Spatial computing is an evolving medium for developers and creators. Our goal as a company has always been to make the creative sandbox and canvas infinitely bigger. Over the past year, we’ve listened to developer feedback and updated our tools and development environments to simplify the way you create for Magic Leap 1. We’ve released tutorials and samples to help onboard new developers and simplify workflows. Now, we’re releasing LuminSDK 0.23, consolidating our developer tools to improve developer productivity, and replacing the package manager with one portal called The Lab. These developer updates come alongside an update to LuminOS 0.98, and you can read more about those features here.

Today, we announced Magic Leap 1, an updated version of Magic Leap One Creator Edition, and launched our first suite of software and services specifically designed for our enterprise partners. Many of our developer partners have showcased their enterprise-focused experiences that seek to solve age-old business problems and challenge the status quo. This pioneering ethos is behind many of our latest developer updates.

Customers who purchased our Professional Developer package will receive early access to the LuminOS 0.98 update today. The release is also available for direct download on our Developer Portal. Over-the-air (OTA) updates for LuminOS 0.98 start rolling out Thursday, December 12th and will continue through the remainder of the week. You can download the newest version of the SDK via The Lab here. Both LuminOS 0.98 and LuminSDK 0.23 will be available on Magic Leap One Creator Edition and Magic Leap 1.

Earlier this year, we expanded internationally to the UK, Germany, and France. Now, we’re announcing internationalization and localization for Spain and Italy. Alongside this update, we’ve made changes to our terms. Please make sure you accept them to continue accessing the developer mode on your device and sections of the developer portal. And if you haven’t yet, we recommend you take the time to update your home country on your Magic Leap ID. This ensures you’ll see the most relevant apps available in your region. You can find instructions on how to do that here.

The Lab

Many of you contributed to our developer survey earlier this year. We took that information, combined with feedback from partners and online, and have continued to iterate on making our platform a best-in-class development environment.

With the release of The Lab, we’ve centralized all our developer tools into a single toolset to make them easier to access. The Lab replaces Magic Leap Package Manager and consolidates Zero Iteration (formerly ML Remote), Virtual Room Generator, Device Stream, and a new tool called Device Bridge, which you can use to manage apps, files and log on to your Magic Leap devices. Make sure you update to The Lab from Package Manager. It’s your integrated development pipeline and it has everything you need to create spatial experiences.

Download The Lab here.

In addition to The Lab, we have a robust set of new features for LuminSDK 0.23. Some highlights include:

-Friend Picker APIs for inviting friends to multi-user sessions.

PCF Get Quality APIs to allow multi-user apps to assess the overall quality of the user’s environment for virtual shared experiences.

Added API for detection of a controller in the user’s hand.

ML Remote is known as Zero Iteration in The Lab. In simulator mode, it can now load multiple rooms into the same session.

Added ML Movement API for spatial movement of objects, making them feel they have mass and inertia.

Improved stability and performance when working with ZI workflow.

Unity Updates - support for Unity 2019.2

Unreal Updates - support for Unreal 4.23.0

Bug Fixes (in response to community feedback):

MLInputModule and MLInputRaycaster issues have been addressed.

Worldscale examples issues have been addressed.

In addition to these features, we’ve announced a strategic alliance with PTC’s Vuforia Engine. This collaboration will give enterprise and industrial developers the opportunity to leverage the computer vision of Vuforia Engine and pair it with Magic leap 1’s powerful hardware.

You can see the full version of the release notes here or in The Lab.

Magic Leap for Web Developers and Digital Artists

We’re always looking to reach out to more developers with diverse backgrounds and to build bridges to our technology. We often get asked how someone unfamiliar with Unity or Unreal can start creating on Magic Leap 1. For web developers, technical artists, and mobile developers, the answer is the Lumin web platform.

While you may have seen some of the work we did last year to support web developers interested in creating spatial web experiences, we’ve just released some new features that make creating spatial web content easier and more compelling. You can now create Progressive Web Apps that can be easily saved by a user to their home screen. Helio, our spatial web browser, now supports page rotation, and you can also set 3D CSS transforms on any div or element, so you can detach surfaces and place them within the prism. We’ve also open sourced Prismatic 2.0, and we’re thrilled to see how it evolves as more Javascript developers start to experiment with what the spatial web will look like. Finally, we’re now fully compliant with the WebXR spec, with support for the VR core API as ratified by W3C, and there’s beta support for Magicleap’s PCF API.

Javascript developers can now take advantage of MagicScript, which we continue to evolve to provide both an abstraction layer on top of Lumin Runtime and a cross platform language that can be used to develop Magicverse experiences. Recently we open sourced MagicScript Components for iOS and Android. This framework allows development of cross platform applications for spatial computing and Magicverse to have them written once to run on iOS, Android, LuminOS and Magic Leap Devices.

We also just released two Glitch projects as part of our starter kit: “Hello Prismatic” and “Hello WebXR.” These starter projects give you just what you need to get started with two of Helio’s most powerful and easy to use solutions.

Check out Helio's Web Platform API documentaiton here.

The Magicverse SDK

The ultimate goal of our Magicverse platform is to build a system of systems that brings the physical and digital worlds together as one. This infrastructure empowers developers to create huge, multi-user online experiences for consumers and businesses, where you can create and publish digital content and experiences to physical spaces. Users can be physically present, digitally co-present, or both, and they can discover and engage via a Magic Leap device or their XR-compatible devices. You’ll start seeing Magicverse experiences and developer tools in early 2020 with the public release of our Magicverse SDK, planned for our first update at the end of Q1.

The initial features of that SDK will allow developers to create persistent content and multi-user XR experiences on Magic Leap devices, iOS and Android; utilizing Swift, Unity, or MagicScript. You’ll have sparse map merge and persistent coordinate frame (PCF) sync across Magic Leap and iOS devices, WiFi cloud based localization, tracking against pre-built maps, and new MagicScript components for iOS and Android. Areas can also be pre-mapped and curated using a Magic Leap device to guarantee the quality within a space. This feature will help you create more robust location-based experiences when you’re developing offsite or you don’t have constant access to the locations you’re creating experiences for.

Over the last few months, engineers have been wandering around our offices with all sorts of mobile devices, showing their colleagues a Magicverse deployment at our headquarters. We recently started using this to give our visitors a digital tour of our building through Magic Leap and mobile devices. Today, many of these features are being tested by our partners, and while this is only the start of what the Magicverse will become, we’re excited to see what you do with these tools next year.

What's Next

Over the past year, our company has transitioned from innovating in silos to listening to user and developer feedback and incorporating it into our roadmap. Alongside the public release of the Magicverse SDK, we also have another OS and SDK update planned for the end of Q1 2020 that will include features which simplify the creation of co-presence and sharing apps. Our community has been asking for Bluetooth BLE compatibility, so with our next update, you’ll be able to write apps that sync to external devices. OAuth will be available in Unity so you can create your own login flows. We also have a few other tricks up our sleeves.

As developers, our ideas have been constrained by screens. But with Magic Leap 1, the whole world can be our creative canvas. Whether you’re developing the next AAA game or an application to revolutionize the way we do business, our goal as a software team is to create the platforms and services that make your creations feasible, scalable, and joyful.

Last but not least, I would like to thank our community of users and developers for all their feedback - please keep it coming.

Yannick Pellet, SVP of Software