AR/VR proudcuers and the BBC Studios have come together to launch BBC Earth – Micro Kingdoms: Senses. This is an interactive documentary experience for the Magic Leap 1. Narrated by Stephan Fry, the AR experience is bringing users the wold of tiny insects and spiders to their living room. This is a new type of experience for Magic Leap users.
This AR show was created by the same minds behind the Planet Earth and Blue Planet shows. The BBC Natural History Unit is now letting Magic Leap 1 users get up close and personal with two different species of some multi-legged crawlers. You’ll get to hangout with a Leaf Cutter Ant colony, native to the tropical rainforests, and then chill with the Wandering Spider from the Atlantic Forest of Eastern Brazil.
This experience was rumored to launch back in the fall of 2019, but this is the first time we have seen the experience. It is late, but it better than never.
In the video above, you can learn a little about the techniques that were deployed while in the process of creating this film. The stars of the shows, the ones that you don’t want in your living room, were animated by using photo and video references from the BBC Natural History Unit. The other props in the animation, such as the logs and the plants, were created using photogrammetry. This is a technique for reconstructing 3D geometry with high-res textures that have been pulled from real photographs and other scans.
This experience seems to be very interactive too. It won’t simply happen in front of you, you will actually be interacting with the models the entire experience. You can even snag a digital magnifying glass to watch the ants go in while eating a leaf. Its a pretty cool experience.
“The way the ants move around, the way they communicate, is completely authentic to how they would behave in the wild. Likewise with the spider—the way it stalks its prey, the way it responds to your presence,” said Phil Stuart, Creative Director at Preloaded.
This launch of Micro Kingdoms is on the tail end of third-party apps that have been made and developed for the Magic Leap specifically. The AR wearable headset seems to be focused on creating and helping with exclusive high-end content for their users. Magic Leap is consistently giving more developers hardware and more tips on how to created inside of their app ecosystem. If you are interested in creating with and for Magic Leap, you can check out their dev conferences happening in May down in Miami.
Magic Leap 2
Although the latest trend of apps and experiences have been consumer-focused, Magic Leap is still promising that the Magic Leap 2 will be made and focused for enterprise-focused customers. The second version should be launching sometime in 2021, so you can expect a good number of leaks to be coming out in the coming months.
With all of that being said, not many people will enjoy this experience. The app is exciting, but the price of the Magic Leap 1 is $2,300. Until that is cut, this experience could go largely unnoticed. For more VR news and AR news, make sure to check back at VRGear.com.
