Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Greg Alt

Ben J Sugden

Alexandre Da Veiga

Laura K Massey

Aaron Burns

Tom G Salter

Todd Omotani

Marcus Tanner

Michael Gordon Hale

Jeff Sutherland

Joseph Van Den Heuvel

Ken Ouellette

An HMD device is configured to vertically adjust the ground plane of a rendered virtual reality environment that has varying elevations to match the flat real world floor so that the device user can move around to navigate and explore the environment and always be properly located on the virtual ground and not be above it or underneath it. Rather than continuously adjust the virtual reality ground plane, which can introduce cognitive dissonance discomfort to the user, when the user is not engaged in some form of locomotion (e.g., walking), the HMD device establishes a threshold radius around the user within which virtual ground plane adjustment is not performed. The user can make movements within the threshold radius without the HMD device shifting the virtual terrain. When the user moves past the threshold radius, the device will perform an adjustment as needed to match the ground plane of the virtual reality environment to the real world floor.

Ground plane adjustment in a virtual reality environment

Methods for managing content within an interactive augmented reality environment are described. An augmented reality environment may be provided to an end user of a head-mounted display device (HMD) in which content (e.g., webpages) may be displayed to the end user using one or more curved slates that are positioned on a virtual cylinder that appears body-locked to the end user. The virtual cylinder may be located around the end user with the end user positioned in the middle of the virtual cylinder such that the one or more curved slates appear to be displayed at the same distance from the end user. The position and size of each of the one or more curved slates may be controlled by the end user using head gestures and a virtual pointer projected onto the virtual cylinder.

Management of content in a 3D holographic environment

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Greg Alt