Magic Leap on its way with SDK sign-ups

Magic Leap is set to release its first software developers' kit, suggesting we may soon know more about the technology.

The augmented reality startup has won millions in funding - including half a billion dollars from Google - and hired a host of top-notch employees, including sci-fi writer Neal Stephenson.

However, it's yet to reveal the full details of its technology, and the firm is more often than not described as "mysterious".

The few public videos have suggested a new virtual or augmented reality system, with press images of whales floating above a beach or video games overlaid onto your own ofifce. It's understood that the headset hardware can layer virtual scenes into the real world, using a small projector aimed at the user's eyes.

Speaking at a MIT Technology Review conference, executives from Magic Leap revealed developers can now sign up to receive the SDK when it's released.

"You can go to our website and sign up under our developer tab, and we'll soon be telling you a lot more about that," chief creative officer Graeme Devine said, according to a report on Technology Review. "I cannot wait. The awesome stuff is not going to come from us, it's going to come from everyone out there."

Devine also said the SDK would work with game engines Unity and Unreal.

Cheerful content

Stephenson said at the conference that his role involves "thinking about content".

"We don't know necessarily how to make content that's going to work on this," he said, according to the Technology Review report. "You can't just take an existing video game. You can't just take that 3D world and dump it into a medium like this."

He did say the augmented reality technology is "a lot more cheerful" than the versions described in his own novels, however.