This version of Magic Leap's display has nothing to do with light fields. It is a wave guide optic, just like Epson Moverio, Hololens (the term holographic also implies nothing special in terms of optics, it's a wave guide display combined with perspective rendering), and almost all other see-through HMDs. Magic Leap made headlines when they teased their oscillating fiber display, which had potential to render light fields, but that has not been pursued with this release. That's not to say they won't pursue it in the future, it's just not relevant to this product.
Next, eye tracking actually doesn't affect what is rendered to the display. The relationship of the headset display's field of view to the user is rigidly fixed even if your eyes move; different objects should not be rendered when moving only your eyes.
Rather, eye tracking is used for contextual information and user interaction. Gaze direction could be an input to foviated rendering, or you could use your eyes to select and manipulate digital objects.
Nothing I've said is meant to detract from ML's product; it's a very exciting development and a huge accomplishment for ML and the XR industry. I just think we should keep these points in context.
In HN discussions of it, it's been "over-dismissed". In my recollection, the majority of the comments viewed it as smoke and mirrors. Many were basically or even outright saying it was fraudulent.
See for yourself: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=magic%20leap&sort=byPopularity...
I disagree. Hololens is used for plenty of custom applications in the construction industry. You just don't hear about them because they are pretty much inhouse projects, likely implemented on top of unity (hence low cost and simple to deploy).
Here is an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF8H_GAm8mM
No consumer killer apps yet, that is of course true. But I wouldn't see AR in any major way in consumer space - just like you don't have HUD displays in a large category of vehicles, even though they are critical to military cockpits.
Personally, I'd put money on the number of people using HoloLens outside of dev teams in applications like this being in the low hundreds/thousands, but would love to be shown data to the contrary. Cool youtube videos unfortunately do not really indicate anything.
But it brought a ton of clients in the door, so mission accomplished.
According to the article in The Verge [0], CEO Rony Abovitz says it is a “full-blown, working consumer-grade product.”
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/8/17662040/magic-leap-one-cr...
1. There's a neat hardware size progression for ML that was posted on Twitter: MagicLeap's gone from a device like you stare through at the optometrists office down to something comparable to a scuba mask.
https://twitter.com/karanganesan/status/1024970520205307904?...
2. There are a few different ways to achieve AR style displays and what Magic Leap has chosen is the hard way -> lightfields and eye tracking (two technologies that haven't really been attempted to ship at scale).
3. This is still a developers' release - and not truly a "paradigm shift" or whatever overhyped term you want to use.
Separate from all that, I still think the end game of AR (in the next 10ish years) is to be the thing that comes "next" after smartphones. The proper way to view this ML Dev kit is that it's the equivalent to a PalmPilot or other barely functional PDA that had some good ideas, but didn't quite hit the right inflection point of portability, screen, battery life, form factor, etc. but that paves the way to get there.