photo courtesy of Magic Leap
Nestled in Fort Lauderdale, South Florida is Magic Leap Company. You’ve heard of virtual reality consoles and maybe even tried them out it at your local mall. Virtual Reality is technology that uses a GPS system in accordance with the computer system it’s tied into. With bulky, shiny goggles over your eyes you enter a different world. Gone are the days of remote controls. Now, you rotate your body 80 degrees and you can come face to face with a virtual character. Magic Leap, I believe, is at the frontier of this industry. This is why you may have not heard of them. They have gone one step further from VR and they have invented Mixed Reality. A new phenomena that has the biggest names in the industry investing in its production before it’s even released. According to Wired magazine, to date, investors have funneled $1.4 billion into it. Alibaba has invested, Google has invested, and talks of collaborations with Disney are in the works.
CEO of Magic Leap, Rony Abovitz, with photonic lightfield chip
It works by using a clear lens embedded with chip technology, A photonic lightfield chip. The clear lens allows you to see the world as it is around you while it’s secret lightfield technology, adds 3D virtual elements to that environment. At the most basic level, it can be explained as technology mimicking the way your eyes translate light. This allows for the intermeshing of reality AND virtual elements. What does this mean? It means in your living room, R2D2 “walks up to you”. In a professional setting, we may start seeing “3D”holographic computer screens and virtual 3D graphs and maps that allow for full spectrum viewing of geographical regions
As shown in the video below:
Video by MagicLeap
Currently, Magic Leap is in Fort Lauderdale and companies from Silicon Valley, California (Tech hub of the US) are making the pilgrimage to see Magic Leap in action.