At Microsoft's Ignite digital conference, the software giant unveiled Microsoft Mesh.

Microsoft also revealed "holoportation," which allows users to transfer a 3D rendered image of a person into a virtual room. This means that users can see a virtual rendering of a person in their living room, even if that person is thousands of miles away.

This is an area of innovation that Microsoft calls "mixed reality." Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service bears the computational burden of enabling people to render virtually wherever they are. [Alex Kipman, a Microsoft technical fellow, said in a post on the company's blog. [Alex Kipman, a technical fellow at Microsoft, stated in a company blog post. 'You can feel like you're actually in the same place as the person you're sharing content with, or you can teleport from different mixed reality devices to be with people even if you're not physically with them. [The video above is a simulation of what Microsoft Mesh looks like, but the video below, featuring Kipman, is a more raw streaming video; the 3D model may not look as perfect as in the movies, but it's still a very impressive demo.

The cool thing is that Mesh users do not need to own a Hololens 2 headset to take advantage of this feature. Users of traditional VR headsets can also jump into the Mesh environment using their own cartoonized avatars.

The COVID-19 craze makes it especially difficult for designers to work together in the same room when tackling complex machines. In Microsoft's demo, users can walk around a virtual representation of a car's frame and interior and collaborate more easily. The closest fictional equivalent would be Tony Stark's lab in the movie Iron Man.

Microsoft says that every industry, from architecture to medicine, could use this technology.

Microsoft did not give an exact release date for Mesh. The company plans to release a full suite of AI-powered tools for developers in the coming months. Microsoft will likely prioritize industrial applications first before rolling out Mesh to consumers.

And Microsoft seems to have the general public in mind. Along with videos of doctors and researchers using Mesh, the company was also eager to show off what Pokémon GO could look like with the technology. It definitely has the potential to take open-world gaming to the next level.