Microsoft has giv­en con­sumers a look into the future of its holo­graph­ic tech­nol­o­gy. And it’s impres­sive. Microsoft­’s HoloLens will soon bring high-def­i­n­i­tion holo­grams into con­sumers’ lives. What is this holo­graph­ic head­set, and why is every­one talk­ing about it?

A new oper­at­ing sys­tem was not the only excit­ing thing to be unveiled at Microsoft­’s Win­dows 10 keynote. In a bold, and large­ly unan­tic­i­pat­ed announce­ment, Microsoft announced that Win­dows 10, along with the new Spar­tan brows­er (IE replace­ment designed from the ground up) would be released with full sup­port for ‘HoloLens’.

HoloLens makes the holo­graph­ic tech­nol­o­gy (which will be named Win­dows Holo­graph­ic) that we’ve all seen in sci­ence-fic­tion movies become a real­i­ty. Accord­ing to Microsoft the tech­nol­o­gy will “adapt to the nat­ur­al ways we com­mu­ni­cate, learn, and cre­ate. [Allow­ing our] dig­i­tal lives [to] seam­less­ly con­nect with real life.”

As revealed in a live keynote demon­stra­tion, Microsoft HoloLens brings high-def­i­n­i­tion holo­grams into con­sumers’ lives where they inte­grate with our phys­i­cal places, spaces, and things. HoloLens con­tains mul­ti­ple sen­sors, spa­tial sound, and mul­ti­ple chips, as well as a brand new Microsoft-craft­ed proces­sor called a Holo­graph­ic Pro­cess­ing Unit.

This is the head­set that makes it all pos­si­ble.

And incred­i­bly, Win­dows Holo­graph­ic isn’t mere­ly a con­cept or an idea, it’s a real and ful­ly sup­port­ed fea­ture of Microsoft­’s new oper­at­ing sys­tem.

“Holo­graph­ic com­put­ing enabled by Win­dows 10 is here,” said Alex Kip­man, Tech­ni­cal Fel­low at Microsoft. “Every Win­dows 10 build fea­tures Holo­graph­ic appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming inter­faces (APIs) for mul­ti­ple screen sizes.”

If you need­ed any fur­ther evi­dence of the immer­sive, and game-chang­ing pow­er of holo­graph­ic tech­nol­o­gy, have a read of how one Ven­ture­Beat reporter’s expe­ri­ence of the tech­nol­o­gy made him recon­sid­er his life choic­es.

(This is prob­a­bly why Microsoft bought Minecraft!)

If the tech­nol­o­gy has as much of an effect on con­sumers’ lives as it promis­es. 2015 could real­ly be Microsoft­’s year.