According to re/code, tech giant Google is one of several investors ploughing money into Magic Leap, which is promising to deliver the next generation of virutal reality that will dwarf efforts by current rivals such as Oculus Rift.

It's a bold claim, to be sure, and so far there's been little in the way of a reveal about what Magic Leap is working on.

But if the report is accurate, the Florida-based company is currently in a $500 million funding round being lead by Google.

Cinematic reality

According to Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz, terms like virtual reality and augmented reality are already outdated. They bring with them a decades-old legacy that was never delivered upon at the time, and sets unambitious goals for its creators.

Abovitz and his team claim to be working on technology they prefer to call cinematic reality, which will "be the most natural and human-friendly wearable computing interface in the world."

Though Magic Leap remains secretive and cryptic about its 3D visualisation technology, the hints it's been dropping suggest some form of plenoptic camera device; most likely head-mounted.

This isn't a new technology, which allows an image to be refocused after it's been captured and could theoretically be used to rebuild a 3D object from a recording, but practical applications have been limited and rare. Potentiallly, that's about to change.

With the long wait consumers have been through waiting for virtual reality to arrive, it'll be interesting to see if Google is backing a brand new horse that could make the technology we've witnessed so far find itself outdated before it even arrives.

Source: re/code