An anonymous reader cited a report from UploadVR: Magic Leap 1 AR Headset will “cease to operate” as of December 31, 2024, the company announced. Magic Leap 1 launched in mid-2018 as the first transparent AR headset to be marketed and sold to consumers. The headset is powered by a tethered waist-mounted computing pack and comes with a single tracked controller, though there is support for hand tracking. The device’s content included chat with an avatar, a floating web browser, a Wayfair app to see what the furniture in your room might look like, two games made by Insomniac Games, and a Spotify background app.
But the Magic Leap 1’s staggering $2,300 price tag and the limitations of clear optics (even today) mean it’s reportedly falling well short of expected sales. Transparent AR currently provides a much smaller field of view than opaque VR-style headset display systems, although it costs significantly more. And the Magic Leap 1’s form factor wasn’t suitable for outdoor use, so it didn’t deliver the out-of-home functionality AR glasses promise one day like pedestrian navigation, translation and contextual information. Information reports that Magic Leap’s founder, CEO at the time, originally expected to sell over one million units in the first year. In fact, only 6,000 units were reported to have been sold in the first six months.
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