Marvel’s Spider-Man video game maker Insomniac unveiled a new augmented reality demo dubbed Seedling for the Magic Leap One Creator Edition AR glasses.
The Seedling demo lets you take care of a plant, which holds the promise to save the Balagan galaxy, where the Schmelling (I am not at all sure of the spelling here) incident destroyed all the vegetation in the entire galaxy. The demo is part of Insomniac’s effort to be a leader in leading-edge AR and virtual reality platforms.
I saw the demo at the Magic Leap L.E.A.P. conference in Los Angeles, where Magic Leap is unveiling its application lineup for the first time. I confirmed with Nathaniel Bell, creative director at Insomniac on Seedling, that this situation is much worse than what would happen if the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park blew up.
“This is much worse,” he said. “The ecosystem has been decimated. You receive an invite to the Seedling scouts. They are in charge of cultivating the last known seeds for the Balagan galaxy. You are tasked with saving the galaxy.”
You get a manual on how to take care of the seedling. You can grab the pages with the remote control and then peel them in a stroking motion so that you can turn the page.
In the demo, I fast-forwarded to 11 days into the simulation, where the Seedling was quite large and still growing. I donned some glasses that had a special prescription for my eyes.
I had to pick up some virtual tweezers and pick off the little buds that were dead on the seedling. I had to also take some pruning shears and snip off branches that were dead. In short, I was using the Magic Leap glasses and its controller to try to use my fine motor skills to give the plant a manicure.
To be honest, I think the app tried to add a bit more precision than the Magic Leap device was capable of doing. When I tried to pick dead buds with the tweezers, it was hard to do.
Granted, this wasn’t just any plant. I had to feed it some plant food which it voraciously swallowed. I asked Bell if there was a shotgun in the game, and he said there wasn’t.
Onstage Wednesday, Insomniac CEO Ted Price said that it was clear that Magic Leap would introduce a new medium for computing.
The companies started brainstorming a few years ago, and Seedling was the result.
“It’s Insomniac asking how can we bring a bit of sparkle, a bit of wonder, to the world with Magic Leap,” Price said. “Seedling isn’t the only thing we are working on with Magic Leap. We are honored to be part of these exciting early days.”