“I’ll believe it when I see it” doesn’t really apply in an age where any type of digital entertainment can be conceptualized on video. That’s exactly what should keep you from getting too excited over the insanely cool video that Magic Leap released today. The short teaser shows a first-person shooter style augmented reality game in which a mundane office is transformed into a battleground. And it’s almost certainly fake.
Magic Leap—an augmented reality tech startup which was acquired by Google last year and has yet to show any signs that it will produce a consumer-level product—was recently supposed to attend a TED talk but pulled out at the last minute. The video, which Magic Leap says was one of the things it had planned to show off at the talk, is extremely impressive if you’re willing to take it at face value.
“This is a game we’re playing around the office right now,” the video’s description claims, though the more times you watch it, the more obvious it is that what we’re seeing here is a concept clip. Everything from the HUD to the laser weapons, which are actually just physical props, suggests that this is what Magic Leap is shooting for (no pun intended), though whether something like this is possible via a head-mounted display has yet to be proven.
Magic Leap’s ambitious goals have attracted some high-profile investors and interest from across the tech world, though the company hasn’t shown a whole lot of actual progress towards its goal of creating virtual worlds within our own. With something like this, it’s best to wait until you can see it with your own eyes, and not via a computer screen.
H/T The Verge | Screengrab via Magic Leap/YouTube
