The HoloLens Emulator lets you test holographic applications on your PC without a physical HoloLens. It also includes the HoloLens development toolset.

In this section we will install Windows Mixed Reality developer tools and learn about how to use them.

You can download the latest HoloLens Emulator update here: bit.ly/emulator2.

Can the HoloLens Emulator run on my device?

Before installing the emulator, make sure your PC meets the following hardware requirements:

• 64-bit Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Education

• 64-bit CPU

• CPU with 4 cores (or multiple CPUs with a total of 4 cores)

• 8 GB of RAM or more

• In the BIOS, the following features must be supported and enabled:

  • Hardware-assisted virtualization

  • Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)

  • Hardware-based Data Execution Prevention (DEP)

• GPU requirements

  • DirectX 11.0 or later

  • WDDM 1.2 graphics driver or later (1st gen)

  • WDDM 2.5 graphics driver (HoloLens 2 Emulator)

  • The emulator might work with an unsupported GPU, but will be significantly slower

• You need to enable "Hyper-V" feature on your device before you can use the Emulator.

How to check or enable "Hyper-V" settings?

How to install or update the Emulator?

Mixed Reality Toolkit(MRTK) supports in-editor input simulation. Simply run your scene by clicking Unity’s play button. Use these keys to simulate input.

• Press W, A, S, D keys to move the camera.

• Hold the right mouse button and move the mouse to look around.

• To bring up the simulated hands, press Space bar(Right hand) or left Shift key(Left hand).

• To keep simulated hands in the view, press T or Y key.

• To rotate simulated hands, press Q or E(horizontal) / R or F(vertical).

The Windows Device Portal for HoloLens lets you configure and manage your device remotely over Wi-Fi or USB. The Device Portal is a web server on your HoloLens that you can connect to from a web browser on your PC. The Device Portal includes many tools that will help you manage your HoloLens and debug and optimize your apps.

How to setup device portal?

• Turn on your HoloLens device.

• Tab your wrist(HoloLens 2) or make a bloom gesture(HoloLens 1) to initiate Windows menu.

• Open the Settings > Update & Security.

• Select For Developers tab on the right hand panel.

• Enable "use developer features" by toggling on/off button.

• Scroll down at the For Developer settings to enable "Device Portal".

• Go back to all settings page by clicking "Home" on the left hand panel and select "Network & Internet" settings.

• Select "Wifi" tab on the left, if it is not already selected.

• Select the wifi you are connected to and click on "Advanced Options".

• Scroll down and write down the IPV4 address.

• You will type in this IP address to your browser to reach to your device portal.

• You might see a connection Alert as shown below:

• Go ahead and click Advanced button and click Proceed to <your IP address>(unsafe).

• Congrats, you made it to your device portal.

• Click Views on the right hand panel and select "Live Preview" to see the camera view of your HoloLens.

• You can turn off PV camera if you would like to share or record what you are seeing through your HoloLens but do not want to capture your environment.

• You can see the videos recorded or screenshots you snapped by asking Cortana here, on the Videos and Photos section, if you enabled voice commands.