To quote Langston, “Engineering or medical students learning about electric car engines or human anatomy could gather as avatars around a holographic model and remove parts of the engine or peel back muscles to see what’s underneath. Colleagues could simply get together and chat in a shared virtual space, or companies could use Microsoft Mesh-enabled apps to offer virtual all-hands meetings or training to employees around the world.”         

Excluding the technical jargon, What actually is Microsoft Mesh?

“You can actually feel like you’re in the same place with someone sharing content, or you can teleport from different mixed reality devices and be present with people even when you’re not physically together,” explains Microsoft’s Alex Kipman, the inventor of Kinect and HoloLens.
If you have been waiting for a science fiction tech or mixed reality product like Tony Stark has, then Mesh is the one you need to keep your eyes on.

According to Microsoft, Holoportation is a technique that allows users to appear as avatars of themselves in space. Microsoft Mesh is said to support holoportation. Though holoportation allows only the creation of avatars, Microsoft promises communication between people in their photorealistic forms.

Mesh has been regarded as the greatest and most innovative product in the field of AR and VR. Let’s check out the core components of Microsoft Mesh.

Mesh-enabled Apps: 

• HoloLens2: With its immersive mixed reality capabilities, HoloLens 2 and its Mesh App can connect and co-create with others from the comfort of wherever you’re working.
• VR Headsets: Using VR Headsets, you can meet, share, and work with other users in virtual spaces with Mesh.
• PCs and Mobiles: You can join Mesh-powered meetings and design sessions using your very own PCs and smartphones.
• Mesh-enabled apps: On top of the development platform, Microsoft Mesh also delivers some app experiences that bring the platform alive. 

   

Developer platform:

Mesh is enabled by a comprehensive platform and a collection of tools. The heart of this developer platform is Azure.
 The HoloLens 2 Mesh app and AltspaceVR are instantiations of the collaborative experience Mesh can light up for immersive headsets. 

 As a developer, you don’t need to worry about core infrastructure around billing, audio/video transmission, and the underlying live-state management capabilities because of the presence of services like Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Graph.  The following are the capabilities of Microsoft Mesh:

1. Immersive presence: The Mesh platform, with its AI-powered motion models to capture motion and expressions, comes with an avatar rig and a customization studio, so you can use the out-of-the-box avatars that represent participants depending on devices they’re joining from. It also enables the most photorealistic 360o holoportation with outside-in sensors for life-like representations.
    
2. Spatial maps: This framework enables content to be anchored, device point-of-views to be shared, and 3D models to be collaborated on thereby enabling Mesh to have a global understanding of the space/environment the user is in.
    
3. Holographic rendering: This gives the flexibility to design apps that can optimize for latency vs fidelity depending on the device and natively rendering 3D file formats in Mesh-enabled apps.
    
4. Multi-user sync: Creating a common perspective of the hologram and each other within a collaborative session is augmented with spatial audio in Mesh that creates a sense of being in the same physical space in a multi-user scenario.
   A cross-platform developer SDK by Mesh to leverage the capabilities and core platform feature thereby providing the developers the freedom to work on platforms of their choice like  Unity alongside native C++ and C#, and upcoming support for Unreal, Babylon, and React Native.

    

Multi-device support:

This product is built on Microsoft Azure, enabling developers to build immersive, multi-user, cross-platform mixed reality apps.

Mixed Reality is going mainstream across consumers and commercial, liberating screen-bound experiences into instinctual interactions in your space, among your things, with your people. Microsoft Mesh feels like a science fiction movie come to life with its mind-blowing design. While a lot many product-based companies are working on innovations MR solutions, Mesh has proven to be the next big thing.
 Mesh uses AltSpace VR, a social network that came out back in 2017, to help create virtual avatars for users. Mesh will soon be integrated with Teams thereby providing a far more futuristic call than any other team meeting platform.
To experience the Mesh MR, all you have to do is wear a HOLOLENS 2 headset, enter a virtual meeting, and you’re in for the ride!
All the participants in the virtual meeting can take up a virtual avatar, and it would feel like you all are in the same room together. The pandemic has resulted in enforcing tech innovations to greater heights and mesh was one of them. Microsoft is also making Mesh available on a variety of devices, including the HoloLens 2, most virtual reality headsets, tablets, smartphones, and PCs.

Powered by the computing and AI capabilities of Azure, Mesh is also designed to allow architects, designers, and engineers that handle 3D modeling and design to work together across the globe.
Despite the advancement, Mesh has its own set of difficulties like the cost of VR headsets, HOLOLENS 2.Another thing is that actions like jumping from a 2D screen are possible, the experience isn’t immersive enough in the headset.
From having a virtual MR meeting on Teams to a virtual concert to an MR gaming experience, the possibilities are limitless. But the reality and success of Mesh depend on the way Microsoft markets its technology and overcome the limitations mesh currently faces.