A new operating system was not the only exciting thing to be unveiled at Microsoft’s Windows 10 keynote. In a bold, and largely unanticipated announcement, Microsoft announced that Windows 10, along with the new Spartan browser (IE replacement designed from the ground up) would be released with full support for ‘HoloLens’.

HoloLens makes the holographic technology (which will be named Windows Holographic) that we’ve all seen in science-fiction movies become a reality. According to Microsoft the technology will “adapt to the natural ways we communicate, learn, and create. [Allowing our] digital lives [to] seamlessly connect with real life.”

As revealed in a live keynote demonstration, Microsoft HoloLens brings high-definition holograms into consumers’ lives where they integrate with our physical places, spaces, and things. HoloLens contains multiple sensors, spatial sound, and multiple chips, as well as a brand new Microsoft-crafted processor called a Holographic Processing Unit.

This is the headset that makes it all possible.

And incredibly, Windows Holographic isn’t merely a concept or an idea, it’s a real and fully supported feature of Microsoft’s new operating system.

“Holographic computing enabled by Windows 10 is here,” said Alex Kipman, Technical Fellow at Microsoft. “Every Windows 10 build features Holographic application programming interfaces (APIs) for multiple screen sizes.”

If you needed any further evidence of the immersive, and game-changing power of holographic technology, have a read of how one VentureBeat reporter’s experience of the technology made him reconsider his life choices.

(This is probably why Microsoft bought Minecraft!)

If the technology has as much of an effect on consumers’ lives as it promises. could really be Microsoft’s year.