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Microsoft HoloLens

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Microsoft HoloLens was a self-contained mixed reality headset built by Microsoft and sold in two generations. HoloLens (1st gen) shipped as a Development Edition on 2016-03-30 at $3,000, joined on 2016-08-02 by a $5,000 Commercial Suite [1][27]. HoloLens 2 was announced at Mobile World Congress on 2019-02-24 and went on sale on 2019-11-07 at $3,500 [3][4]. Both were untethered Windows computers worn on the head, with see-through waveguide lenses, inside-out tracking that needed no external base stations, and custom Microsoft silicon called the Holographic Processing Unit. Microsoft stopped manufacturing HoloLens in December 2024; HoloLens (1st gen) lost support on 2024-12-10, and HoloLens 2 remains under monthly security servicing until 2027-12-31 [5][6]. A separate military derivative, the US Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), carried a production ceiling of $21.88 billion and was handed to Anduril Industries in 2025 [7][8]. For the current generation of AI glasses, HoloLens is the reference case: most of its component technologies survived, and none of its industrial design did.

HoloLens (1st gen)

Microsoft revealed HoloLens on 2015-01-21 at its Windows 10 press event [28], and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced the same day that it had built a Mars visualization tool called OnSight around the headset [29]. Preorders for the Development Edition opened on 2016-02-29 and units shipped from 2016-03-30 in the United States and Canada at $3,000, restricted to developers who had applied and received an invitation [1]. On 2016-08-02 Microsoft dropped the application requirement and added a second tier, the Commercial Suite, at $5,000: the same hardware plus a warranty and enterprise security and device management features [2][27]. Neither was sold to consumers.

The device ran an Intel 32-bit processor with TPM 2.0 support, 2 GB of RAM and 64 GB of flash, and weighed 579 grams [9]. Optics were two HD 16:9 light engines feeding see-through waveguide lenses, rated by Microsoft at 2.3 million total light points and a holographic density above 2,500 radiants per radian [9]. Sensors were an inertial measurement unit, four environment understanding cameras, a depth camera, a 2 MP photo and HD video camera, four microphones and an ambient light sensor [9]. Battery life was 2 to 3 hours of active use, and the whole assembly was passively cooled [9].

The part Microsoft talked about most was the Holographic Processing Unit. Alex Kipman described the HPU as custom silicon that let HoloLens understand gestures and gaze while mapping the surrounding room in real time [1]. Marc Pollefeys, then director of science for HoloLens, later spelled out why a general-purpose chip would not do: any computer vision work that has to run locally for latency reasons, such as hand tracking, runs off the same head-mounted battery as everything else [10]. That constraint still governs every on-device AI wearable.

The field of view problem

HoloLens (1st gen) drew criticism for how little of the wearer's view its display covered from the first press demos, held at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters the same day as the reveal. Engadget's Ben Gilbert told Road to VR the field of view was "its biggest limitation: you are essentially looking through a window", and that it meant "far more head movement than you'd normally make". Gizmodo's Sean Hollister called it "tiny" and "tunnel-vision-narrow", and PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon called it "disappointingly limiting" and "not immersive at all", though all three praised what was inside the window [26].

Microsoft did not publish a figure to argue with. The company's specification sheets for both generations list optics, resolution and holographic density but never a display field of view in degrees [9][11]. That is a live source of confusion: the one field-of-view figure that does appear on Microsoft's HoloLens 2 hardware page, 96.1 degrees diagonal, describes the visible light tracking cameras, not the display [11].

The display figures that circulate come from Alex Kipman rather than from a spec sheet. After Road to VR pressed Microsoft in February 2019, Kipman pointed to a pre-reveal Wired feature confirming 34 degrees diagonal at 16:9 for the original headset and 52 degrees diagonal at 3:2 for HoloLens 2 [12]. UploadVR, working from the same Kipman clarification, derived roughly 43 by 29 degrees horizontal by vertical for HoloLens 2 and gave 30 by 17.5 degrees for the first generation [3]. Anyone quoting a bare "34 degrees" or "52 degrees" for HoloLens is quoting a diagonal, and the two generations do not share an aspect ratio, which is one reason the figures get compared badly.

Microsoft's presentation of the improvement was itself misleading. Kipman told the MWC audience that HoloLens 2 delivered "more than double" the field of view; Microsoft later told Road to VR that this meant field of view area, not any angle. Road to VR then measured the comparison graphic Kipman had shown on stage against the real figure Microsoft had confirmed to it, and found the graphic depicted an area 5.2 times that of HoloLens 1. Microsoft told the site the graphic was just an "illustration" [12].

HoloLens 2

HoloLens 2 was announced on 2019-02-24 at MWC Barcelona and went on sale on 2019-11-07 in ten countries at $3,500 [3][4]. Microsoft also sold it bundled with Dynamics 365 Remote Assist at $125 per user per month, and later a Development Edition that added a $500 Azure credit plus Unity Pro and PiXYZ trials [13].

HoloLens (1st gen)HoloLens 2
Announced2015-01-21 [28]2019-02-24 [3]
Available2016-03-30 [1]2019-11-07 [4]
Price$3,000 Development Edition, $5,000 Commercial Suite [2]$3,500 device only [13]
Main processorIntel 32-bit with TPM 2.0 [9]Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 [11]
Custom siliconHPU 1.0 [9]second-generation HPU [11]
Memory and storage2 GB RAM, 64 GB flash [9]4 GB LPDDR4x, 64 GB UFS 2.1 [11]
Display FOV (per Kipman)34 degrees diagonal, 16:9 [12]52 degrees diagonal, 3:2 [12]
Eye trackingnone; automatic pupillary distance calibration [9]two IR cameras, real-time tracking [11]
Hand inputgesture input (bloom, air tap) [9]two-handed fully articulated model [11]
Weight579 g [9]566 g [11]
Battery2 to 3 hours active use [9]2 to 3 hours active use [11]

The second-generation HPU was designed around machine learning from the start. In a CVPR 2017 keynote, Microsoft's Harry Shum announced that the next HPU would carry an AI coprocessor able to run deep neural networks natively, supporting a wide range of layer types and fully programmable by Microsoft, and showed an early silicon spin running hand segmentation live [10]. That coprocessor is what made HoloLens 2's articulated hand tracking practical on a battery.

Optically, HoloLens 2 replaced the first generation's light engines with a laser-illuminated system: Microsoft describes the display as waveguides plus light projectors sitting above the brow, using laser light [14], and UploadVR called it a custom laser MEMS design [3]. Eye tracking served both display optimization and iris sign-in through Windows Hello [11].

Road to VR's Scott Hayden, who spent about half an hour in the headset at MWC, praised the articulated hand tracking and an eye-tracked text-scrolling demo and called the field of view "approaching what I'd call 'really quite usable and not terribly annoying'", while noting that the bottom edge of the display was plainly visible and that the optics washed out in a brightly lit room [15]. TechCrunch's Frederic Lardinois, reviewing the shipping unit, wrote that the first generation had often felt like "looking at the virtual objects through a stamp-sized window" [4].

Microsoft never published sales figures. In April 2020, five months after launch, it said it had shipped "tens of thousands" of HoloLens 2 headsets to "hundreds" of enterprise customers and was still working through a signup list rather than offering open ordering [16]. Positioning was explicitly industrial: alongside the standard device Microsoft sold an Industrial Edition certified UL Class I Division 2 for hazardous locations, and a Trimble XR10 edition integrated into a hard hat and PPE-compliant in more than 40 countries [17].

The Army program

IVAS is a distinct program from the commercial product line and should not be described as the same device. It is a US Army effort for a body-worn system based on HoloLens 2 [19] which, in Microsoft's description, combines augmented and virtual reality to give soldiers beyond line-of-sight perception, better survivability against drones and faster mission command of unmanned systems [8].

Prototyping began roughly 28 months before the production award, placing it in late 2018 [18]. On 2021-03-31 the Army announced that it had moved the program into production under an agreement with Microsoft carrying a maximum potential value of $21.88 billion and a potential period of performance of ten years, structured as a five-year base with a five-year option [7]. FedScoop reported the production quantity as 120,000 headsets [18]. Secondary coverage dates "the $22 billion contract" variously to 2018 or 2021 because there were successive awards; Breaking Defense puts the Army's selection of HoloLens 2 in 2018 [20], Road to VR the $22 billion award in 2021 [19]. The production agreement is the 2021 one [7].

Testing went badly. A three-week Army assessment ending 2022-06-18 put 70 infantry soldiers through three 72-hour combat scenarios, and more than 80 percent reported headaches, eyestrain or nausea after less than three hours of use. Congress rejected the Army's request for roughly $400 million to buy up to 6,900 more units and earmarked $40 million for a new model instead; the Army had already awarded a $125 million task order for a version 1.2 with a lower-profile heads-up display and a distributed counterweight [19].

On 2025-02-11 Microsoft and Anduril jointly announced an expanded partnership under which, "pending Department of Defense approval", Anduril would "assume oversight of production, future development of hardware and software, and delivery timelines" for IVAS, with Microsoft Azure becoming Anduril's preferred hyperscale cloud for IVAS workloads [8]. Breaking Defense reported that Anduril formally assumed oversight of the production agreement in April 2025, under a contract novation [20].

What has happened since is documented and unflattering. The Army opened a new rapid-prototyping competition, Soldier Borne Mission Command (SBMC), and by September 2025 an Anduril and Meta team had been selected alongside a new entrant, Rivet, whose award was a $195 million, 18-month sprint [20]. In June 2026 the Government Accountability Office listed IVAS among its examples of wasteful weapon-system acquisition, writing that the estimated $1.8 billion program "has yet to deliver operational capability after three different acquisition efforts and system versions developed since 2018", and that the nearly 10,000 units built of the first two versions "have fallen short of soldiers' needs and will go into storage, with some potentially used for testing, rather than to the field" [21]. MIT Technology Review reported in May 2026 that "much of the other hardware" for both of Anduril's headset projects, its SBMC entry and a self-funded helmet system called EagleEye, is being built by Meta, "including the displays and the waveguides that send visuals to the user's eye without blocking the view", that the component parts for those prototypes only began arriving in March 2026, and that the Army is not expected to move an SBMC choice into production until 2028, if it picks one at all [22]. No fielded operational capability has been sourced as of 2026-08-02.

Discontinuation and support

Microsoft told mixed reality partners in late September 2024 that it was announcing a "Last Time Buy" for HoloLens 2 [6]. The dates in that message match Microsoft's own documentation, which carries two distinct end dates that often get conflated.

EventDateSource
HoloLens (1st gen) enters Long-Term Servicing state2021-11-23[5]
HoloLens (1st gen) final servicing update, after which no security updates or technical support2024-12-10[5]
HoloLens 2 final feature release, Windows Holographic 24H1 build 22621.1409November 2024[5]
Manufacturing endsDecember 2024[5]
HoloLens 2 monthly security servicing ends2027-12-31[5][6]
UK PSTI minimum security update period, units bought by 2025-02-282028-02-28[5]

The two Microsoft-stated dates sit on the same page and belong together. The release notes say monthly security servicing continues through December 2027, and separately that "for purposes of conformance with the UK Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) Act, the minimum security update period for HoloLens 2 is February 28, 2028 (for units purchased until February 28th, 2025)", after which HoloLens 2 devices "will no longer be compliant with security standards" [5]. HoloLens 2 is not dead as of 2026-08-02: the current release listed on that page is the July 2026 Update, build 22621.1546 [5]. What has ended is manufacturing and feature work. Microsoft's purchase page states that "HoloLens 2 is no longer being manufactured and is currently out of stock in all geographies" [23].

No replacement was announced [6]. Microsoft confirmed the end of production to UploadVR and said it remained "fully committed" to the militarized IVAS version; UploadVR's reading was that in the general enterprise market Microsoft was no longer a hardware player and that its strategy now ran through its partnership with Meta [30]. Alex Kipman, the HoloLens co-creator, was reported in June 2022 to be leaving Microsoft within two months, in a mixed reality reorganization that followed an Insider report on misconduct allegations, which he did not publicly answer [24]. Microsoft's other head-worn platform went the same way: Windows Mixed Reality, the PC virtual reality line launched in 2017 with Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, was deprecated in December 2023 and removed in Windows 11 version 24H2 in October 2024 [25].

Legacy

The technical inheritance is easy to name. HoloLens shipped see-through waveguide combiners in a commercial product in 2016 and again in 2019, the same basic optical approach, if not always the same grating family, as the display glasses now sold by Meta, Snap and Vuzix [9][11]. It shipped world-scale six-degrees-of-freedom inside-out tracking with no markers, external cameras, wires or phone, now the default for headsets and glasses alike and built on the same SLAM and sensor fusion work [1][11]. It turned a fully articulated two-handed model and real-time eye tracking into system-level input rather than a research demo, an interaction grammar that Apple Vision Pro later built an entire interface around [11]. And it put a programmable neural-network accelerator on the headset itself, for the latency and battery reasons every wearable now cites [10].

What did not carry over is the shape. HoloLens 2 weighed 566 grams and ran 2 to 3 hours because a passively cooled visor had to hold four tracking cameras, a time-of-flight depth sensor, two infrared eye cameras, a five-channel microphone array, laser projectors, a Snapdragon 850 and a custom coprocessor [11]. Shrinking that to eyewear was not a matter of iteration. The products that reached glasses form between 2024 and 2026, Meta's Ray-Ban Display among them, got there by giving something up: a much smaller display, compute moved off the head, or no display at all. The wide binocular see-through headset stayed a headset, and the place it survives closest to its original ambition is defense, where Anduril inherited both the program and, in Meta's displays and waveguides, the hard optical problem [22].

Ten years after the developer edition, the AI glasses market that HoloLens partly anticipated is contested by Android XR, Snap Spectacles, Magic Leap and Meta's Orion prototype line, and there is no Microsoft headset in it. That leaves HoloLens beside Google Glass as one of the two large pre-2020 attempts at head-worn augmented reality whose components outlived the products that carried them.

References

  1. ^"Announcing Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition open for pre-order, shipping March 30." Windows Blogs (Alex Kipman), 2016-02-29. blogs.windows.com/...r-pre-order-shipping-march-30
  2. ^"Buy HoloLens." Microsoft, archived 2017-02-06. web.archive.org/...buy
  3. ^"HoloLens 2's Field of View Revealed." UploadVR, 2019-02-25. uploadvr.com/hololens-2-field-of-view
  4. ^"Microsoft's HoloLens 2 starts shipping." TechCrunch, 2019-11-07. techcrunch.com/...softs-hololens-2-starts-shipping
  5. ^"HoloLens 2 release notes." Microsoft Learn. learn.microsoft.com/...hololens-release-notes
  6. ^"Microsoft Discontinues HoloLens 2, Support to End in 2027 with No Successor in Sight." Road to VR, 2024-10-01. roadtovr.com/...scontinued-support-2027-hololens-3
  7. ^"IVAS: Microsoft Award By Army Worth Up To $21.9B." Breaking Defense, 2021-03-31. breakingdefense.com/...oft-award-worth-up-to-21-9b
  8. ^"Anduril and Microsoft partner to advance Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program for the U.S. Army." Microsoft Source, 2025-02-11. news.microsoft.com/...vas-program-for-the-u-s-army
  9. ^"HoloLens (1st gen) hardware." Microsoft Learn. learn.microsoft.com/...hololens1-hardware
  10. ^"Second version of HoloLens HPU will incorporate AI coprocessor for implementing DNNs." Microsoft Research Blog (Marc Pollefeys), 2017-07-23. microsoft.com/...-ai-coprocessor-implementing-dnns
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  12. ^"Microsoft Significantly Misrepresented HoloLens 2's Field of View at Reveal." Road to VR, 2019-02-27. roadtovr.com/...ololens-2s-field-of-view-at-reveal
  13. ^"HoloLens 2 pricing and options." Microsoft, archived 2020-06-19. web.archive.org/...buy
  14. ^"HoloLens 2 display." Microsoft Learn. learn.microsoft.com/...hololens2-display
  15. ^"Hands-on: HoloLens 2 is a More Than Just a Larger Field of View." Road to VR, 2019-02-26. roadtovr.com/hololens-2-hands-on-preview-mwc-2019
  16. ^"Microsoft is Expanding HoloLens 2 Availability with 'tens of thousands' Shipped to Date." Road to VR, 2020-04-15. roadtovr.com/...ments-units-expanding-availability
  17. ^"Compare HoloLens 2 options." Microsoft Learn. learn.microsoft.com/...hololens2-options
  18. ^"Microsoft wins $21B contract to produce 120,000 AR headsets for the Army." FedScoop, 2021-03-31. fedscoop.com/...lolens-ivas-procurement-production
  19. ^"US Congress Halts Orders of Microsoft AR Combat Goggles Amid Reports of Headaches & Eyestrain." Road to VR, 2023-01-13. roadtovr.com/...icrosoft-defense-augmented-reality
  20. ^"EXCLUSIVE: Army taps Anduril-Meta team, plus new entrant Rivet, for IVAS recompete." Breaking Defense, 2025-09-05. breakingdefense.com/...al-reality-goggle-army-sbmc
  21. ^"Weapon Systems Acquisition: Beyond Business as Usual, Using Leading Practices to Curb Waste and Save Billions." US Government Accountability Office, GAO-26-109135, June 2026. gao.gov/...gao-26-109135.pdf
  22. ^"Inside Anduril and Meta's quest to make smart glasses for warfare." MIT Technology Review, 2026-05-18. technologyreview.com/...-smart-glasses-for-warfare
  23. ^"Purchase HoloLens 2." Microsoft Learn, last updated 2025-02-27. learn.microsoft.com/...hololens2-purchase
  24. ^"HoloLens Chief Alex Kipman to Leave Microsoft Amid Misconduct Allegations." Road to VR, 2022-06-08. roadtovr.com/...n-microsoft-misconduct-allegations
  25. ^"Windows 11 No Longer Supports Microsoft's Windows VR Headsets Following October Update." Road to VR, 2024-10-02. roadtovr.com/windows-11-drops-wmr-support-24h2
  26. ^"Microsoft's 'Mixed Reality' HoloLens Garners Mixed Reviews, Incredible Potential Diminished by Small Field of View." Road to VR, 2015-01-26. roadtovr.com/...e-apps-diminished-small-field-view
  27. ^"HoloLens Development Edition Updates." Windows Blogs, 2016-08-02. blogs.windows.com/...s-development-edition-updates
  28. ^"'Microsoft HoloLens' Revealed, an Untethered See-through AR Headset." Road to VR, 2015-01-21. roadtovr.com/...t-microsoft-holographic-windows-10
  29. ^"NASA, Microsoft Collaboration Will Allow Scientists to 'Work on Mars'." NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2015-01-21. jpl.nasa.gov/...l-allow-scientists-to-work-on-mars
  30. ^"Microsoft Is Discontinuing HoloLens 2 As Production Ends." UploadVR, 2024-10-01. uploadvr.com/microsoft-discontinuing-hololens-2

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