Indie Creator Program

The news is out, we got a grant to develop Universe Sandbox for Magic Leap! Out of the 6,500 applicants that applied for Magic Leap’s Independent Creator Program, we were one of the lucky 30 that were accepted. We’re excited to join the company of other great indie developers and excited to bring the Universe Sandbox experience to Magic Leap.

If you’re not familiar, Magic Leap creates mixed-reality (MR) technology. Like VR, MR utilizes a headset and a motion-tracked controller for interaction. But unlike VR, the real world doesn’t disappear when you put on the Magic Leap headset. MR creates a map of the physical world around you and then superimposes digital images over it, bringing objects to life by making them appear like they are right there in front of you.

And with the mapping and object detection, the real world can interact with the digital world, allowing you to do things like smash planets against your wall.

Bootcamp


The very first step of development. Viewing Earth in Universe Sandbox through Magic Leap.

In February, Dan (Universe Sandbox creator & director) and Dave (Universe Sandbox mobile developer) went to California to attend the Magic Leap Creator Bootcamp. The Bootcamp was a crash-course in Magic Leap development, with discussions about the hardware, technical considerations, best design practices, and everything else creators like us need to know to make our magic happen.

It was an inspiring few days and a great opportunity for us to see what others are working on and what is possible for Universe Sandbox. We received some quality feedback on our plans as well as some exciting ideas for new directions.

Improving Universe Sandbox on Every Platform

Developing Universe Sandbox for Magic Leap is without a doubt exciting. But we don’t think about this development work as existing in a vacuum. While we continue to develop for desktop, we’re completely rewriting our VR interface, we’re polishing and optimizing for mobile, and we’ve now begun this work for Magic Leap. Further in the future, we’d like to do console versions, too. A key part of our vision for all of this is that the Universe Sandbox experience is never watered down. We want to make it possible to do the same things with Universe Sandbox in VR and on your phone that you already do on your desktop.

Of course, different platforms have different strengths and weaknesses; our design decisions are affected by these considerations for different hardware, different input, etc. But we can still aim for the power and flexibility that exists in the desktop simulation and interface.

Some of the design problems we face with Magic Leap will require developing solutions that improve all platforms. We expect the work we do on the interface will have a lot of significance for both the VR version and the mobile version that we are working on. And the performance optimizations we make while getting Universe Sandbox running on the Magic Leap headset will certainly have a ripple effect and improve performance on every other platform.

We look forward to sharing more about this journey as we continue development for Magic Leap!