So it appears Magic Leap is looking for even more money. This would be on top of the ~$1.4 billion already thrown at the company.  That amount is already unprecedented so talk of further investment is nothing short of astonishing. The thing that got me interested in the company in the first place was the ludicrous amount of investment they had raised from such interesting and respected sources. Piling more on top of this is just wild. 

We all use Google Maps. It is arguably the most useful part of a smartphone. Being lost is, to a degree, a thing of the past. It is one of the most important innovations in recent memory and is perhaps the 'killer feature' of a smartphone. If Mixed Reality becomes popular, and we stretch our privacy a bit, then we are about to see another massive shift in mapping and how we see the world in general.

Magic Leaps next move is a product launch.  Given the press reaction to partial information, a "show don't tell" mentality and a built in scepticism saying anything more at this point will be detrimental unless they can show it all. This product launch will be the most important moment for the company.  Obviously, their product needs to be great. Great products can overcome most obstacles. But not far behind is the messaging they are able to bring to the announcement. Many mediocre products have succeeded because of a good launch and many great products have failed due to a bad one. Whether it be a press conference, a pre-produced video or weeklong party, coming out of the launch announcement with praise from the zeitgeist can be a real difference maker.

There have been a few high profile product launches in the past year that have been fascinating to watch. Between No Mans Sky, The Google Pixel, New MacBooks and, most recently, the Nintendo Switch we have lots of fodder to go though and there is much for Magic Leap to learn. 

We were always hoping Magic Leap were keeping the cards close to their chest in terms of what technology they have developed.  It make sense. When the only people you are marketing to are investors and talent to hire then you want to make it seem like you have something that no one else does.  You want to make it feel like they could be part of something amazing. But that time has come to an end. They are no longer an R&D company. They are a product company or hope to be. They are no longer talking to investors and talent exclusively. They are talking to us. The consumer.

Magic Leap needed some negative press to temper these expectations and it needed it as far ahead of product launch as it could get. That pent up excitement, and resentment, needed to come out before the realities of the product crush the perfect image in our heads. 

If you are interested in Magic Leap (and if you are reading this site, you certainly are) then you really should be reading Karl Guttag's blog. He has done some excellent analysis of the video that Magic Leap has released and come to some conclusions of what technology is being used. Unlike many reports, Guttag far less optimistic about the company. He paints a picture that puts Magic Leap in the same sort of place as many competitors. The advantages such as fiber scanning displays and high resolution are all but a dream in his analysis.

At this point "1000s" of people have tried some incarnation of Magic Leap. Most of these people will be the employees or potential employees of Magic Leap, investors and content creators. All of them are under NDA and are not particularly interested in discussing their experience. But there are a few reporters who have been invited to try prototypes at different stages of development. They are still under NDA but are doing their best to tell us what they saw under these heavy restrictions. With each new article we see a slightly different twist on the bending of these restrictions and by putting them together we can build a more cohesive picture. 

We just achieved a number of major product dev milestones; things are full on exciting @magicleap 

- Rony Abovitz

I suspect Magic Leap is planning to launch their first product next fall/winter.  The evidence for this is shaky but I don't think it is an unreasonable guess. We know they are going to show us more "soon-ish".  While that could mean anything I hope means within ~1 year. We also hear rumours about Magic Leap being involved in the film "Ready Player One" which premieres early 2018 pinning that as the latest date for Magic Leap to release. They are at the stage of doing experimental production runs and are actively debugging their production line. They are hiring people to test development kits, design packaging, manage FCC compliance among many other positions that are all required towards the later stages of product development. This all points towards a plan to release late next year. But plans are just that. Plans.

Privacy always seems to be top of mind in the tech industry. It is a touchy subject and it is hard to have a nuanced conversation about.  There are vocal people on both sides of the privacy argument and separating economics and emotions from reality can be challenging.  Further complicating matters is that we, the public, constantly change what we are comfortable with while companies are constantly redefining what privacy even means.  Yet I would argue that all the ink spilled on the subject to date is but precursor to what will happen if Magic Leap is successful.  The potential for, and necessity of, data collection by Magic Leap will far exceed what any company has done in the past.  Magic Leap with have to tread carefully as it brings us into their future.

According to a former blackhat hacker that goes by Gummo, the field of view of Magic Leap is "far superior to hololens".  While this should not come as a surprise it is nice to hear from someone who claims to have tried the technology.  It is also interesting to see who Magic Leap is showing this technology to. It is clear Magic Leap is concerned about security and have shown this through their sole acquisition of Northbit security company.  The fact they are giving demos and likely working with security experts such as Gummo bodes well for the security of the platform.

Many readers took issue with my claim of Magic Leap providing a 90° field of view and rightly so.  It is the most speculative statement in a speculative article and there is a good chance it is grossly wrong. It is particularly hard to reconcile with the quote stating that it would require 50 Mpx to produce a high field of view display.  50 Mpx is absurdly large and is far beyond anything we are capable of today.  So how can I stand by my statement? By reading more patents of course.

Finding the next big thing is hard. Billions are spent and wasted every year in its pursuit. Even with these large resources most tech companies fail to strike on anything interesting and the cost of failure can be high in both dollars spent and reputation.  So how are these companies reacting to the potential future of mixed reality?

With new technology comes new fundamental interface paradigms. We are currently in a rare moment where we can guess at what the next paradigm might be and where Magic Leap fits in.

Magic Leap has not been forthcoming with details about how their technology works.  From what little we know, it is a truly novel system with capabilities far beyond the off the shelf components consumers are accustomed to.  Putting together patents and presentations we can get a pretty good picture of how the technology works and makes some educated guess on the specifications, such as field of view and resolution, we can expect to see.