Agile development is, in essence, about reducing the feedback time, and the Holographic Simulation does just that. This allows rapid development and encourages experimentation, something a new platform, such as the HoloLens, needs. To get it up and running is simply a matter of turning it on and clicking on the Play button. This is done by first opening the Holographic panel by clicking on the menu via Window | Holographic Emulation, as shown:
You will now be presented with the Holographic panel; from here, it's simply a question of selecting Simulate in Editor for Emulation Mode, as shown in the following screenshot:
When Emulation Mode is set to Simulate in Editor, clicking Play will start the emulator built into the Unity Editor. The Holographic panel also exposes the Room and Gesture Hand options. Room allows you to select one of the supplied virtual rooms (located in the Plugins/Rooms/ folder where the emulator resides) while Gesture Hand allows us to select between left-and-right handed gestures.
To take advantage of the simulator, you will need to have access to a game controller, such as an Xbox controller. You can still run the simulator but won't be able to move around.
The following table lists the controls available when the simulator is running; these were taken from the official Unity website:
|
Control |
Function |
|
Left stick |
Up and down to move the virtual human player backward and forward; left and right to move left and right. |
|
Right stick |
Up and down to pitch the virtual human player’s head up and down; left and right to turn the virtual human player left and right. |
|
D-pad |
Move the virtual human player up and down or roll head left and right. |
|
Left and right trigger buttons; A button |
Perform a tap gesture with a virtual hand. |
|
Y button |
Reset the pitch and roll of the virtual human player’s head. |
The simulator is great for rapid development and provides the opportunity to eliminate any obvious bugs that would otherwise be deployed to the device, adding to the friction. But it does lack the fidelity of wearing the device, which brings us nicely to the next tool released by Unity--Holographic Remoting.