Halo’s Cortana Virtual Assistant Brought to Life

Today, virtual assistants exist as a voice from a dedicated enclosure or via your phone. Sometimes they even come with a two-dimensional visual element, but in the video game in Halo, this assistant takes the form of a woman, “Cortana,” projected into the real world in three dimensions.

Hacker Jarem Archer has decided bring this functionality to life, using a Windows 10 device to render the holographic AI sidekick via a monitor that reflects the image down on three panes of mirrored glass. The gadget can track a person’s facial position to adjust the rendered image’s perspective, and useful information is quarried from Microsoft’s Cortana web service.

Finally, lighting the pyramidal display structure is taken care of by an Arduino-controlled strip of LEDs, while a Unity 3D app animates Cortana in three different camera angles.

You can find more information on Archer’s work in progress here, and see it in action below!