The Mystery of Magic Leap

This augmented-reality based, super secretive startup has raised over a billion dollars from investors, but still isn’t saying how its technology really works. Florida-based Magic Leap has spent several years working on its technology for blending crisp digital images with the real world but little is known in terms of real life applications except for the fact that technology will eventually be made into a headset.

Recently Wired shared having a peek inside Magic Leap’s technology centre and what they are building. Elucidating about Magic Leap and virtual- and augmented-reality technology, Wired recounted that it was able to wear a Magic Leap headset to check out things like a hovering steampunk robot drone, as well as “human-size robots” that walked through walls and tiny people wrestling on a tabletop.

However there’s still no clarity regarding the headset looks, its pricing or when will it be released? The company, which has thus far raised about $1.4 billion from investors, has previously said it will be in the range of consumer mobile devices.

Also, there are only few details about how Magic Leap’s technology works to let you see images that are so bright, clear, and fully formed they seem nearly indistinguishable from real objects that surround you. The story does include an image of a clear lens captioned as Magic Leap’s “mysterious photonic light field chip”—a light field is the pattern that light creates when bouncing off of something, and Magic Leap has said it’s creating a light-field chip that includes silicon photonics.

In a video accompanying the Wired story, Magic Leap founder and CEO RonyAbovitz adds a bit of information, saying it’s a “three-dimensional wafer-like component that has very small structures in it, and they manage the flow of photons that ultimately create a digital light-field signal.”

The extensive write up at the end, however leaves you with more questions than it actually answers. Wired notes that Magic Leap claims what it’s making is different from other augmented-reality headsets like Microsoft’s HoloLens because of how it shines light in your eye. But, frustratingly, there’s still no real sense of what’s going on under the hood, as Magic Leap “declines to explain it further at this time.”

And seems like we aren’t the only ones wondering or gasping for more. Everyone and every thing now wants to know what the company is and how it’s doing what it’s doing.