Magic Leap Launches Avatar Chat With AR Chatroom & Media Sharing, Cartoonish, Low-Detail Avatars

Continuing in its now familiar "Where's the fricking whale we were promised?" theme, Magic Leap just announced Avatar Chat with media and browser sharing features in (what looks to be) a small, augmented reality chatroom setting. If you were hoping to see vivid recreations of your friends as full featured 3D avatars displayed right in front of you, seeming to be sitting on your couch or resting against a wall or whatever, this is not for you: The avatars are extremely low-detailed, disembodied heads.

In fairness, the limited graphics seems to be by design -- probably because this is meant to be a light application for content sharing. Still, the lack of "Wow" factor continues to be a frustration for Magic Leap:

This is not, on its face, much more advanced than Microsoft's Avatar Kinect from 7 years ago. Back then I thought that would be a killer app for the company's motion capture system, but no. So having been burnt once, I tend to think Avatar Chat might also fizzle, and follow Kinect into the dusty closet where broken dreams of consumer transformation are stored.

Comments

[Philip Rosedale]

It seems possible that VR headsets like the Quest or Focus, with pass-through video capabilities and wide FOV at a consumer price point ($400) will provide a better experience than can be delivered with AR. You can't see a person's eyes when they are wearing the Holo-lens or Magic Leap, so why not just wear a VR headset?

[Maxwell Graf]

Philip, while I understand your comment and perhaps even why you would prefer to have VR headsets provide a better experience than AR, please consider why it is possibly a bad idea and also why it saddens me that you take this perspective on the two technologies.

On the first point, VR HMD's are specifically designed to replace your environment with a virtual one, though they may have pass-through camera technology, a wide FOV, etc., while AR technologies are specifically designed to augment your environment. By making a VR HMD provide a reproduction of your environment (via video, w/e), you are adding a performance requirement in addition to any other functionality it needs to perform. It is a redundant function when the environment exists already and you simply need to augment it. Simpler is better. Additionally, the applicability or case-use for AR is much larger than anything VR was ever designed to cover. VR headsets were/are designed for a narrower market, a niche, even if everyone who uses a phone or PC had one. AR, on the other hand, is/has been designed from the beginning with the goal of being a much more encompassing technology and ideally less intrusive than VR.

And for my second point, why I am sad that you are taking up this position is that you are one of the few people in the world that happens to be in a prime position of influence in the spheres where these technologies are being created, funded and developed. Quite honestly, we need YOU to be the guy making the points that I wrote above instead of me; I have nothing to give except my advice on the matter and nobody really cares.

The fact that you are have taken this view is, sadly, one of the reasons that VR has generally not done nearly as well as it could and should have and also why AR has had such a hell of a time taking off over the last few years. I wish you could see it differently, because you are the guy that pushed VR without a headset into being, which is why I am here and you are here and Hamlet's blog is here - our second lives. I wish you could be the champion of VR being what it is and AR being what it can become...you are exactly the type of champion both technologies need. You exist in a world full of business and technology people with lots of money and lots of creative power. You have influence in those techno circles.

True visionaries are few and far between, Philip. You are certainly one of them, and thank you for actually making that vision real. I spent a dozen years in SL and am still there creating in that magical place. There is no denying that what you are working on with HI FI and Sansar is a continuation of your brilliant creativity. That is precisely why you are the guy to push these new technologies in the right direction, even if they do get there eventually without you.

You are, quite honestly, one of the only people that can influence that future in as big a way.

[Clara Seller]

Hamlet, I couldn't agree more with you. Of course, I would never be as kind.

I watched that YouTube video twice because I thought I might have blacked out during the first watch. No, apparently I didn't miss anything. If you took away their speech capabilities, these people would probably less functional than a parakeet. Are we supposed to want to be like that?

[Ryan Schultz]

Thanks for the heads-up, Wagner. The avatars remind me a little bit of the cartoon-like ones in AltspaceVR and Rec Room.

[irihapeti]

one day somebody is going to make a world where there is nothing to do but stand around looking absolutely fabulous and chat. And when the avatars are absolutely fabulous then stuff (a world) will be created around them and for them

until then there will only be world builders, making fabulous worlds with little to no people in them

one day somebody with VC money is going to get that is about people. What we look like and that we converse. Far more so than what our house, forest, pond, looks like

[Fim]

Most of the 'users' who create content do just (crappy) replicate the real world. It does make more sense to augment RL.

You can see a person's eyes when they are wearing the http://blog.leapmotion.com/north-star-open-source/