Mixed Reality Tools in Windows 10 Creators Update Build 15025

When Microsoft announced the Creators Update last October in New York City, they revealed it would focus on 3D for Everyone and that the company would partner with several companies to provide Head Mounted Devices (HMD's) that would deliver mixed reality and 3D to Windows 10 based systems running this latest Feature Update which is expected in April.

In December at WinHec, Microsoft unveiled Project Evo a partnership with Intel to deliver that mixed reality experience to users of Windows 10 and the Creators Update.

Well, in the most recent testing builds of Redstone 2, aka the Creators Update, some of those tools that will be integrated into the operating system to support the collection of mixed reality devices are starting to take shape.

In the last build released for testing, 15025, two new tools have appeared while one has been removed.

The last few builds of the Creators Update contained a new settings category named Mixed Reality in the Windows Settings apps however, that settings page has been removed in Build 15025. No reason was given by Microsoft in the latest release notes for this build except that it was removed.

While I was poking around over this past weekend in that same build, I did come across two new mixed reality related apps that are highlighted in this gallery.

The first is the Learn Mixed Reality app but without mixed reality hardware attached to the system it simply crashes once it is started. The second tool, the Mixed Reality Portal, does start up without any issues and will check your system specs to verify you have the right hardware to run mixed reality on the Creators Update. It will stop after that check though and let you know that there is now mixed reality hardware attached to the system.

Neither of these results are unexpected since there is not mixed reality gear attached to my test device but it is good to see them coming together leading up the the Creators Update release which is expected in April.