Magic Leap 2 is the best AR headset yet, but will an enterprise focus save the company?

Magic Leap’s glasses had been supposed to guide us into the augmented actuality period, a world past screens the place we may work together with digital objects as in the event that they had been standing proper subsequent to us. Too dangerous they failed spectacularly. By early 2020, the corporate had raised almost $2 billion. However except for a few flashy demos and wild art projects, there wasn’t a lot of a purpose for its audience of builders and creators to purchase a $2,295 headset. Like Google Glass earlier than it, Magic Leap felt like a false begin for AR, an answer to an issue that did not exist.

However the firm is not lifeless but. With a brand new CEO onboard — former Microsoft government Peggy Johnson — it is aiming for one thing way more sensible: AR for the enterprise. Which will seem to be a retread of the HoloLens playbook, which has focused on business customers for years, however Magic Leap has a shot at giving Microsoft some critical competitors with its second-generation AR glasses. 

The $3,299 Magic Leap 2 (ML2), which launched in September, is less complicated to put on, way more highly effective and it presents a dramatically bigger (and taller) AR area of view than any headset we have seen earlier than. It has the distinctive capacity to dim its show, permitting you to dam out gentle and focus extra on digital objects. And it needs to be simpler for builders to work with, due to a brand new Android-based OS. Whereas it is nonetheless unclear if the corporate’s new marketing strategy will repay, ML2 continues to be a big achievement, particularly now that Meta can also be pushing into related AR-like territory with the $1,500 Quest Pro.

In a Twitter chat with Engadget, Magic Leap’s founder and former CEO, Rony Abovitz, stated the corporate was at all times taking a dual-pronged strategy to shoppers and enterprise clients. He additionally famous that the brand new headset was being developed with an enterprise focus earlier than the launch of the Magic Leap 1 Creator Version in 2018. Whereas Abovitz would not disclose particular gross sales numbers, he claims that the damning gross sales report in regards to the firm selling only 6,000 headsets was additionally utterly “made-up.”

“It has been a protracted wrestle,” Magic Leap SVP and head of {hardware} Kevin Curtis stated in an interview with Engadget. “Once we got here out of ML1, we realized an amazing quantity… Not simply technically, but in addition from a market perspective. So that actually was used to set the objectives for ML2.”

A few of these objectives appeared inconceivable on the time. The corporate wished to double the sector of view (FOV) — the quantity of display screen space the place you may truly see AR objects — as effectively lower the gadget’s quantity in half. These strikes would make its sequel headset much more immersive, whereas additionally being extra comfy for prolonged put on. In line with Curtis, bumping up the sector of view from 50 levels to 70 levels with ML1’s projector and eyepiece expertise would have required sporting one thing as giant as an open hand. That is not precisely doable all day.

Magic Leap spent years exploring current types of projection, together with laser-scan primarily based methods, uLED arrays and LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon), however discovered all of them missing. As a substitute, it developed its personal customized structure, which makes use of LCoS along with LED RGB gentle modules and a posh system of concentrators and polarizers to carry photographs to your eyes. That works along with a brand new eyepiece design to attain its lofty 70 diploma area of view.

However what does that really imply? The Magic Leap 1 headset featured a FOV of fifty levels, which made it appear as should you had been viewing AR by way of a automobile’s cramped rear window. (That was similar to HoloLens 2’s 52 levels of viewing.) With Magic Leap 2, the corporate hit a 70 diploma FOV by rising the vertical viewing space, permitting you to see taller objects with out transferring your head up and down. Throughout my transient demo, it felt extra like standing in entrance of an open doorway.

That is extra akin to the way you view issues in actual life, in keeping with Curtis, and it goes a great distance in direction of convincing you the AR objects you are seeing are actual. I’ve tried all kinds of headsets over time (together with the defunct entry from the startup Meta, which existed lengthy earlier than Fb’s identify change), and the Magic Leap 2 is the primary one which’s delivered a real sense of presence. Whether or not I used to be viewing a big piece of medical tools, or an expansive 3D mannequin of downtown San Diego, I needed to attempt arduous to see the sides. It was nearly aggressively immersive.

The brand new projection expertise additionally helped Magic Leap obtain its purpose of decreasing ML2’s quantity by greater than half, resulting in a 20 p.c weight drop (it clocks in at simply 260 grams, barely greater than half a pound). The result’s a pair of AR glasses that really feel extra like, effectively, glasses. Whereas the unique headset appeared like a pair of huge ski goggles, ML2 has flatter lenses and slimmer arms, making you appear much less like a bug-eyed dork and extra like an engineer or surgeon gearing up for a giant venture. (It is no surprise Magic Leap gave health startups a headstart with entry to its new {hardware} and software program.)

All of this tradition improvement may also assist Magic Leap ship higher headsets down the road. The corporate claims its eventual Magic Leap 3 glasses, which don’t have any launch date but, will lose one other 50 p.c in quantity and ship a bigger area of view. The expertise can probably be scaled past 80 levels, permitting you to view a building-sized object unencumbered by any AR boundaries.