Earlier this week, Recode reported that Google is "set to lead a huge investment in Magic Leap." The article cites "sources" which say that Google could be leading a $500 million funding round for the company, possibly including capital from Andreessen Horowitz which previously invested in Oculus. Magic Leap has been in stealth mode since its inception and no one seems to have a concrete idea about what their "Cinematic Reality" tech is. We went digging to see what we could uncover. At a most basic level, Magic Leap appears to be working on a wearable imaging technology which the company seems to think is groundbreaking. The few bits of information on the company's website contain trademarked phrases like "It's time to bring magic back into the world," and "The human brain is still the best display ever made." Magic Leap's CEO, Rony Abovitz, says "we believe [our technology] will be the most natural and human-friendly wearable computing interface in the world.” In an interview with the South Florida Business Journal in February, Abovitz said "When you see this, you will see that this is computing for the next 30 or 40 years. To go farther and deeper than we’re going, you would be changing what it means to be human." With little to no readily available info to go on, Magic Leap sounds like snake oil. But there are several compelling reasons to chase this wild goose: $50m in Seed and Series A The company has already secured some $50 million in Seed and Series A investments, the latter having closed in February of this year. It doesn't look like the details of the deal were made public, but a press release announcing the deal quotes Richard Taylor, co-founder of Weta Workshop, and announces him as being on Magic Leap's Board of Directors, indicating that he and/or Weta were likely involved in the investment—which is odd, because Weta is a special effects and prop company... based in New Zealand. A Founder with a Track Record of Success [caption id="attachment_16736" align="alignright" width="253"] Rony Abovitz, Founder & CEO of Magic Leap. Photo courtesy South Florida Business Journal[/caption] Magic Leap's founder and CEO, Rony Abovitz is far from a first-time college dropout entrepreneur. According to LinkedIn, Abovitz received his Masters degree in biomedical engineering. He also co-founded Mako Surgical, which was sold to Stryker for $1.65 billion in September, 2013. Abovitz is also well vetted on LinkedIn. Impressive Employee Pedigree Magic Leap also has an impressive repertoire of employees for a company that's been in stealth since its inception. LinkedIn lists 109 people affiliated with the company, including Ann-Marie Harbour, a producer who's worked on projects for Nike, EA, Old Spike, and Skype and is now Executive Producer at Magic Leap; Henk Vlietstra, an experienced businessman who's worked with TNT, DHL, and others, now holding the title of "Executive Officer" at Magic Leap; and Graeme Devine who's worked as VP of R&D at Virgin Games, a Game Designer at iD Software, Lead Game Designer at Ensemble Studios and Microsoft, and has also worked in a gaming capacity at Apple. Ok, so there's reason to pay attention (as long as we ignore this)... Continue Reading on Page 2... What Are They Working On? It turns out that Devine gave a presentation in August at Unite 2014, Unity's developer conference (he says that Magic Leap is using Unity to develop games for the platform). His talk gives almost no useful information (as with the rest of the company's communications) and left the audience puzzled. He does however mention at the beginning that he was as skeptical as anyone before getting a look at Magic Leap's technology. "...I signed the NDA and they showed me a video and I said 'No, that is impossible. That thing does not... that's impossible. I know what is possible and impossible—I've been at Apple for two years, I helped launched the iPad—that is impossible. I will come to Florida and I will call you charlatans'," he told the audience at Unite. "...I walk into their office... I stuck my head into what's called 'The Beast'—if you've ever seen the movie Brainstorm, it's like the original Brainstorm thing—and, holy cow... it was real. Absolutely incredible. I couldn't believe it. I made myself a very bad deal and said "I'll will help you', within 20 seconds—I couldn't believe what was possible." Development Kits in the Next Year? The only tidbit mentioned during the talk about the Magic Leap device itself is that it will be wearable (he wouldn't even specify if it would be head-worn, but that's probably a safe bet). Devine also shared a photo of what appears to be a hologram of a shark floating in the middle of the room, he seems to imply that the photo is undoctored, or perhaps it's a concept of what the company's technology can supposedly do—create high fidelity, full color, hologram-like imagery that works for augmented reality. The company's website is filled with similar imagery, including a short video showing a child revealing a tiny elephant in her hands and gasping with amazement. "There was a guy hanging out in a room, Mick, he's real, the room's real. That shark, hanging out in the middle of the table? That's not meant to be there is it? That's a real shark—it would be great for shark week. It hangs out in the middle of the table and it's not meant to be there, what the hell is that? What's going on?" he teased. At the end of his talk, one member of the audience asked when development kits of the device would be available. "We'll be continuing to roll out in the next year," he said at first, followed by a bit of backtracking, "...but there's no announcement on dates or anything to do with that." Light-fields, Vergence-Accommodation Conflict, and Retina Resolution In his presentation, Devine mentioned a New York Times article from July which talks almost as vaguely about Magic Leap, but at least confirms that the company is working with light-fields. A light-field display could solve the issue of vergence-accommodation conflict that's present in current head mounted displays like the Oculus Rift. Human eyes use two primary means of focusing on objects, vergence and accommodation. Vergence is when both eyes rotate inward to focus at the same point in space; if you cross your eyes, you see double because your eyes don't have the correct vergence on the objects in front of you. The other means of focus is called accommodation, and it happens per-eye, by bending the lens of the eye to focus light from a certain distance onto the retina; if you close one eye and focus on your finger held close to your face, the objects behind it will become out of focus, and vice versa. Vergence and accommodation are thought to be linked, because they work in tandem to give us a focused 3D view of our surroundings. Vergence-accommodation conflict can arise with current VR tech where the vergence is variable, but accommodation is static because the light from objects is always being emitted just inches from your eyes rather than bouncing from actual far away objects. It would seem that Magic Leap's "Cinematic Reality" technology proposes the use of a head mounted display that uses light-field technology to fix this problem. Modern attempts at near-eye light-field displays involve using micro-lens arrays which take the light from many tiny images and focuses it into a single image. From my understanding, forming the image in this way allows the vergence and accommodation cues to be in sync because the light from virtually distant objects arrives at the eye as though it is really coming from a distant object. Nvidia Research demonstrated interesting findings on near-eye light-field displays at SIGGRAPH 2013: According to the New York Times piece, Abovitz said that the company's tech is capable of resolution close to the power of the human eye. That's significant because achieving a pixel-based "retina" resolution (where the eye cannot distinguish individual pixels) would require something like 16,000x16,000 at 100 a 100 degree field of view, according to Michael Abrash, Oculus' Chief Scientist, something we're not likely to see in the near future. Continue Reading on Page 3... Trademarks Trademarks filed by Magic Leap (dug up by Reddit user Fastidiocy) confirm that the company is interested in light-field technology. In February, 2014, the company applied for a Trademark on the term 'DDLS'. "Wearable computer hardware, namely, an optical display system incorporating a dynamic digital lightfield display," reads the application. Among the company's 36 trademark applications are many references to comic books, specifically relating to what sounds like augmented reality functionality. "Comic books enhanced with specialized covers; graphic novels enhanced with specialized covers," reads one of the applications. "Imagine if the imagination could imagine" is probably the zaniest among the trademark applications, along with the company's oft-used phrases, "Cinematic Reality," "A Rocketship for the Mind," and what sounds like an app store for their hardware called "The Magic Shop." Patents The company has also applied for several patents relating to head mounted displays, virtual reality, and augmented reality. It's here that we pick up significant hints about AR applications of the tech, especially with the discussion of a transparent display; "...the projection device being capable of assuming a substantially transparent state when no image is projected," as one of the patent applications reads. Here's a sample of patents which may indicate what approach the company is taking to achieving its vision (dates are when the patent was filed). March 14th, 2014 – Display System and Method One embodiment is directed to a user display device comprising a housing frame mountable on the head of the user, a lens mountable on the housing frame and a projection sub system coupled to the housing frame to determine a location of appearance of a display object in a field of view of the user based at least in part on at least one of a detection of a head movement of the user and a prediction of a head movement of the user, and to project the display object to the user based on the determined location of appearance of the display object. January 15th, 2014 – Ultra-high Resolution Scanning Fiber Display One embodiment is directed to a compact system for scanning electromagnetic imaging radiation, comprising a first waveguide and a second waveguide, each of which is operatively coupled to at least one electromagnetic radiation source and configured such that output from the first and second waveguides is luminance modulated and scanned along one or more axes to form at least a portion of an image. September 11th, 2013 – Ergonomic Head Mounted Display Device and Optical System Optical systems such as image display systems include a freeform optical waveguide prism and a freeform compensation lens spaced therefrom by a gap of air or index cement. The compensation lens corrects for aberrations which the optical waveguide prism will introduce in light or images from an ambient real-world environment. The optical waveguide prism receives actively projected images at an entry location, and emits the projected images at an exit location after internally reflecting the images along an optical path therein. The image display system may include an image source and coupling optics. The approach permits design of an optical viewing device, for example in optical see-through HMDs, achieving an eyeglass-form appearance and a wide see-through field of view (FOV). November 23rd, 2012 – Three Dimensional Virtual and Augmented Reality Display System: A system may comprise a selectively transparent projection device for projecting an image toward an eye of a viewer from a projection device position in space relative to the eye of the viewer, the projection device being capable of assuming a substantially transparent state when no image is projected; an occlusion mask device coupled to the projection device and configured to selectively block light traveling toward the eye from one or more positions opposite of the projection device from the eye of the viewer in an occluding pattern correlated with the image projected by the projection device; and a zone plate diffraction patterning device interposed between the eye of the viewer and the projection device and configured to cause light from the projection device to pass through a diffraction pattern having a selectable geometry as it travels to the eye. October 29th, 2012 – System and Method for Augmented and Virtual Reality One embodiment is directed to a system for enabling two or more users to interact within a virtual world comprising virtual world data, comprising a computer network comprising one or more computing devices, the one or more computing devices comprising memory, processing circuitry, and software stored at least in part in the memory and executable by the processing circuitry to process at least a portion of the virtual world data; wherein at least a first portion of the virtual world data originates from a first user virtual world local to a first user, and wherein the computer network is operable to transmit the first portion to a user device for presentation to a second user, such that the second user may experience the first portion from the location of the second user, such that aspects of the first user virtual world are effectively passed to the second user. October 1st, 2012 – Tactile Glove for Human-computer Interaction One embodiment is directed to a system for human-computer interface, comprising an input device configured to provide two or more dimensions of operational input to a processor based at least in part upon a rubbing contact pattern between two or more digits of the same human hand that is interpreted by the input device. The input device may be configured to provide two orthogonal dimensions of operational input pertinent to a three-dimensional virtual environment presented, at least in part, by the processor. The input device may be configured to detect the rubbing between a specific digit in a pen-like function against one or more other digits. The input device further may be configured to detect the rubbing between the specific digit in a pen-like function and one or more other digits in a receiving panel function. May 7th, 2012 – Massive Simultaneous Remote Digital Presence World Various methods and apparatus are described herein for enabling one or more users to interface with virtual or augmented reality environments. An example system includes a computing network having computer servers interconnected through high bandwidth interfaces to gateways for processing data and/or for enabling communication of data between the servers and one or more local user interface devices. The servers include memory, processing circuitry, and software for designing and/or controlling virtual worlds, as well as for storing and processing user data and data provided by other components of the system. One or more virtual worlds may be presented to a user through a user device for the user to experience and interact. A large number of users may each use a device to simultaneously interface with one or more digital worlds by using the device to observe and interact with each other and with objects produced within the digital worlds. We've reached out to Magic Leap leap for comment, but unsurprisingly they did not provide anything substantive. We'll be continuing to watch Magic Leap closely. Should we believe the hype?