Instead of using the Leap's hand controller for aligning the planets, however, I used the controls on the spaceship, which are all touch-sensitive. Tapping a round circle would select a planet, for example, and sliding my finger on a circular dial would rotate it in orbit. Using these tactile controls really helped bring the experience to life for me, more so than other virtual or augmented reality experiences I've had. Even though Meow Wolf's demonstration here is very unique to the art exhibit, it does show how powerful tactile controls can be to immersion, especially in an augmented reality environment where you're still in the real world.

Art continues to be a strong theme in a few other demos I tried. One was virtual theater care of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where I saw an actor enact Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" while a digitized tree changed colors and form behind him. Another was an interaction with a surprisingly lifelike CGI character called Mica, who stared, smiled and squinted at me, making me feel like I was being examined.

She gestured me to hang a real picture frame, which I did. She then walked over to it, painted Rene Magritte's Treachery of Images on it and proceeded to pluck the pipe out of the picture into her hands. Both were examples of how humans can be digitized in augmented reality, and I can imagine how this could be used in museums or educational tours to make those experiences more immersive and lifelike.

Some demos I had are likely experiences you've heard of before. Funomena's Luna: Moondust Garden is a version of the company's popular VR game but made in an augmented reality space, where I planted seeds on the floor and watered them so they could grow. I used Wayfair Spaces to plan out furniture placement and home decor, dragging and dropping different pieces in a way that feels a lot more realistic than just using an AR app on a phone.

There were other AR experiences that I didn't even get to try. Weta Workshop introduced Dr. Grordbort's Invaders for the Magic Leap, where you can fight off steampunk bad guys coming out from behind your living room walls. Air New Zealand unveiled a board game of sorts called Fact or Fantasy New Zealand, where players can use a physical 3D map in conjunction with the Magic Leap glasses to learn more about the country thanks to digital whales and a friendly virtual Hobbit.

Of course, in order to even try all of this out, you need a pair of expensive $2,295 glasses, or in the case of the Meow Wolf spaceship, you'll have to travel and pay the price of admission to the art exhibit. It remains to be seen if augmented reality, whether it be by Magic Leap or someone else, will ever be affordable and accessible enough for the masses. Until then, let the experiments continue.