TECH

Next year marked for Magic Leap One Creator Edition

Magic Leap has stepped up to announce its three piece AR headset, and this is the Magic Leap One, Creator Edition.
So, it has a large pair of goggles that wrap around the head, a body-worn computer and a wireless controller. Developers, creatives and designers are told it will arrive for them next year.
All in all, the glasses are called Lightwear and small circular processing unit is called Lightpack, to clip on your belt or wear on pants and third, the controller. (It is "The engine that drives our spatial computing platform. High-powered processing and graphics, streamlined in a lightweight pack that stays right by your side.") Lightwear goggles are filled with sensors and cameras for mixed reality experiences.
CEO Rony Abovitz delivered this message on the site. Part of the message read:
"In early 2018, please also look for 'Origins'- a bit of a fun backstory on how we got here and where we are going.
The Magic Leap team and I look forward to co-creating the future with you.
Have a great holiday :-)
The BBC said this was the first version of its augmented reality system but it was clear from reader comments on tech sites that more specific details including specific dates and pricing would have been appreciated.
Also evident from reader comments was concern over the look and disappointment they were seeing what appeared to them as renderings, not photos.
One comment referred to "futuristic welding goggles," while Quartz called the headset "very bulbous" and a computer attached by a cable that looked like a Discman.
The article concluded, "Perhaps it's (MagicLeap One] so good that we won't mind looking like we're wearing a pair of steampunk goggles strapped to a CD player to check our emails."
Sam Machkovech, Ars Technica, wrote:
"The company has finally announced a product, dubbed the Magic Leap One, which includes a headset, a single wand controller, and a "lightpack" processing unit—the latter to be worn on your waist like a high-tech fanny pack. The kit is currently advertised as a 'developer' device and has a vague launch window of 2018—which will hopefully be enough time for the company to actually show us the final, physical product. No price has yet been announced."
Scott Stein, CNET, said, "Augmented reality jumped into the mainstream in 2017 thanks to fun demos on iPhones and Google's Pixel phones, but Magic Leap's sudden reveal points to bigger things happening next year."
If you visit their home page you see a picture, so revealing about this type of technology being offered that no captions are really needed.
You see flowers wrapped around chairs, a wonderful orb surrounding a tree plant, cartoon like boxes on the floor, a floating cloud and sun formation below a lightbulb, so, well, you can "get the picture" of AR in your living space clearly enough. CEO Rony Abovitz said that the Magic Leap One was aimed at mixing the real and virtual world together, but he envisioned future versions of the Magic Leap being able to go just into VR-type experiences, too, said Stein.
"Bring Your Creativity to Life. Experiment with combinations of creatures and objects to discover unexpected mash-ups. Like painting with turtles or rays of light. Imagine, produce, and play whenever, wherever, and however. It's a sandbox without boundaries (or real sand)." That is from the Magic Leap site.
Stein: "It sounds like the Magic Leap is a more advanced method of displaying 3D images using light field technology and it has its own specialized controller with haptics." Light field technology, wrote Stein, projects what is effectively a full 3D image onto your retinas that can be focused on in the same way that real objects can.
"The Magic Leap One Creator Edition is designed to project light directly into users' eyes to trick their brains into perceiving virtual objects as part of their surrounding environment," said the BBC.
Added Stein: "The most impressive trick the Magic Leap One can do seems to be how it handles scanning room environments and layering in holographic objects: virtual things can now block real things, like they would in the real world."




Nancy Owano