Introducing Actiongram: A completely new holographic storytelling medium

We’ve been really excited to see the response to the Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition pre-order and all the holographic experiences announced last month. The experiences, in particular, have generated a lot of interest from the community. One of the experiences I talked about briefly in my last blog is called Actiongram. 

Actiongram allows people without 3D skills and visual effects experience to be amazing holographic storytellers. In order to provide great holographic content to help inspire creators, we built a holographic studio where many different actors, characters, objects and creatures can be captured as holograms. Actiongram is an app that allows people to place this rich holographic content into their real world environment, and record a mixed reality capture (MRC) video. Creators are able to develop their own unique holographic stories, in their world, to express their thoughts, ideas, and delight people. A

ctiongram allows people to create videos with holograms and advanced visual effects that would normally require expensive software and years of experience to do. Actiongram not only shows how easy it is to be a holographic storyteller, it demonstrates that almost anybody can be a holographic developer. Actiongram was built by a team of just 5 people in roughly 6 months 

This team was given a mission to help prove the robustness of the HoloLens development platform and the ability for a small team to make a high-quality holographic experience. I am extremely proud of Actiongram both because of the creativity it can unlock with storytellers and because it shows what a small team can do with holograms. 

 I am excited to share that we already have some of the world’s best social storytellers creating holographic stories using Actiongram and HoloLens. It is amazing to see the creativity and hilarity people are able to deliver with this new medium. We’ve been working on a closed beta program to help test how easily people can create and share these holographic stories from HoloLens. 

We are just starting to see the initial results of this program. I am super happy to share the first of these videos with you. Check them out and let us know what you think! Use #Actiongram on social media or feel free to reach out to me on Twitter with your feedback – @kudotsunoda. Apply now for the Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition, which begins shipping on March 30th. Device owners can look for the Actiongram app in the Windows Store beginning this summer.