(upbeat music)
- [Zack] Hey everyone, Zack here for Windows Central
and welcome back to another video.
Now today we're taking a look at
Windows Core OS for HoloLens 2.
This is the first version of Windows Core OS
to be made available to the public
and will be shipping on the HoloLens 2
when it rolls out to buyers later this year.
So this flavor of Windows Core OS is very similar to
the original HoloLens OS that's
currently available on the HoloLens 1.
The only real differences here are cosmetic changes
to the start menu and app title bars and whatnot.
Everything else is more or less the same,
not including things like the new HoloLens 2
hardware capabilities such as being able to sort of
actually touch holograms and stuff.
We won't be taking a look at that today,
we're literally just taking a look at the OS itself
because this is running in an emulator
which is very difficult to control.
So, yeah, let's dive straight into it.
The first noteworthy change to the start menu here,
compared to the old HoloLens OS at least,
the tiles are slightly rounded at the corner
so if we get closer here you may be able to see that.
And I think this is a design choice you're going to see
show up in loads of places throughout Windows 10
and Windows Core OS over the coming months and years.
This is likely and upcoming change
to the fluent design language.
You can already see it in some areas of Windows 10
such as the new search experience in 19H1
and the tabs UI and context menus in the new Microsoft Edge.
And I'm pretty sure you're going to
see it in other places very soon as well.
So, yes, this is the start menu.
If we launch an app here...
Let's launch the settings app because why not.
You'll see that the title bar at
the top here has slightly changed as well.
If you've used Windows mixed reality on
Windows 10 19H1 if you've used a mixed
reality headset glasses, um, this UI
the start menu and the window UIs and whatnot
will be very familiar to you because
it's using the same stuff.
It's the same design language across both.
So this isn't technically new if you've been
using 19H1 and a Windows mixed reality headset.
This is just new for the Holographic OS which is
also known as Windows Holographic for Business.
So along the top page there's a new button
called follow me which if I click on it will
sort of dock the window below my peripheral vision
and if I look down you see the window down there like that.
Now this will follow me around the room,
wherever I go it will stick with me.
So I can always refer to it if I need to.
So this is great if I have multiple
different sort of windows open at one time
and I need to not lose one or two I can
just dock it to me so wherever I can just
look down and it will be there ready
for me to access.
If we open up the start again
and take a look along the top here
we can see that there's options for the time,
our name, which on this emulator
at least is Visitor0,
and the battery percentage,
our profile picture icon up here
which doesn't actually do anything
if we click on it.
Then we have options for ethernet or if this
was a real device it would be wifi.
If we click on that, that will take
us to our wifi settings.
We also have our speech on which
HoloLens OS is still voice activated
so I can say things like..
if I highlight something here..
If I say, close,
it will close the window for me like that
which is quite nice.
Also, since we can get close to it we can also
see that the start has a sort of 3d effect to it.
We can see if see if things like the
icons and whatnot are floating just above
the start menu itself
which is a cool designs aesthetic.
We'll actually see that all over the place
with Holographic OS or Windows Holographic OS
even, which is quite nice.
So let's quickly get to the apps list
just to show you what the apps list looks like
and it's more less the same as the old one.
You can see it's little sort of like
physics effect there..
You can see some physics effects there
and stuff when you click on things.
Let's launch this and go back up.
So this is obviously one flavor of
Windows Core OS, there will be more
flavors of Windows Core OS over time
that will do lots of different things.
There will be one for laptops, there's one for
the Surface Hub 2x of course
and that's where the more
interesting stuff is happening.
This of course is the first version of
Windows Core OS to ship so we're gunna
take a look at it regardless.
Um..
Which is why we're sort of poking around it.
There's not a lot to look at
like I said, this is very similar to the
original of HoloLens OS and if you've tried
out the 19H1 mixed reality update
you'll know that more or less the design
changes are present there as well.
But yes, this is a real version of
Windows Core OS that's working and
will be shipping later this year
which means progress is being made.
We're on step closer to Windows Core OS
launching on more devices, which is very exciting.
But until then, thank you very much for watching
and I shall see you in the next one.
Buh Bye.