Here's a thorough look into the technology powering Magic Leap's mysterious 'cinematic reality' headset

What is Magic Leap?

Other than "the company that Google co-funded to the tune of $500 million," no one really knows. Well, okay, at least one person outside of Magic Leap knows - the MIT Technology Review's Rachel Metz is the only journalist who's been allowed to try out the Florida-based company's mysterious headset. There have been no press tours, no "development kits," no big Kickstarter campaigns. The company's CEO Rony Abovitz describes Magic Leap as a "techno-biology" company.

For a company that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars from high profile investors, that has one of Google's most important employees sitting on its board (Sundar Pinchai, the man in charge of all Google consumer products), Magic Leap has been amazingly quiet. Here's the long and short: Magic Leap is a technology company creating some form of "augmented reality" headset. The headset uses what are essentially tiny projectors to mix artificially-created light with the world in front of you - it "augments" the reality you see with your eyes.

Magic Leap believes this technology will change computing. Magic Leap believes its headset will kill of screens in general, from your home TV to your mobile phone (and everything in between). That remains to be seen.

On July 23, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published the most thorough patent application that Magic Leap has produced, complete with ridiculous drawings of what Magic Leap's headset is potentially capable of doing. As a reminder, patent applications are not indicative of final products necessarily. That being said, let's dive into the 185-page application to see what Magic Leap is up to.