Magic Leap 2 Hands-On: First Look at a New Generation of AR
Tech
Speaker 1: Oh, whoa. That is very interesting.
Speaker 2: A long time ago. And what felt like another universe? I saw an AR headset called magic leap magic leap two. I just got the demo here in New York and it was a whole different experience.
Speaker 2: So magic leap has made a complete pivot and went fully into the business territory. Now [00:00:30] with the new CEO, Peggy Johnson, it is looking at verticals like defense and medicine. And I got to take a look at it in New York, in a regular comp room where I put it on and went through a couple of demos. Now here's the thing you need to know about magic leap and about AR headsets in general. There aren't that many of them now, right now, the, the big ones you wear in your head like helmets are the magic leap, magic leap two and Microsoft HoloLens too. The magic [00:01:00] leap two, the design line is a lot thinner and more compact than what the HoloLens two is, but it also has this separate processor pack that you still have to wear in your hip. That's the same as the original magic leap.
Speaker 2: Plus it also has this handheld controller, which is also similar in concept to what the original magic leap pad, although the magic leap two does have eye track and it does have hand tracking. I didn't get to demo all of that stuff. I really was looking at stuff that was about the display and about [00:01:30] that controller. You know, when I looked at it in the conference room, there were some light coming in and there were a couple of demo stations where I TRO on different headsets with different demos. This is early hardware that I looked at. The actual headset is put us to debut later this year, magic leap is aiming to have this technology at some point filter down to everyday consumer AR glasses. That's something that we've heard from a lot of different companies. The idea of AR is still that it's going to be projected, uh, with these wave guide displays.
Speaker 2: Um, so I see kind of these ghostly [00:02:00] B but vivid 3d effects in, in front of me. The one thing I noticed about magic leap too, is that the field of view is much bigger. And it seems like the biggest field of view that I've ever seen on an AR headset it's wider than what the original magic leap was, but it's also notably taller. It's hard to judge, but I'd say it was kind of feeling like a more like a, like a small paperback book held in front of my face versus, you know, years ago it felt more like a deck of playing cards. And that difference was really clear [00:02:30] when I looked at a tabletop demo showing this kind of, you know, commander field view of a, of a forest fire type situation. I could see these mountains that were displaying on top of the table.
Speaker 2: I could see this fire situation that was hopping up and there were these helicopters and I could point and get little readouts on things, but also on the wall behind me, there was a big monitor type display that transformed a, a bare wall into all these extra readouts. What I notice is that glancing with my eyes, I could [00:03:00] look up at those displays a lot more easily. I could get to the table and see a table. You know, that was, that was a pretty wide, um, table, um, at a distance that felt like only, you know, a couple of feet, whereas opposed I didn't have to back up any further than that, But here's the thing that's really crazy. The next demo I tried showed me something I've never seen before in AR it's called segmented dimming. And basically the display is able [00:03:30] to shutter down like a pair of sunglasses that can block out all the light in the room.
Speaker 1: Oh, wow. That is very interesting.
Speaker 2: This is something that magical leap. It talked about doing years ago, and I've heard about this, you know, the idea that AR glasses could become VR or that type of a thing. So this basically feels like it's diming all the lights in the room so that suddenly I could look at the AR stuff on the table and it felt like someone and all the [00:04:00] lights down, I could still see some details of the lights through it, but it was really like I was wearing very dark sunglasses. What it made the effect feel like was that I was really focusing on the situation, almost like a museum exhibit where suddenly the spotlight was, what I, you know, was looking at. What I was meant to be looking at magically was intending this to also handle situations in bright sunlight, a lot better. And the aim is maybe sort of people like, you know, if you're working in medicine or training and you wanna be able to focus, this really felt like it was narrowing [00:04:30] the cone of focus a lot more towards what I was looking at.
Speaker 2: It was pretty intriguing. The other thing it can do is, is segment or, you know, focus that diming effect areas. So I stood with another demo and looked at this, you know, 3d watch luxury watch that was floating like an AR effect in front of me, but it was being matted out in the back by the segmented dimming, which meant that it was opaque. So, you know, when my videographer was walking behind it, I couldn't see him through [00:05:00] the much. That's really interesting too, because while there have been effects in AR that have allowed occlusion, which means that an AR thing can look like it's walking behind a real piece of furniture. I haven't seen anything where somebody walking behind the AR thing ends up being blocked out. And while I could see the dark edges of the Matt kind of hovering around it, it seems like it would potentially be very useful for making out details without having to see things shine through.
Speaker 2: It kinda removes the [00:05:30] ghost effect and magic leap also showed some spatial audio stuff with the headset, which show the, you know, effects of having multiple people. Talk to me, these, these virtual heads in a room and how good the spa audio was through the headset band of making the voices sound distinct. One thing that was interesting is that the demo used an audio cue to get my attention to a virtual object that was in the room and magically believes that that's an important kind of, you know, way to draw your attention [00:06:00] to something that's not there. It did seem like you'd be able to more easily multitask with that wider field of view display. There are cameras on this controller. So the idea is that it's not gonna lose focus and it doesn't use that type of, um, ally based tracking that it did before.
Speaker 2: It's a, it's a different, you know, uh, type of a tracking system. The aim is that it's going to be more reliable no matter where you aim it at, but it'll also work with hand tracking. I just didn't try that. So I don't know how good that part is. Um, I think maybe the idea might be [00:06:30] to work with other types of peripherals and accessories. Microsoft's HoloLens too. Doesn't have any accessory. It just has hand tracking. But the problem with that might be precision, which you're trading off in exchange for the convenience of just being able to reach around this is just, uh, like a pointer and nothing in the philosophy of it has changed from the original magic leap. The little puck thing that I put on my belt, where my stuck in my pocket was big. It's, it's still this big chunky processor.
Speaker 2: And it [00:07:00] was making like a hissing. You know, it was making a hissing sound when I was using it like a, like a venting sound. Um, there's an AMD processor on this, that magically promises is much more powerful than the previous one and could vault above some of the other processors like the, the claim is that it's much more powerful even than the Qualcomm XR two, the Snapdragon XR two, which is on the Microsoft HoloLens two and is also on the Oculus quest two. That sounds interesting, but it's all a very self-contained system. [00:07:30] It's not designed right now to connect with a phone. Um, there are promises that the apps being developed for magic leap two could be cross compatible, but we just don't know yet. One thing I didn't like about magic leap two, that is the same as before is that it doesn't work with my glasses.
Speaker 2: The ho lens too, was a visor, just flipped down over my glasses and was really nice. I have big glasses and I have terrible vision. Now there are prescription inserts for the magic leap two, and guess what? It turns out that they didn't [00:08:00] have those during my demo that matched my prescription promises are that you could make a insert that would match my minus eight plus prescription, but I had to put in contact lenses. The trade off for that is that the field of view can get larger. The closer the glasses are to your face. So think that's what magically was aiming for with that. But speaking of glasses, that's exactly where magical leap wants to go next to make these things smaller, to eventually become something that you could outfit with [00:08:30] a prescription and, and wear, you know, maybe all the time and maybe down the road, connect with phones.
Speaker 2: The future is uncertain. What I see right now is it's interesting that that segmented dimming technology popped up. I don't think it's the last time we're gonna see something like that. Because as these AR glasses aim to go outdoors, they're gonna have to figure out how to work better in bright sunlight and how to make those effects pop sitting through this demo is clearly a little better. And it's clear. I got some interesting features. I just don't know where the landscape is going. [00:09:00] Who's gonna be interested in adopting it and whether the software will be better, magic leap is looking to get more developers working on this platform. This is just a very early look at what assured to be a continuing and interesting landscape for AR unlike VR air stuff really hasn't been defined yet. I haven't seen a great pair of AR glasses. If you have questions, any thoughts, please leave. Even below I'm Scott Stein. Thanks for watching.
