Microsoft takes the lead in the battle for artificial reality

The Browser Wars once played a central part in the fight for control of the gateways to cyberspace. Microsoft may have defeated Netscape in round one, but Mozilla, maker of Firefox, and Google later hit back, with a little support from Apple.

For the next round in this battle, some of the faces are the same, but the technologies are far more advanced and the stakes are much higher. The contestants are honing their weapons. It will be a drawn-out affair, but the first skirmishes will commence before the end of the year.

This time, it will not be about two dimensional windows that look out on to web pages. Instead, it will involve some of the most ambitious and creative technologies the tech giants can muster: welcome to the Artificial Reality Wars.

It is Microsoft, an unlikely late entrant to this contest, that has just signalled the start of hostilities. HoloLens, the new "mixed reality" it showed off this week, is scheduled to go on sale before the end of this year. The device will not be cheap - $1,000 or so seems to be the general expectation. But it could be the first mass-market device to bend the real world into unexpected shapes.

In fact, reality, as a concept, is about to be subjected to some extreme manipulation all around. The companies that work out how best to applythe new and very serious"reality distortion fields" could end up controlling the way millions of people work, socialise or look for entertainment.

The methods of reality distortion, as practised by the tech companies lining up for this battle, take a number of different forms.

First, there is the purely virtual. Since Facebook's acquisition of Oculus last year, the concept of virtual reality has been enjoying a powerful revival. Sony's Project Morpheus and Samsung's adoption of Oculus's technology have added to the sense that this long-held tech dream could soon see the light of day.

For the most immersive digital experiences, it will be hard to beat virtual reality - where the wearer is encased in a closed headset that presents an all-encompassing world. But reality can only intrude through digital representations, and the wearer remains isolated from physical experience.

Google's Glass represents the other end of the spectrum: a form of augmented reality where the virtual is intended to intrude as little as possible on to the "real". It is like shrinking a smartphone and turning it into a tiny screen that floats just above the field of vision, invisible to others. But the privacy fears stirred up by the device and general rejection of adopting "geek chic" into everyday life suggests that making such technology unobtrusive will be hard. Google suspended sales of its smartglasses last week.

Microsoft's headset steers a middle course. Mixed reality- or, as Microsoft prefers to call it, holographic reality - works by appearing to project virtual objects into real life. In fact, they are displayed on the transparent lens of the headset - only the wearer can see them - but it is like populating the world with holograms that respond to voice or gesture commands.

That points to an intriguing new way of blending the real and the virtual. New forms of entertainment and game-playing immediately suggest themselves - as well as new forms of advertising or ways for companies to engage their customers. Google, through a recent $500m investment in a mixed reality start-up called Magic Leap, is backing a similar vision.

Besides perfecting the actual technology - HoloLens has been in secret development for more than five years - the key to success in the Artificial Reality Wars will lie in persuading developers to come up with effective uses. Here, Microsoft has both strengths and weaknesses. It has a heritage as a platform company (unlike Google and Facebook) and a large army of developers that have used its technologies. But it has also lost the attention of a younger generation that has grown up writing apps for the smartphone world.

In that respect, the new device sits within a bigger strategy. It is part of Microsoft's promise for a new generation of "universal apps": write for any Windows device (which means, at the moment, mainly PCs) and your app will be able to run on all.

With its startling visual effects, HoloLens might end up being more than the first shot in this new battle: it could also be the product that starts to make Microsoft relevant to the tech world's future again, rather than just its past.

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