Holographic Remoting with Unity and HoloLens – Run Holographic Apps Directly from Unity to HoloLens

Holographic Remoting is a new features of Unity (v5.5), that reduces your development iteration during deployment of Holographic Apps from Unity. Using Holographic Remoting, we don’t need to build project as Universal Windows Apps and run it from Visual Studio separately. Holographic Remoting allows you to run your apps directly from the Unity Editor after connecting to Microsoft HoloLens.

Holographic Remoting save a lot of development and deployment time. Once the connection is established between Unity and HoloLens, you can run the application in Unity, and you can view the same app directly on HoloLens as well as in the Game Window. This is really helpful to rapid development, testing and quick prototyping.

Let’s check how it works.

Configure the HoloLens Device

To use this feature, along with Unity 5.5 version running on your desktop, you need to have Holographic Remoting Player installed on HoloLens Device.

The Holographic Remoting Player app that connects to PC apps that Holographic Remoting. Holographic Remoting streams holographic content from a PC to your Microsoft HoloLens in real-time, using a Wi-Fi connection. Read More Here

Install the App from Windows Store into your device.

holographicremoting1 — Running the Holographic Remoting App in the Device

Launch the app, you will see the Holographic Remoting Player Launched and display the IP address to connect with.

holographicremoting2 — Holographic Remoting Player Running on Device

Holographic Emulation – Remoting from Unity

Open your holographic app project in Unity or create a new project in Unity.

If you are new into holographic app development with HoloLens, you can start looking at my series of post – Holographic App Development Using Microsoft HoloLens

Navigate to Windows menu and Launch Holographic Emulation.

holographicremoting3 — Launch Holographic Emulation

In the Holographic Emulation Windows, Set the Emulation Mode to “Remote to Device” and provide the Remote Machine IP address – (the address getting displayed in Holographic Remoting Player)

holographicremoting4 — Connecting Remote Device

That’s it!

Click on Connect.

Connection Status will change from Disconnected -> Connecting – >Connected

holographicremoting5 — Device Connection Status

Running the App

Now run the app in Unity.

You should be able to see app running in both game window as well as HoloLens device.

Here is side by side the same app running on Unity and HoloLens Device using Holographic Remoting.

holographicremoting6 — Holographic App Running on Both Unity Game View and on Device

Notes:

You have to ensure both you HoloLens Device and PC (from where you are running your holographic app in unity) are on same network and
You Unity is online
Select on the Player Settings button and from the right side inspector section, select “Virtual Reality Supported” from Other Settings.