Rumors suggest Magic Leap headset is sub-par

Remember Magic Leap? This startup showed off impressive cinematic reality technology a year or two ago and received lots of venture capital to make its technology a reality. The company has raked in a whopping $1.3 billion but besides a couple of impressive clips on YouTube it has been very secretive about what it's developing.

Late last week tech site The Information published an article that smashed the image of the top-secret startup. The site alleged that Magic Leap executives overstated the quality of their upcoming augmented reality headset and that current prototypes are inferior to currently available development kits like the Microsoft HoloLens. The Information claims Magic Leap prototypes are much larger than promised and exposed that promotion videos published by Magic Leap relied heavily on film studio special effects.

Another point of contention in the story is about a promotional video that Magic Leap posted on YouTube in March 2015 that showed a fantastical world of explosions and invading humanoid machines. The quality of the imagery and apparent mastering of augmented reality technology served to generate intense interest in the company and its still-unfinished product.

In fact, The Information said that the clip was created by film studio special effects rather than being the result of internally developed optical breakthroughs. That undermines the company’s note posted with the video that said “This is a game we’re playing around the office right now.”

VentureBeat has some more background information as well as copies of the Twitter rebuttal from Rony Abovitz, Magic Leap’s CEO.