

Since so many of the non-gaming AR apps out there are so enterprise-centric, the release of these two AR communication apps offers a unique opportunity compare the effectiveness of the two competing, high-end AR devices when faced with a similar task.

On the other hand, New York-based startup Spatial just launched its remote communication solution for Microsoft's HoloLens that is "a lot" different, but serves the same general purpose. convention, and released a couple of weeks ago in partnership with Twilio, allows any two Magic Leap One users to communicate in real time from remote locations using simplified avatars. Magic Leap's Avatar Chat, teased during the L.E.A.P.

I step back across the room to view it from afar. All the while it hums and slowly rotates above a desk. It looks as real as the lamps and computer monitors around it. I’m seeing all this through a synthetic-reality headset.

Intellectually, I know this drone is an elaborate simulation, but as far as my eyes are concerned it’s really there, in that ordinary office. It is a virtual object, but there is no evidence of pixels or digital artifacts in its three-dimensional fullness. If I reposition my head just so, I can get the virtual drone to line up in front of a bright office lamp and perceive that it is faintly transparent, but that hint does not impede the strong sense of it being present. This, of course, is one of the great promises of artificial reality-either you get teleported to magical places or magical things get teleported to you. And in this prototype headset, created by the much speculated about, ultrasecretive company called Magic Leap, this alien drone certainly does seem to be transported to this office in Florida-and its reality is stronger than I thought possible. I saw other things with these magical goggles. I saw human-sized robots walk through the actual walls of the room. I could shoot them with power blasts from a prop gun I really held in my hands. I watched miniature humans wrestle each other on a real tabletop, almost like a Star Wars holographic chess game.
