

Magic Leap Announces Its Augmented Reality Developer Platform - xasos
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/02/magic-leap-platform/

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ferrari8608
> This chip powers its augmented reality headset that works by shooting light
> directly onto your eye, rather than sticking a screen in front of it.

I'm curious to know exactly what they mean by shooting light directly into
your eye. Wouldn't you see the source? That is basically what a screen does,
though less direct. It makes light, some of which enters your eyes. You see
more light when you look at the source, the screen.

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russdill
Every single display works by projecting photons into the eye.

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Retric
If that where the case only one person could see your monitor at a time.
Instead monitors send light across a vary wide viewing angle.

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efnx
Light is made of photons. Every single display shoots photons into your eyes.
Traditional displays send photons into everybody's eyes.

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MichaelGG
Keyword is _directly_ , to contrast it with, say, a page of [e]paper that
reflects light into your eyes.

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seanp2k2
I'm thinking "looking into a tiny projector focused on your retina", but I'm
having a hard time imagining what what would be like, since I've literally
never experienced anything like that. Looking into a normal projector wouldn't
be comparable really, as the focus for those is a field much larger than your
retina. You'd need something with a lens that would focus it down to dime-size
or smaller to get a similar effect, and I doubt you'd want to do this with
anything more powerful than a pocket projector. Might be a fun weekend project
to hack a new lens system into one and see what it can do if the internals are
even hackable enough to make something like that possible (I'm thinking focal
lengths and lens types).

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pitchups
How does Magic Leap compare with Microsoft's Hololens? It appears that both
are implementing AR is slightly different ways. Was completely blown away
though by the demo videos of the Hololens -

[https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-
us](https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us)

~~~
mwilcox
Magic Leap are promising MUCH more - realistic occlusion of virtual objects by
real ones, dynamic transparency (allowing both AR and fully immersive VR),
natural depth of field (refocusing on virtual objects without simulated blur),
a scanning fiber light-field display, fully accurate hand tracking, both very
near (holding something in your hand) and far (things flying through streets)
depth tracking.. you get it. Not to mention, they haven't even said anything
about their cloud platform yet, which you can bet Google are heavily involved
with.. combining Tango area mapping with Google Maps.. they are trying to
solve every problem in AR/Computer Vision, so it's no wonder people are
skeptical. But if anyone's going to succeed, they have a pretty impressive
team & investor lineup.

Not to mention, Magic Leap are trying to build a whole ecosystem designed for
AR experiences, right down to retails stores. Whereas Microsoft simply seem to
be making 'Windows-AR'.

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IshKebab
There's no way to occlude real objects. Think about it, it's just shining more
light in your eyes. You can't shine "dark" into someone's eyes.

I don't believe they've promised that anywhere either. In fact where are you
getting _any_ of this information?

~~~
Someone
The OP claims the reverse: _" realistic occlusion of virtual objects by real
ones"_

With a good 3D model of the real world, that is possible (but not easy to get
right with a possibly rapidly moving camera)

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tgb
And also complains dynamic transparency. That would be a way to do real
objects occluded by virtual ones, depending on what it means.

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AndrewKemendo
As someone who is developing in the same space (AR) I am wondering if ML is
going to be like the Segway in that there is something interesting there but
the reveal is not going to be that much of a breakthrough.

It just has too much backing from people that don't get suckered for that to
be the case though, so it is really interesting.

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mkawia
Everything is 'upcoming' with this company.

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steverb
Yes and I'd be loathe to spend any real time learning the SDK of a device that
is so far mostly concept videos (as far as I can tell).

That won't make a whit of difference to them of course, it's not like I'm
known in the gaming space anyway...

I'm pessimistically hopeful that they aren't just hype and don't spend so long
trying to get it right that they're irrelevant by the time they launch.

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burkaman
They have a ton of very high-profile investors, it can't be purely hype. It's
hard to believe Google would put half a billion dollars into a company without
seeing something concrete and impressive.

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steverb
And Bezos and Jobs invested in the Segway, I'm not saying that it's pure hype,
just that all they've shown is hype.

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Joeri
To be fair, the segway did what was promised, but it turned out that it wasn't
so useful in practice.

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aaronharnly
A plausible outcome for this technology as well.

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6stringmerc
As a musician, I'm curious about the potential for using the VR/AR envrionment
as a production tool. DAWs are pretty static, but giving depth to composition
by way of more granular interaction seems possible. With so much digital
progress in emulation and networking, it would be very cool to finally have a
VR/AR "jam room" that could unite musicians across the country/globe in one
room to collaborate. A distant future, sure, but a reasonable application.

As a capitalist, my biggest question is...I'm half joking here, but tongue in
cheek serious... _How is this eventually going to be used for porn?_

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loudmax
Network latency is going to a significant factor for musicians jamming
together. I could see it for musicians living in the same city or maybe a few
hundred miles from each other. If they're on different continents, the speed
of light will become a limiting factor:

[http://royal.pingdom.com/2007/06/01/theoretical-vs-real-
worl...](http://royal.pingdom.com/2007/06/01/theoretical-vs-real-world-speed-
limit-of-ping/)

It comes to about 1/10th of a second for people on the opposite side of the
globe under ideal network latency. Okay for conversation, but could be a
problem for musicians playing together.

Don't get me wrong, I think there are a lot of interesting uses for this
technology if they can get it to work as promised.

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6stringmerc
Yeah, it's been one of the more prolonged riddles.

However I can say from firsthand experience that the JamKazam platform is
usable and functional. Distance and connectivity do matter, that is true. Even
on my very limited connection using a relatively modest USB audio device, I've
had success on several occasions with one to several participants.

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M8
VDK - vapourware development kit.

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mwilcox
I'm not really understanding what the announcement is here. They've had a
Developers section on their site for almost 6 months?

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moron4hire
Still only have his word to go on. Still no hardware actually demonstrated.
Won't believe it till I see it.

