Portal On The HoloLens Is The Best Use Of Augmented Reality Yet

Don't get too excited: Portal isn't coming to the HoloLens in any official capacity. However, that didn't stop tinkerer Kenny W. from putting together a demo that uses Microsoft's augmented reality tech to bring Portal into the real world—and the results are as cool as you'd expect.

In the brief video, Kenny W. uses the HoloLens to line the walls, floors, and ceilings around his apartment complex with orange and blue portals, which he uses to fling a hapless Companion Cube around the building.

Unlike an actual Portal game, there aren't any real puzzles in Kenny's remake, but that doesn't make the demo any less impressive—in addition to the basic Portal physics, which look exactly like they do in the game, the augmented reality Portal recognizes staircases and furniture, while Kenny controls the digital Portal Gun flawlessly with a few simple hand gestures.

This isn't the first fan-friendly property that Kenny has brought into the real world using augmented reality, either. A few months back, Kenny W. uploaded a video and subsequently shared the source code for a Hololens-based Pokémon project that brings Nintendo's popular critters straight into your living room—and, unlike Pokémon Go, Kenny's version of the game features fully-animated one-on-one Pokémon battles.

While a complete augmented reality Portal game is still a pipe dream—at least for now—Kenny W.'s demo isn't the first immersive Portal experience to arrive on new tech. The Lab, a minigame collection by Portal and Half-Life developer Valve  (also known as the studio that's never going to give fans Half-Life 3) , returns players to Portal's Aperture Science laboratory for a series of challenges exclusively on Valve and HTC's Vive virtual reality headset.

Developers' editions of Microsoft's HoloLens shipped in March, 2016 and cost would-be designers a cool $3000. The consumer version is still a work-in-progress, and Microsoft has yet to announce an official release date.