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The thing is that if they are real they'll be doing exactly this developer play right about now - a compelling product without any software at release would result in a lot of disappointed early adopters - you can't use this as a proof for (or against) vaporware

It's worth noting that Weta just announced yesterday that they are jumping in with both feet

https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/352809/weta-expands-...

For any serious company a "developer play" would mean shipping an api and DEVELOPER HARDWARE.
So they built an entire SDK complete with developer documentation, Unreal Engine plugins, guidance on UX design, etc, but the hardware is vaporware?

Seems rather unlikely to me at this point.

Well, if it keeps investors aboard. That's what a company desperately scrambling to reach a goal that seems attainable but keeps slipoing out of reach might look like. Theranos comes to mind...
are there any examples of anything built with this tech? successful platforms usually come with apps built with them
This is the first public release of the SDK. Nobody's had an opportunity to build anything on the platform before now, other than ML themselves.
It also says "Product is continually advancing and may be different at time of shipment", which makes me wonder what is going on.
Magic Leap promised a completely goggles-free AR experience. You could load up hundreds of people in a room and show them AR demos. You could be on a beach and watch a communal AR event with thousands of people. You could teach in a classroom without any kinds of headgear or goggles or anything.

Magic Leap is 100% vapourware, even if they release some headset. Magic Leap are liars and cheaters and full of BS vapourwear claims until they release their Magic Leap thing with no headset that gives perfect AR to everyone. Until that day they are liars and cheats.

Edit: Source, magicleap.com circa 2015 or so.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150402084910/http://www.magicl...

> Magic Leap promised a completely goggles-free AR experience

Nowhere on that page does it say anything about "goggles-free AR". Heck, the page is so vague it's not even 100% clear it's talking about AR at all.

If you went and misinterpreted that vague marketing teaser as a promise of pie-in-the-sky technology, that's on you.

Their early promotional material sure implied that strongly.

They may have a cool product but they over-hyped the hell out of themselves three years ago and they don't even have physical units to demo yet. That's a massive marketing failure.

I think most of the hype was coming from uninformed bystanders, not Magic Leap themselves.

Magic Leap revealed almost nothing about what they were working on until just a couple months ago; before then all we had to go on were rumors, statements from people who demoed some early prototypes, and a couple incredibly vague teasers from Magic Leap hinting at what they were doing.

If it weren't for the fact that they made headlines after receiving massive amounts of funding from investors (including Google, which makes for great headlines), most of us probably would have never heard of them.

The marketing specifically showed viewers of their content not wearing any gear.

For example: the famous whale splashing in a gym video.

Unless you’re arguing that Magic Leap themselves were uninformed bystanders to their own marketing videos... that’s simply not true.

The early marketing showed _nothing_. No images or descriptions of actual hardware, not even a straightforward explanation of what they're actually building.

Again, if you went and interpreted that to mean "we invented a holographic projector" or "we invented glasses-free AR" or "we discovered a way to project forcefields strong enough to suspend whales in midair" that's on you.