Magic Leap is a mystery. Parsing through their pre-factual, post-cool ad campaign leaves you with the impression that the brains at the company have created the next be-all and end-all of augmented reality devices thanks to an ingenious light field display technology; and as a curious onlooker, getting a peek of the $4.5 billion startup‘s tech will cost you exactly one non-disclosure agreement. Ok. Probably several. Now founder and CEO Rony Abovitz offers a bit more in his recent blog post entitled Creativity Matters, where he speaks about some of the changes coming to the company in 2017, and for what it’s worth, says it’ll be “a big year for Magic Leap.”

In Abovitz’s last update in late December, he reported the successful conclusion of the company’s first PEQ (Product Equivalent) built to their target form-factor, and says a bigger PEQ run will follow in 2017, which is said to “exercise [Magic Leap’s] supply chain and manufacturing/quality operations.”

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Current units built by Magic Leap “are for engineering and manufacturing verification/validation testing, early reliability/quality testing, production line speed, and a bunch of other important parameters,” he says.

If you’re partial to artistic flair, Abovitz is happy to oblige in his latest blog post. I’ve condensed it down some here:

“Our first product is coming,” writes Abovitz. “My office in our new building is right next to a small model home we built, right smack in the middle of everything. A home where we can test how Magic Leap will fit into your life each day.”

Rony Abovitz, CEO of Magic Leap | Photo courtesy Magic Leap
Rony Abovitz, CEO of Magic Leap | Photo courtesy Magic Leap

“2017 will be a big year for Magic Leap. Enjoy the ride with us – it will be fun. Magic Leap is for the dreamer, the artist, and the wide-eyed kid within us all. But what we are building is no longer just a dream. It is very real, and we are way past the “is it possible stage”. We are not about building cool prototypes. We are scaling up so we can manufacture hundreds of thousands of systems, and then millions. That requires a level of perfection, testing, and attention to detail by determined professionals. We have made something that is small, mobile, powerful, and we think pretty cool.”

“Our photonics may be powered by a novel array of unique nano-structures designed by our otherworldly optics team. Our sensors and computing pack a lot of punch in a small package. But the experience you should have must feel as if it were powered by unicorns and rainbows (and we have had many of those here).”

Magic Leap has only shown video capture of their technology, the most recent of which announcing a partnership with Lucas Films’ ILMxLab to create an AR experience.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Ian Shook

    Sounds good, Rony.

  • 1droidfan

    Somehow I doubt the final headset will deliver the visuals the football helmet attached to a mainframe did.

  • GrangerFX

    To the Japanese that statement combined with that image, is hilarious.

  • guest101

    Now that their retina projector tech is not going to happen, does whatever they are releasing matter at this point?

  • Foreign Devil

    “Magic” leap as in illusion and trickery. . is all we have seen so far with this product.

  • LarZen

    If they dont have anything to show at CES this year I think it’s safe to call it.

    • Malkmus

      The call was made several months ago by Magic Leap themselves. They told reporters they wouldn’t be showing anything at CES.

      http://www.businessinsider.com/magic-leap-could-launch-product-in-2017-2016-10

    • kalqlate

      I suspect their first demo will be the promised presentation The Age of Starlight originally scheduled in 2015 with physicist Brian Cox at Manchester International Festival, perhaps rescheduled in June and/or July of this year.

  • Get Schwifty!

    I’m convinced they will have some kind of product to market, exactly what remains to be seen, but something will emerge. The problem with constantly teasing the market and toying with it is eventually the market either gets tired of waiting and calls you a fraud as seems to be in vogue now, or expectations get so ridiculously high that people are disappointed no matter how good the product is. Nothing to show at CES is to me a concern, the press from it would be profound, OTOH, if they really have something good going it won’t matter, the press will be all over it without the distraction of other CES announcements fighting for air time.

  • OgreTactics

    “But the experience you should have must feel as if it were powered by unicorns and rainbows (and we have had many of those here).”

    Oh don’t worry, even the PR seems like we’re talking about unicorns and rainbows. I knew it was a lie as soon as heard about “retina projector tech”. Science is not magic, this does not exist yet. Then when I saw all the investors and article on Wired or Bloomberg literally showing nothing I knew this was a money laundering scheme like Bloombox for those who remember it…

    But I’m sure will see some product somehow, to pretend there was one in the beginning even that’ll have nothing to do with a revolutionary or even useful gadget…

  • Barret
  • jFaulkner

    Don’t tell me your funny, make me laugh.

    • Sam Illingworth

      How would I tell you my funny?

  • Dingus

    And no man’s sky is going to change the face of gaming

    • Get Schwifty!

      LOL – this indeed made me laugh…

  • Change

    “great determination is inauspicious”

  • CURTROCK

    So, basically I’m expecting something that is better than Hololens & Meta, in a smaller form factor. Does that about sum it up? Yawn.

  • Surykaty

    Oh I wish they would lose the fake “artistic” lingo and hype.. it sounds so stupid to me and so pretentious I want to puke.. this totally casts a bad light on the probably very amazing engineering work that is being done on the product.

  • Daniel Lopes

    Informative series on Magic Leap
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBa-668ByAk&t=435s

  • I’ll give them to the end of 2017. But there’s a real failure in their communication strategy. Demo, demo, demo, even if it only partly works. Intel, Microsoft, etc. have all risks demos that could have (and some did) go south in front of a live audience. We’re a pretty forgiving group – and even admire courage when things don’t work. But you can’t talk and not demo.

    Only two options here – demo what you got or take the Steve Jobs approach and go maniacal on secrecy. End of 2017 for me. Tick. Tock.

  • Fartimus

    There’s an extreme disconnect between what the CEO keeps saying and the information coming out of the people that actually worked at ML and their dev. partners. Not sure if he’s in his own augmented reality.

  • Follow @offensivedialog

    This is wonderful, but after three years of vaporware, magic leap and hololens are going to have to make the shit public. I need to be able to walk into a T-Mobile or Verizon store and walk out with mixed reality goggles and a SIM card. These videos are marketing schemes are old and washed up.

  • Hogo

    im not ready to abandon them yet.