Without a doubt the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) of today is very much a different firm than the Microsoft of 40, or even 20, years ago. While the company’s flagship Windows business is going nowhere fast, in the last decade new divisions within Microsoft have seen rapid growth as the demands of the market shift.

It wouldn’t be a huge stretch to imagine that the Microsoft in 40 years would be a very different company than the Microsoft of today. The way we interact with computers is changing; the HoloLens might be the new paradigm for the computing input of the future much like how the mouse and touchscreen were the disruptive forces of the past.

As Microsoft celebrated its 40th anniversary on Saturday, its founder, former CEO, and now technology adviser Bill Gates sent out a memo to the company’s 100,00 employees letting them know where the company is headed. Naturally the email got leaked, and it’s a worthwhile read. Check it out in its entirety below:

Tomorrow is a special day: Microsoft’s 40th anniversary.

Early on, Paul Allen and I set the goal of a computer on every desk and in every home. It was a bold idea and a lot of people thought we were out of our minds to imagine it was possible. It is amazing to think about how far computing has come since then, and we can all be proud of the role Microsoft played in that revolution.

Today though, I am thinking much more about Microsoft’s future than its past. I believe computing will evolve faster in the next 10 years than it ever has before. We already live in a multi-platform world, and computing will become even more pervasive. We are nearing the point where computers and robots will be able to see, move, and interact naturally, unlocking many new applications and empowering people even more.

Under Satya’s leadership, Microsoft is better positioned than ever to lead these advances. We have the resources and drive to solve tough problems. We are engaged in every facet of modern computing and have the deepest commitment to research in the industry. In my role as technical advisor to Satya, I get to join product reviews and am impressed by the vision and talent I see. The result is evident in products like Cortana, Skype Translator, and HoloLens — and those are just a few of the many innovations that are on the way.

In the coming years, Microsoft has the opportunity to reach even more people and organizations around the world. Technology is still out of reach for many people, because it is complex or expensive, or they simply do not have access. So I hope you will think about what you can do to make the power of technology accessible to everyone, to connect people to each other, and make personal computing available everywhere even as the very notion of what a PC delivers makes its way into all devices.

We have accomplished a lot together during our first 40 years and empowered countless businesses and people to realize their full potential. But what matters most now is what we do next. Thank you for helping make Microsoft a fantastic company now and for decades to come.

What the Microsoft — or even computing — of 40 years in the future looks like is anyone’s guess. But with Microsoft’s enormous R&D budgets and the exceptional innovation it has shown in the last few years, its future will no doubt be exciting.

The post Read Bill Gates’ Memo to Microsoft’s Employees On its 40th Anniversary appeared first on VR World.

In an interview with the Gaming Business Review, an online site ran by M2 Publishing, Tim Sweeney detailed recent developments in Epic Games, as well as his visions of the future.

The interview obviously took place during Game Developer’s Conference 2015, which is traditionally held in San Francisco, CA. We highly recommend that you head there and read the whole interview, but we could not miss out on a question that is shaping the industry right now:

GBR: How big do you see virtual reality becoming over the next five to ten years as a business?

TS: Virtual reality and Augmented Reality will literally change the world. They will be the next computing platform.  There’s a market for billions of these devices because everybody who has a smartphone today will — perhaps in as much as decade from now — much prefer entertainment in a completely immersive experience that takes advantage of your entire field of view and has full body input through miniaturized cameras and other technologies.  But we’re in the early days of it now.  Let’s be clear, everything is in the development kit stage.  It is for early adopters and what we’re seeing now is really just the Palm Pilot to the platform that will evolve into something iPhone-like in its quality.

There’s no point in denying it, after seeing billions of dollars earned by 3D movies which rely on ‘cheap tricks’ to achieve depth (try finding animated feature movies without 3D being the ‘default’ option), next step will bring us technologies such as Microsoft Hololens, production versions of Facebook-owned Oculus VR (John Carmack keynote) and second-generation Google Glass, which is developed in near-secrecy by the search giant and a practical monopoly in glasses, Italian giant Luxottica.

After operating for almost 20 years as an independent studio, Epic Games made waves across the gaming and development community when they accepted an investment from Tencent Holdings (HKG:0700) last June (2014). The Chinese powerhouse paid up $330 million for 48.4% of the company, setting the valuation just a bit below $680 million.

Tim Sweeney continued to be the CEO, while his lifelong business partner Mark Rein still continues as in his role of Vice President.  Not selling themselves outright like idSoftware did with ZeniMax Media, Epic Games continues to be independent studio, consisting out of product (games) and technology development units. Their recent announcement about making Unreal Engine ‘free’ opens a path for even more ‘premium freemium’ titles which base their revenue model on microtransactions.

The post Tim Sweeney: Virtual Reality will Literally Change the World appeared first on VR World.

Since it has been confirmed that the Windows Holographic platform will come baked into every copy of the Windows 10 operating system, Microsoft obviously anticipates the possibility of a future filled with “holographic” computing devices.

So is Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) correct to expect this trend, and – more importantly – should we be happy if it is?

HoloLens joins the recent crew of wearable interfaces, which includes Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Glass and Sony’s not-so-smart-glasses. Some people want to include Oculus Rift in this list, but the Rift is neither augmented reality, nor a computer interface – it is a glamorous virtual reality gaming console, that also happens to be really cool, but doesn’t attempt to function as an interface for everyday computing.

A step forward

Augmented reality devices represent the logical step in a trend that began with the unveiling of the original iPhone in 2007.  Much has been made of the way Apple’s iPhone – and later the iPad – influenced the computing world by creating a vast market for portable smart devices. But equally relevant is an extraordinary paradigm shift caused by these devices with the perfection of one simple element: the touch screen.

Since Douglas Engelbart’s “mother of all demos” in 1968, computer interfaces have been dominated by the ingenious mouse-keyboard combo. For a generation of people who lived before computers, the mouse and keyboard represented the perfect interface: a simple and intuitive way to input commands to a computer using direct mechanical motion and tactile feedback. Typing at a computer wasn’t much different from using a typewriter, and using a mouse must have felt a lot like pulling a lever or turning a steering-wheel to get where one wanted to go.

Most importantly, this interface maintained a clear distinction between the user and the machine: there could not be a less ambiguous boundary than the four corners of a computer monitor, and the pronounced grid of a 1980s keyboard. This distinction was a comfortable one for those accustomed to reading text from the pages of a book, or the folds of a newspaper.

But it also turned out to be an unnecessary one, because computers are not books. The touchscreen was not merely a cool gimmick, but a fundamental change in the way people interacted with their devices. Gone was the distance, or the need for mechanical proxies. Users could now directly manipulate the digital environment by touching it, and interacting with it in a way so intimate that it could arguably be called “magical”.

Since a capacitive touchscreen was included in Apple’s original iPhone, touchscreens have appeared everywhere: tablets, laptops, desktop monitors, televisions, cars, and even refrigerators. It’s a well established fact that a small niche for touchscreens existed before 2007, as exemplified by Microsoft’s Palm PC. But besides being inaccurate and cumbersome, these screens focused on the use of a stylus, and so continued to emphasize the mechanical boundary between machine and user.

Changing paradigms

Google went a step beyond the touchscreen with Glass, by changing the very screen from a physical one to one existing virtually in a user’s line of sight. But this was more of a gimmick than anything significant. Glass still functioned almost exactly like a mobile device. The glass interface was just a screen – a screen constantly floating in front of one’s face, but a screen nevertheless.

HoloLens represents an even more dramatic reduction in the distance between user and interface. By virtually transforming the physical world into a tangible representation of programs and controls, HoloLens is more invasive than glass, which at least preserves the distinction between what is virtual and what is real.

The effect – theoretically, at least – is awesome. What could be cooler than literally stepping into a Martian biome, or the bounds of a video game environment, or to pick up a virtual model and turn it around, all within one’s office?

The question of whether these theoretical features will actually function as intended can be ignored in lieu of the more dramatic question, which is: should this distance be breached in the first place? Digital environments are not realer than the ones in books or other fantasies, which we comfortably consign to the boundaries of our imagination, or pages, or stage, or screen – the boundaries of something.

But should we willingly lie to our senses until they are confused what is actual, and what is virtual? HoloLens is the first time this has actually been attempted, so there are no past failures to learn from, or debates to draw on. This is a question that must be worked out by the consumer, whose answer will ultimately determine the fate of augmented reality, and Microsoft’s HoloLens.

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