QPORIT

Control of MAGIC LEAP, the company founded by Rony Abovitz and once-upon-a- time funded by $$Billion of dollars from Google, has now been taken over by Saudi interests, who participated in another $Billion-or-so investment round in the last two years -- according to reporting by The Telegraph, posted on MSN.

Meta is currently the leading vendor of the headsets used for Virtual Reality, and is pouring tens of $Billions of dollars a year into research and technology for both Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality.  Microsoft was the first to market a Mixed Reality Headset, but the technology was primitive, and both sales and applications were limited. Magic Leap, hoping to develop new technology to greatly improve Mixed Reality then joined the competition, but never quite made much of a dent in either the technology or the sales of devices. And Apple has spent several years and many hires (according to "rumors") trying to enter the Mixed Reality industry with a new suite of products, which are "rumored" to be released this year (or delayed, according to "other rumors").

Virtual Reality is the presentation of a completely computer generated world to users, through a headset and other sensory devices (such as haptic -- sense of touch -- feedback and 3D sound).

Mixed Reality (sometimes branded as Augmented Reality) is the presentation of computer generated content overlaid on the real world. Google Glass was an early, very unsuccessful and poorly received, version of Augmented Reality.

It is widely (but not universally) believed among both the creators of technology and the commentators, that Mixed Reality can be used for more commercial applications than Virtual Reality, and in the long run will be a $$$Trillion dollar industry.  It is unclear how long the "long run" will be, but estimates run from 5 to 10 years more before there is substantial adoption.

Labels: Apple, eXtended Reality, HMD's, Hololens, Magic Leap, Meta, Microsoft, Mixed Reality, Rony Abovitz, Saudi Arabia, Virtual Reality

# posted by QPORIT @ 12:00 AM