With top tier press clamouring for information on the secretive augmented reality project known as Magic Leap, Kent Bye – the force behind the excellent ‘Voices of VR‘ podcast – serendipitously happens upon a full interview with it’s Technical Director Paul Reynolds.
As it turns out, Reynolds was following Kent on twitter, so after a speculative direct message or two, the interview was lined up and Kent understandably pleased with his scoop.
Listen to the Interview Here
The interview is wide-ranging and takes in topics from the mundane (game engine support for Magic Leap) to the supremely enticing. A few snippets from Kent’s transcript:
Magic Leap has the capability to completely overtake your perceptual system by putting you into a virtual world, but that they hit an uncanny valley effect where it’s more magical & believable for their technology to put virtual content into the real world
Rather than creating a sense of presence into another world, how Magic Leap is more concerned about creating a magic moment where people casually accept virtual content without thinking about the technology
And a choice quotation from the interview:
Our presence is more like, this thing, you have a sense of it’s mass, scale, it’s location relative to you. That’s presence in our –and it’s really strong especially in the near-range, the closer to you. We’re typically, especially in video game type of stuff, the closer things get to you, they start to break down.
One of our strengths is that it’s a really powerful moment when you see virtual content really close, and it feels even more that it’s there instead of getting more blurry or lower resolution.
So yeah, we do talk about presence, but in a totally different way. So we have that ability, you know, immersing even further is something we do.
Catch the full interview over at Voice of VR here.