It is official: Magic Leap is no longer making its own headsets. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the layoffs. May you land on your feet; any team will be lucky to have you.
Magic Leap has a very special place in the XR research ecosystem: this headset became a true workhorse for XR research labs using eye tracking to study attention and spatial interaction. Its compact form factor made it uniquely practical for experiments involving mobile cognition and substantial head-and-body movement, such as our lab’s work with AR-assisted CPR.
Magic Leap’s stunning, memorable early claims were lightyears ahead of its readiness; yet the technical and scientific value of what Magic Leap did deliver was undeniable. We loved it, as a tool of studying human attention in XR. Alas, the brutal economics of high-end hardware – hardware is hard! – made it unsustainable to build such advanced, elaborate tools for the niche market the headsets ended up serving. RIP Magic Leap headsets. You will be missed.
A small tribute from Duke I3T Lab: Our Magic Leap–based evaluations of user attention during Sudoku solving and AR-assisted CPR (IEEE ISMAR 2024 and 2025), alongside our earlier work on AR safety and security.
