Florida-based startup Magic Leap Inc. has built up a lot of hype around its mysterious augmented reality platform — about $4.5 billion in hype actually. But so far we have only seen a few demo videos offering a brief glimpse of what the tech will supposedly be able to do.

Now, it turns out that some of those features may have been wishful thinking on Magic Leap’s part, and they may not make it into the final product.

A new report by The Information claims that Magic Leap’s technology is still far behind the lofty promises made in some of its videos, such as the one it posted in March 2015 showcasing a steampunk robot shooting game. Magic Leap claims in the description for the video that the game is something they are “playing around the office right now,” but as some have already speculated, that video was entirely pre-rendered and did not represent that actual state of the company’s AR tech.

More than a year later, Magic Leap still cannot deliver on that video’s promise. Indeed, according to The Information, the company’s tech might have to take a step backwards for it to be consumer-ready.

Magic Leap’s initial prototype, which is internally nicknamed “the Beast,” is reportedly a bulky, shoulder-width box that users look through to see AR imagery overlaid on the real world. Since this would not be feasible for a commercial AR product, Magic Leap’s eventual goal is to shrink its technology down to something roughly the size of a pair of glasses.

In order to accomplish this, Magic Leap had originally put its faith in a fiber scanning display, which uses a fiber optic cable that wiggles back and forth to create an image in the air. In theory, this technology would be able to display three-dimensional images while having low weight and space requirements.

Magic Leap has apparently not been as successful with the fiber scanning display as it had hoped. The company has downgraded the technology to a long-term research goal, and it is not present in Magic Leap’s product equivalent, or PEQ, prototype.

In his interview with The Information, Magic Leap Chief Executive Rony Abovitz admitted that the company has had to make a few tradeoffs during the design process, and the PEQ prototype is not quite as powerful as the Beast. However, Abovitz remains optimistic about the future capabilities of Magic Leap’s AR platform.

“We’re entering the third act of the film—the one that has the cool ending and the Death Star explodes,” Abovitz said. He might have been better served to choose an analogy that does not end with the most advanced piece of technology in the galaxy blowing up thanks to a design flaw.

Image courtesy of Magic Leap