magic leap 2 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

April 25, 2023

Magic Leap 2 Now Supports OpenXR, Strengthening Industry Against Potential Apple Upheaval

Though delayed from its commitment last year, Magic Leap today announced that ML2 now fully supports OpenXR. The timing might have something to do with Apple’s looming entrance into the XR space.

Magic Leap had planned to deliver OpenXR support for its ML2 headset last year, but it was seemingly delayed until now. Today the company announced that Magic Leap 2 is conformant with OpenXR.

OpenXR is an open standard that aims to standardize the development of VR and AR applications, making hardware and software more interoperable. The standard has been in development since 2017 and is backed by virtually every major hardware, platform, and engine company in the XR industry.

“The adoption of OpenXR as a common AR ecosystem standard ensures the continual growth and maturation of AR,” Magic Leap said in its announcement. “Magic Leap will continue to advance this vision as Vice Chair of the OpenXR Working Group. In this role, Magic Leap provides technical expertise and collaborates with other members to address the needs of developers and end-users, the scope of the standard, and best practices for implementation.”

Its true that Magic Leap has been part of the OpenXR Working Group—a consortium responsible for developing the standard—for a long time, but we can’t help but feel like Apple’s heavily rumored entrance into the XR space lit a bit of a fire under the feet of the company to get the work across the finish line.

In doing so, Magic Leap has strengthened itself—and the existing XR industry—against what could be a standards upheaval by Apple.

Apple is well known for ignoring certain widely adopted computing standards and choosing to use their own proprietary technologies, in some cases causing a technical divide between platforms. You very well may have experienced this yourself, have you ever found yourself in a conversation about ‘blue bubbles and green bubbles’ when it comes to texting.

With an industry as young as XR—and with Apple being so secretive about its R&D in the space—there’s a good chance the company will have its own way of doing things, especially when it comes to how developers and their applications are allowed to interact with the headset.

If Apple doesn’t want to support OpenXR, this is likely the biggest risk for the industry; if developers have to change their development processes for Apple’s headset, that would create a divide between Apple and the rest of the industry, making applications less portable between platforms.

And while OpenXR-supporting incumbents have the upper hand for the time being (because they have all the existing XR developers and content on their side), one would be foolish to forget the army of experienced iOS developers that are used to doing things the ‘Apple way’. If those developers start their XR journey with Apple’s tools, it will be less likely that their applications will come to OpenXR headsets.

On the other hand, it’s possible that Apple will embrace OpenXR because it sees the value that has already come from years of ironing out the standard—and the content that already supports it. Apple could even be secretly part of the OpenXR Working Group, as companies aren’t forced to make their involvement known.

In the end it’s very likely that Apple will have its own way of doing things in XR, but whether that manifests more in the content running on the headset or down at the technical level, remains to be seen.

June 10, 2022

Hands-on: Magic Leap 2 Shows Clear Improvements, But HoloLens 2 Retains Some Advantages

Magic Leap 2 isn’t available just yet, but when it hits the market later this year it will be directly competing with Microsoft’s HoloLens 2. Though Magic Leap 2 beats out its rival in several meaningful places, its underlying design still leaves HoloLens 2 with some advantages.

Magic Leap as a company has had a wild ride since its founding way back in 2010, with billions of dollars raised, an ambitious initial product that fell short of the hype, and a near-death and rebirth with a new CEO.

The company’s latest product, Magic Leap 2, in many ways reflects the ‘new’ Magic Leap. It’s positioned clearly as an enterprise product, aims to support more open development, and it isn’t trying to hype itself as a revolution. Hell—Magic Leap is even (sensibly) calling it an “AR headset” this time around instead of trying to invent its own vocabulary for the sake of differentiation.

After trying the headset at AWE 2022 last week, I got the sense that, like the company itself, Magic Leap 2 feels like a more mature version of what came before—and it’s not just the sleeker look.

Magic Leap 2 Hands-on

The most immediately obvious improvement to Magic Leap 2 is in the field-of-view, which is increased from 50° to 70° diagonally. At 70°, Magic Leap 2 feels like it’s just starting to scratch that ‘immersive’ itch, as you have more room to see the augmented content around you which means less time spent ‘searching’ for it when it’s out of your field-of-view.

While I suspect many first-time Magic Leap 2 users will come away with a ‘wow the field-of-view is so good!’ reaction… it’s important to remember that the design of ML2 (like its predecessor), ‘cheats’ a bit when it comes to field-of-view. Like the original, the design blocks a significant amount of your real-world peripheral vision (intentionally, as far as I can tell), which makes the field-of-view appear larger than it actually is by comparison.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if only the augmented content is your main focus (I mean, VR headsets have done this pretty much since day one), but it’s a questionable design choice for a headset that’s designed to integrate your real-world and the augmented world. Thus real-world peripheral vision remains a unique advantage that HoloLens 2 holds over both ML1 and ML2… but more on that later.

Unlike some other AR headsets, Magic Leap 2 (like its predecessor) has a fairly soft edge around the field-of-view. Instead of a hard line separating the augmented world from the real-world, it seems to gently fade away, which makes it less jarring when things go off-screen.

Another bonus to immersion compared to other devices is the headset’s new dimming capability which can dynamically dim the lenses to reduce incoming ambient light in order to make the augmented content appear more solid. Unfortunately this was part of the headset that I didn’t have time to really put through its paces in my demo as the company was more focused on showing me specific content. Another thing I didn’t get to properly compare is resolution. Both are my top priority for next time.

Tracking remains as good as ever with ML2, and on-par with HoloLens 2. Content feels perfectly locked to the environment as you move your head around. I did see some notable blurring, mostly during positional head movement specifically. ML1 had a similar issue and it has likely carried over as part of the headset’s underlying display technology. In any case it seems mostly hidden during ‘standing in one spot’ use-cases, and impacts text legibility more than anything else.

And while the color-consistency issue across the image is more subtle (the ‘rainbow’ look), it’s still fairly obvious. It didn’t appear to be as bad as ML1 or HoloLens 2, but it’s still there which is unfortunate. It doesn’t really impact the potential use-cases of the headset, but it does bring a slight reduction to the immersiveness of the image.

While ML2 has been improved almost across the board, there’s one place where it actually takes a step back… and it was one of ML1’s most hyped features: the mystical “photonic lightfield chip” (AKA a display with two focal planes)—is no longer. Though ML2 does have eye-tracking (likely improved thanks to doubling the number of cameras), it only supports a single focal plane (as is the case for pretty much all AR headsets available today).

Continue on Page 2: Different Strokes for Different Folks Enterprise Use-cases »

The post Hands-on: Magic Leap 2 Shows Clear Improvements, But HoloLens 2 Retains Some Advantages appeared first on Road to VR.

June 7, 2022

Magic Leap Commits to OpenXR & WebXR Support Later This Year on ML2

In an ongoing shift away from a somewhat proprietary development environment on its first headset, Magic Leap has committed to bringing OpenXR support to its Magic Leap 2 headset later this year.

Although Magic Leap 2 is clearly the successor to Magic Leap 1, the goal of the headsets are quite different. With the first headset the company attempted to court developers who would build entertainment and consumer-centric apps, and had its own ideas about how its ‘Lumin OS’ should handle apps and how they should be built.

After significant financial turmoil and then revival, the company emerged with new CEO and very different priorities for Magic Leap 2. Not only would the headset be clearly and unequivocally positioned for enterprise use-cases, the company also wants to make it much easier to build apps for the headset.

To that end Magic Leap’s VP of Product Marketing & Developer Programs, Lisa Watts, got on stage at week’s AWE 2022 to “announce and reaffirm to all of you and to the entire industry [Magic Leap’s] support for open standards, and making our platform very easy to develop for.”

In the session, which was co-hosted by Chair of the OpenXR Working Group, Brent Insko, Watts reiterated that Magic Leap 2 is built atop an “Android Open Source Project-based OS interface standard,” and showed a range of open and accessible tools that developers can currently use to build for the headset.

Toward the end of the year, Watts shared, the company expects Magic Leap 2 to also include support for OpenXR, Vulkan, and WebXR.

OpenXR is a royalty-free standard that aims to standardize the development of VR and AR applications, making hardware and software more interoperable. The standard has been in development since 2017 and is backed by virtually every major hardware, platform, and engine company in the VR industry, and a growing number AR players.

In theory, an AR app built to be OpenXR compliant should work on any OpenXR compliant headset—whether that be HoloLens 2 or Magic Leap 2—without any changes to the application.

OpenXR has picked up considerable steam in the VR space and is starting to see similar adoption momentum in the AR space, especially with one of the sector’s most visible companies, Magic Leap, on board.

The post Magic Leap Commits to OpenXR & WebXR Support Later This Year on ML2 appeared first on Road to VR.

March 23, 2022

Watch: New Look At Magic Leap 2 Headset & Controllers

A video shared by Magic Leap earlier this month gives us our most comprehensive look at the design of the company’s upcoming Magic Leap 2 AR headset yet.

It shows us almost every angle imaginable of the headset and its controllers.

As reported in late January, the Magic Leap 2 specs suggest it will be a best-in-class AR headset, aimed at the enterprise market. Compared to the Magic Leap 1, it’s lighter in weight, twice as powerful and features an eye box that is twice as large. This is just the tip of the iceberg — you can read more spec specifics here.

We had previously seen photos of Magic Leap 2, but this new video gives a full 360 degree overview. Plus, it gives a clearer look at the headset’s accompanying controllers. As reported earlier this month, the controllers feature cameras on the sides, used for onboard inside-out tracking.

We had seen some unofficial pictures of the controllers at the time, but this new video gives us our first official look. The two cameras are present on the sides, but you can also see what looks to be a trackpad on the top of the controller.

This style of inside-out tracking, using cameras on the controllers themselves, is being employed by other companies as well — leaked images from last September suggest that Meta will use a similar onboard camera design with its controllers for Project Cambria.

Magic Leap 2 will target enterprise markets on release, but specific pricing info and release window details have yet to be revealed.

March 7, 2022

Magic Leap 2 Controller May Use On-board Inside-out Tracking, an Industry-first

A new photo of Magic Leap 2 appears to show the device’s controller equipped with cameras for inside-out tracking which would be the first time we’ve seen the approach employed in a commercial XR headset.

Though we learned plenty of interesting details about the forthcoming Magic Leap 2 AR headset back in January, it looks like there’s still some secrets left to uncover.

A recent photo of Magic Leap 2 posted by Peter H. Diamandis is, as far as we know, the first time we’ve gotten a clear look at the front of the Magic Leap 2 controller. The photo clearly shows what appear to be two camera sensors on the controller, indicating a high likelihood it will have on-board inside-out tracking.

The original Magic Leap 1 also had a motion controller, but it used magnetic tracking. This was the reason for the curious square sticking out of the headset’s right side (it contained a receiver that sensed the magnetic field emitted from the controller).

A square dangling off the side of Magic Leap 1 senses a magnetic field created by the controller | Image courtesy Magic Leap

Magic Leap 2 has ditched the square and appears to be moving to entirely on-board inside-out tracking for its controller. To our knowledge this will be the first time a commercial XR headset makes use of the approach; that is, assuming Magic Leap 2 beats Meta’s Project Cambria to market (the latter is also expected to use on-board inside-out tracking for its controllers, based on some leaked details, though it hasn’t been confirmed yet).

Other standalone XR headsets, like Quest 2, typically use headset-based inside-out tracking to track their controllers (or the user’s hands). That is: cameras on the headset look for the controllers (typically arrayed with IR LEDs) and use their location to map their movement relative to the headset.

While this approach has proven effective, it only works when the controllers are in view of the headset’s cameras. That means it’s possible for the headset to lose track of the controllers if they spend too much time outside of the camera’s view (like if you held them too low, too high, or behind your back). Putting cameras on the controllers themselves would enable inside-out tracking that, in theory, has coverage no matter where the user holds it.

Beyond ‘anywhere’ tracking coverage, putting inside-out tracking directly on the controller means the headset wouldn’t need to be covered in so many cameras (Quest 2 uses four cameras while Rift S tops that at five), and it means the elimination of the ‘tracking rings’ (seen on most standalone headset controllers) making them sleeker and perhaps less prone to breakage.

There’s more potential benefits too. Giving controllers their own inside-out tracking could make it easier to use a combination of input methods, like a controller in one hand and controllerless hand-tracking in the other. Currently that’s a challenge because the cameras on the headsets tend to use different exposure settings for tracking controllers compared to tracking hands. Furthermore, decoupling controller tracking from the headset has the potential to reduce controller tracking latency.

But, as they say, there is no free lunch. Giving controllers on-board inside out tracking likely means putting a dedicated processor inside with enough power to crunch the incoming images and compute a position, which we’d expect to result in higher costs and more battery drain compared to having simple IR LEDs on-board.

There’s also the issue of motion blur for the on-board cameras. While inside-out tracking has been shown to work well for headsets, controllers can move considerably faster, especially during intense games—so fast, in fact, that it prompted Valve to update its SteamVR Tracking tech to account for the speed of top Beat Saber players.

As you can imagine, swinging a camera around that fast is likely to induce motion blur across the image sensor, especially in darker scenes where the exposure time needs to be increased to gather more light.

Of course, Magic Leap 2 isn’t intended for gamers, so it’s possible that this wouldn’t be an issue for the headset’s enterprise-focused use-cases. Or maybe the image sensors on the controllers are fast enough to avoid motion blur even during quick movements?

Perhaps most likely the sensors aren’t above average, but the controller will simply lean primarily on IMU-based tracking until the controller slows down enough to get a proper position (this is the same approach that existing standalone headsets use to deal with controllers that occasionally leave the headset’s field-of-view).

In any case, we’ll know more as Magic Leap 2 approaches commercial availability. The headset is expected to launch this year but a specific release date hasn’t been announced yet. In the tweet which included the controller photo, Peter H. Diamandis said he would be hosting Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson at his Abundance 360 event at the end of April which could signal the next time the company will divulge official details on the headset.

Editor’s note: Before someone in the comments says ‘SteamVR Tracking tracking controllers have been doing inside-out tracking for years!’ the industry vernacular does not consider systems using artificial markers as ‘inside-out tracking’.

The post Magic Leap 2 Controller May Use On-board Inside-out Tracking, an Industry-first appeared first on Road to VR.

January 27, 2022

Tons of New Magic Leap 2 Details Shed Light on Dynamic Dimming & More

Although it’s expected to launch this year, there’s still no firm release date on Magic Leap 2. However, the company has begun sharing details on the headset which suggests the launch is approaching.

This week at the SPIE Photonics West 2022 conference, Magic Leap’s VP of Optical Engineering, Kevin Curtis, took to the stage to share a bevy of new details on the headset. Attendee Nataliya Kosmyna shared portions of the presentation alongside some portions which cropped up over at the AR XR MR subreddit.

During the presentation Curtis detailed Magic Leap 2’s bevy of sensors, optical stack, Android foundation, and more.

The most interesting details to come from the presentation are perhaps about the headset’s dynamic dimming capability, which is a first among commercial AR headsets.

Dynamic Dimming Lenses

Curtis shared that Magic Leap 2 can adjust the light transmission of its lenses from 22% to 0.3%. The former being something like sunglasses and the latter being closer to welding goggles. This wide range ought to make the headset usable even in very bright outdoor environments (though it will of course come at the cost of dimming the world around the user as well). Dynamic dimming is paired with a brightness range from 20–2,000 nits; combined, these capabilities should make the headset significantly more flexible than its predecessor, and similar headsets, when it comes to varied lighting conditions.

Also noted in the presentation, the dimming capability can refresh at 120Hz, and is “segmented” as well. The slides state this means that Magic Leap 2 lenses can “enable black,” presumably by selectively dimming only the part of the lens where black is needed in the image. On traditional transparent AR headsets it’s impossible to have ‘black’ as a color because black is the absence of light but the lenses have no way to stop light from passing through. Without access to the entire contents of Curtis’ talk, we don’t know how precisely the dimming capability can be segmented so it’s difficult to know if this will be a comparatively groundbreaking capability, or something more limited.

Curiously, dropping to the minimum 0.3% light transmission might even make Magic Leap 2 useful for fully immersive VR experiences where the real world is largely dimmed to make way for entirely virtual content. It remains to be seen if this is a use case the company is actively aiming for.

The Headset

About the headset itself, Curtis shared that Magic Leap 2 will come in just one size—a change from Magic Leap 1 which had a ‘large’ and ‘small’ variant. The reasoning behind having two sizes for ML1 appears to have been driven largely by a small eyebox and the lack of IPD adjustment, requiring two different sizes of the headset to try to cover a suitable range of the IPD spectrum. For Magic Leap 2, Curtis says the eyebox was doubled in size, apparently making it large enough for the company to move to a single headset size.

According to Curtis, Magic Leap 2 weighs just 248 grams (0.5 pounds). That’s a nearly 22% reduction over the original headset’s 316 grams (0.7 pounds), while furthering its lead in weight over HoloLens 2 which comes in at a much heftier 566 grams (1.2 pounds). Granted, Magic Leap 2 still relies on a tethered connection to a ‘Compute Pack’ which gives it a big advantage in the weight department over fully self-contained headsets.

ML2 will also include eye-tracking, with two cameras per-eye. As far as we know, that’s up from one camera per-eye on ML1, which could mean greater accuracy. Eye illumination is provided by six tiny LEDs which can be seen embedded in each lens.

It isn’t clear yet if Magic Leap 2 will have the same varifocal capabilities as ML1. Given the diagram shared by Curtis (further above)—which appears to show one waveguide per red, green, and blue color (instead of two per color as with ML1)—the feature may have been scrapped.

The headset will include a 12MP RGB camera for user-facing photo capabilities, like taking pictures & videos, scanning barcodes, and streaming video for ‘see-what-I-see’ use-cases. On-board audio is also confirmed.

Two key things we don’t know yet are the resolution and field-of-view of Magic Leap 2. According to Curtis, Magic Leap 2 has “double” the field-of-view of ML1 (which is 50° diagonal), though we expect this means double the area, not double any of the linear dimensions. The company has previously shared this comparison of the ML2 field-of-view vs. ML1 in which we can see most of the gain comes in the vertical direction.

Compute Pack

As for performance, Curtis indicates the Magic Leap 2 ‘Compute Pack’ will have 2–3 times the GPU & CPU performance of Magic Leap 1, including the addition of a dedicated co-processor for handling computer-vision operations, which he referred to as the CVPU (computer-vision processing unit).

Curtis didn’t specify Magic Leap 2’s processor, but the company has strongly hinted that it comes from AMD. Interestingly, Magic Leap 1 was based on Nvidia’s Tegra chipset, which was fairly novel for this kind of device.

AMD is also a somewhat novel choice for Magic Leap 2 as most devices in this category use chips from Qualcomm, including Magic Leap’s main competition, HoloLens 2. You may know AMD as a creator of desktop & laptop processors as well as GPUs, but the company also has a significant foothold in the console market as the longstanding provider of chips in Xbox and PlayStation consoles. Magic Leap 2 could represent AMD’s first significant entry into the XR space.

Magic Leap 2 also touts “more memory, storage, and battery life vs. competitors,” but we don’t have many specifics at this time. From the materials we have we know that ML2 will have USB-C charging, Bluetooth 5.1, and WiFi 802.11AX (AKA WiFi 6).

Continue on Page 2: Controller, Embracing Android »

The post Tons of New Magic Leap 2 Details Shed Light on Dynamic Dimming & More appeared first on Road to VR.

October 12, 2021

Official Magic Leap 2 Details Released, $500m New Funding Raised

It certainly seems to be hardware season where virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) is concerned. HTC Vive has a special event planned this week, Lynx-R1 launched a Kickstarter, Canon EOS VR was unveiled and now the first proper look at Magic Leap’s next device. Not only that, the company has managed to raise a further $500 million USD in funding.

Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson initially teased the first image on Monday before an interview with CNBC. This has been followed up with further imagery of a much sleeker looking device. In a similar arrangement to the original model, the Magic Leap 2 has a pair of central cameras but this time there are two additional sensors just below them. There’s an additional lens on the corner that looks tilted outwards by around 45-degrees, presumably for a wider capture field.

Actual specifications regarding the Magic Leap 2 haven’t been released just yet, Johnson has mentioned that the: “headset boasts critical updates that make it more immersive and even more comfortable,” increasing its field of view (FoV) – as seen in the image above – vertically rather than horizontally. It’ll also come with a dimming feature that the CEO says is: “a first-to-market innovation that enables the headset to be used in brightly lit settings.”

Johnson is also keen to point out that the Magic Leap 2 aims to achieve the company’s goal of a device suitable for “all day, everyday use”. “All day” would be quite the achievement considering the Magic Leap 1 was good for 3.5 hours of continuous use. That could indicate a much larger battery, improved power consumption or hot-swappable battery for users.

To help bring the Magic Leap 2 to market, Magic Leap has managed to raise an additional $500 million on top of the billions previously raised.

“This investment is an important step in advancing Magic Leap’s mission to transform the way we work,” said Peggy Johnson in a blog post. “With ongoing support from our existing investors, Magic Leap will have greater financial flexibility and the resources needed to continue our growth trajectory as we expand on our industry-leading AR technology.”

Magic Leap 2 is already in select enterprise customer hands via an early access program. Sales of the headset will begin at some point in 2022. For continued updates, keep reading VRFocus.

October 12, 2021

Magic Leap 2 Teased For 2022 With Taller Field Of View

Magic Leap teased the first images of its next generation AR headset, Magic Leap 2.

A blog post by Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson features an image, pictured below, comparing the field of view of the first and second generation AR headsets. While Magic Leap 2 seems to have small gains in horizontal field of view, vertically the augmentation of your vision should be far more significant with the new device. The company is said to have raised another $500 million to roll-out the second generation product focused toward business markets in 2022. “Select customers” are “already leveraging its capabilities through an early access program,” according to the company.

We can also see in the images of the new device that it apparently keeps its wired design. The original Magic Leap One headset shipped starting in August 2018 priced at $2,295 with a single handheld controller and wired computing puck accompanying the lightweight glasses.

magic leap 2

Here’s the first generation device for comparison:

Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft are just a few of the companies working to develop next-generation AR headsets geared toward different use cases. A new generation of VR headsets are also likely to have advanced AR passthrough modes likely to overlap with the feature sets of systems like Magic Leap 2. We’ll be curious to see, then, what price Magic Leap’s second generation system arrives at when it launches, and how it holds up against other products available at the time it ships.

“Magic Leap 2 will be the industry’s smallest and lightest device built for enterprise adoption,” Johnson wrote. “This more advanced headset boasts critical updates that make it more immersive and even more comfortable, with leading optics, the largest field of view in the industry, and dimming – a first-to-market innovation that enables the headset to be used in brightly lit settings, in addition to a significantly smaller and lighter form factor. These updated features lend themselves to achieving our goal of all day, everyday use, which is what the enterprise market has been asking for – a device that you can put on your head in the morning and wear all day long.”

Magic Leap appointed Johnson as CEO in July 2020 after former CEO Rony Abovitz stepped down, citing a need for the company to pivot to a new ‘focused’ direction.

October 11, 2021

CEO Shares First Details on Magic Leap 2, Announces $500 Million in New Funding

Magic Leap today announced that it has raised $500 million in new capital at a $2 billion valuation. This comes ahead of the launch of its upcoming AR headset, Magic Leap 2, which it promises will be smaller, lighter, and tuned to be an “all day” device.

New Capital

Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson took to CNBC today during the channel’s Power Lunch show to reveal that the company has raised a $500 million investment at a $2 billion valuation. The company didn’t disclose who participated in the funding round.

Magic Leap had previously raised some $3 billion for its hyped AR headset which didn’t see nearly as much traction as the company hoped for. It nearly fell apart last year, and had gone as far as announcing significant layoffs, before a last minute investment of $350 million allowed it to restructure. Shortly thereafter, Peggy Johnson took over as CEO, replacing founder Rony Abovitz, and began to pivot the company more heavily toward the enterprise sector.

The First Details on Magic Leap 2

Magic Leap 2 will be the first new product from the company since Johnson took the reins. In addition to announcing the new investment today on CNBC’s Power Lunch, Johnson also teased more about the new AR headset.

Most interestingly, perhaps, she said Magic Leap 2 will be an “all day, every day” device, thanks to a more compact and comfortable form factor. This is intriguing because—if “all day” is to be believed—it suggests the headset will have significantly more battery life than the three or so hours of the original Magic Leap headset.

“These updated features lend themselves to achieving our goal of all day, everyday use, which is what the enterprise market has been asking for—a device that you can put on your head in the morning and wear all day long,” Johnson wrote today in a post on the company’s official blog.

It remains to be seen how the company plans to achieve this however. A truly ‘all day’ AR headset would be a breakthrough in the industry, as it would allow persistent and seamless augmentation of the real world, rather than donning a bulky headset for select use-cases. However, Johnson may merely be alluding to the headset being comfortable enough to wear all day, but only if it remains powered off until specifically needed. Alternatively the new headset could now include a swappable battery pack.

But bulk and battery life isn’t the only barrier to true practical ‘all day’ use. In an image of Magic Leap 2 released today we can see that the headset will still bring a notable penalty to one’s own field-of-view, similar to the original Magic Leap headset which significantly truncated the real-world FOV.

Johnson also claimed Magic Leap 2 will include a new “segmented dimming” technology which she says will allow the headset to be practical in brighter environments, like an operating room. She didn’t elaborate on how it worked.

Magic Leap 2 will also feature improved “color fidelity,” “text legibility,” and “image quality,” according to Johnson, as well as “double the field-of-view.” We take this to mean ‘double the area‘ which is less significant than doubling the diagonal field-of-view, but it would be an improvement none-the-less, likely bringing Magic Leap 2’s field-of-view on par with HoloLens 2.

It looks like most of this increase comes, oddly, in the vertical direction, according to a depiction shared by the company, which Johnson claims is the “largest field of view in the industry.”

Magic Leap says it plans to launch Magic Leap 2 in 2022, though it says “select customers” are already using the headset through an early access program.

The post CEO Shares First Details on Magic Leap 2, Announces $500 Million in New Funding appeared first on Road to VR.

October 11, 2021

First Image of Next Magic Leap Headset Revealed

After much hype augmented reality (AR) reality company Magic Leap launched its first device – the Magic Leap 1 – back in 2018. It didn’t quite set the tech world on fire, with the following years seeing plenty of upheaval including new CEO Peggy Johnson appointed last year. Today, Johnson has teased the first image of what’s likely to be Magic Leap 2.

Johnson shared a post on Linkedin with a very cropped image of the new device saying that she’d be sharing further details on CNBC’s PowerLunch programme today. While the singular image doesn’t reveal a great deal, the new device certainly looks smaller and more stylish than Magic Leap’s previous generation AR headset. The form factor seems to be more in line with other AR hardware manufacturers, going for a more fashionable smart glasses approach to help widen its appeal.

Whilst it might not be the Magic Leap 2, information up to this point would suggest it is the follow-up device. The Microsoft and Qualcomm veteran joined Magic Leap back in 2020, announcing earlier this year that the initial rollout of Magic Leap 2 would take place by the end of 2021. At the time she said: “we’ve made the product half the size, about 20% lighter,” which would fit with this image.

Those in Magic Leap’s early adopter program will be given first access, slated to be in Q4, with general availability taking place in Q1 2022. Hopefully, today will see the company finalise some of those details and maybe even release a price for its next device.

Don’t expect it to be coming in at a consumer price point though. Magic Leap is still firmly focused on the enterprise market, encouraging businesses to utilise AR, whether that’s for training, collaboration, design or any other use case.

Most of the news out of Magic Leap in 2021 has concerned partnerships, from integrating NVIDIA’s CloudXR tech to teaming up with AMD. Most recently, last week saw Magic Leap and VMware announce Workspace ONE XR Hub integration on Magic Leap 2. As further details arise, VRFocus will keep you updated.