Over the past few years, Magic Leap has been quite busy. The company has been hard at work upon something that we knew about from shallow hints and conjecture. What’s even more interesting, is the fact that it managed to conjure up a multi-billion dollar valuation, merely on the promise of a product. Well, Magic Leap is now ready to unveil it’s much awaited offering, which takes the form of an augmented reality headset.
Magic Leap opened pre-orders for it’s upcoming product last month, and it has a developer conference tomorrow, where the goods will finally be pushed into the open. Before that, a few lucky folks were invited into a sort of a closed door premiere, where a bunch of companies that have partnered up with Magic Leap to create content for it’s new headset, had set up shop to tout their wares.
Among the companies that had their booths at the event, were development studios like Weta Workshop and Wingnut AR. Reportedly, these companies are coming up with all new games that will have the player fight it out with robots and spider infestations. Also showcasing their products were medical imaging company Brainlab, and furniture retailer Wayfair.
Coming back to the games, Weta’s Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders have been featured by both the game development company and Magic Leap, for several years now. Judging by a preview video that is now available however, the wait might just have been worth it. Check it out yourself:
As the video above shows, the game play is rather complex, with the robotic invaders interacting with the elements present in the room. Of course, in order for that to happen, the player must first move around the room so as to allow the Magic Leap device to map the environment.
Now the game play itself is not very complex (from what we can see at least) and involves shooting robots that appear out of thin air (at least when you have your headsets on). However, the thing that needs to be considered here, is the potential of these devices. Magic Leap is probably hoping to bank that potential (as it has all these years) to convince users to buy its $2,295 headsets.
While the device does not need to be tethered to a computer, it only works indoor. Apart from the headset, you also get a motion sensing hand controller and a hip pack that powers the whole system. The hip system and the the headset are both pretty lightweight. This combined with the 3-hour battery backup can make the product a favorite for AR geeks — at least for those who can afford the $2K+ price tag. To pitch its headset successfully to price conscious users, Magic Leap will have to ensure that it’s platform has loads of interesting content. And based upon what we saw today, the company has made a good start in that direction.
