
What we just learned about the Magic Leap One's hardware - ilikeatari
https://www.cnet.com/news/magic-leap-is-ready-to-talk-more-about-its-ar-headset/
======
cromwellian
This definitely feels a lot like the people selling perpetual motion or energy
devices. A CEO/Entrepreneur who uses non-standard terminology, speaks like
Deepak Chopra with fanciful but fictitious sounding explanations, a kind of
word salad designed to impress.

I had high hopes for Magic Leap when it was first announced. I though this was
going to be a device that had opaque overlay LCD or laser-retina projection so
that it worked outside in daylight. I thought it would have a full on FOV. Now
it seems really like a kind of Hololens 1.5.

At this point, I think we may have to wait for Apple to solve workable AR
glasses.

~~~
Torn
The fact they refuse to let people try it is such a red flag.

~~~
Holomakerbot
They gave private demos at GDC in March.
[https://twitter.com/radiocurea/status/976549719664050176?s=2...](https://twitter.com/radiocurea/status/976549719664050176?s=21)

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mattbierner
Apple is going about AR right: incremental, shipping now, and already building
a developer ecosystem. Smartphone based AR is mediocre at best but millions of
users already can access it and provide feedback on it. Apple doesn’t have to
convince users to spend $600 (at least) today on a new gadget that would still
mostly be a novelty. They have bought themselves time to develop a great AR
hardware product, and when they do release it, a whole ecosystem will already
be in place

In fact, Apple may have already won this space unless they seriously drop the
ball or someone releases something amazing. I mean the hololens is shipping
today and is really cool but few people seem to care because it’s so expensive
and it’s not clear why you need AR. To make AR more than a novelty requires
developers. Developers will go where the users are because that’s where the
money is, and users go where the apps are and where their friends go. Apple is
using smartphone based AR to work around this catch 22

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drcode
The book practically writes itself: "Tragic Leap: An un-augmented look at the
reality behind a secretive startup"

~~~
ccvannorman
It's virtually unusable: A crystal clear post-mortem for spectacles with a
foggy future

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squeaky-clean
They didn't just "not mention specs". They mentioned someone asked a hardware
spec related question, and then said something along the lines of "I'm not
falling for that trick question."

That's waaaay worse than just silence in my opinion.

~~~
civilitty
No kidding. Have their staff not been trained to deflect questions using basic
reasons that are omnipresent to any cutting edge hardware company? For
example, "we are unable to reveal that information yet due to contractual
obligations with our vendors" or "we can't talk about that yet because we are
still finalizing a few minor details."

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shawn
Here's a clip of the intro. Decide for yourself:
[https://clips.twitch.tv/BreakableTentativePassionfruitPipeHy...](https://clips.twitch.tv/BreakableTentativePassionfruitPipeHype)

~~~
grizzles
I think this thing is going to be the biggest bust ever. There are only so
many variations of laser tag that one can play.

The twitch clip has a home shopping esque feel to it. That seems
...appropriate. All this from a company with a ~$6B valuation. Imo, that was
the real magic leap.

I predict that in a few years, AR vendors will focus on AR for industrial
purposes, and then it will be useful.

~~~
walterbell
Industrial AR, $5K glasses shipping today:

[https://daqri.com/about/leadership/](https://daqri.com/about/leadership/)

[https://shop.daqri.com](https://shop.daqri.com)

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llao
Clickbait you can skip without missing out on anything.

All they learned is irrelevant details, sadly they did NOT say anything about
the color of the top or the exact haptic feel of the third knob from the
right.

Nothing about the vapourware tech to learn.

Skip and keep watching from your safe distance.

~~~
sago
> All they learned is irrelevant details

I disagree. Perhaps you mean that they didn't learn anything positive.

I learned that it doesn't work with glasses, that it can't work outside, that
the required processing puck will run so hot that it needs ventilation, and
that only months before release they still have no content, specs or anything
functional except a green LED.

I think those things are very interesting and important.

The fact that they are all very damning of the company and its product _is_
the story.

~~~
croshan
Exactly. This article seems to try to paint the tech in a positive light, but
it really shows a damning story.

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Analemma_
This thing is going to be the Daikatana of AR. Tons of hype, many years late,
finally delivered as garbage nowhere close to what was promised. It's a shame
they couldn't ship before the VR hype flamed out, otherwise they might have at
least made some of their money back from curious buyers, but now there's going
to be nothing.

Just get a HoloLens. That at least has shipping hardware and a real company
behind it. Even if Magic Leap eventually does most of the same thing, it's not
going to be so much better that it was worth all the bluster.

~~~
yborg
"Rony Abovitz's about to make you his bitch."

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strictnein
Bets on whether or not that hockey puck just contains a Snapdragon 845 and
some other COTS stuff? I'd wager significant money that it does.

~~~
aphextron
More likely an XR1, but yeah there's absolutely no way these guys are
designing silicon.

[https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/29/snapdragon-
xr1/](https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/29/snapdragon-xr1/)

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kthejoker2
Save you the click: Absolutely nothing.

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Animats
It must be for real now. It has lots of blinky lights.

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walrus01
I don't care how informative this article is, we should not be linking to
pages that both prompt you for notification permission _AND_ begin autoplaying
a loud annoying video immediately upon page load.

~~~
ilikeatari
I agree the autoplaying is annoying. I did however find value in the content.
How to properly label that this link has a video that autoplays?

~~~
dmitrygr
[mutebeforeclick]

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_iyig
tl;dr:

No specs, no demos, no video or images of what is seen through the glasses.

The only functionality demonstrated live was a green LED on the glasses.

Even in a world where the glasses work 100% as advertised, I’m still skeptical
that goggle-vision AR will be a multi-billion dollar industry. Who wants to
run around playing AR video games in their house or office? Who’d want to wear
goggles and buckle a gaming PC to their belt just to check e-mail and watch
YouTube? Where is the market for Magic Leap’s ideal, everything-works AR
headset?

Some might say industry, architecture, or medicine, but that doesn’t appear to
be their focus right now, and it’s hard for me to see those niche applications
justifying their billions in investment so far.

~~~
ben_w
While this particular AR may be overhyped, I do expect AR to become a multi-
billion-US$ industry before 2025. Even if it’s just two apps, Sunglasses.app
and Google Maps pasted onto your view with no careful design, that’s still
worth $30 and could run on that year’s version of the Raspberry Pi Zero. 30
million units per billion dollars, doesn’t feel unreasonable.

~~~
dwighttk
Is sunglasses.app just slightly darkening the lenses so they work as
sunglasses?

~~~
ben_w
Pretty much. People already pay a premium for photochromic lenses that take
minutes to adjust, LCD can do the same in milliseconds.

~~~
throw_away2
I just want the Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses

~~~
oceanswave
Oh come on, let me have just a little bit of peril?

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amanzi
There are a lot of big name companies betting a lot of money on the success of
this device so I'm willing to give it a chance, but unless they start
releasing some actual details about how well it works I remain sceptical.

~~~
Holomakerbot
This is one of the strongest counter arguments to all the cynicism in these
comments. Sure they didn’t give specs but guess what neither did Hololens
until preorders opened. The main thing they haven’t done yet is a live demo
which we know is a challenge because when Microsoft did it they caught a bunch
of flack for misleading the tiny FOV. For magic leap they’re not launching
until end of the year. Demos are supposed to come in a couple more moths. But
really what compels me Is all the partnerships. Why would Weta put their
reputation on the line and say their magic leap game is launching this year if
it were so obviously vaporware. Same for Framestore (big Hollywood gfx house)
who announced this week that they’ve been working on content for years that
will be available at launch as well. It’s one thing to be skeptical of magic
leap, but it becomes harder to think that they’ve hoodwinked all these other
reputable companies into making content for them for a product that is crappy
or not ever coming out.there have also been about 30 other devs who have
announced they’re early partners who have received hardware kits privately.

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vkou
This is a puff piece that doesn't answer the fundamental question - have they
solved the core problems with AR - field of view, and dark images?

~~~
shawn
Almost a direct quote from the presentation: ML is an additive device, meaning
the darker an image is, the more transparent it is.

But in practice it probably isn't a problem. All that matters is that they
deliver killer apps. What you can do with mixed reality vs the PC is what
counts.

Remember how lifechanging the original iPhone's google maps integration felt?
I used to get lost. No one ever gets lost anymore.

We need something like that for the mixed reality space. It's too early to
know precisely what that could be, but we'd be betting on the wrong side of
technology to dismiss it out of hand.

~~~
drcode
The problem is that they've been making lots of promises but then also
publishing misleading demos that seemed to disobey the basic laws of physics
(i.e. demos showing subtractive image synthesis in a compact form factor)
which makes it hard to take any of their tech claims seriously.

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testcase_delta
It's interesting seeing the tone in comment sections here change with time.
Threads on Magic Leap used to have many defenders. Now, not so much.

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elialbert
can anyone think of any way to make money betting against magic leap?

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curiousgal
Queue in a blog post by the guy who despises Magic Leap.

~~~
vernie
Karl Guttag rules.

~~~
drcode
Say what you will about him, but his predictions have proven accurate so far:
ML has made very suspect claims to investors and the public and ML's
technology offers little innovation over the status quo, based on the
information available so far.

~~~
Holomakerbot
So far it's the only headset coming to market that contains all of the
following: Standalone, eye tracking, variable focal planes, hand tracking and
a 6DOF controller, and a significant increase in FOV over Hololens (roughly 55
degrees to Hololens' 35). There are other AR headsets announced that may have
a huge FOV but are tethered to a PC and have questionable visuals. Really,
once Magic Leap is out it will be quite unique, and not just because of the
tech it packs compared to the competition but because they've also been
building content from their first party studio as well as numerous gaming and
productivity partnerships.

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denlekke
Theranos 2.0?

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segmondy
Worst.

[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/magic-leap-
technolog...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/magic-leap-technology-
reportedly-years-away-from-completion)

~~~
mslate
Citing an article that is 1.5 years old? Ignored

~~~
pedalpete
actually, I think you're missing out by ignoring that article.

'technology ... is “not really what we’re ultimately going to be shipping,”
but that his company’s prototypes were good for showing investors and others'

Unlike Theranos, Magic Leap has received investment from people with knowledge
in the industry, so I think it is less smoke and mirrors than Theranos, but
similar in that they are doing a big promotion on technology that is not ready
yet. I'm not going to call it vaporware, and I don't think Tharanos was
vaporware either, but they were selling to investors and their customers a
product that didn't exist as they had sold it.

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cfadvan
Karl Kuttag was right all along I guess. Good for him, but a bit of a bummer
for the dream ML was trying to sell. Of course that dream turns have been made
of lies and horseshit, so...

