Today, during Magic Leaps monthly developer live stream, we got a full hardware demonstration of the Magic Leap One. These streams are targeted directly at developers so they likely won't always be interesting to the general consumer but this week was a big one. Shanna De Iullis, who operates demos at Magic Leap, walked through the hardware in the best detail we have seen yet. Here is what we learned.
Read MoreKarl Guttag has posted his analysis of the Magic Leap One based on the photos and information that has been released thus far. The effort and time he has put into this is impressive. He managed to deduce the likely dimensions of the device and 3D print a reference design. If you are interested in a deep dive on this then I recommend reading the article. But don't let his negativity bring you down. Read on for my thoughts on this.
Read MoreIt looks like Magic Leap has more secrets than just their device. On the Magic Leap website there is a trail of floating leaves that follow you as you scroll down. One of these leaves is unique though. What does it mean?
Read MoreRecently, Magic Leap released its SDK to developers so they can start playing with what is possible on the Magic Leap platform. With these tools you can develop a full Magic Leap application to run on the device when it is eventually released. But the documentation and toolkit is incomplete. There is a huge section that is still yet to be released to the public.
That is, the Lumin Runtime. And it could completely change how you think about apps.
Read MoreSome time ago I wrote about how I thought Magic Leap might work based primarily on patents that were published by the company. While patents do give some indication of what the company is working on, they do not reveal what features a product will have. At the time, that list of features didn't exist.
It does now.
Read MoreGDC is on us and it looks like Magic Leap is coming out in force.
Some cool news for @magicleap creators coming next week - stay tuned 😎
— Rony Abovitz (@rabovitz) March 18, 2018
The team has been tweeting out images of a building decked out with Magic Leap logos and even a shot of a NASA spacesuit just in case we all forgot that TED talk from years ago.
Big week ahead! pic.twitter.com/4fS0oMHJgC
— Rio Caraeff (@riozilla) March 19, 2018
Tick tock.. pic.twitter.com/yUtPbdrNSj
— brenda freeman (@bcfree002) March 19, 2018
Tick-tock... #gdc pic.twitter.com/2gH1mMmCEL
— Anastasia 🦄 GDC (@AnastasiaDevana) March 19, 2018
I expect they will be showing demos in that room to either the press or GDC attendees. Worst case it will only be for select developers but regardless there are going to be many more people that have experiencing Magic Leap by the end of the week.
At the same time it appears WETA Gameshop is having a coming out party of sorts. They have been working on a game called Dr. Grordbort for over 6 years in tandem with the development of Magic Leap hardware. I suspect we will finally see in-game footage similar to the concept they released years ago.
An SDK release is almost certain. This was tweeted by Magic Leaps cloud architect.
After months of thoughtful planning, weeks of artful building, and a long weekend to make things extra special, my team is ready to launch something awesome. I enjoyed a calm anticipation at my desk earlier. An exciting day starts in a few hours. pic.twitter.com/9AGjVOU45d
— Tim Gossett (@MrGossett) March 19, 2018
And as users on /r/magicleap discovered https://developer.magicleap.com has changed. Still inaccessible, but the error message is new and the portal below the login appears to be "opening".
Should be a fun week ahead. I'm extremely curious how they decide to show footage of the device in action. We are going to know a lot more about what this first iteration of Magic Leap can do.
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Magic Leap has revealed their hardware for the world to see. It is at the same time surprisingly small and too large. It is brimming with sensors. It's dense. Solid. It feels tightly packed. As if every square centimeter has been filled with circuitry. It's somehow nostalgic. It's the future but how the past envisions it. Cutting edge but at home in the '80s.
It's bulky. Too bulky. This isn't for regular folk to walk down the street in. It looks like it is out of a movie. The too cool and aloof techy wears this while performing hacking miracles. But most importantly it is real and you can buy it in 2018.
Read MoreAfter near radio silence for years, Magic leap is finally talking to consumers. With a redesigned website, new logo, consistant messaging, and more active communications we are finally seeing the tone and the image that Magic Leap wants people to associate with their company.
Read MoreSo 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.
Read MoreWe 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.
Read MoreMagic 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.
Read MoreWe 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.
Read MoreMagic 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.
Read MoreIf 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.
Read MoreAt 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.
Read MoreWe just achieved a number of major product dev milestones; things are full on exciting @magicleap
- Rony Abovitz
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Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreEveryone knows new products need new content. From television to smartphones to video games it doesn't matter if you build the best technology, you need the best content to go along with it. Neal Stephenson, Magic Leaps "Chief Futurist", has set up a content studio in his home town of Seattle, Washington to help solve this problem for Magic Leap.
Read MoreLast week the Chief Scientist at Oculus, Michael Abrash, laid out his vision for the future of VR. In his presentation he lays out a number of key technologies that are required to be able to fulfil this dream and gave a speculative time line of 5 years to accomplish many of the things he laid out. Encouragingly, most everything he said is something we know Magic Leap is working on from their patent applications, video releases and job posting. Seeing another company working in a similar space layout a roadmap that aligns so closely to what we presume Magic Leap is building gives credence to Magic Leaps ideas and ambitions. Let's look at some of these technologies.
Read MoreRony Abovitz arrived to the talk by remote control telepresence bot to join Jon Hirschtick on stage. The 'uniqueness' of the appearance wasn't limited to just the use of telepresence, though. The event highlighted both a longstanding friendship and a nascent partnership between the two CEOs and their companies. OnShape is a leader in the Computer-Aided Design field with their Cloud platform for collaborative 3D design, and Jon Hirschtick himself was a founder and CEO of SolidWorks, one of the leading modeling and design tools in multiple industries. It was quite a special event to see two people with nearly a twenty year friendship, both pioneers and leaders in their fields, talk to each other about the future.
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