
Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap - carloscm
http://www.magicleap.com/#/blog
======
carloscm
This is notable not just because of Neal Stephenson, but because his blog post
contains what I think is the most detailed public description of the tech so
far:

\--- Here’s where you’re probably expecting the sales pitch about how mind-
blowingly awesome the demo was. But it’s a little more interesting than that.
Yes, I saw something on that optical table I had never seen before--something
that only Magic Leap, as far as I know, is capable of doing. And it was pretty
cool. But what fascinated me wasn’t what Magic Leap had done but rather what
it was about to start doing.

Magic Leap is mustering an arsenal of techniques--some tried and true, others
unbelievably advanced--to produce a synthesized light field that falls upon
the retina in the same way as light reflected from real objects in your
environment. Depth perception, in this system, isn’t just a trick played on
the brain by showing it two slightly different images.

Most of the work to be done is in applied physics, with a sizable dollop of
biology--for there’s no way to make this happen without an intimate
understanding of how the eye sees, and the brain assembles a three-dimensional
model of reality. I’m fascinated by the science, but not qualified to work on
it. Where I hope I can be of use is in thinking about what to do with this
tech once it is available to the general public. "Chief Futurist" runs the
risk of being a disembodied brain on a stick. I took the job on the
understanding that I would have the opportunity to get a few things done. \---

~~~
tomp
Stupid question: Who is Neal Stephenson, and why is he famous?

Wikipedia suggests that he's a sci-fi author, is there a particular reason for
his fame, could you recommend some of his works?

~~~
Florin_Andrei
_Snow Crash_ for old school howling-metal cyberpunk.

 _The Baroque Cycle_ for a semi-fictional view of the beginnings of science -
the Newton and Hooke era.

 _Anathem_ for an interesting take on the philosophy of science disguised as a
sci-fi epic.

~~~
Fuzzwah
I would also highly recommend:

 _The Mongoliad_ semi-fictional view of mid-thirteenth century Mongol invasion
of Europe

 _Reamde_ MMO gold farming, social networking, criminal methods of the Russian
mafia, Islamic terrorists

~~~
billyhoffman
ugh. Reamde.

Reamde starts off with a lot of interesting ideas, and then morphs into quite
possibly the worst watered-down, airport-paperback, fourth-rate-Tom-Clancy-
triller nonsense I have ever read. Avoid it at all costs. Unbelievable plot
and character motives. ick.

~~~
RandallBrown
I _really_ liked Reamde. It's a close second to Anathem as far as Neal
Stephenson's books go for me.

If you can suspend disbelief at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation,
it's pretty awesome.

------
replicatorblog
This Gizmodo article does a great job of demystifying MagicLeap's tech by
digging into the founder's background, patent filings, and trademark
applications:

[http://gizmodo.com/how-magic-leap-is-secretly-creating-a-
new...](http://gizmodo.com/how-magic-leap-is-secretly-creating-a-new-
alternate-
rea-1660441103?utm_content=bufferb8afe&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer)

~~~
carloscm
That 1mm single fiber endoscope is just amazing, out of a spy/scifi novel.

~~~
lotsofmangos
Oh, it's that guy. Awesome. That's perked my interest more than Stephenson
joining them.

------
themoonbus
That's cool and all, but this has got to be one of the worst company websites
I've seen recently. I get that they're stealthy, but this doesn't even build
any interest.

It was only until I clicked "Wizards Wanted" (yes, I get it. Magic.) that I
sort of got an answer.

Edit: Actually, the Developers section has some more information. But my point
still stands.

~~~
a3n
I had no idea what the company does until I bailed from their site and read a
comment here. Yes, I could have dug deeper, like the person posting that
comment did (thanks), but damn, gimme a _reason_. And no, having $CELEBRITY in
your company is not enough reason.

Two utilitarian sentences on what your thing is, and then all the literate
prose you can produce. But gimme those two sentences.

~~~
danellis
Give you a reason for what? You're all acting like this company owes you an
explanation of what it does.

~~~
Delmania
They're selling something. If they want people to hand over cash, it might be
practical to tell us what it is.

~~~
vidarh
They're not selling anything yet. They don't you to hand over cash yet.

And so it is more practical for them to tease and build interest.

~~~
themoonbus
Right, except that this doesn't tease or build interest... at least for me.

...not that it matters, seeing as they seem to have already built interest
with the people that matter, investors.

------
thearn4
The hype for me is tempered pretty heavily by what happened to Clang. I'm
still very curious what Magic Leap is all about though.

~~~
eco
What/who is Clang (apart from the compiler)?

~~~
egypturnash
A sword fighting video game Stephenson kickstarted for $526k and failed to
deliver anything playable on.
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang)

~~~
jmelloy
I happily kickstarted it, but I had no belief it would actually deliver. $500k
is 5 software devs or artists for a year. That's not very much money for a 3D
game.

~~~
fixedd
And it's only 5 people if you're offering below-industry pay, not paying
taxes, no benefits, no office, no equipment purchases, etc. I'd figure
150k/person minimum, with more like 2-300k in more contentious areas.

------
ThinkBeat
Will he bring as much success to this company and he did with Clang?
[http://www.geek.com/games/neal-
stephensons-526000-kickstarte...](http://www.geek.com/games/neal-
stephensons-526000-kickstarter-sword-fighting-game-officially-
canceled-1604892/)

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting hire. As a startup it seems an unlikely one, Neal is a wonderful
author, and has a sharp wit, but as he explains "his brain is not useful" to
the work at hand. I could see _consulting_ with him, but hiring him struck me
as odd. In terms of what Magic Leap purportedly does my guess would be that
Daniel Suarez (Daemon, Freedom) might be a better choice in terms of a vision
that applies somewhat directly.

~~~
Thrymr
Well, they've got to do _something_ with that half billion dollars. Decisions
that don't objectively make sense somehow become possible when you've got that
kind of money to spend.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Sad as it is, that is a very real danger of the 'over raise'. Way too many
startups have negotiated their bankruptcy in their own, soon to be someone
elses, overly well appointed offices. I picked up an Aeron office chair for
$12 that way, very sad.

------
fsloth
Anyone else enjoy the fact that Stephenson's 'Reamde' also featured a hightech
VR company that employed famous fiction authors in their staff :)

------
valarauca1
So they are a holographic augmented reality company?

From their site:

>Imagine being able to generate images indistinguishable from real objects and
then being able to place those images seamlessly into the real world.

Sounds like you generate a hologram anywhere. And project it into the real
world. Think Star Trek holodeck, but everywhere, or anywhere from what they
are selling. And the holograms they're projecting would be almost
indistinguishable from other objects (I highly doubt that honestly, subsurface
reflection takes A LOT of processor horse power with 1 view alone n).

It will be interesting to see what they cook up.

~~~
aidenn0
The current most popular theory seems is that they are using the usual VR
tricks, plus have the ability to track the eye so that the eye's accommodation
(focus) matches the distance that the object is supposed to be from. From what
I remember with my experiments with stereoscopy this should reduce VR sickness
in about 10-20% of the population for which accommodation mismatching with
stereopsis causes issues.

Note that this effect is why 99% of the content in feature-length 3d movies
appears at an apparent distance of more than 10 feet from you; the amount that
accommodation falls off rapidly with distance, so it's a much less strong
effect at that distance.

------
throwaway90446
Unclear from their site what MagicLeap even does.

------
cryoshon
Still can't figure out what the heck this company does.

Guess it plans to sell hype.

~~~
nissimk
The last time I remember this much hype was in the lead up to the segway.

[http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2013/1019/Inventions-
tha...](http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2013/1019/Inventions-that-were-
going-to-change-the-world-but-didn-t/The-Segway)

------
calebm
When I heard of Magic Leap, "Snow Crash" is one of the first things that came
to my mind. I really want to see a Magic Leap demo!

------
gavanwoolery
"...to produce a synthesized light field that falls upon the retina in the
same way as light reflected from real objects in your environment"

Goes back to Carmack's idea presented in one of his Quakecon sessions
(although obviously the idea has been in sci fi for a long time).

This is interesting, I have an idea of how it might work:

Producing a synthesized light field could be done with a huge array of tiny
mirrors or refractive material (I know stuff like this has been done in the
past). By simulating directional rays coming in, I'm guessing your eyes could
be tricked into thinking there is depth since the movement of each eye would
change the amount of light absorbed (i.e. "focusing" on different objects in
the light field). I could be wrong about this, have not thought it through
very well.

All that said, they've raised over $500 million from Google Ventures and
others, so I'm guessing there is something here, as lacking as the website is.

------
Impossible
This quote "I sometimes feel that the creative minds who make games have done
about as much as is possible in two dimensions. It’s hard to imagine how the
current crop of games, for example, could be more finely tuned to deliver that
particular kind of entertainment." isn't particular inspiring coming from a
Chief Futurist. I can imagine a ton of 2D (or text based, for that matter)
games that haven't been attempted let alone perfected. I also feel like I play
new novel 2D games all the time.

I say this as someone that is excited about VR, AR and would love to see
whatever Magic Leap is cooking up, and is a huge Neal Stephenson fan.

------
kingzain
There's more information here if anyone is interested:

[http://io9.com/how-neal-stephenson-is-helping-to-make-
snow-c...](http://io9.com/how-neal-stephenson-is-helping-to-make-snow-crashs-
meta-1671621178)

------
davidw
Hrm. I hope he doesn't get distracted from writing books. I love his books,
but don't care much about video games. I wonder if he's tired of writing, or
just wants to do something different...

------
nabla9
[http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/magic-leap-
inc/](http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/magic-leap-inc/)

------
CmonDev
_" I sometimes feel that the creative minds who make games have done about as
much as is possible in two dimensions. It’s hard to imagine how the current
crop of games, for example, could be more finely tuned to deliver that
particular kind of entertainment."_

Well PCs powerful enough for proper amount of voxels would let us do
interesting things. Dwarf Fortress with a voxel-based high-res graphics could
be interesting.

------
javajosh
It's too bad the economic incentives make this company take a stealth route.
The problem is so large, and potentially so game-changing (both literally and
figuratively) that I fail to see how one company could possibly capture all
the value created, and it makes me sad that it would even try.

------
lucasgw
Step away from goggles, glasses, etc. Start thinking about contact lenses and
optical implants - the kind of stuff that requires FDA approval - medical
devices - then the amount of funding and interest they have received becomes
instantly much more credible, and makes much more sense.

------
billsossoon
For anybody curious about Magic Leap, I highly recommend this TED talk by the
company's founder Rony Abovitz:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY)

It starts off kinda weird, you gotta give it a few minutes.

------
king_magic
I literally have no clue what Magic Leap does after reading through a few
pages on their site. It's pretty absurd IMO to have a site like this that says
so much but says so little. Honestly, why bother at this point?

~~~
Intoo
eye projecting tech, THEY KIND OF WANT TO REPLACE OCULUS VR BY A COMPLETELY
NEW VR TECH, where u'll see an elephant in times square because it'll be
projected to you eye from somewhere, stuff like that, VR IN REALITY

------
desdiv
Did this "revolutionary startup hires top SF writer" thing ever happen before?
If so, how it turn out last time(s)?

I hope it doesn't end up like the whole "revolutionary CPU maker hires Linus"
thing.

~~~
aetherson
It happens (sort of) in REAMDE. :P

There, it ends up precipitating a gigantic MMO war.

------
verytrivial
There is literally and purposefully nothing to see here. Move along.

------
bambax
> _We know what you 're thinking: "Who the heck are we?"_

Well, no, I'm thinking, who the hell are _they_. And I can't seem to figure it
out from your website.

------
linguistbreaker
Stephenson is a fairly well respected futurist.

The Magic Leap technology involves light field projection - kind of like the
opposite of light field photography if you remember the Lytro camera.

------
llamataboot
I wish we knew what their estimated timeframe on having some MVP of this tech
available. 2 years? 5 years?

------
Intoo
MagicLeap is so secretive that it looks like their eye projecting tech. is far
from being ready

------
miles932
OMG. I can think of no stronger endorsement of a technology. _take my money
NOW_

~~~
hyperbovine
"Having a product" comes to mind...

~~~
miles932
Hence why I said "technology". If this gives Stephenson a jaw-drop moment,
it's something I'd like to see turned into something we can all use.

------
kylestlb
Is the blog down? I only see a picture of a submarine hovering above a street!

------
pfisch
This sounds so fake it is ridiculous. They hired a sci-fi author...come on.

~~~
geoelectric
Stephenson has some roots in tech too. Second Life, arguably the most
successful _modifiable_ MMO-environment, was based on his vision of the
Metaverse. One Laptop Per Child was influenced by his ideas in The Diamond Age
(and a side project, Nell, was directly inspired by it). In the Beginning was
the Command Line was an excellent non-fiction work of his surveying OS
evolution. His books in general have a heavy technological focus.

I mean, I hear you, but this is more like Arthur C. Clarke joining a
spaceflight organization. Yes, he's coming at it from a different direction,
but plainly he's got some valid ideas because other people keep implementing
them, directly or otherwise.

