Microsoft HoloLens and Volvo Cars are partnering to explore future automotive and technology scenarios and plan to bring Microsoft?s HoloLens augmented-reality goggles to Volvo showrooms next year to spruce up safety-feature demonstrations, car customization and even test drives. A HoloLens demonstration was conducted at Microsoft's global headquarters in Redmond, USA, and showed how mixed reality might be used by customers to configure cars in three dimensions. With HoloLens, Microsoft's wearable computer, holograms are mixed into the physical world.

Participating journalists were also given a mixed reality preview of Volvo?s new S90 premium sedan, which will be unveiled in reality at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January.

With HoloLens on, you could walk around the sedan to look at the car from different angles. In another part of the room, the headset projected a video of the car on a road to simulate the vehicle's autonomous driving features. A toy, car-size version of the S90 appeared on a pedestal, its collision-detection sensors lighting up for a person who wore a HoloLens and circled around the car.

"With HoloLens we have the freedom to create a bespoke experience which customers can steer themselves. Imagine using mixed reality to choose the type of car you want ? to explore the colors, rims, or get a better understanding of the features, services and options available," said Bjorn Annwall, Senior Vice President, Marketing Sales and Service at Volvo Cars.

With HoloLens your peripheral vision is largely preserved, in order to allow you to move around spaces - like a vehicle showroom - very freely. This is a significant benefit to companies, like Volvo, where how people experience both the car and the dealership environment are very important.

Scott Erickson, senior director of HoloLens at Microsoft, said that developers and other potential customers for the headset had not been put off by its field of view. While the company has demonstrated a couple games for HoloLens, it has largely shifted the focus of HoloLens to business and education applications.

In addition to Volvo Cars, Microsoft is working with NASA JPL, Trimble, Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic, and many more, to deliver new ways to design, create, collaborate, and bring products and information to life.

The developer version of the headset, which will be available in the first quarter, will cost $3,000 ? not exactly an impulse purchase for the average consumer.