What is Lumin SDK? Why do I have to buy Azure to use Unity free version?

A search engine search indicates that Lumin SDK seems to be an in-game sandbox thing for some sort of social 2nd-life type stuff: https://www.magicleap.com/en-us/new...0-24-and-the-magicverse-sdk-technical-preview

However, the first hit in the search is for something that is not called Lumin at all, but... Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/f...0708200038:s&dclid=CKiovP64vuoCFVKsfgod28QJXQ

Furthermore, I was expecting no hidden fees from the Personal Unity license (I haven't made a hundo grand on games yet, sorry), but the External Tools pane in Preferences is spitting out a red warning exclamation mark at me that I don't have it installed. Whatever "it" is--Lumin or Azure (it says Lumin). FYI this warning appears after I select Mono as my IDE of choice--the best one IMO.

I'm very confused. It makes sense that it would be Azure, but to reiterate: Why would Unity force me to buy a service from Microsoft when I have a free license?

 

That's really not how search engines work.

Lumin SDK is the Software Development Kit used to make applications for the Magic Leap Augment Reality glasses. You need to have that installed only if you are working on a game/app for the Magic Leap.

Azure is the brand for several cloud services offered by Microsoft. It has absolutely nothing to do with Magic Leap or Unity.

 

First off, Lumin and Azure are different things.

Lumin is from a company called "Magic Leap" who make a VR/AR experience suite geared towards the enterprise, Lumin OS being the OS it operates on.

Azure is from Microsoft and is a cloud computing service where you can rent compute/storage on the web in "the cloud".

Neither are part of Unity. Azure has its own pricing as they're selling you compute power on the web. Lumin has all sorts of caveats depending what aspects of the entire suite you're trying to tap into. Where as Unity's "free license" is just for developing and releasing using the Unity engine. Just because Unity is free for you, doesn't mean any other resources are free. You still have to pay for other things you may desire to use like Photoshop, Azure, 3DS Max, and more. Often times these things have free alternatives like Gimp and Blender, other times not so much (it's hard to find free cloud services out there that scale). Unity has no control over that since those things are not controlled by Unity... Unity is offering you the engine, not the other things. Just like if you wanted to get a programmer to help you, Unity doesn't supply one... well they also don't supply cloud computing, Photoshop, or the sort.

As for there being a result when you google "Lumin SDK" coming back as "Azure"... no idea. Usually the first result in google is an ad. Are you sure you're not just seeing an ad? Just because some result came back for an arbitrary search doesn't mean that thing is actually related to what you're searching.

...

Now Unity does offer "build support" when targeting "Lumin OS" which is what that checkbox when you go to install Unity via Unity Hub is about:


This is just offering you the ability to build to Lumin OS if you want it.

So when you say "External Tools pane in Preferences is spitting out a red warning exclamation mark at me that I don't have it installed", are you referring to this:


Cause if it is... well, you need to install the Lumin SDK. That "Lumin OS" support is just the build support... it doesn't install the Lumin SDK, just the Unity resources that are needed to target said SDK. Lumin supports the SDK itself.

You should probably follow the tutorial from Magic Leap for working with Lumin:
https://developer.magicleap.com/en-us/learn/guides/get-started-developing-in-unity

Specfically the "prerequisites" part:

Those "Install Magic Leap Tools" likely being the SDK as well as any other tools that Magic Leap offers.

Note, you will need to get a Magic Leap ID and other things to be allowed access to the SDK (and is likely why Unity doesn't auto install the SDK for you... the Magic Leap license probably doesn't allow 3rd parties to redistribute the SDK and instead requires you to go to them for it.)

As for what may be required to get that Magic Leap ID... I'm not certain. I haven't dug into the requirements nor know what conditions may make it free or not (or if it's 100% free). That is up to Magic Leap and Unity has NOTHING to do with how Magic Leap offers access to its resources.

...

And NONE of this has to do with Azure... I honestly don't know how you connected these together aside from you saw Azure as the "first result" when you googled about Lumin. Which as I stated... the first link is usually an ad... note the bold "AD" next to it in this search:

 

Great, thanks.

 

Please tell that to my search engine. But yeah, thanks.

 

We don't know what you googled... and search engines usually have ads to pay for the service so you can keep using it for free.

Not sure how you thought search engines worked?

 

Of further note: A search for "lumin Unity azure" did not turn up anything so yeah, just letting you know I did my due diligence.

Thanks.

 

I thought they worked at all. My apologies.

 

All I did was google "lumin sdk unity" and the results I got was that tutorial I linked earlier.

It's not like I had that up my back pocket.

The only reason I showed a previous "lumin sdk azure" was because that's the ONLY way I got azure to show up as the first result... if you also included azure in your search... well, why?

 

PS:

 

Mmm, I smell Bing...

 

LOL

Yep!



It's probably hitting on "sdk" and popping up ads (hence the 'ad' icon) as its first 2 results.

 

Someone needs to up their Googlefu skills. A significant portion of your game dev troubleshooting time will be spent googling. If you're having trouble with that, you're going to have a hard time developing games.