The tech world has always been a strange and eccentric place to a certain degree, but Magic Leap is one of those rare companies that really takes the cake when it comes to zany antics and mysteriousness. After a TEDxTalk that could only be described as art house chic and a few amazing runs of fundraising, including netting $500 million from Google themselves, all we really understand about Magic Leap for certain is that they’re working on extremely futuristic augmented reality technology. The rest, at this point, is speculation. That won’t be the case anymore in the very near future, however, for ten select developers. Magic Leap is looking to get a group of ten developers on board to check out their proof of concept and begin creating for the platform.
The company’s tech involves what’s being referred to as a “mixed reality lightfield”, a hyper-realistic sort of view that simulates objects and people actually being in the room. The big reveal came at Twilio’s Signal developer conference, during the second day. Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz, speaking via a telepresence device bearing the legend, “This is the droid you’re looking for”, hosted a video showing off some concepts of the company’s tech, such as the above. Extremely realistic, but still distinctly holographic imagery entered users’ realms in the demonstration videos. The reason that Abovitz was there, of course, was that Magic Leap had partnered up with Twilio, giving developers the option to integrate things like phone calls into apps for the new platform.
It was during these videos that Abovitz announced that he wanted to get ten developers on board, with one of those developers being picked through a contest held at that very conference. The mixed reality firm’s plans are still mostly a mystery for now, being revealed in bits and pieces through videos and occasional interviews. Future plans once the developers are on board are also unclear, such as when the developers will get access to the tech, when their apps are expected to be done or how open the APIs involved will be. If the demonstration videos are to be believed, Magic Leap is working on something truly magical.