Magic Leap Revealed First-Person Augmented Reality Demo

We don't know what the technology looks like. Ambitious though it may seem, it appears as though Magic Leap is well on its way.

In March, the company published showing a few of the ways augmented reality could enhance the gaming experience, as a player blasts away robot enemies invading his office.

This is only a taster of what we should expect from the Magic Leap, and it doesn't depict anything too mind-blowing, but it's still an interesting look at the tech that Google hopes will prove to be more successful than its own venture into the world of AR, the ill-fated Google Glass project. But all that may just be a stepping stone to augmented or blended reality. "We're gearing up to ship millions of things", said Abovitz, though declining to state specific details on when Magic Leap's technology is expected to launch and how numerous devices it is looking to sell. Imagine building a 3D model of something in the air in front of you, instead of with a mouse on a computer screen.

"In the real world, in visual reality, there's this interaction with the light field".

Magic Leap, an AR outfit sitting on in financing partially furnished by Google, has been working on its technology over the past several years, largely in secret. Not only did Magic Leap get a massive investment from Google but other investors in the mix included Andreessen Horowitz, Legendary Pictures, KKR, Vulcan, along with Weta Workshop which is credited for the special effects behind film franchises such as "The Lord of the Rings".

Magic Leap's technology is obviously very different to the virtual reality (VR) seen in head-mounted displays (HMDs) such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, but is at least comparable to Microsoft's mixed reality (MR) HMD, HoloLens.

During yesterday's talk, Abovitz revealed that Magic Leap is no longer "in the research lab doing theoretical things", but far out of the R&D stage and moving on to production phase. "No special effects or compositing were used in the creation of these videos" - implying that this is a near-final version of what you'd see if you were wearing a Magic Leap headset.