Next comes Evans' "display problem." Magic Leap has long attributed its titular magic to a “dynamic digital light field signal.” Generally speaking, that means it captures all the data (location and direction) of light rays in a room, and then uses that to dictate how virtual objects appear and behave in a given space. That has huge repercussions for being able to render live-action VR content in navigable 3-D, the way Lytro does. But perhaps more importantly, it allows a headset to present virtual objects as though they're close to the viewer, reducing eyestrain.

However, Magic Leap has also refused to elaborate beyond that phrase to discuss how it generates that signal; it simply calls its lenses “photonic wafers,” leaving even experts to speculate about how they can accomplish such an optically challenging process in such a small device compared to the bulkier headsets like the HoloLens and Meta 2.

“Their lightfield technology—that’s what no one really knows about,” says David Nelson, creative director of the mixed-reality lab at USC Institute for Creative Technologies. “Looking at that form factor, I’m a little dubious. There have been different approaches with multiple displays, layered displays that are essentially projecting toward your eye. They might be doing something like what the HoloLens does where they're projecting onto a piece of glass that then reflects back to your eye, but the form factor for that is even hard to imagine.”

Not so, says Abovitz. “We’re not bouncing a cellphone screen through a half-silvered mirror,” he says, referring to the HoloLens’ method of splitting a light beam to project an image. “I generally don’t like to comment about other companies, but I will focus on a couple of things where we think we’re the only people in the world doing them.”

'We maxed out what was possible in this day and age.' Rony Abovitz, Magic Leap

There are other methods of displaying virtual objects to the user; for instance, rays of light can be beamed directly into the eye. However, these tend to mean a reduction in field of view, the amount of visible space in which digital creations can appear. (The Rift and the HTC Vive, both VR headsets, possess a 110-degree FOV, while the HoloLens' FOV is only 35 degrees, with plans to double that in the next version.)

In my own experience with Magic Leap—all the way back in the relative Stone Age of May 2016—I found the FOV to be somewhat limited, though Rolling Stone reports that the Magic Leap One manages something a bit more impressive, something "about the size of a VHS tape held in front of you with your arms half extended". That's roughly comparable to how I'd describe Meta 2's FOV, making Magic Leap's technology potentially even more impressive.

Another unresolved issue is whether Magic Leap’s technology will allow users’ eyes to focus on virtual objects at different depths. This multifocal ability is at once the greatest promise of lightfield technology, and its greatest challenge. If you're able to focus naturally on objects being presented in various parts of the room, that turns AR/VR/MR from a dip-in technology to a persistent, all-day proposition—a game-changer for industries like design and healthcare that are uniquely suited to the technology. Previous Magic Leap videos seemed to imply that it used multifocal lightfield; however, whether the effect was a result of the technology itself or the camera filming it remains unclear.

On one hand, Abovitz seems to imply that Magic Leap One can do this. “It’s a virtual lightfield output,” he tells me, “not a single plane.” But on the other, Rolling Stone was unable to confirm whether the system can support it. (I don’t recall multiple focal depths in my time with Magic Leap's technology; it certainly wasn’t explicitly called out of any of the demos.)