Augmented reality is already a thing, for example Pokémon Go. The game combines the real world with the Pokémon (fictional characters). Although it is a augmented reality, you can tell it’s not real because it’s clear that you’re looking at a phone screen. In recent days, companies such as Microsoft and Magic Leap have been hard at work creating their own augmented reality headsets. These headsets will create the illusion that the real and virtual worlds are coexisting at the same time, in the same place.
Microsoft’s augmented reality headset, Hololens, is a $3000 work in progress. Magic Leap’s headset might be a little more cheaper and early testers are saying that it may offer one of the best augmented reality experiences. Magic Leap One Creator Edition is available now (but only to six cities in the United States) for $2,295. There doesn’t seem to be a complete list of cities where the Magic Leap One is available so you may need to check your zip code against the order page to see if it is available in your area. The company states that the regional availability is ‘growing daily’
The Magic Leap One Creator Edition is mainly aimed at developers and artists. According to the company, the device is fully functional, but it needs to be seen to realise its full potential. According to CNET reports, Magic Leap is showing the Magic Leap Two and Three to ‘investors and prototype partners’ but there has been no news to it’s features or price.
The Magic Leap One headset is been powered by a NVIDIA Parker processor. It also has two 64-bit Denver CPU cores, four ARM Cortex-A57 CPU cores and NVIDIA Pascal graphics GPU. The device has 8GB of Random Access Memory (RAM) and 128GB of storage. The battery is rechargeable and can last up to three hours when being used. With the headset comes a handheld controller that has a 7.5 hour battery, a 12 LED RGB ring, a trackpad that’s touch sensitive and haptic feedback.
Although the Magic Leap One is already out, I am pretty exited to see what Microsoft will come out with to compete with the handset.
