Samsung names Magic Leap as a possible partner in ar headset development

Samsung is working on the development of its own ar headset and is considering a collaboration with the American Magic Leap. Samsung CEO Sung-Hoon Hong announced this at the Virtual Reality Summit in San Diego.

According to the Samsung CEO, the company wants to learn lessons from similar projects, such as Microsoft’s HoloLens. Speaking about the partnership with Magic Leap, he said “there is an opportunity to partner up,” according to the Wearablezone site that attended the event. The CEO described four levels of AR services. Samsung is targeting level three, which involves ‘interacting with virtual objects in the real world’.

He gave the example of playing Pokémon Go where the player encounters Pikachu in a real tree. Then the player must be able to push the leaves of the tree to the side to get to the creature. The current status of ar applications would currently be at level two, which is also where Pokémon Go is. Samsung is not alone in focusing on the third level. The HoloLens is also part of this, according to a slide from the Samsung presentation.

Sung-Hoon Hong also spoke about the development of a ‘light field engine’, which should be able to produce holograms. These should be ‘very realistic’ and look ‘touchable’. The Samsung CEO also gave information about the second version of the Gear VR, which should be released “within a very short time”.

The American company Magic Leap wants to release glasses next year to compete with Microsoft’s HoloLens. Recently, it came out that the company would not have important techniques ready for the release of the ar glasses. It must be able to show virtual objects in the real world, which can also adapt to the environment.