Magic Leap, backed by Google, aims to create 'an operating system for reality'
Augmented reality startup Magic Leap has already presented some surreal visions of everyday life.
Last October, just after the company landed $542 million in funding from Alphabet, then still known as Google, it released a series of videos showing tiny elephants frolicking in people鈥檚 palms, seahorses floating through classrooms, and submarines cruising ten feet above city streets.
Then, earlier this year, Magic Leap produced a video showing an augmented-reality office, in which users could physically move around their files and discard e-mails with a contemptuous swipe of the hand.
On Wednesday, the company clarified its ambitious mission: Magic Leap wants to create 鈥渁n operating system for reality,鈥� chief executive Rony Abovitz said this week, allowing users to interact with digital objects just as if they were in front of them. Besides sophisticated software, the company is building a Google Glass-like device that will be able to project the computer-generated visions onto a user鈥檚 field of vision. The company released showing a virtual model of the solar system rotating above a woman鈥檚 real-life desk, and shy robot named Gimbal hiding underneath a table.
A tagline on the video reads, 鈥淪hot directly through Magic Leap technology on October 14, 2015. No special effects or compositing were used in the creation of these videos鈥� 鈥� implying that this is a near-final version of what you鈥檇 see if you were wearing a Magic Leap headset.
Rather than creating an immersive virtual world like the kind you鈥檇 get from Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR goggles, Magic Leap wants to weave fantastical creatures and objects into the world we already inhabit.聽
Magic Leap has set up shop in a former Motorola phone factory in Florida, The Wall Street Journal, and is employing hundreds of people. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not in the research lab doing theoretical things. We鈥檙e gearing up to ship millions of things,鈥� Mr. Abovitz said on Tuesday. The company hasn鈥檛 yet released any details about the headset itself, or about when it expects to ship products to customers.聽
Magic Leap hosts 鈥渁pp fests鈥� to encourage selected developers to write software for its platform. One developer created a digital cookbook that projects recipes onto flat kitchen surfaces, and even displays a virtual stove in case users want to practice their culinary skills.
Magic Leap isn鈥檛 the only company focused on augmented, rather than virtual, reality: Microsoft aims to ship a developers鈥� edition of its HoloLens headset by the first quarter of 2016. Though details about HoloLens have been scarce, reviewers who tried on early versions of the headset at Microsoft鈥檚 BUILD 2015 conference said that they were utterly convinced by the meshing of holographic images with physical reality.
