Microsoft has this week announced its latest project: a new mixed-reality platform that will allow people in different physical locations to join collaborative and shared holographic experiences across different devices while experiencing the same virtual world.

The futuristic project, called Microsoft Mesh, led this week’s Ignite digital conference, the company’s first keynote experience designed entirely for mixed reality, with people attending the conference in a “shared holographic world.”

The holoportation concept, which uses 3D capture technology to beam a lifelike image of a person into a virtual scene, will enable geographically distributed teams to foster a better sense of collaboration, whether through conducting virtual design sessions, assisting one another, or even hosting virtual social meet-ups that go far beyond catching up over Zoom.

“This has been the dream for mixed reality, the idea from the very beginning,” Microsoft Technical Fellow Alex Kipman explained in a press release earlier this week. “You can actually feel like you’re in the same place with someone sharing content or you can teleport from different mixed reality devices and be present with people even when you’re not physically together.”

Microsoft Mesh will initially allow users to express themselves as avatars in shared virtual worlds and experiences but over time the technology company homes to use holoportation so users will be able to project themselves—their most lifelike, photorealistic selves—into the shared virtual universe.

While the new advancements do make video conferencing seem like yesterday’s technology already, this is really just the beginning for the Microsoft Mesh platform—which, according to Microsoft, will eventually span into even more layers of human connection across the globe.

Two friends living on opposite coasts, for example, could join the same concert as avatars to experience the show together, Microsoft even hopes to create such photorealistic avatars that families separated by oceans and border crossings could interact with family members in real time at a reunion.

“This is why we’ve been so passionate about mixed reality as the next big medium for collaborative computing,” Kipman added. “It’s magical when two people see the same hologram.”

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