Magic Leap demo promises to transform offices into augmented-reality games

Folders, coffee, ray-gun? Magic Leap's sneak peek at its augmented-reality service has virtual-reality proponents buzzing.

|
YouTube/Magic Leap
Magic Leap debuted a clip that shows of its vision of an augmented reality future.

What if you could transform your office into a steampunk robot shoot-‘em-up video game?

That’s what mysterious, though buzzworthy, augmented-reality company Magic Leap is proposing via a surprise YouTube clip released Friday. The clip is an intriguing indication of what augmented-reality gaming could soon look like, in what is already a watershed year for the nascent technology.

The clip opens with a hand picking up Gmail and YouTube apps as if they’re staplers on a desk, and swiping, scrolling, and pinching through e-mails and videos. Those are discarded with the swipe of a hand. Up pops a spinning wheel of entertainment options, and the hand points to a video game called “Dr. Grordbort presents: Victory.” From there, the player selects a ray gun and robots pop out of the floorboards, jump out from behind desks, and even blast through the wall.

"This is a game we’re playing around the office right now (no robots were harmed in the making of this video)," says the caption below the video.

The tech world first noticed Magic Leap about a year ago, when the small, Hollywood, Fla.-based start-up garnered big money from a huge tech name. After finishing a $50-million round of funding last February, in October, Google sunk $542 million in the company.

The company doesn’t have a product on the market just yet, but keeps the tech world intrigued with its whimsical creations and ambiguous identity. Employees of the company have described their work as creating “cinematic reality.” The website describes the company as “an idea.”

“An idea that computing should be shaped and forged to work for us: our life, our physiology, our connected relationships. That exploring human creativity is as great an adventure as exploring space,” reads the “about us” section of its website. “It's an idea based in the belief that people should not have to choose between technology or safety, technology or privacy, the virtual world or the real world.”

Sounds like a manifesto of virtual-reality enthusiasts.

So far, however, it isn’t even clear what Magic Leap’s actual product is. All we know about the company is that it got a lot of funding, can make an elephant fly out of your hand, and now turn your office into an indie video game. The company was supposed to present at the TED conference, but had to cancel for undisclosed reasons (this video was supposed to be debuted during its presentation).

But mystery may not be its case for long. In the “Wizards Wanted” section of its website, Magic Leap has a lengthy list of positions open, many of which seem to advertise a need for combining computer learning and biology skills. If they can get the talent that can connect the two, this hyper-reality could be actual reality in the near future.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Magic Leap demo promises to transform offices into augmented-reality games
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2015/0320/Magic-Leap-demo-promises-to-transform-offices-into-augmented-reality-games
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe