magic leap 2

Magic Leap 2 Update Claims Vastly Improved Hand-tracking, Biometric ID, & More

magic leap 2, magic leap 2 1.4.0, magic leap 2 update, News, XR Industry News / Rejus Almole / November 11, 2023

A major update to Magic Leap 2 claims to improve many of the device’s core capabilities.

With all that’s happened in the XR space recently, it’s hard to believe that Magic Leap 2 has hardly been out for more than a year. The company continues to support and improve the device, including a major update released today (v1.4.0) which claims to improve a wide range of core capabilities.

Hand-tracking & Positional-tracking Improvements

The most notable, perhaps is the claimed “six times” improvement in hand-tracking accuracy, alongside a 10% reduction in latency. Although the device ships with a single controller, hand-tracking is the most accessible way to interact with the device, making this a very meaningful improvement.

Additionally, the company says the headset’s positional tracking has been improved, allowing virtual content to more convincingly stay locked to the real world. Specifically the company claims a “63% improvement on average (e.g. if the error was 2 cm when walking 2 meters, it is now 0.74 cm).”

This enhancement is thanks to “improvements in [real-time] calibration,” and the company says this could have knock-on improvements for other systems that rely on the headset’s camera tracking.

Biometric Unlocking and Authentication

The Magic Leap 2 v1.4.0 update also rolls out improvements for what the company calls “Iris ID”—an authentication method based on eye-recognition. The update allows users to unlock their headset with their uniquely recognized eye-scan, and developers can use the same system to authenticate and log-in to third-party applications.

Biometric ID is just one of many potential features that make eye-tracking a game-changer for XR devices.

Improved Casting and Capturing

Today’s update improves the headset’s ability to cast and capture what’s happening in the headset for sharing with others. Details on the exact changes are slim at the moment, with the company only noting:

Improves video stream sharing from the Magic Leap Hub

Improves the user experience for Capture

Removes artifacts in the third eye, improves opacity, and applies settings, across all third eye streams

Adds additional aspect ratio to support standard miracast resolutions

But it’s clear the company recognizes the importance of sharing the view of what’s happening in the headset. “Effective, high-quality capture capabilities are essential for educating and winning over new audiences, creating compelling content, and maximizing enterprise value,” the company says.

Developer Improvements

The update also adds a range of improvements to make it easier for developers to work with the headset. Specifically Magic Leap says it’s focused on improving debugging capabilities.

We’re introducing debugging and profiling tools that provide developers with more actionable information to test and optimize their applications and setups.

These tools support faster development of more reliable, valuable, and sophisticated AR solutions for enterprise. They will enable developers and partners to self-service their app debugging on user-build secure devices. Developers will be able to run profiling tools, decipher logs, and determine if a problem exists within the application or the OS.

Additionally, the update opens up developer access to the headset’s magnetometer—a digital compass which tells the direction the headset is facing—allowing developers and users to calibrate the heading for their specific situation. This is important for world-relative applications like AR navigation.

– – — – –

You can find the full update details in the Magic Leap 2 v1.4.0 release notes here.

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Magic Leap 2 Now Supports OpenXR, Strengthening Industry Against Potential Apple Upheaval

Apple, apple xr, magic leap, magic leap 2, ml2, News, OpenXR / Rejus Almole / April 25, 2023

Though delayed from its commitment last year, Magic Leap today announced that ML2 now fully supports OpenXR. The timing might have something to do with Apple’s looming entrance into the XR space.

Magic Leap had planned to deliver OpenXR support for its ML2 headset last year, but it was seemingly delayed until now. Today the company announced that Magic Leap 2 is conformant with OpenXR.

OpenXR is an open standard that aims to standardize the development of VR and AR applications, making hardware and software more interoperable. The standard has been in development since 2017 and is backed by virtually every major hardware, platform, and engine company in the XR industry.

“The adoption of OpenXR as a common AR ecosystem standard ensures the continual growth and maturation of AR,” Magic Leap said in its announcement. “Magic Leap will continue to advance this vision as Vice Chair of the OpenXR Working Group. In this role, Magic Leap provides technical expertise and collaborates with other members to address the needs of developers and end-users, the scope of the standard, and best practices for implementation.”

Its true that Magic Leap has been part of the OpenXR Working Group—a consortium responsible for developing the standard—for a long time, but we can’t help but feel like Apple’s heavily rumored entrance into the XR space lit a bit of a fire under the feet of the company to get the work across the finish line.

In doing so, Magic Leap has strengthened itself—and the existing XR industry—against what could be a standards upheaval by Apple.

Apple is well known for ignoring certain widely adopted computing standards and choosing to use their own proprietary technologies, in some cases causing a technical divide between platforms. You very well may have experienced this yourself, have you ever found yourself in a conversation about ‘blue bubbles and green bubbles’ when it comes to texting.

With an industry as young as XR—and with Apple being so secretive about its R&D in the space—there’s a good chance the company will have its own way of doing things, especially when it comes to how developers and their applications are allowed to interact with the headset.

If Apple doesn’t want to support OpenXR, this is likely the biggest risk for the industry; if developers have to change their development processes for Apple’s headset, that would create a divide between Apple and the rest of the industry, making applications less portable between platforms.

And while OpenXR-supporting incumbents have the upper hand for the time being (because they have all the existing XR developers and content on their side), one would be foolish to forget the army of experienced iOS developers that are used to doing things the ‘Apple way’. If those developers start their XR journey with Apple’s tools, it will be less likely that their applications will come to OpenXR headsets.

On the other hand, it’s possible that Apple will embrace OpenXR because it sees the value that has already come from years of ironing out the standard—and the content that already supports it. Apple could even be secretly part of the OpenXR Working Group, as companies aren’t forced to make their involvement known.

In the end it’s very likely that Apple will have its own way of doing things in XR, but whether that manifests more in the content running on the headset or down at the technical level, remains to be seen.

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Magic Leap 2 Gains Certification so Doctors Can Use AR During Surgery

AR News, ar surgery, magic leap, magic leap 2, Medical Applications, News, vr surgery / Rejus Almole / January 6, 2023

Magic Leap, the storied unicorn developing enterprise AR headsets, announced at CES 2023 that its flagship device Magic Leap 2 earned a certification that clears it for use in the operating room.

The company first intimated it had pursued IEC 60601-1 certification at SPIE’s XR conference in January 2022, however the news largely went unreported since the information was presented in a single slide at the conference.

At AMD’s CES 2023 keynote, Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson confirmed Magic Leap 2 has indeed obtained IEC 60601-1 certification for its flagship AR headset.

As explained by TÜV Rheinland, the IEC 60601-1 certification specifies a device that is “intended to diagnose, treat, or monitor a patient under medical supervision and, which makes physical or electrical contact with the patient and/or transfers energy to or from the patient and/or detects such an energy transfer to or from the patient.”

Magic Leap says this certification allows Magic Leap 2 to be used both in an operating room as well as in other clinical settings, allowing medical professionals such as surgeons to focus on the patient and not have to refer to 2D screens.

By and large, this gives software developers a non-inconsequential inroad into gaining FDA certification for apps that could be used during surgery, and not just for pre-surgical training.

One such Magic Leap partner, SentiAR, is currently under review by the FDA for its app which connects physicians to live clinical data and images, allowing them to do operations such as navigating a catheter through blood vessels of the heart using a 3D map of a patient’s heart and the location of the catheter in real time.

Founded in 2010, the Plantation, Florida-based company initially exited the gate with consumer ambitions for its first AR headset, Magic Leap 1 (previously styled ‘One’). After awkwardly straddling the segment with its $2,300 AR headset, the company made a decisive pivot in mid-2020 when co-founder Rony Abovitz announced he would be stepping down as CEO, positioning the company to reprioritize its future devices away from consumers. It has since released Magic Leap 2, which is largely targeted at enterprise.

The well-funded company, which has amassed $4 billion in funds to date, has recently taken on $450 million from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, giving the country a majority share in the US-based augmented reality company.

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Saudi Arabia Gains Majority Stake in Magic Leap in $450M Deal

AR Investment, Investment, magic leap, magic leap 2, magic leap investment, ml, ml2, News / Rejus Almole / January 4, 2023

Saudi Arabia has taken majority share of the US-based augmented reality company Magic Leap, The Telegraph reports, widening the stake via its state-owned sovereign wealth fund with a deal amounting to $450 million.

Citing delayed accounts obtained from its European division, the company is said to have raised $150 million in preferred convertible stock and $300 million in debt from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) over the course of 2022. The investment puts the country’s ownership of Magic Leap over 50 percent, giving it overall majority control.

The Telegraph reports that, as of November 2022, Saudi Arabia’s PIF is “entitled to appoint four of the eight directors of the board of directors of Magic Leap.”

The wealth fund, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, invests in projects considered to be strategically significant to diversifying its national economy.

Through PIF, Saudi Arabia owns minority stakes in Uber, Capcom, Nexon, Live Nation, Boeing, Meta, Alphabet, Citigroup, Disney, and Bank of America to name a few. It also owns Premier League football team Newcastle United and LIV Golf, a challenger to the PGA Tour.

Founded in 2010 by Rony Abovitz, the Plantation, Florida-based company kicked off its consumer ambitions with a long and ambitious tease of its first AR headset, Magic Leap 1 (previously styled ‘One’), starting its marketing campaign as it emerged from stealth in 2014.

Released nearly four years later, the developer-focused ‘Creator Edition’ headset was initially priced at an eye-watering $2,300, which not only deflated some of the potent hype behind the unicorn startup, but also cemented a long and bumpy road ahead if Magic Leap wanted to eventually offer its tech at a consumer price point.

Having awkwardly straddled the prosumer segment with limited success, in mid-2020 Abovitz announced he would be stepping down as CEO, signaling a pivot that would refocus the company’s efforts on servicing enterprise instead of consumers. Shortly afterward, Microsoft’s Executive VP of Business Development Peggy Johnson took the reins as CEO of Magic Leap.

The company has since released its follow-up headset, Magic Leap 2, to enterprise partners and through third-party vendors, putting the device in direct competition with Microsoft’s HoloLens 2.

To date, Magic Leap has raised $4 billion, with minority investors including Google, Alibaba, Qualcomm, AT&T, and Axel Springer.

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