On Thursday, yet another piece of the Magic Leap puzzle fell into place at Twilio's Signal developer and customer conference in San Francisco.
During one of the stage presentations, Twilio co-founder and CEO, Jeff Lawson, walked on staging wearing the Magic Leap One to introduce the first live demo of the company's new Avatar Chat app.
The app, which was previewed last week at Magic Leap's L.E.A.P. conference in Los Angeles, allows multiple Magic Leap One users to communicate with each other using avatars in augmented reality.
Before the demo, Twilio gave us a better look at how the app works via a short commercial spot.
During the video, three Magic Leap One users in three different locations are shown talking to each other, sharing photos and 3D models and, at one point, even giving each other a high five, with the controller standing in for the user's hand.
It's a slick ad that makes using the still unreleased Avatar Chat app look like something that some businesses might use for remote workers. But how does it work when the spotlight is on? That's what Lawson showed us as he called up Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz to engage in a live Avatar Chat session.
At first, Abovitz's audio was difficult to hear, but it's not clear whether the audio problems had something to do with the app, or was just a tech glitch in the live presentation's audio.
After a little virtual character small talk with Abovitz, Lawson then showed off how emoji work in the app, a feature that allows users to show various reactions to content and interactions with the other Magic Leap users.
The only real hiccup came toward the end, when Lawson tried to duplicate the high five action shown in the commercial (in this case, as a fist bump). It ranks as Magic Leap's first live tech product fail, but assuming the other features work as smoothly as advertised, fist bumps and high fives aren't really a make or break product feature.
Twilio plans to release the app for the Magic Leap One later this fall. Assuming it's free, as all apps currently available on the device are, it could go far toward boosting communication and collaboration amongst Magic Leap users, and perhaps even give new users a reason to try their hand at "spatial computing."
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Cover image via Twilio/YouTube
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