The thing is that if they are real they'll be doing exactly this developer play right about now - a compelling product without any software at release would result in a lot of disappointed early adopters - you can't use this as a proof for (or against) vaporware
It's worth noting that Weta just announced yesterday that they are jumping in with both feet
Well, if it keeps investors aboard. That's what a company desperately scrambling to reach a goal that seems attainable but keeps slipoing out of reach might look like. Theranos comes to mind...
Magic Leap promised a completely goggles-free AR experience. You could load up hundreds of people in a room and show them AR demos. You could be on a beach and watch a communal AR event with thousands of people. You could teach in a classroom without any kinds of headgear or goggles or anything.
Magic Leap is 100% vapourware, even if they release some headset. Magic Leap are liars and cheaters and full of BS vapourwear claims until they release their Magic Leap thing with no headset that gives perfect AR to everyone. Until that day they are liars and cheats.
Their early promotional material sure implied that strongly.
They may have a cool product but they over-hyped the hell out of themselves three years ago and they don't even have physical units to demo yet. That's a massive marketing failure.
I think most of the hype was coming from uninformed bystanders, not Magic Leap themselves.
Magic Leap revealed almost nothing about what they were working on until just a couple months ago; before then all we had to go on were rumors, statements from people who demoed some early prototypes, and a couple incredibly vague teasers from Magic Leap hinting at what they were doing.
If it weren't for the fact that they made headlines after receiving massive amounts of funding from investors (including Google, which makes for great headlines), most of us probably would have never heard of them.
The early marketing showed _nothing_. No images or descriptions of actual hardware, not even a straightforward explanation of what they're actually building.
Again, if you went and interpreted that to mean "we invented a holographic projector" or "we invented glasses-free AR" or "we discovered a way to project forcefields strong enough to suspend whales in midair" that's on you.
