VFX Google plans to enter the virtual reality market with acquisition of Magic Leap -

Google plans to enter the virtual reality market with acquisition of Magic Leap

With virtual reality taking center stage, Google does not want to stay behind in the race. With the sale of Oculus VR to Facebook for $2 billion, the search engine giant wants to make up lost ground and hit back at its competitors all guns blazing.

Google with other investors is planning a huge investment in Magic Leap, a secretive virtual reality company which boasts of building the hardware and software that can deliver high-res 3D reality.

Google is lining up a $500 million offer to fund the Florida based company with Andreessen Horowitz being the other venture capitalist in the group of investors in the consortium. Magic Leap has already raised $50 million in funding earlier this year.

What Magic Leap is into is a highly realistic cinema experience where in people could feel the virtual reality that is more connected. The company calls this ‘Cinematic Reality’ and has trademarked the term. The image on the website shows a photorealistic tiny elephant moving around the person’s cupped palms.

Facebook which recently bought Oculus is in a different space with the virtual reality that is aimed at the gamers, mobile interface and the future of desktop computers. With Oculus one gets an immersive experience of the world that he/she enters and not the world that is around them. Magic Leap is more into giving one an experience about the world around him/her wherein he/she could feel the projected images that could interact with the environment.

Magic Leap is a Dania Beach, Florida based company with growing interest from Hollywood and Silicon Valley alike. CEO Rony Abovitz, who previously founded a surgical robotic company and sold it for $1.65 billion is working on making the most natural and human friendly wearable computing interface in the world.

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