The core technology of Magic Leap is digital light field display technology. The way that the light emitted by the virtual object displayed by digital light field enters human eyes simulates the real-world object, so it can display the virtual object that is seamlessly integrated with the real world, and at the same time, it can eliminate the discomfort that may be brought by other display technologies. Another feature of Magic Leap's digital light field display technology is the miniaturization and lightweight of display equipment, so it can be made into MR equipment suitable for long-term daily wear.

Light field is a function that describes the amount of light passing through every point and direction in space. Because the points in space need to be described by three-dimensional coordinates and the directions can be described by the rotation angles of two directions, the light field in space is five-dimensional. If you want to display the light field with a flat panel display device, because the plane is two-dimensional, plus two angular directions, you only need four dimensions to describe the light field passing through a plane in space.

This is a very good example of a four-dimensional light field display device. Michael Klug, senior vice president of optics at Magic Leap, was the co-founder and CTO of Zebra Image, which developed four-dimensional light field holographic display technology. Here is a video showing a hologram printed by their technology. When the observer moves the position or changes the angle of view, the image he sees will be different.

The human eye perceives the distance between the object and itself through the convergence and divergence of the angles between the eyes and the different focusing degrees of the lens. At present, most VR glasses and Hololens display virtual objects through flat panel displays. Because the distance between all pixels on the display plane and the human eye is fixed, when the human eye observes the virtual object, the lens needs the same degree of focus, regardless of the distance from itself. The human eye can only produce stereoscopic vision perception distance through different convergence and divergence angles between eyes. This causes the conflict between the two ways of perceiving distance, which will cause discomfort.

For MR glasses, because human eyes can see real objects and virtual objects at the same time, if the flat panel display displaying virtual objects and real objects are in different focal planes, human eyes can't see real objects and virtual objects at the same distance from human eyes at the same time, which creates a new conflict with human eyes' visual system, and the virtual objects seen by human eyes can't integrate into the real world, which will cause discomfort. Therefore, MR glasses require more display technology than VR glasses.