What Magic Leap One is like 2 years after releaseI’ve dusted off MagicLeap and..
Magic Leap One was first demoed to the public on 1st July 2018, therefore today is its second anniversary. With this in mind I’ve decided to dust off my unit and take a look on how it looks today and what changed in the two years period.Getting the device updated
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Let’s start exploring, shall we?
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In 2015 Magic Leap released a video of a “game they play in the office right now”, only to turn out that was created by Weta Workshop as a concept showcase - to show what Magic Leap was hoping to achieve. Of course, when Magic Leap released, there was no such game. But Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders were actually built by Weta workshop and released later.
From Magic Leap studios there is another app, simply called Underwater, which creates an opening to sea bed in your room and allows fish traffic to come back and forth. It’s very calming and relaxing to just watch fishes swimming around my collection of PC headsets.
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There are several musical apps found - starting with Tonandi, which is an underwater soundscape created by Sigur Ros, that was actually available at launch. Ambeo is a soundscape created by Sennheiser that allows you to create and listen to sounds in a spatial environment. EXA Music allows you to play various virtual instruments and you can also play virtual theremin in it’s own app.
There are quite a variety of experiences that can be found in the Magic Leap store, one recurring theme caught me by surprise and that’s climate change. There is Climate Change paid app supposed to show data about how our climate is changing. Another app is simply called Climate Data and even another one called Currents, which explains currents in the oceans and how they might change along with climate.
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A creative playground in the end
While the media coverage of Magic Leap was mostly negative, after not really delivering the hype they’ve built and having financial difficulties lately, what seems to be completely overlooked is what Magic Leap has become - a creative playground to showcase what consumer AR will be like, when it finally arrives. And if you’re like me and have a Magic Leap unit somewhere collecting dust, I’d say it’s a good idea to charge it and give it a spin.Magic Leap announced that it will only focus on Enterprise market in near future, so it's unlikely this place will grow. But who knows, Magic Leap is still a perfect devkit for Consumer AR, when it arrives. Whenever from Facebook, Apple, Google or maybe some future version of Magic Leap, if they can survive...
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