Magic Leap One: Creator Edition shipping in 2018
Augmented reality company unveils long-awaited first product, a self-contained wearable platform
The cat is out of the bag. Magic Leap today finally announced its first product, the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition augmented reality platform, with an expected launch sometime in 2018.
The Magic Leap One consists of Lightwear goggles, a Lightpack processing unit that can be clipped to a belt or pocket, and Control, a six-degrees-of-freedom handheld controller with haptic feedback. The company says the Lightpack gives the system the power and performance of a laptop, while the goggles can generate digital images that adjust themselves to natural lighting, making the tech comfortable, even during prolonged use.
As for what Magic Leap One will actually do, the company has given a number of use cases where it feels the tech can make a splash. There are gaming applications, of course, but Magic Leap also plans for the platform to support telepresence functionality that could be useful for social chatting or professional collaboration, and digital art creation tools. It could also be used to create virtual persistent displays, whether that's adding ersatz monitors around one's workspace or a virtual big-screen TV above the fireplace.
According to a Rolling Stone article on the hardware, the Lightwear goggles will come in two sizes, with customizable pads and pieces to properly fit users. For users who wear prescription glasses, the company plans to offer customized versions of the goggles with lenses adjusted to suit their needs. As for content, the publication talked about an experimental soundscape being created with Sigur Ros, as well as a game developed by Weta Gameshop, the nascent development arm of the film industry's special effects giant Weta Workshop.
Rolling Stone notes that like the Microsoft Hololens, the goggles' limited field of view is still an issue. "It's much larger than the HoloLens, but it's still there," according to the article, but Magic Leap said future generations of the tech will increase that field of view.