[bri3d]

Stand-alone goggles make more sense than a table, because they're closer to the eye and can more directly manipulate what the user sees.

If you read through the depths of Magic Leap's site combined with their patent applications, it becomes clear that they are trying to develop a set of goggles which combines some form of projection onto the retina [0] with some form of selective blocking [1] (to give contrast, and prevent the projected images from appearing as hazy mirages over the light otherwise reaching the retina).

Especially the blocking would be impossible to achieve with anything but goggles.

[0]: https://www.google.com/patents/US20140071539 [1]: https://www.google.com/patents/US20130128230

[jrk]

I think the idea is not that they wouldn't have goggles—these lab prototypes have goggles—but that they might be much more constrained than a free, walk-around head mount. Think: Imagineering-like controlled experiences down to arcades rather than a personal walk-around device like Glass^n or Rift AR. Controlling both the environment and background they augment and the head movement (and not worrying as much about miniaturization) could make the problem easier enough to be manageable.

Still unclear. They do seem to imply they want it to be an unconstrained mobile AR device, but that is indeed ambitious enough to warrant skepticism. Walk-around tracking for home/anywhere is still an unsolved problem for Oculus, and overlay AR is at least several times more demanding.