Magic Leap is real and it’s a janky marvel
In my work with the HoloLens, I found that it&#x27;s really best when you&#x27;re augmenting the real world rather than displaying generic graphics. I know that sounds kind of like a tautology &quot;use an augmented reality device to augment the real world?!? What a novel idea!&quot; But if you look closely at the extant apps on HoloLens, you will realize they are mostly VR applications that happen to be rendered in your living room. To wit, the content is not connected to the space in any way other than proximity. You can move the content somewhere else and it&#x27;s the same content.<p>Where I&#x27;ve found AR to really shine is in IoT settings. Take the real world with smart objects and add relevant data on top of them. That&#x27;s the easiest thing to do, as the data is readily available and the UX is much more obvious than other potential use-cases. The real world becomes an anchor for the content and makes it much more believable, even when you lose the augmented graphics in the periphery as you move around.<p>There may be other ways to augment the real world other than IoT. GIS and routing might be one, though the tech isn&#x27;t solid enough yet to put in a fast moving car, on roads with wide varieties of weather conditions. Medical assistance (though not training, again, that&#x27;s VR). Logistics and shipping--previous experience working in a grocery warehouse, I saw that new pickers struggle the most with finding things, and the most successful pickers have memorized the locations of things.<p>ASIDE: I&#x27;m also very interested in augmented <i>audio</i> interfaces, spatialized audio through bone-conducting headphones, for a much better virtual assistant experience. I have two small kids and use Google Home <i>a lot</i> while I&#x27;m getting them ready to go somewhere or making them dinner. Having different reminders and features located in different parts of the house, with proper fall-off of volume, would be a huge improvement on our daily routine.<p>What does this have to do with Magic Leap? I would be very happy if all that Magic Leap had to offer was &quot;slightly better HoloLens&quot;. The HoloLens has been underwhelming for a lot of people, but I think even today at basically 5 years old, it still has a lot of untapped potential. ML is slightly cheaper than HL, which is always nice, and it&#x27;s running an Android-like OS, which might bring more developers along (though personally I very much enjoy UWP on both desktop and MR Windows). We are so close on so many different concepts that incremental improvements can&#x27;t come fast enough.