An anonymous reader quotes a report from UploadVR: Magic Leap 1 AR headsets will no longer function from December 31, 2024, the company announced. Magic Leap 1 launched in mid-2018 as the first transparent AR headset to be marketed and sold to consumers. The headset is powered by a waist-mounted computer package and comes with a single tracked controller, although it also gets hand tracking support. Content for the device included avatar chat, a floating web browser, a Wayfair app to see what furniture might look like in your room, two games made by Insomniac Games, and a Spotify background app.
But Magic Leap 1’s eye-watering $2300 price and the limitations of transparent optics (even today) reportedly caused the device to fall significantly short of sales expectations. Transparent AR currently offers a much smaller field of view than the opaque display systems of VR-style headsets, despite costing significantly more. And Magic Leap 1’s form factor wasn’t suited for outdoor use, so it didn’t offer the out-of-home functionality that AR glasses once promise, such as on-foot navigation, translation, and contextual information. The Information reported that Magic Leap’s founder, then CEO, originally expected it to sell over a million units in its first year. In reality, only 6,000 copies were reportedly sold in the first six months.