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XR Talks is a weekly series that features the best presentations and educational videos from the XR universe. It includes embedded video, as well as narrative analysis and top takeaways. Speakers’ opinions are their own.
It’s about ten days in to Magic Leap One’s time in the wild, and the reviews have been mixed. Interestingly, most negative reviews come from tech publications with non-technical and formal product reviewers. Positive responses have come from developers with less “formal” reviews.
We believe this is due to developers’ intimate knowledge of AR’s current deficiencies, which has tempered expectations. Formal reviews from tech writers conversely can’t get past the divergence between two years of hype and what they now perceive as unspectacular — which is also fair.
So for this week’s XR Talks we’ve aggregated selected reviews and product walkthroughs that collectively fall on both sides of the fence. The embedded videos below start with our favorite developer reviews, followed by the formal/pro reviewers. You can decide whom to believe.
As for common threads across most of the reviews, the field of view is a fairly universal gripe. And the lack of launch content was notable for some, given that there’s only so much that can be done on the device before the app library is exhausted. Then again, this is a developer release.
“There’s really not that much to do at the moment,” said developer Lucas Rizzotto (video below). “Given the current state of the store, there’s not enough to keep you occupied for more than an hour as a consumer. This really positions this as a device design for creating.”
Meanwhile, we should remember Magic Leap One isn’t AR’s end-point. It’s an evolutionary step analogous to the Palm Pilot’s place in mobile computing. We should also remember that Magic Leap One’s utility will be a function of what developers do with it, far past its first week in the wild.
“The currently available apps don’t use most of the input modalities of the device,” said Rizzotto. “This means that Magic Leap’s developer community will outmatch Magic Leap creatively by utilizing everything that’s available, and become the real metric of what this device can do.”
Without further buildup, here’s the roundup:
Editor’s Choice: Lucas Rizzotto (Developer)
Avaer Kazmer (Developer)
UploadVR (Product try-on and reactions by Ian Hamilton, feat. our friend Sivan Iram)
CNBC (Official Review)
Wall Street Journal (Official Review)
The Verge (Official Review)
CNET (Official Review)
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Disclosure: ARtillry has no financial stake in the companies mentioned in this post, nor received payment for its production. Disclosure and ethics policy can be seen here.