Pokémon Go for HoloLens Previewed

While the wildly en vogue Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game only in the loosest sense – limited by the mapping capacity of current-gen smartphone cameras – emerging tech could see the game, or those like it, propelled into the arena of true AR. Already, a developer for Microsoft’s HoloLens AR headset has created a demo inspired by Pokémon Go which places those eponymous pocket monsters into the real world in ways Niantic’s mobile game can only dream of:

“We were actually amazed how easy it is to launch an app for this device and create and optimize the mechanics and interaction,” David Robustelli, Head of Digital at CapitolaVR, which created the demo, told UploadVR. “The build was created in Unity with the HoloLens SDK.”

While the demo is not a game in itself, is in no way commissioned or endorsed by Niantic Labs, and does not indicate an official HoloLens version of Pokémon Go, as a proof-of-concept for such an endeavour, it’s pretty cool.

“For now the Pokémon are randomly generated within a mapped environment,” Robustelli explained. “We are now focusing on how to use different gestures for specific interactions. For example, like opening your inventory or activating your map and zooming in and tilting your map.”

“The thing is there is a huge amount of possibilities that are unexplored and which could work for games like these,” he added. “A more challenging thing is how to access the Google Maps API and enabling it within a running app. But I’m sure that in the upcoming years when more and more people are developing for this hardware also more things will be standard to use in tools and apps.”