Magic Leap Review
Magic Leap is a startup company that has raised more than $1.4 billion from Google, Morgan Stanley, Warner Bros., and others. Let’s find out more about this “mixed reality” technology company.
What Is Magic Leap?
Magic Leap is a technology company that is currently focusing on bringing its “mixed reality” technology to life. With over $1 billion in investments from Google, Morgan Stanley, Warner Bros., and other giants, there’s a lot riding on the success of Magic Leap.
Mixed reality is somewhere between virtual reality and augmented reality. One article describes it as “VR’s more badass brother”.
Mixed reality is essentially as a combination between augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). It’s designed to create an experience that is immersive yet integrated into the real world.
In promotional videos highlighting the potential of Magic Leap, we see virtual orca whales jumping out of a school gymnasium floor that’s been turned into an ocean. Other videos show virtual robots hiding under desks, a virtual solar system rotating around an office, and children playing with virtual dragons in their own home.
In demos available today, you can hold a miniature elephant in your hands and play with it. Or, project a virtual computer screen in front of you to browse the internet, shop online, view social media, and perform other normal tasks.
In the future, Magic Leap may let you do things like try on clothes without buying them or perform more accurate surgeries from around the world.
Obviously, this all sounds a bit like science fiction. So how does Magic Leap work?
How Does Magic Leap Work?
Magic Leap is still in development, so we don’t have full details about how it works. All we know is that the central part of the kit is the viewing lens, which is a headset you wear while viewing a Magic Leap performance.
The company claims this viewing lens is a “photonic lightfield chip”.
The chip works in a much different way than conventional AR technologies. Instead of using reflected light to send computer-generated images and information to the eye – which is how most work – the chip projects virtual images directly into the eye using a technology known as Dynamic Digitized Lightfield Signal, something the company shortens to Digital Lightfield.
This gives headset wearers a highly realistic view of the virtual world that augments the real world.
Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what this hardware looks like. Early images from Magic Leap show a headset that looks similar to the ones seen in traditional VR kits – like from Oculus Rift or Google Glass.
Thousands of people have already seen the Magic Leap technology in action. Unfortunately for us, all of those thousands were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements – which means we don’t actually know that much about Magic Leap’s technology or how it works.
About Magic Leap
Magic Leap was founded in 2011 and has a strategic partnership with Alibaba. The company is based in Dania Beach, Florida and maintains locations in Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, and Mountain View, California as well as Seattle, Washington; Austin, Texas; and New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Israel.
The company’s headquarters are here:
1855 Griffin Road Suite B454
Dania Beach, FL 33004
The company was founded by Rony A. Abovitz, current chief executive officer and president, as well as co-founder Dr. Brian Schowengerdt. Other key members of the company include Mr. Graeme Devine, Chief Game Wizard.
The company is also hiring “wizards” to push its platform even further. The company claims that they have a trial and “now we need blazers”.
Ultimately, Magic Leap is a futuristic technology that we don’t know a lot about at this time. However, the potential for this technology is limitless. It could totally change the way we interact with the world in the future. It’s already going through tests and thousands of people have seen the technology in action. We’ll keep you posted on Magic Leap as we learn more about this company moving forward.