New Magic Leap AR Demo Shows How You'll Wake Up in the Future

On Tuesday, augmented reality trailblazer Magic Leap released a new video demo of its very secretive product. If you can bring yourself to believe it — and to believe the fine print — the video is sure to blow your socks off.

The fine print: “Shot directly through Magic Leap technology on April 8, 2016. No special effects or compositing were used in the creation of this video (except for this text).” Assuming, against all reason, that that’s true, you’ll soon be getting accustomed to a new morning routine. Instead of rolling over, groggy, and poking mindlessly at your smartphone’s clunky screen, you’ll don a Magic Leap headset and gesticulate your way through a mixed reality tour of your messages, priorities, internet destinations, and even a jellyfish smack.

Or so Magic Leap believes: the video is optimistically called “A New Morning,” and the description proclaims: “Welcome to a new way to start your day.” If I get to wake up to what’s in this video, I’ll gladly proselytize.

The notable but possibly misleading element of the fine print is the word technology. Though not necessarily the case, it could be that the use of such an ambiguous term is meant to conceal the fact that the video was not shot through a Magic Leap headset — especially when you consider the difficulty involved in filming a presentable video through a pair of glasses.

Regardless, we’ll take the AR company at its word: if you buy this product, whenever it’s released, you’ll get what’s advertised.

Check it out — stick around for that jellyfish smack at the end:

To build such an AR interface, Magic Leap undoubtedly snagged some powerful minds to work there. Let’s just hope that those powerful minds are also virtuous — Magic Leap’s patent applications give us reason to be wary of its future tech.

And let’s also hope that it can get a product out to the general public before too long: all we’ve gotten are patents and videos — we’ve yet to see much that’s concrete.