第13章ハイブリッドマルチクラウドのデジタルソリューション開発

Microsoft and the Azure Cloud provide various services for its Kinect and HoloLens products. This includes the Azure Kinect Sensor SDK, a developer kit with advanced AI sensors for building computer vision and speech models. Azure Kinect is a cutting-edge spatial computing developer kit with sophisticated computer vision and speech models, advanced AI sensors, and a range of powerful SDKs that can be connected to Azure cognitive services.

Microsoft also offers HoloLens 2, which is a set of smart glasses, and the HoloLens Emulator, both of which allow users to test holographic applications on a PC without a physical HoloLens 2 or HoloLens 1, including the HoloLens development toolset. Using the HoloLens emulator requires learning keyboard and mouse commands to facilitate walking in a given direction, looking in different directions, and making controlling gestures and hand movements.

The emulator uses a Hyper-V virtual machine, which means human and environmental inputs being read by HoloLens sensors are simulated from a keyboard, mouse, or Xbox controller. Users do not need to modify projects to run on the emulator because the apps do not recognize that they are not running on a real HoloLens. Users can join the HoloLens developer program, and learn to develop and deploy their own 3-D models.

Alternative development environments for HoloLens include Unreal Engine and BuildWagon. BuildWagon provides an online code editor that allows users to write code in JavaScript and view the results on the same screen or directly on the HoloLens. A HoloLens device is not required, and code is hosted on the cloud to allow multiple developers to collaborate on the same project from different locations. BuildWagon’s HoloBuild library provides ready-made components to expedite creation processes and access HoloLens’ special features.

The Microsoft Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK) is a Microsoft-driven project that provides a set of components and features used to accelerate cross-platform MR app development in Unity. It provides the cross-platform input system and building blocks for spatial interactions and UI, enabling rapid prototyping via in-editor simulation that enables users to see changes immediately. It operates as an extensible framework that provides developers with the ability to swap out core components while supporting a wide range of platforms.

Microsoft provides a detailed set of guidelines to assist with the development of mixed reality applications, covering application ideation, design, development, and distribution.

Innovation is a great concept, and the use of big cloud PaaS services enables it. Before big cloud PaaS services became available, it was difficult for companies to put in place the services and related infrastructure needed to develop innovative solutions. All of the PaaS services that are covered in this chapter require frameworks and resources, which are provided by the big clouds; therefore, it is possible for companies to focus on applying these services to develop innovative solutions. As an example, you can simply go to azure.portal.com and type “Data Science Virtual Machine” in the search bar. You will then be provided with a choice of Linux or Windows VMs that come fully packed with all the framework and related APIs needed to implement the service. Microsoft Azure provides IoT Edge and IoT Hub frameworks that can be used to collect data from sensors located at the edge (e.g., weather sensors that measures temperature and humidity) and propagate the corresponding data to the Azure cloud so it can be analyzed to generate weather predictions. Therefore, big cloud PaaS services can be used today to enable and accelerate innovation.

Also available on the Azure Cloud are a number of PaaS services, including the following:

• Azure storage services may be used to store 3-D models.

• Azure Remote Rendering (ARR) is a service that lets you render highly complex 3-D models in real-time and stream them to a device. ARR is generally available and can be added to your Unity or Native C++ projects targeting HoloLens 2 or Windows desktop PC.

• Azure Object Anchors (AOA) is a mixed reality service that helps you create rich, immersive experiences by automatically aligning 3-D content with physical objects. It makes it possible to gain a contextual understanding of objects without the need for markers or manual alignment. It also saves significant touch labor, reduces alignment errors, and improves user experiences by building mixed reality applications with Object Anchors.

• Azure Spatial Anchors (ASA) is a cross-platform service that allows you to build spatially aware mixed reality applications. With ASAs, you can map, persist, and share holographic content across multiple devices at a real-world scale. In particular, ASAs are used to create free-world anchors that persist across multiple application sessions.

• Azure Speech service is a speech resource that may be used to recognize speech, synthesize speech, get real-time translations, transcribe conversations, or integrate speech into your bot experience.

• Azure AI Vision is a cloud-based computer vision API that provides developers with access to advanced algorithms for processing images and returning information. When a user uploads an image or specifies an image URL, Microsoft Computer Vision algorithms can analyze visual content in different ways based on inputs and user choices.