Magic Leap 1 may not be considered an ideal gaming platform due to its high cost and general focus towards enterprise use cases but nobody seems to have told Resolution Games. The studio which is well known for virtual reality (VR) titles like Bait!, Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigsand Acron: Attack of the Squirrelshas already released augmented reality (AR) title Angry Birds FPS: First Person Slingshotfor the device and today adds another, Glimt: The Vanishing at the Grand Starlight Hotel.
Resolution Games revealed the title back in November, creating an original IP based around a detective mystery. In Glimt: The Vanishing at the Grand Starlight Hotel you take on the role of a top detective in the psychic division of the Warlock Investigation Bureau, tasked with solving a crime of interplanar proportions. Guests have been reported missing and you need to find out why.
Using Magic Leap’s spatial computing you’ll be presented with dollhouse scale scenes which need to be explored, solving a series of different cases around the hotel. These all bring you one step closer to learning the source of the dangerous magic responsible for these vanishings.
“As a studio, we’re excited to continue exploring different mediums and expanding our games catalogue with our third title in augmented reality,” said Tommy Palm, CEO of Resolution Games in a statement. “This is our second game for Magic Leap, and a lot has progressed with the platform since our first title launched. We’re seeing more potential than ever for augmented reality games and look forward to continuing to innovate in the space.”
Glimt: The Vanishing at the Grand Starlight Hotel is free on Magic Leap 1 so its perfect if you’re stuck at home with nothing to do. Of course, the headset is designed for work applications as well, hence why Magic Leap launched a Collaboration Package earlier this month. Companies get four Magic Leap 1 devices for a trial period of 45 days as well as access to Spatial, a cross-platform collaboration solution.
As for Resolution Games’ next projects, the studio has already confirmed one, Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale. As further details are released, VRFocus will keep you posted.
BBC Studios and AR/VR studio PRELOADED today launched BBC Earth – Micro Kingdoms: Senses, the interactive documentary for Magic Leap 1. Narrated by Stephen Fry, the AR experience brings user into the tiny world of insects and arachnids.
Created in collaboration with the BBC Natural History Unit, the same minds behind Planet Earth and Blue Planet, Micro Kingdoms lets users get up close and personal with a two species of creepy crawlers—a Leaf Cutter Ant colony from the tropical rainforests of Central America and the Wandering Spider from the Atlantic Forest of Eastern Brazil.
According to a behind-the-scenes video (linked below), the virtual invertebrate stars of the app were created using photo and video references sourced from BBC’s Natural History Unit. Environmental props, such as plants and logs, were created using photogrammetry, a technique for reconstructing 3D geometry with high-resolution textures from real photographs and other data.
And it seems to pack in a fair amount of interactivity as well, as its said to include a dynamic soundtrack to underpin key events. Peering through a magnifying glass, you can watch the ants go to work demolishing a leaf.
“The way the ants move around, the way they communicate, is completely authentic to how they would behave in the wild. Likewise with the spider—the way it stalks its prey, the way it responds to your presence,” said Phil Stuart, Creative Director at Preloaded.
The release of Micro Kingdoms follows a string of third-party apps created for Magic Leap 1 via the company’s Independent Creator Program, including BBC Civilizations from indie studio Nexus Studios.
Magic Leap appears to still be on that warpath for high-quality, curated content. To that effect, the company is giving away more Magic Leap 1 hardware and engaging more independent developers soon through its upcoming LEAP Con in May, a more intimate affair at its Florida HQ than its inaugural dev conference in 2018.
And although slick (and probably pretty expensive) offerings like Micro Kingdoms feel like the company is filling out Magic Leap World with consumer-focused experiences for an impending, bona-fide consumer headset release, the company has said its Magic Leap 2 headset will still be focused on enterprise and prosumers segments when it launches in 2021. So it seems only relatively few people will ever enjoy the dulcet tones of Stephen Fry as he waxes poetic about bugs, at least until the original Magic Leap 1’s $2,300 price tag is reduced.
Magic Leap recently announced some new programs that aim to get developers creating for the its AR headset, Magic Leap 1. The company additionally released dates for its developer conference, LEAP Developer Days, which will be held in May at Magic Leap’s headquarters in Florida.
Magic Leap is starting another hardware initiative soon, dubbed ‘Access Hardware’, which aims to get its AR headset into the hands of developers who are “serious about publishing applications with Magic Leap,” the company writes in a recent blog post.
The program is targeting existing developers hoping to release a “quality app in 2020,” which may point to another effort by the company to fill out its library of games, apps, and experiences before an ostensible consumer-facing hardware launch.
The company has thus far delivered $10 million in grants to 33 developers worldwide, and has given away hundreds of its Magic Leap One Creator Edition headsets (now rebranded to ‘Magic Leap 1’).
Outside of the physical hardware, which has a base price of $2,300, the Access Hardware initiative is also offering support from Magic Leap’s developer relations team so qualifying apps can be published on the platform’s store, Magic Leap World. Developers can apply for Access Hardware here.
“During the application process, we’ll look for things like technical experience, project feasibility, and the overall quality of your submission. Hint: we’re particularly interested in ideas that solve problems and create opportunities for enterprise markets and customers,” the company says.
The company says it will announce more details about developer funding later this year in addition to other support programs for enterprise-focused developers and agencies.
If West Coasters were hoping for a return of LEAP to its inaugural location in Los Angeles this year, they’ll actually need to do a bit of globe-trotting. Slated to take place at the company’s Plantation, Florida headquarters, the company says developers should expect “behind-the-scenes access to help accelerate their development and the growth of their businesses.”
LEAP Developer Days will be divided into two groups, held respectively on May 19-20 and May 21-22. This, the company says, will allow for face-to-face time with its dev relations team, studios, marketing teams, engineers and designers building the core Magic Leap hardware and platform.
Magic Leap announced new programs that will run across 2020, including two separate Developer Day events and a new program called ‘Access Hardware’ for developers.
Announced in a blog post, Access Hardware is a new program that aims to provide developers with Magic Leap devices to use for development. Magic Leap notes that the program is specifically for “developers who are serious about publishing applications with Magic Leap.” The program will also include support with a developer relations team, with the resulting app receiving priority status when it is ready for publishing.
Developers who want to be considered for the Access Hardware program can apply online. Magic Leap said it is looking at “technical experience, project feasibility, and the overall quality of your submission” in applications, with a focus on “ideas that solve problems and create opportunities for enterprise markets and customers.”
Magic Leap also announced LEAP Developer Days, which will run at Magic Leap headquarters in Florida in May. The events will be two separate two-day events, running May 19-20 and 21-22 respectively. Developers will meet face-to-face with Magic Leap’s staff and talk to engineers and designers about the Magic Leap platform and development of AR applications. You can read more specifics about what’s on offer at the dev days on the Magic Leap blog. Applications will open later this month.
Magic Leap’s next-gen AR headset, Magic Leap 2, is officially slated to launch sometime in 2021. Company founder and CEO Rony Abovitz says in a Forbesinterview that ML2 will be targeting enterprise and early prosumers, calling it “a major new platform packed with sensors, and advanced optics.”
Speaking to Forbes, Abovitz says its next headset is now passing through its final build stages, although he didn’t delve into specifics regarding any of the device’s upcoming features, saying only that the company plans to work with customers to perfect the Magic Leap 2 throughout 2020—exactly how, he wouldn’t say.
In a bid to further position itself as a solution for businesses, Magic Leap has now done away with the Magic Leap One Creator Edition moniker, replacing it simply with ‘Magic Leap 1’.
The $2,300 base price tag is still the same, and it doesn’t appear to be physically different in any way from the Creator Edition, which was launched in August 2018. However now the company is ostensibly trying to attract enterprise users, as its newly updated website puts professional use cases front and center—a definite change in tone from the quasi-consumer approach the company has taken since launch, which has showcased games, music apps, and experiences as the platform’s biggest draws.
The company has also put together a Magic Leap 1 ‘Enterprise Suite’ package, priced at $3,000, which includes two years of access to the company’s newly released Device Manager software, enterprise support, limited warranty, and rapid replace plan.
Some of this likely comes as response to a damning report recently released by The Information that alleges the company only sold 6,000 Magic Leap One headsets in the first six months after launch.
That same report maintains that Magic Leap Two will include 5G connectivity, a wider field of view, a smaller and lighter form factor, and different color options. The report claims however this second iteration may be stymied by “fundamental technology constraints,” making a hardware refresh a possibility too. Critically, Magic Leap disavowed the report, calling it “littered with inaccuracies.”
Whatever form Magic Leap 2 takes, one thing is for certain: the company is taking a clear step back from its ambitions as a consumer device, and meanwhile locking down street cred as a business-friendly device provider, putting it in closer competition with Microsoft’s HoloLens platform. Its 2021 release date is also encroaching upon the same time frame Apple reportedly could release its first AR device too. Where those two dots connect, we can’t say just yet (especially since the Apple report is unsubstantiated), but it seems the roaring ’20s are going to be a very interesting decade for AR, to say the least.
Spatial computing is still very much in the realm of business applications, with companies like Magic Leap promoting the technology across a range of use cases. Today, Magic Leap has announced a new enterprise suite of software to complement an updated headset, the Magic Leap 1.
Having launched the Magic Leap One Creators Edition last summer, the spatial computing specialist has upgraded the design so that the field of view (FoV) is now 50-degrees. Other headset specs include a 120Hz refresh rate and the option for prescription inserts for glasses wearers. As for the processing Lightpack, this small puck houses 8GB RAM, 128GB storage, and 3.5 hours of battery life.
The headset will be sold alongside the new Magic Leap Enterprise Suite, offering business customers applications designed specifically for the enterprise environment. Companies like BNP Paribas, Deloitte, Hyperloop TT, JetBlue Travel, McLaren, and Skender have all partnered with Magic Leap to give employees access to spatial computing.
“Today’s announcement heralds the arrival of a new chapter for spatial computing with an advanced technology platform for enterprises across all industry sectors,” said Omar Khan, Chief Product Officer at Magic Leap in a statement. “Our innovative partners are leading the charge by developing groundbreaking solutions that will transform their businesses and customer experiences. Together, we are rewriting the rules of business with spatial solutions that will yield greater efficiencies, deeper engagement, and significant new business opportunities for all stakeholders.”
Two-year access to Device Manager with enterprise-level support from Magic Leap. Device Manager lets authorized administrators control important aspects of working with Magic Leap 1, enabling them to configure and set up devices, view usage metrics, remotely distribute apps and updates, and remotely lock or wipe devices if needed.
Two-year access to a RapidReplace program, so you can get a new device quickly if you need one.
A two-year extended warranty to guarantee Magic Leap 1 always works as it should.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Magic Leap and spatial computing, reporting back with the latest updates and announcements.
Magic Leap is one of the most well-funded startups in history, boasting $2.6 billion in overall funding—and that’s before calculating its latest financing round, the amount and specifics of which are still unknown at this time. A new report from The Information however alleges that the company has seen sluggish sales of its Magic Leap One AR headset, something that reportedly only sold 6,000 units in the first six months following its August 2018 launch.
The Information maintains CEO Rony Abovitz internally claimed he wanted to initially sell one million units of the $2,300 headset in its first year of production. Abovitz reportedly later reduced that number to 100,000 units.
Even at the low side of 100,000 units, that’s in the neighborhood of how many Oculus Rift DK2s were shipped globally, which at the time of launch in 2015 cost nearly one-sixth of the price of ML One.
Image courtesy AT&T, Magic Leap
According to the report, Magic Leap is also now prototyping a second headset, which is said to include 5G connectivity, a wider field of view, and a smaller and lighter form factor. The report claims however this second iteration has been stymied by “fundamental technology constraints,” making a hardware refresh a greater likelihood.
Furthermore, The Information maintains both Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and former Qualcomm exec Paul Jacobs stepped down in 2018 from the board at Magic Leap. Pichai is said to have left due to “the demands of his schedule,” replaced by Google Maps VP Jennifer Fitzpatrick, while Jacobs was ousted from Qualcomm for his attempt to take the company private.
When asked for comment, a Magic Leap spokesperson told Engadgetthat The Information report was “littered with inaccuracies and misleading statements, and erroneously portrays Magic Leap’s operations, internal plans and overall strategy.”
In apparent response to the report, Abovitz also took to Twitter, saying that he’s “very realistic about each step we (and all others) need to take each year [to make AR mainstream].”
I'm a left brain and right brain person (I'm part engineer, part artist) – I have deep conviction that spatial computing will be really big over time – and very realistic about each step we (and all others) need to take each year to get there.
Some of this talk of sales numbers undoubtedly comes down to how Magic Leap positions their technology. Although it’s labeled a ‘Creator Edition’ headset, which is ostensibly targeted at developers, the company has made some overt bids to appear consumer-facing, as the company makes exclusive deals with major telecoms such as AT&T and Japan’s NTT DOCOMO, and it releases polished (and likely expensive to fund) second-party apps on their burgeoning app store, Magic Leap World.
Image courtesy Magic Leap
The store isn’t just a collection of developer examples, but it’s rather a curated platform that has both a selection of free and paid apps from big names including Weta Workshop’s Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders, ILMxLABS’ Project Porg, Rovio’s Angry Birds First Person Slingshot, or Insomniac Games’ paid app Seedling. You can even now listen to Spotify on ML One.
In short, nobody would be focused on sales numbers if the company had followed a more conventional release cycle; i.e. launch a purposefully unsexy developer kit with little to no marketing, build hype at trade shows by teasing a better, more refined version of the product with better specs, release the new product as the true 1.0 once you’ve got a solid set of useful apps on your store. Meanwhile, you can either heavily subsidize the product to make it more appealing to indie developers, or provide alternate hardware available so devs don’t have to weather the full cost of a $2,300 device.
Irregardless of the report’s claims, Magic Leap has clearly decided to approach the problem of kickstarting the AR headset product segment in its own unique way, something their unprecedented amount of cash has allowed them to experiment with. However now with Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook heavily invested in AR, Magic Leap will need a real win here soon if it plans to compete with the established powers in tech for what looks to be an interesting next decade ahead of us to say the least.
Magic Leap One sold just 6,000 units in the first six months, and technology issues mean a true successor product is still “years away”, according to a report from The Information.
ML1 is one of the first augmented reality headsets aimed toward consumers rather than just enterprise. Content for the headset includes a number of projects including avatar chat, a web browser you can place anywhere in your room, a Wayfair app for seeing how furniture will work, various entertainment experiences, and twogames from Insomniac Games. They even recently announced a Spotify app for the system.
Magic Leap Founder and CEO Rony Abovitz told investors and employees he expected the headset to sell “at least” one million units in the first year, according to the report.
Abovitz is known for grandiose language when describing “spatial computing” — and in our first interview with him last year suggested he thought the company could one day go public. Executives reportedly eventually convinced Abovitz to “settle” for a target of 100,000 in the first year.
However, according to the report, the headset actually sold just 6,000 units in the first six months — and Magic Leap has not publicly refuted the report. When the product launched, screens at the company’s headquarters showed the expected sales, not the actual live sales figures.
The company’s headset inventory was reportedly so large that it started giving employees free headsets.
For comparison, Microsoft’s HoloLens AR headset reportedly sold around 50,000 units after two years. But Microsoft seems to have more realistic expectations about the current state of AR, and has been targeting enterprise rather than the consumer market.
In 2018, Magic Leap was apparently losing tens of millions of dollars per month. Later that year, the company lost a lucrative US Army contract bid to Microsoft. This year, it laid off “dozens” of employees and slowed hiring.
But Why?
So why did Magic Leap sell a small fraction of their 100,000 target?
The $2,300 price is a significant barrier to consumer interest. In the VR world, the standalone Oculus Quest from Facebook is $400 and representatives claim they are making them as fast as they can sell them.
Difficult to manufacture custom display required for AR likely contribute to high cost for Magic Leap, but we believe the company made some decisions which kept the price higher. The company also used the most powerful, and expensive, mobile chip it could find: the NVIDIA Tegra X2. Oculus Quest, for comparison, uses a more affordable chip from Qualcomm to try and deliver a compelling mobile VR experience.
The 6DoF controller bundled with Magic Leap One also uses electromagnetic tracking for positioning. Electromagnetic has the advantage of not being subject to occlusion, however, it is significantly more expensive than the LED tracking solutions we’ve seen from Facebook and Microsoft.
But even if Magic Leap One had been priced more competitively, the relatively low field of view and relative lack of content may still have limited its appeal. The ultimate promise of AR glasses is an all day outdoor wearable device which can create arbitrary screens, provide on-foot navigation, and translate other languages. Magic Leap simply doesn’t provide that yet.
Magic Leap 2: Years Away
The report also suggests the company is currently in the prototype stage for a successor to the Magic Leap One, codenamed ML2.
It is said to have a wider field of view, greater “depth perception” (likely more focal planes or a varifocal system), and higher quality graphics. It’s also reportedly smaller and lighter, and will come in multiple colors.
ML2 may also incorporate a cellular 5G connection. This would seem to indicate that it can be used outside — the current device is only recommended for indoor use.
The report claims that “a person involved with the project” told employees that the device is still years away due to “fundamental technology constraints”. This could put the company in direct competition with Apple and Facebook, which are each reportedly planning to launch their own AR glasses in a few years.
All that said, the company is apparently close to a minor refresh of the Magic Leap One which could provide some improvements.
Magic Leap and Insomniac Games announced a new game, Strangelets, for the Magic Leap One. The game is a follow-up to Insomniac’s previous AR title Seedling, which released last year.
We tried an early version of Insomniac’s previous AR game, Seedling, at Leap Con in October last year. The full version of the game released later that year in December, and according to Insomniac the new AR game Strangelets follows on from Seedling’s story and sees players continue to deal with “the effects of ‘The Schmelling Incident'” from the story of the first game.
The Magic Leap blog also provides a brief description of the gameplay that Magic Leap owners can expect from Strangelets. “With the help of a mysterious companion known only as “Bulby,” Strangelets invites players to search their homes for dimensional rifts, reach inside to rescue strange alien creatures, then care for their collection by using harvested energy from real-world objects.”
The game also supposedly takes real-world time and weather into account to vary the gameplay, and features a story “worthy of retelling.”
Sony recently acquired Insomniac Games and, as such, the announcement for the game suggests Strangelets will be the their last release as an independent studio. Before Stangelets, their most recent release was Stormland, an Oculus-exclusive VR title, which was announced before the acquisition but released after it. Stormland’s release was unaffected by the acquisition, but the studio’s future in AR and VR remains unclear.
Insomniac Games, the studio behind VR games Stormland (2019) and The Unspoken (2017), announced its acquisition by Sony Interactive Entertainment back in August, and while we imagined their last independent project was surely the open-world Rift adventure Stormland, it appears the studio had another title sitting ready in the wings for Magic Leap One called Strangelets.
Strangelets is Insomniac’s second ML One title, which follows December the release of Seedling (2018), a game that puts you in the shoes of a space cadet tasked with repairing a dying galactic ecosystem due to the effects of ‘The Schmelling Incident,’ a catastrophic cosmic event.
Playing in the same universe, strangelets (cute alien creatures) find themselves “trapped in pockets between dimensions,” the studio writes in a Magic Leap blog post.
Here’s how Insomniac describes the game:
With the help of a mysterious companion known only as “Bulby,” Strangelets invites players to search their homes for dimensional rifts, reach inside to rescue strange alien creatures, then care for their collection by using harvested energy from real-world objects. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience that encourages physical movement through multiple rooms, transforming players’ familiar spaces into a playground of discovery and surprise.
“After the launch of Seedling, our small team of spatial computing pioneers were more inspired than ever by the potential of this new platform,” said Nathaniel Bell, Creative Director for Strangelets and Seedling. “We were ready to dive headfirst into our next experimental experience and to continue collaborating with our passionate partners at Magic Leap. Our goal moving forward was to build on lessons learned from Seedling and to venture into new territories of spatial computing not yet experienced by players.”
It will be interesting to see where Insomniac goes from here, and whether it continues to focus on VR/AR, or keeps its main focus on traditional ‘second party’ games for PlayStation. However it goes, Insomniac is one of the most experienced studios in immersive gaming, so we’re hoping for something good for PlayStation 5 and the next iteration of PlayStation VR to say the least.
