Microsoft silently launches HoloLens emulator for devs to build AR apps without a headset

Mar30

by Sindy Cator on March 30, 2016 at 10:45 pm

Today at Build, Microsoft’s developer conference, Microsoft announced it will ship its $3,000 development kit for the HoloLens. It also secretly released a HoloLens emulator which allows developers to build augmented reality apps without actually owning a headset. The emulator uses a Hyper-V virtual machine and works with Visual Studio to perform most of the same tasks you’d expect from HoloLens. Rather than relying on environmental inputs from the headset, the emulator uses keyboard and mouse (or an Xbox controller) commands to respond as if they were being run on HoloLens. The commands are a lot like your typical PC game,…