Leaping Into the AR Magicverse?

Magic Leap finally materializes into a product some of us can actually buy, yet the real test will be whether developers take the bait.

With a final fanfare of unnecessary theatrics, it seems like people will now be able to get their hands on this elusive Augmented Reality headset, so developers can start making their own reality with Magic Leap One Creator Edition. I first heard about this ridiculously well-funded start-up (investment clocked so far by ML is over $2.3 Billion) some eons ago in Tech Terms. It seemed an exciting proposition back then, sold mainly off the back of some very cool concept videos cooked up by New Zealand-based special effects company WETA (you know, the one from all the Lord of the Rings films). But things have since soured considerably, and I became quite fed up with it all, specially as there were plenty of other players like Microsoft HoloLens and DAQRI which were consistently delivering not only cool demos, but real use-cases for holographic Mixed Reality.

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There’s only so much “we know something you don’t know” you can take before it starts to become annoying, but Magic Leap simply would not take a hint. And although Wired reports that Magic Leap’s CEO and Founder Rony Abovitz now recognizes that they were arrogant, I’m yet to see a significant change in attitude.

What we have seen is that — based on the documentation and photos released — the headset has to be tethered to what looks like a Diskman (kids, you’ll laugh, but back in the olden 90s we used to play these things called CDs…) and the FOV (Field of View) is only slightly larger than that of the HoloLens. Considering how much flack Microsoft gets for its FOV, it seems unfair to cut Magic Leap any slack on that.