Website Ars Technica Epic boss Sweeney explains his enthusiasm for Magic Leap in detail. The company was the first to succeed in bringing AR-glasses with all essential components onto the market.
Sweeney expects AR glasses to replace the smartphone sooner or later. The transition should be smooth. For the next two to three years, he forecasts up to ten million AR eyeglass wearers who would have to be thrilled to break through the one hundred million mark in the next step. “This is happening little by little,” says Sweeney.
The challenge for the second generation of AR glasses is to miniaturize the technology in such a way that special glasses can no longer be distinguished from conventional glasses. The digital projections would have to be of such high quality graphically that they would fit seamlessly and entirely realistically into the environment.
Sweeney sees augmented reality as superior to virtual reality, as AR glasses could offer a VR-like experience. However, the VR glasses are not suitable for AR applications. “Virtual Reality may reach 200 million users worldwide, mainly hardcore gamers and arcade visitors,” Sweeney believes.
At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Magic Leap takes to the next level for a mixed reality future. And it’s being belly-painted by Epic boss Tim Sweeney, an essential decision-maker in the tech and gaming industry.
Epic is the publisher of the Unreal Engine, a development environment frequently used by programmers. Epic’s founder and boss Tim Sweeney has been fruitful for two decades and sometimes finds clear words when something doesn’t suit him. For example, he repeatedly criticized Facebook and Oculus for their strict platform policies. The social network must not take control of virtual reality, Sweeney said.
So when Sweeney praises Magic Leap, it’s PR, of course, because his company has just released a suitable developer interface. On the other hand, it is an accolade for Magic Leap. Sweeney doesn’t usually speak lightly; he’s not a typical Silicon Valley speaker.
Magic Leap “truly created something magical,” the thoroughbred nerd can be quoted in an Epic message. The “combination of breakthroughs in hardware with software innovations” is “a huge leap forward for the spatial computing revolution.” That’s a word.
Confirmed: Magic Leap comes with Eye-Tracking
Both Unreal and Unity reveal the functions that their respective engines support in Magic Leaps Lightwear glasses. In both cases, Eye-Tracking is on the list.
Further functions supported by the engines are head tracking, gesture and hand tracking, the measurement of the environment with subsequent 3D reconstruction, surround sound and a hand controller with six degrees of freedom. Besides Unreal and Unity, Mozilla also registers as a new partner for spatial web applications.
Mozilla MR
@mozillareality
Also, we’re delighted to be able to share that we’re teamed up with @magicleap as an early access dev partner to explore spatial computing on the immersive web! #WebXR.
So, developers can download Magic Leap’s programming interface Lumin from the official Creator website. A forum, instructions and a spectacle simulator are intended to facilitate the introduction to Magic Leap development.