Holoportation is a Great Way to Give Awkward High Fives

Few companies have an invention portfolio quite like Microsoft. The company has over 40,000 patents for ideas ranging from stupid slide bar designs to Nazi sex bots, but its most recent tech unveiling is by far its most glamorous.

Microsoft is calling the new technology Holoportation, a portmanteau of 'hologram' and 'teleportation,' which makes sense because that's pretty much what the devices and software are doing: teleporting (virtual) holograms.

As detailed on the website for Microsoft's research wing and in the above video, holoportation is a new type of 3D capture technology that aims at transforming the way people communicate—and selling more HoloLens, Microsoft's pricey virtual reality kit that just went on pre-sale. Although Holoportation is a catchy name, the technology doesn't actually involve holography in the strict sense, since it doesn't use a light field and requires special optics (a virtual reality headset) to work. Furthermore, it's no more of a teleportation system than Skype, since both communication methods require the physical ferrying of energy from point A to point B to function. It's kind of like holography and kind of like teleportation, but holoportation is not really either.

Still, the device clearly takes inspiration from both of these perennially futuristic technologies. Microsoft's holoportation rig works by positioning users within an array of 8 cameras that are used to create a virtual 3D model of the users which can then be compressed and sent anywhere in the world. Recipients outfitted with a augmented reality headset can interact with the resulting virtual hologram of the sender in real time.

Although this technology is still in its infancy (and how/if such a complicated system will translate to a consumer product remains to be seen), the initial results are certainly impressive. With the exception of minor screen tearing, the 3D avatars rendered with Microsoft's new holoportation technology are uncanny.

Unfortunately, many of the specs of Microsoft's holoportation tech remain a secret. Although the research group responsible for the technology—Interactive 3D Technologies—cites 5 papers about the technology that will be released later this year, for now interested parties must content themselves with the above video and other promotional materials on Microsoft's website.