There’s virtual reality and augmented reality. Microsoft is imagining something similar, but not via a headset. Instead, this is an immersive holographic experience. Yes, the experience is called Windows Holographic, but it works via a device Microsoft calls the HoloLens, which debuted at Microsoft’s Windows 10 event today. Nate Ralph was there and got our hands-on impressions.

Microsoft’s catchphrases are “blended” and “holograms.” The idea is real-world pop-up immersive experiences, via — yes — a pair of goggles.

The immersive environments are meant to extend into the world around you. This is like what other companies such as Magic Leap are trying to achieve, but Microsoft’s product looks like the first polished type of immersive, full-3D augmented-reality headset we’ve seen.

This is augmented reality, in a nutshell: not a closed-off world, but a world that blends with the world around you. Microsoft wants to call the experience holographic. But these images come from a pair of goggles: they’re not projected into the actual room.

“This is your world with holograms.” Alex Kipman, Microsoft’s “father of Kinect,” introduced Windows Holographic as a new immersive platform, one that works with existing initiatives (CNET’s Nick Statt has more on the HoloLens back story). Oculus, Magic Leap and others could theoretically develop for the HoloLens, a wearable holographic computer. It’s a headset, but an augmented-reality one: “The first fully untethered holographic computer.”

HoloLens has see-through lenses, spatial sound, motion sensors to capture information about the environment. It also comes with a built-in, high-end CPU and GPU, Kipman adds. It also has a dedicated “holographic processing unit,” or HPU, to understand gestures, voice, position, and positional mapping.

Unlike a phone-equipped Samsung Gear VR or a PC-tethered set of goggles, the HoloLens will be a stand-alone device, much like Google Glass. Use cases described by Microsoft span the gamut: medical, bike repair, gaming, construction or just sitting around your room interacting with invisible things.

You can interact with things using your hands, because it looks like HoloLens is incorporating Kinect-type motion-sensing camera technology in the headset. Hand-scanning gesture-based input is already in play via technologies such as LeapMotion and Oculus’ NimbleVR, but Microsoft’s Kinect does use some of the best motion-sensing tech currently available.

HoloLens will be available in the “Windows 10 timeframe,” according to Kipman. How limited-release the actual device will be, versus how developer-oriented it is, will be the big question. And you will be wearing a giant pair of tinted goggles on your face while waving your hands, so keep that in mind.

Virtual reality and augmented reality are technologies that are becoming very real, and can pack some amazing initial impressions, but the usefulness is the challenge. Take the Kinect, for instance, as a prime example of high tech that eventually ended up unused for many. Google Glass, too. HoloLens, you have your work cut out for you.