Magic Leap and Lucasfilm launch lab in SF

“Magic Leap is creating a whole new medium: Mixed Reality Lightfields, designed to harness the power of your imagination and take you to places you never thought possible”. ILM stands for Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects company founded by George Lucas in the ’70s to anchor visual effects for Star Wars.

“The future of mixed reality and immersive entertainment holds incredible promise”, said Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucsfilm, in making the partership announcement.

Lucasfilm forms its ILMxLAB a year ago, tasked with creating virtual, augmented and mixed reality experiences.

Lucasfilm released a video today showing off just how the company’s technology can superimpose realistic looking droids in your living room.

Magic Leap isn’t the only company hoping to bring augmented reality (AR) to the masses.

The mysterious but exceedingly well-funded Floridian startup Magic Leap has forged a partnership with Lucasfilm that will see the “mixed reality” tech firm opening a joint research lab at Lucasfilm’s compound in San Francisco this month. The startup, which launched in 2010, has raised $1.4 billion to date from investors including Alibaba Group and Google. But Abovitz did give the audience an idea of the scale of the start-up’s Florida-based operations.

The Verge reported that Magic Leap is getting into the movie business, and this is the second partnership they have formed with a filmmaker.

“We’ve been testing these experiential story moments, trying to make mixed reality not a novelty but something filmmakers can actually use.”

When asked if Magic Leap will demo the product for consumers more often in consumers, Abovitz simply said “yes”. “We want people to step inside our stories, and we want those stories to react back to people in deeply compelling ways”. “The mixed media and games we’re seeing now are like the dessert”.