(calm music)
- Hey there guys.
Zac here, for Windows Central,
and welcome back to another video.
Now today we're taking a look at Windows 10 Redstone 4
for HoloLens.
This is the first major Windows 10 update
HoloLens is receiving since the anniversary update,
which is technically the release the HoloLens shipped with,
so this is technically the first feature update
that HoloLens has ever seen.
It didn't get the Creators update
or the full Creators update,
but it is finally getting Redstone 4.
And in it, not much, but there are some refinements
and improvements, and just things
that have been brought over from Windows 10 Redstone 4
on desktop and stuff.
So the biggest change in Redstone 4
for HoloLens, is the ability to move
objects or windows around more freely.
In the previous release, moving windows and objects
was a clunky experience, you had to press on a button,
which would then enable a dedicated move mode.
But as you can see here, in Redstone 4,
it works just like it does on desktop.
I could just grab the edge of a window
and resize it by doing the air tap gesture,
or I could just grab the title bar
at the top of the app here and move it around
as you would expect.
Another improvement is the ability to use
two hands at once to manipulate windows and objects as well.
So as you can see here, I am now twisting
and rotating this app with two hands,
that wasn't possible before.
Twisting and rotating apps was a whole thing
in the previous release.
I don't even think you could rotate apps,
not easily anyway.
But yes, as you can see here, I am now able to
twist and zoom in and out,
make apps bigger or smaller with two hands,
and easily move them around with one hand as well.
This is a huge improvement over what it was
in the original HoloLens release,
so much so that, this is actually
an enjoyable experience now.
Moving objects around in the previous release
was definitely not an enjoyable experience,
it was slow and, I would describe it as rather clunky.
But in this release it's far better,
it's still not perfect of course,
the tracking and the field of view is not great
so it sometimes still feels a bit claustrophobic,
but being able to just making apps bigger on the fly
without having to go into a dedicated zoom mode,
just makes the experience feel so much more fluid
and it's just like manipulating
windows on a desktop, for example.
Now you may have noticed the setting app for HoloLens
now looks the same as it does on desktop,
and that's because, yes this is the same Redstone 4
settings app that you can find on desktop.
The same UWP updates applied to Redstone 4 on desktop
should also be applied here as well,
which means we're also getting updated apps,
such as the new Photos app,
which is the same one found on desktop,
except it doesn't have all that weird
video editing stuff of course.
But everything else is here,
such as being able to view your
OneDrive photos, for example,
and getting the same sort of editing tools for photos
and what not.
And there's this new feature called "Place in Mixed World"
which essentially just takes a photo
in your OneDrive library, or Photos library,
and it places it like a picture in the real world,
as you can see here.
So I can now move this around
and pin it to walls, resize it, much like a real photo.
So let's move this down here
and pin it to the wall next to my desk.
And there we go, that's now hanging out
on my wall like you would expect a photograph to do.
But yeah, this is the full on Windows 10 PC Photos app.
If you go up here into the settings area,
you can see that yes it's the same
universal app that's being shared across PC, Xbox,
and I assume mobile still if that's still being updated.
Yes, it even has dark mode, which will change
when I restart the app, and all of that good stuff.
That's the Photos app, let's minimize that
and pin it to the wall a little bit more.
There we go, it's now chilling on my wall
just like a real photo and it actually looks pretty cool.
This release also includes the updated PWA support,
which works just like you would expect.
This is the Twitter PWA, available in the Windows Store
for desktop, running on HoloLens just fine.
And it works just like you would expect,
it looks almost identical to the desktop app,
except sort of optimized for mobile.
If you resize the window,
it will obviously scale accordingly.
This is it, I can do my normal Twitter stuff
with this app.
I will receive notifications that come through
via the PWA service workers
that are supported in this build.
I can even do a normal tweet,
as you would expect to be able to do
from a Twitter app.
The keyboard here hasn't changed much, I don't believe.
It still looks the same to me,
there's still dictation options and stuff,
but yes it's there and that works as expected.
So again, I just want to emphasize
the improved support for moving objects
and windows around.
If you open up a hologram here from the Holograms app,
you'll see that being able to place
these objects is far easier in this release.
So let's take a second to load this.
The reason why lots of this is taking a while to load
is because my internet connection,
unfortunately is just not fast right now,
but speaking of performance actually,
HoloLens itself feels a lot snappier with this release.
The anniversary update for HoloLens was somewhat slow.
But with this release it's a little bit faster,
it's not incredibly fast but it's definitely faster.
So like popping up the start menu, for example,
just feels snappier, it happens almost instantly.
Just pinning and clicking on tiles,
and opening apps, the app will begin to open
and load almost instantly now,
whereas before it would feel like
there was a slight delay in doing that.
But yes, as you can see here, we're just opening up
apps here, let's move this to the left for a second.
Let's open up, let's put something else on my desk.
Actually no, let's put something on the wall,
let's put this shelf here on the wall.
Let's see if we can do this first time.
So yes, it's slightly impairing because it is
powered by the net,
who says the net?
It's powered by the web, and my internet,
as I said, is incredibly slow.
But here it is, it's now popped up
so I can use two hands to make it bigger,
cause that's a tiny shelf right now,
you could fit nothing on it.
Let's make it more life size.
There we go, that's more like it.
And let's get up and make sure
it's up against the wall, like that.
Now let's give it a double check,
see if it's close enough to the wall to looks realistic.
Yes, it looks fine.
Finally, let's take a look at Microsoft Edge in this build.
It's still Microsoft Edge,
not much has changed in that regard.
It features the slightly updated
fluent design UI now.
Doesn't have set tabs aside,
which is kind of odd,
but, there you have it, it's not there.
Other than that, it's got all the same
under the hood improvements and changes,
including the, again, the PWA support,
which is always nice.
Let's load up Windows Central here.
Again, the reason why this is taking a while
to load webpages and stuff
is because my internet sucks right now,
I basically have no internet
so I'm using mobile data,
which is not very fast.
But yes, this is Redstone 4, we do have the updated
hub UI which is slightly larger now
and more easy to use and what not.
But yes, other than that, this is Redstone 4 for HoloLens.
There's lots of developer orientated updates and stuff,
which I'm not gonna dive into it this video
because that's boring,
but there's lots of new APIs and things
that developers can tap into and take advantage of.
So yes, this is my little setup
I've built here with HoloLens,
just temporarily.
That's pretty much it for this video guys.
Thanks so much for watching,
and I shall see you in the next one.
Bye bye.