Magic Leap is shipping its first headset this summer

Magic Leap’s first “spatial computing” mixed reality headset, the Magic Leap One Creator Edition, is shipping this summer. The company announced the news in a live stream today, narrowing down a previous statement that it would ship this year. It’s following up on an announcement from this morning, when AT&T revealed that it would be the exclusive US carrier partner for Magic Leap. However, Magic Leap still hasn’t confirmed an exact date or a price, although the company has previously said it would cost at least as much as a high-end smartphone.
 
Magic Leap has been slowly pulling back the veil on its headset. On its stream today, it revealed a few specifications on the headset, like the fact that it will use an Nvidia Tegra X2 processor. The stream also showed an an actual experience: a tech demo known as Dodge, where users have to dodge or block shots from a rock-throwing golem.
 
The demo showcased how the Magic Leap One recognizes hand gestures, with users pinching and holding to place spawn points for the golem, or holding their hands up to deflect rocks. While it wasn’t shown here, you can also apparently have multiplayer experiences with Magic Leap headsets, sharing an illusion between people wearing headsets in the same space.
 
According to Magic Leap, the headset can pick up specific static gestures or identify points of the hand. As Robert McGregor noted on Twitter, however, the demo we saw didn’t seem to recognize when a user’s hand should logically be blocking parts of the image, lessening the “mixed reality” impact. We also didn’t get to see someone using the headset in real time, and it’s difficult to estimate the field of view from Magic Leap’s recording — an issue that has plagued Microsoft HoloLens videos. But with a shipping date that’s rapidly approaching, we should be seeing more of the headset soon.


 

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