Magic Leap Studios is set to debut a new experience for the Magic Leap AR headset at SIGGRAPH this week. The studio, which says that Undersea will transform your living room into a serene “photorealistic” coral reef, has today released the app on Magic Leap World.
Update (July 29th, 2019): Magic Leap Studios today launched ‘Undersea’ on Magic Leap One.
At SIGGRAPH 2019 in Los Angeles this week, the studio will present their experience with creating the app. We’ll have feet on the ground at the convention, so check back soon for all things AR/VR.
Original Article (July 22nd, 2019): Magic Leap Studios, the company’s internal development studio, will fully reveal Undersea next week at SIGGRAPH. “Undersea is a room-scale, Spatial Computing experience through which users can relax and observe underwater life in a dynamically generated, coral reef biome. Distinct vistas and creatures, presented in a photo-real art style, provide an opportunity to feel a sense of presence and connection between the creatures, the environment, and the user,” the company says about the experience.
Magic Leap Studios is stressing the graphical fidelity of the experience, saying that it’s built on Unreal Engine and Vulkan 3.1 mobile for an experience which “pushes the graphical boundaries of Spatial Computing.”
Magic Leap Studios has also developed experiences like Create, an interactive toyroom-like sandbox for Magic Leap, though it has cartoonish art direction compared to what Undersea is striving for.
In many cases, ‘ambient’ content—that which is ‘always happening around you’, as opposed to game-like experiences that have a distinct starting and stopping point—is a great fit for AR. It’s clear how Undersea could really fit the bill here, along with the ‘magic’ charter of Magic Leap, by turning your ordinary living room into something ever changing, alive, and aware of you. Though the studio hasn’t revealed much about how the experience will work just yet, I think it could be a lot of fun if the undersea creatures acted a bit like virtual pets (once you gain their trust by tempting them with some food, of course).
At the SIGGRAPH debut, the company says they’ll be digging into the development process of Undersea to help third-party developers learn more about building AR experience for Magic Leap. It’s not clear yet when the experience will actually be released publicly.