Magic Leap – Myth or Magic

I agree that it looks pretty impressive, but I'm unclear on how objects are rendered from a user perspective. Does the user have to wear a pair of glasses or some other viewing device to see the visualizations?

With some of the things online, I can see that its going to be some kind of a glass for sure. They talk about photonic lightfield chip which seems to be almost like a pair of glasses(to be more precise lenses) but it can control light similar to an electronic chip which controls electrons flow. Basically they project images into those glasses which get directly projected into a human eye at various focal lengths which gives you the sense of depth (far and near objects etc.,). Basically the photonic chip should have multiple layers to render images with different focal lengths. What I've read online interprets that it will be a pair of glasses (even Abovitz mentions in one of his talks, thats it going to be a head mounted display like a pair of glasses) which has the lightfield photonic chips for each eye, which then gets fed from a computing unit which the user might have in their pocket (similar in size of a cell phone). With cameras mounted on the HMD (glasses), and doing some SLAM(Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) on those images, they should be able to sense the environment around you and then allow for virtual objects to be placed appropriately to interact.

Check out the article below which gives an in-depth interpretation based on their patents and whatever information/demos magic leap has shared in the past.

http://uploadvr.com/magic-leap-how-it-works/

Magic Leap's CEO also shows the light field photonic chip which looks like a normal piece of glass, but has the property of projecting images from a fiber optic source at various wavelengths.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/19/11457880/magic-leap-photon...

I am wondering whether the technology developed can be rendered in such a form factor where its very easy to wear like grasses and use in a day to day basis. The guys at Magic leap seem to be very confident that they have got most of the complex pieces figured out and its already materialized. Even a developer kit from magic leap next year or so should blow every ones mind of, if they have got the projection of images directly to the eye working even with a tethered system to start with.

Also read that they are planning to showcase their product sometimes the end of the year and in CES 2017 (http://vrworld.com/2016/04/25/magic-leap-unveil-technology-c...).

Hololens from Microsoft seems to be doing something closely similar where they are projecting images through a glass like medium. Read somewhere that hololens was rushed to be first before Magic leap delivers its technology though. Some recent videos form wired on Magic Leap shows some impressive demos taken through their technology and should have a large FOV as hololens has a very limited FOV it seems. Magic leap's CEO Abovitz seems to be very confident that their tech is way superior to whatever exists and are not worried about some products like hololens hitting the market earlier than their products release.

Some refs on teardown of hololens stuff

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-hololens-componen...

VR/MR is going to be the next platform like the internet. We need a decentralized platform just like the web. It shouldn't be controlled by a few big companies