MULTIPLE CITIES—A team of Microsoft researchers are well on their way to creating a holodeck. The scientists have achieved what they're calling "holoportation," a kind of Skype call that places people in remote locations in the same room using 3D modeling and virtual-reality technology.

“‘Holoportation’ is a new type of 3D capture technology that allows high quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed, and transmitted anywhere in the world in real-time. When combined with mixed reality displays such as HoloLens, this technology allows users to see and interact with remote participants in 3D as if they are actually present in their physical space. Communicating and interacting with remote users becomes as natural as face-to-face communication,” the team’s Website.

Check it out.

REDMOND, WASH.—Microsoft served up a video vision of the future of football viewing via its virtual reality HoloLens space-age headgear.

“What if game day was no longer confined to your television screen, but covered your room and took over your coffee table? Today, we shared a glimpse of that future in a brand new concept video unveiled at the Super Bowl 50 panel discussion, ‘The Future of Football: How Technology Could Shape the Next 50 Years of the Game, ’” wrote Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Windows and Devices Group this week on the Windows blog.

The glimpse includes a faux living room with reasonably good-looking, HoloLens-bedecked cast members seeming to crush gnats in mid-air between their fingers but are really moving and activating features that do things like make an animated, virtualized field of play show up on the coffee table, or manifest a life-size, computer-generated Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson trying to get through the whole experience with a straight face.

We know this to be a shameless plug for the Microsoft head wrap, but it is undeniably cool. We just wonder how soon it will become obsolete enough for the ordinary among us to afford it.