Integration of HoloLens in XR-LAB

Abstract

Extended reality is experiencing rapid growth, in both hardware and software and the marked is expanding targeting consumers, businesses and industry. At UiT, Narvik there is established an extended reality laboratory that have a potential to have an impact on the future for education and industry. However, the virtual environment is challenging to operate and navigate with the current equipment. This project focuses on how to integrate a head mounted display, such as Microsoft HoloLens 2, and then use the device in the same environment in real-time. Both the system running the XR-LAB and the system that operates the HoloLens, support a common development software for creating application. This software is a game engine given the name Unity, and to this software there is toolkits provided to each respective system. Results achieved during the project are designs of XR environment and templates for future work towards the XR-LAB. There has been developed an application which allows users of the laboratory to interact and control the virtual environment with a seamless integration of the HoloLens 2. The project had a duration of total 30 weeks and were divided into two parts. The part one counted for 1/3 of the total time and initialized the project with introduction and literature review. Part two were started after the first part was approved, and as the main part it counted for 2/3 of the total time allocated to the project. For the work done in part two and concluded within this report, it was scheduled to have a time usage of 817 hours. Total time consumption used is 825 hours in the 18 weeks of duration. Keywords: Extended Reality, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, OpenXR, XRLAB, Unity, Microsoft HoloLens 2, Igloo Vision.