Impressive videos posted this week show one of the best demonstration yet for why Magic Leap calls its technology mixed reality.
One 45-second clip posted by JJ Castillo shows several Magic Leap One users connecting for a networked multiplayer game despite each of them being in different physical locations. One of the folks in that group is Steve Lukas, whose startup Across Realities developed an approach to let iPhone, Android, HoloLens, Vive, Rift and other devices all talk to one another, resulting in content and avatar positions represented in the same shared space.
Multiplayer @MagicLeap Test from last night w/ @slukas @andres and @tramirez89 #Dev #MagicLeapOne pic.twitter.com/xukQrFUFZU
— JJ Castillo (@JJCastilloVR) September 6, 2018
This approach results in a kind of blending of realities that’s not really been this easy to do before. The video shows a player in a room visited by simplistic avatars of Magic Leap One players who are physically elsewhere in the world. They were able to play a simple game shooting at targets together while still able to see and interact with people who are in the same physical room as well. Each player sees the room they are actually in combined with the same relative positioning of digital targets and avatars.
A group of creators including @JJCastilloVR @tramirez89 @andres @slukas @Aidan_Wolf @_LucasRizzotto have been posting a series of videos in recent weeks showing how they’ve been using Magic Leap One Creator Edition. While we will still call Magic Leap One an Augmented Reality (AR) headset for clarity, some recent videos have shown how the device can be used in combination with VR headsets to mix or blend realities in potentially powerful new ways.
first experiments with the #MagicLeapOne ? position sync with #Vive #AR #VR #HTCVive #madewithunity #magicleap pic.twitter.com/KhtsJ3ZaAy
— mechpilot (@mechpil0t) September 4, 2018
The things we’re seeing in these videos are mostly hacks built late at night and not an indication this sort of functionality will be supported broadly in current generation hardware. Still, these demos provide a preview of the types of things that will be possible when realities can be mixed more easily. Soon, folks without headsets will be able to see the view from their phones that people wearing AR and VR headsets see. That’s a powerful thing and tests like this one provide a glimpse of that possible future.
Keep checking back with UploadVR because we’ll keep watching closely for new developments with this approach to AR and VR.
