News
March 17, 2020
Lumin SDK 0.24 and the Magicverse SDK Technical Preview
With the release of Lumin SDK 0.24, we’re introducing developer features that make creating enterprise applications simpler and providing our first technical preview of the Magicverse SDK.
Yannick Pellet
SVP of Software
With the release of Magic Leap 1 and our Enterprise Suite at the end of 2019, we shared our focus around enterprise solutions across four core areas: communications, collaboration and copresence; 3D visualization; learn and assist; and location-based experiences. We also started working with select partners to begin developing with early versions of the Magicverse SDK, our SDK that allows developers to create cross-platform applications in which digital content persists in physical spaces in the real world. With the release of Lumin SDK 0.24, we’re opening up developer features that make creating enterprise applications simpler, and we’re providing our first technical preview of the Magicverse SDK. These developer updates come alongside an update to Lumin OS 0.98.10, and you can read more about those features here.
Customers who purchased our Professional Developer package will receive early access to the Lumin OS 0.98.10 update. The release is also available for direct download on our Developer Portal. Over-the-air (OTA) updates for Lumin OS 0.98.10 start rolling out on March 16th and will continue through the remainder of the week. You can download the latest version of the Lumin SDK and the Magicverse SDK via The Lab here. If you don’t have The Lab, you can download the Magicverse SDK here. Both Lumin OS 0.98.10 and Lumin SDK 0.24 will be available on Magic Leap One Creator Edition and Magic Leap 1.
The Magicverse SDK
Bridging the digital and physical worlds is the stuff of science fiction. As technologists, we’ve imagined hundreds of different futures that connect the ways we interact in the physical world with the ways we interact online. At Magic Leap, we believe the Magicverse can leverage the benefits of spatial content when and where we need it while allowing us to keep our heads up and stay present in the real world with those around us. We’ve invested heavily in understanding what technologies we need to develop to make that vision a reality. While we’ve publicly shared pieces of that vision before, now we’re introducing our first technical preview of the Magicverse SDK. XR Kit is the first component of that SDK and allows developers to create multi-user experiences anchored to physical locations in the real world across XR devices.
This technical preview is the first step on a journey towards building out the following components we believe need to come together to create a tangible Magicverse experience:
- Prepare a physical space for deploying experiences — In order to deploy spatial applications, an app needs an understanding of the physical space it’s going to be used in. The Magic Leap device allows you to easily and quickly create a digital copy of a physical space via a map with limited-detail sparse points, so that developers can begin to create applications that respond to and place persistent content in those spaces.
- Creating multi-user experiences across XR platforms — Developers need the right tools across an array of technologies to create and publish Magicverse experiences. Last year, we released Persistent Coordinate Frames (PCFs), a system that allows you to place content in the physical world and have it stay in the same place without any drift across multiple user and app sessions. PCFs combined with features like our Invitations API simplify how developers can create multi-user experiences. To illustrate this, we’re releasing Pancake Pals, an intuitive game that leverages much of the Magicverse technology and is designed to showcase how developers can create compelling multi-user content. We’re also releasing the ability to create these experiences for other XR platforms — read on to the next section (XR Kit) to learn more.
- Sharing experiences with end users — Today, there are clear but limited distribution and discovery channels for digital content. For example, you can publish an app to a digital store and share a link. With the Magicverse platform, content will live at specific places, so we’re rethinking content discoverability and the app store of tomorrow. Currently, Magicverse experiences can be downloaded via Magic Leap World and our private app distribution tool and can be shared via setting up physical markers in a space that people can scan. We’re working on enabling more sharing mechanisms that allow you to discover content in more natural and personalized ways. Expect more from us here soon.
These three components come together most visibly in location-based experiences, where businesses are creating immersive experiences for their customers in educational, entertainment, and retail settings such as museums and stores. By utilizing our evolving Lumin SDK to develop a core application, and amplifying that with the features we’re releasing in our Magicverse SDK, developers are starting to create apps that expand the possibilities of how the Magicverse can be used by enterprises to more deeply engage with their employees and customers.
XR Kit (Technical Preview)
In order to scale, the Magicverse needs to be accessible to many people across different platforms and devices. The Magicverse SDK - XR Kit technical preview allows developers to get a head start on building cross-platform Magicverse experiences, starting with iOS and Android. With this kit, you’ll have access to libraries and developer tools for writing Magicverse-compatible mobile apps and for synchronizing location and content on mobile apps. Now, developers can build iOS and Android applications that can recognize Magic Leap PCFs, meaning that you can now deploy your applications to iOS and Android to show the same content that users of a Magic Leap device are seeing. XR Kit is now available via download here. Currently, XR Kit is a separate package from the Lumin SDK and supports native iOS and Android, Unity for iOS and Android, UE4 for iOS (Android coming soon), and MagicScript for iOS and Android.
We’re calling XR Kit a technical preview because we wanted to get it into your hands as soon as we felt you could start building cross-platform experiences. You’ll be able to explore taking your Magic Leap experiences to other platforms, but you may experience some hiccups in trying to publish an iOS or Android app to the App Store or Google Play Store. You can check out some of the known issues you may encounter while using XR Kit here.
Our Magicverse SDK is evolving to encompass the necessary libraries and samples to help you easily get started creating multi-user, cross-platform apps with content that persists in the real world. In the coming weeks, look out for an iOS version of Pancake Pals, showcasing how XR Kit can be used to show off Magicverse content on mobile devices.
Lumin SDK Features for Enterprise Developers
With the release of Lumin SDK 0.24, we’re providing developers with features that also allow them to more easily create multi-user experiences for communications, visualization, and training that solve some of our modern business challenges. Screens are great ways to connect, allowing us to interact with flat but real-time images of our coworkers and loved ones. The power of spatial computing means that we can start to bring presence into that type of remote communication. We’re now introducing the Application Connectivity Platform (ACP) that makes it simple for developers to build an app that shares video and microphone audio with fewer than 100 lines of code. We’re also updating our Invitations API, the tool that allows developers to create multi-user applications on the Magic Leap platform. Finally, we’re introducing “Meeting by Code” functionality, which makes it simpler for enterprise developers to write multi-user apps in which employees can invite coworkers who are located in the same space by verbally sharing a 4-digit code.
We’re also making strides to expose more platform-level APIs and features to our developers. Developers can now leverage our on-device camera, applying the concept of collaboration to real-world training and assistance use cases, where users can provide “see what I see” video feeds directly from their headsets. Imagine an application where an in-field worker needs help performing a task in an industrial setting — instead of flying in an expert to assist on-site, the worker can now stream a video feed of themself performing that task to an expert located remotely. That remote expert can then share 3D models, annotations, or schematics back to the user at the job site.
The Avatar C API is also now exposed as a beta feature (with Unity and UE4 integration coming soon), so Lumin and C developers can use Avatars and mesh and animate them. This functionality opens up a world of possibilities for you to create interesting social applications using Magic Leap users’ avatars. Collaboration Core is another new C API for Lumin developers that enables them to build synchronized applications that allow meeting participants to see each other and interact with applications at the same time. Finally, we’re also exposing Bluetooth APIs, a long-standing request from our community, so developers can now write apps that pair and exchange data between Magic Leap 1 and select compatible Bluetooth devices. While these features are currently only available for Lumin developers, expect to see them for Unity and UE4 in future SDK updates.
Another popular request that we’re taking steps to address is around object recognition. With the launch of our new experimental (pre-beta) World Understanding feature, developers can now write apps that automatically identify specific classes of objects, starting with couches, chairs, tables, screens, and posters. As long as a user has chosen to opt-in to “Shared World” and “World Understanding” within their settings, apps can now recognize and interact with those objects in a user’s space. It is important to note that Object Recognition is an experimental feature and geared towards developers. The service may be intermittent, might not work in select cases, and you may experience some recall or labelling issues. We are currently monitoring the servers as we scale up - don’t hesitate to contact us here for any support and check out the best practices and limitations for this feature here.
To see these and some of our other SDK updates, check out this video.
With the release of Lumin OS 0.98.10, we’ve also introduced the Desktop Companion App (DCA), and plugin support for developers. DCA is a secure bridge between a user’s PC (Windows or Mac) and Magic Leap 1 or Magic Leap One Creator Edition. Through the Magic Leap Desktop Companion App, a user can manage files, access file info, utilize scriptable file plugins with 3rd party apps (such as Maya), and view device status. Our goal with DCA is to empower more enterprise users who may not be developers to easily visualize their 3D content in physical space. You can read more about DCA in the Lumin OS blog here.
The DCA Plugin APIs allow developers to build 3D content bridges from their desktop application or CAD package to move 3D content directly to the Magic Leap device Gallery. If your organization utilizes a custom workflow or software that we’ve yet to build a plugin for, it’s simple for your team to create ways to easily share the content you’re working on via a Magic Leap device.
We’ve introduced a number of new features for web developers. The Helio browser now supports Widevine Level 3 DRM implementations up to 720p, so you can now stream content from services such as Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and AT&T TV Now directly from the browser. This also makes it easier for other streaming content providers to make their content available via Helio. Browser pages can also now be laid flat on tables or floors, giving developers more robust ways of designing UI mechanisms that make use of a spatial content layout. With Prismatic, you can now extract 3D models from regular HTML elements, and a new stage api lets developers specify a larger area to put 3D content including detached divs and models.
Finally, we’ve made significant improvements to the way that we display your apps with Magic Leap World by bringing our app catalog to the web and redesigning the browsing experience on device. You can now check out Magic Leap World here.
The release of these new features and tools meaningfully evolves the way developers can interact with and develop for Magic Leap devices and the Magicverse. And with XR Kit, we’re opening up the apps you’ve built for Magic Leap to be used by anyone, anywhere, anytime.
You can find the full release notes here.
New Developer Certificate
As a heads-up, we are transitioning to a new developer certificate on April 9th, 2020. You can download a new certificate from here.
You can continue building, signing, and installing Magic Leap Applications (.MPK) to devices with any developer certificate on any OS version until April 9th, 2020. After April 9th, 2020, you will only be able to build, sign, and deploy MPKs onto devices using OS version 0.98.10, and they will also require a new developer certificate.
Certificates to submit applications for publishing to Magic Leap World are not affected. This means that all apps currently published or in review on Magic Leap World will continue to be available for download and use and are unaffected by the certificate update.
If you run into any issues with updating certificates, please read our FAQ and reach out to us with questions on our on our Developer Forum.
What’s next
Historically, Magic Leap has been releasing large OS and SDK updates every 2-3 months, with each release carrying several hundreds of requirements. You can now take a look at a comprehensive retrospective of our releases via this Trello board we put together to showcase the hard work that’s gone into furthering this platform over the last several years. We’re going to continuously update that board with new releases as they come out, and once ready, we’ll also add elements of our roadmap for your visibility.
As a sneak peek, some of the major areas we’ll be releasing updates around in the coming months include the Magicverse (SDK as well as other enterprise features), object recognition, and major developments for on-premise support.
Last December, Magic Leap 1 and Lumin OS 0.98 were released with a strong enterprise focus. As we’ve worked with more enterprise partners and customers, we’ve been inundated with exciting platform feature requests, many of which overlap with requests from our developer community. This creates a lot of movement in our feature queues, which we need to address quickly to support our new customers and developers. In order to address those requests in a more effective way, moving forward, you can expect more frequent updates with less feature density. We plan to accompany these updates with insights into how partners are leveraging our newest features.
If you’ve been watching us evolve our technology, waiting for the right time to get started, we recently launched Magic Leap Developers Access Hardware, a program to get Magic Leap devices in the hands of more developers. You can learn more about that program here. The work you are doing is setting the stage for what computing will look like in the future, and we look forward to your continued feedback on how we can improve our tools and our ecosystem so that you can keep innovating.
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