Preview your work with Holographic Remoting

You can use Holographic Remoting to stream holographic content to your HoloLens 2 in real time. This is a great way to quickly debug your app without building and deploying a full project.

A fast way to work on your Unity project is to use "Play Mode", which runs your app locally in the Unity editor on your PC. Unity uses Holographic Remoting to provide a fast way to preview your content on a real HoloLens device. Play Mode can also be used with a Windows Mixed Reality headset attached to your development PC.

Run Holographic Remoting Player on HoloLens 2

  1. First, you need to install the Holographic Remoting Player app from the Microsoft Store on your HoloLens 2

  2. Run the Holographic Remoting Player app on the HoloLens 2 and you'll see the version number and IP address to connect to

    • You'll need v2.4 or later to work with the OpenXR plugin

    Screenshot of the Holographic Remoting Player running in the HoloLens

Unity Play Mode with Holographic Remoting

With Holographic Remoting, you can experience your app on the HoloLens while it runs in the Unity editor on your PC. Gaze, gesture, voice, and spatial mapping input is sent from your HoloLens to your PC. Rendered frames are then sent back to your HoloLens. This is a great way to quickly debug your app without building and deploying a full project.

The following steps assume that you have already set up your project to use OpenXR (in other words, you've imported the required packages and chosen settings for the OpenXR plug-in). If you haven't yet done this, see Setting up your XR configuration.

  1. On your HoloLens 2, go to the Microsoft Store and install the Holographic Remoting Player app.

  2. On your HoloLens 2, launch and play the Holographic Remoting Player app. Note that on the Start menu, the tile for the app says Holographic Remoting. After launching the app, make sure to press the "Play" button on the app's interface.

  3. In Unity, on the menu bar, select Mixed Reality > Remoting > Holographic remoting for play mode.

    Screenshot of project settings panel open in the Unity Editor with XR Plug-in management highlighted.

  4. In the Holographic Remoting for Play Mode window, in the Remote Host Name box, enter the IP address of your HoloLens 2.

    Tip

    The IP address of your HoloLens 2 can be found when running the Holographic Remoting Player

    Screenshot of the Holographic Remoting Player running on the HoloLens 2 with IP address circled.

  5. Change other settings as needed.

  6. Click the Enable Holographic Remoting for Play Mode button.

    Screenshot of the Holographic Remoting for Play Mode window.

  7. Select the Play button to enter Play Mode, and then view the app in your HoloLens 2.

    Tip

    To debug C# scripts in play mode, attach Visual Studio to Unity.

Holographic Remoting requires a fast PC and Wi-Fi connection. You can find more details in the Holographic Remoting Overview documentation.

For best results, make sure your app properly sets the focus point. This helps Holographic Remoting to best adapt your scene to the latency of your wireless connection.

See Also