I TRIED MAGIC LEAP AND SAW A FLAWED GLIMPSE OF MIXED REALITY’S AMAZING POTENTIAL

hen you write about augmented reality headsets, you’re supposed to start by describing something impossible — like a pastel dinosaur stomping its feet in a quiet office space in Florida. This dinosaur is made of fist-sized blocks that look like candy, and the office belongs to Magic Leap, a mysterious startup that’s been working in near-total secrecy for seven years. I should clarify that the dinosaur also isn’t real. It exists only in the lenses of the Magic Leap One, a pair of goggles that Magic Leap hopes will replace phones, computers, and every other high-tech screen in our lives.

The whimsical anecdote setup is supposed to emphasize how well the Magic Leap One tricked my mind into believing this impossible thing existed, which is what I’d hoped would happen last month when Magic Leap invited me to its headquarters. But it just didn’t happen.

In reality, the dinosaur I see through the Magic Leap One looks genuinely three-dimensional, but pieces start getting cut off when I approach it. When a man walks behind it, I can see him slightly. My headset doesn’t account for relative distance, so it’s impossible for someone to walk in front of the dinosaur, no matter how close they are. It’s still a fascinating, wonderful illusion — maybe the best I’ve seen in one of these headsets, and far cooler than watching an AR model through an iPhone screen. But it’s not the kind of revolutionary (or downright magical) advance that Magic Leap has teased for years. It’s a better version of a thing I’ve tried before, and that thing is still very much a work in progress.

Based on an afternoon with Magic Leap, the Magic Leap One Creator Edition — which ships in the US today for $2,295 — is a functional, thoughtfully designed headset with some very real advantages over competitors like the Microsoft HoloLens. But it doesn’t seem like a satisfying computing device or a radical step forward for mixed reality. Magic Leap’s vision is a compelling alternative to that of Silicon Valley’s tech giants. But there’s a baffling disconnect between its vast resources and parts of its actual product. I genuinely believe Magic Leap has given me a glimpse of the future of computing, but it might take a long time to reach that future, and I’m not sure Magic Leap will be the company that gets there first.

 

Magic Leap calls itself a “spatial computing” company, but it produces what most people call augmented or mixed reality experiences: hologram-like objects projected into three-dimensional space. Modern smartphones offer a primitive version of mixed reality, and headsets like Microsoft HoloLens offer a more advanced version for industrial and professional use. Magic Leap has a more ambitious goal: it’s building futuristic mixed reality glasses for everyday computing, hoping to beat bigger companies like Apple or Facebook to market. So far, it’s raised over $2.3 billion to realize its vision, with major investors that range from Google to JPMorgan.

The company isn’t just promoting a headset. Since its founding in 2011, Magic Leap has cultivated an enigmatic image that CEO Rony Abovitz compares to the black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey — “where it’s anything you want it to be,” he says. Abovitz has claimed that Magic Leap’s hardware will “transcend what can be contained in a physical product.” He announced the company with a 2012 TedX talk in which he donned a full space suit and spoke for 30 seconds. Today, he won’t even confirm it was him in the suit.

“OUR WHOLE THING WITH MAGIC LEAP ONE IS, WE WANT PEOPLE TO REALIZE THIS IS WHAT COMPUTING SHOULD LOOK LIKE.”

The Magic Leap One Creator Edition is aimed at artists and developers, but Abovitz stresses that it’s a “full-blown, working consumer-grade product,” not a prototype. AT&T will even offer demos to customers in some of its stores later this year. “We think it’s at the border of being practical for everybody,” says Abovitz. “Our whole thing with Magic Leap One is, we want people to realize this is what computing should look like — not [laptops], not TVs, not phones.”

The Magic Leap One is a three-piece system that includes a headset called Lightwear, a small wearable computer called the Lightpack, and a handheld controller. The headset is studded with tracking cameras for mapping your environment, as well as inward-facing eye-tracking cameras. The darkened lenses are inset with small glass waveguides, which Magic Leap calls “photonics chips.” These chips are manufactured at Magic Leap headquarters, a former Motorola factory. Abovitz says Magic Leap can comfortably produce tens of millions of chips on-site, while the rest of the headset is manufactured by a third party whose name and location he resolutely refuses to discuss.

Lightwear eschews the visor-like style of most mixed reality headsets, favoring a cyberpunk-y design with big round lenses, which lead designer Gary Natsume says are supposed to evoke the “universal sign” of glasses. “If you can start drawing two circles, and everyone says ‘Oh, that’s Magic Leap,’ that’s our goal,” he says. The system has a headphone jack, but by default, it pipes audio through small built-in speakers near your ears.

The headset looks far from utilitarian — it’s like something a hacker would wear in a Shadowrun larp. But against all odds, it’s surprisingly comfortable. You put it on by stretching an expandable back, then settling it lightly over your head. Buyers can pick from two sizes, which offer the same eyepieces with different head strap sizes and interpupillary distances. Swappable nose and forehead rests make smaller adjustments possible. You can’t wear normal glasses with the Magic Leap One, but you can order prescription lenses that clip magnetically into the headset.

POSSIBLY THE ONLY COMPUTER THAT COMES WITH A REALITY BUTTON

Part of the comfort factor is the Magic Leap One’s relative lightness, since the bulkiest electronics are offloaded into the Lightpack. The little puck computer is permanently wired to the headset, and it includes an Nvidia Tegra X2 chipset, 8GB of memory, 128GB of storage, and a battery with up to three hours of use time. The battery is partly detached to create a slot in the center of the device, so you can clip it onto your pocket; if you don’t have pockets, you can also snap it into a thin shoulder strap and wear it that way.

Otherwise, the Lightpack is a smooth gray disk with a USB-C charging port and buttons for power and volume, as well as a universal pause button cleverly labeled “Reality.” Natsume says the Lightpack is specifically slightly smaller than a CD-ROM, so people won’t mistake it for a CD player. Given the Magic Leap One’s mildly ‘90s-retro look, that seems like a legitimate concern.

The Magic Leap One is designed for an eclectic range of inputs. It supports some third-party controllers, and the Lightwear cameras track limited hand motion, although I only tried this feature briefly. Abovitz even says Magic Leap will release a “biomarker toolkit,” which will let apps extrapolate breathing patterns, tone of voice, pupil changes, and pulse rate from microphone and eye-tracking camera data.

But the default interface is a single remote-style controller informally called the “totem,” which includes a front trigger, a bumper button above the trigger, a round trackpad on the top, and a tiny home button behind the trackpad. It looks a lot like the controller of the Oculus Go or Samsung Gear VR, except that it’s fully tracked by the headset cameras, so it offers a full range of motion. It’s not quite like having a virtual hand, but it’s a versatile system nonetheless.

Like every mixed reality company, Magic Leap eventually wants to make a normal-looking pair of glasses that can be worn everywhere. For now, the headset is only guaranteed to work indoors, and it includes Bluetooth and Wi-Fi antennas, but no mobile data options. AT&T has already committed to selling a future version with wireless data plans, though, and Abovitz says you can use the current version “at your own risk” outside. “We wanted to teach people how to begin to live a life like this. You don’t suddenly want people running across the street,” he says.

I didn’t take the Magic Leap One outside, and I’m not sure how well it would function under bright sunlight or near dark. I tried it in a series of spacious, well-lit rooms filled with furniture that provided clear hard edges for tracking. I played demos built by Magic Leap’s huge team of developers to show off the headset’s full range of capabilities, with an employee on hand to answer my questions and guide me through the experiences. I saw the Magic Leap One at what any reasonable person might assume was its absolute peak performance. And in light of all that, I still left worried.