
Magic Leap One - runesoerensen
https://www.magicleap.com/?utm_source=reveal&utm_medium=TW&utm_campaign=WTDO
======
phyller
I don't understand why this entire field seems so focused on gaming, and not
productivity. The single most interesting thing to me was the "displays on
demand".

There are two things that would absolutely revolutionize how I work that I
would pay big money for: 1) Any sort of glasses that would allow me to view
virtual displays in high definition. I don't care if I have to turn my head to
see more than one display, I don't care if they are VR instead of AR. Should
be high enough resolution to be able to use busy Excel spreadsheets and see
enough details on a page to do web development 2) Some sort of glove where I
could move my fingers to type. It doesn't need to represent an actual
keyboard. I could learn whatever new gestures are required for each character.

Those two innovations would mean freedom for me. You could effectively work
anywhere in any position, laying in a hammock, on a crowded train, at night in
bed when inspiration hits without waking your significant other. It would have
to be AR to use while running or working out :)

If these can be made with enough quality to enable equal productivity to a
laptop the creators will have an addressable market of about 3 billion people.

~~~
shimon
There are two reasons why the field is focused on gaming and not productivity:
fidelity and familiarity. It's hard to build high-enough fidelity into the
hardware at a reasonable price point. And even if you did make VR goggles that
were great for giant spreadsheets at $1000, it would be a weird enough idea
that it would have to be _massively_ better than $1000 worth of monitors to
get people interested.

In gaming, on the other hand, the unfamiliarity of the tech is not a risk but
an asset, making the experience more novel. The fidelity doesn't have to be
sufficient to overtake an existing process, just to support a fun experience.
That's a more scalable business with lower technological barriers to entry, so
that's where businesses are focused.

Same reason we had Pong before PCs. You might also see major tech advances in
products for specific targets, like military use, medical, or advanced
manufacturing, that then trickle down to mainstream productivity applications.
But until they get the tech good and cheap enough, expect progressively better
games!

~~~
koolba
> It's hard to build high-enough fidelity into the hardware at a reasonable
> price point. And even if you did make VR goggles that were great for giant
> spreadsheets at $1000, it would be a weird enough idea that it would have to
> be _massively_ better than $1000 worth of monitors to get people interested.

I doubt that. If you make a VR/AR/?R version of a Bloomberg terminal or
Factset then finance firms will literally roll up wads of cash and throw them
at you. It doesn't have to be massively better. It just can't be worse which
is the real hurdle. Granted I'm not an expert on the subject but every VR/AR
app I've seen that claims to be the " _$APP Killer_ " simply sucks.

This is the same reason nobody has dethroned Excel in finance. There's plenty
of things that solve specific sub problems but the generic, " _I have tabs of
data and I want to slice and dice it_ " always goes back to an analyst
exporting data to an Excel file.

~~~
danso
I've never worked at a financial firm but I have a hard time imagining the
uptight social culture of finance being one that embraces employees being
spotted wearing goofy headsets and waving their hands around. The boost in
productivity from any such app would seemingly be negligible, especially when
you consider that the popularity of the Bloomberg terminal lies in its chat
function:

[https://www.ft.com/content/5d6c2d9c-1f61-11e5-ab0f-6bb9974f2...](https://www.ft.com/content/5d6c2d9c-1f61-11e5-ab0f-6bb9974f25d0)

[https://www.ft.com/content/f16d73ee-a910-11e7-ab55-27219df83...](https://www.ft.com/content/f16d73ee-a910-11e7-ab55-27219df83c97)

~~~
CodeCube
> uptight social culture of finance

looooool ... You mean like the men having competitions to see who can hit the
urinal from furthest away? or barefoot wrestling on the trading floor?

Those are both reputable stories I've had relayed to me about people I've
worked with. More like a frat than an uptight environment ;)

~~~
Sukotto
Wow, maybe I was just lucky?

I worked on two different (energy) trading floors. One was a fairly large
venture (30 or so trading desks + mid/back office + dev/ops/DC teams +
management). The other was one of the huge banks. Both were in Stamford CT.

I spent well over 5 years there and never once did I see those sorts of
shenanigans.

There was some stuff: the guy that liked to throw a football across the floor,
occasionally smashing a monitor; the guys that bet $1000+ each over who could
lose the highest % of body weight in 2 months (or was it one month?); and the
occasional swearing, but nothing near the "like a sailor" level I hear about.

Pretty much everyone I worked with was highly professional. They were profit
motivated (for sure), but even there I personally witnessed people making fair
deals where they could have squeezed someone dry and unwinding deals at a loss
to keep a good counterparty relationship.

I'm so glad I never worked with the handset smashing, drug abusing, loudly
swearing, king of the world, type-A assholes that I hear about.

~~~
Jaruzel
> _Both were in Stamford CT._

Been there done that. Was the big bank one, the one with the keys in it's logo
? If so, you were using the Desktop OS build I designed :)

> _I 'm so glad I never worked with the handset smashing, drug abusing, loudly
> swearing, king of the world, type-A assholes that I hear about._

I think these days, thats largely confined to the Hedge-Fund traders. And
those guys are EXACTLY the sort of people would love AR/VR based trading UIs -
_anything_ to make more money is always welcome in their world.

~~~
Sukotto
> as the big bank one, the one with the keys in it's logo

No. We were the other BS across the street.

------
lvoudour
Since the 1st iteration of the design is apparently ready, why can't they just
show a small demo?

It's supposed to be _shipping_ in 2018. They could easily have hired a team of
top notch creators to showcase some of the capabilities of the device live
-even if the device is still not 100% ready- instead of this silly Manhattan
project secrecy. I hope they deliver as promised, but something smells fishy.

It's a pity, because unlike VR I think AR has huge potential both for consumer
and industrial applications.

~~~
mustacheemperor
I share the concern that there's still nothing too publically accessible, but
the device itself isn't completely under wraps. The journalist in the Rolling
Stone article[0] viewed a few demos built between the ML team, including one
with Sigur Ros that's got a very small clip on youtube[1]. I suspect building
a demo of this kind of tech that's remotely as impressive viewed on a website
or youtube video is challenging. If I'd built the device as marketed I'd be
concerned about giving half-baked first impressions that disrupt the hype
machine, even if the device itself isn't half-baked.

[0][https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-
intro...](https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-introducing-
magic-leaps-mixed-reality-goggles-w514479)
[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLtDeonCAYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLtDeonCAYE)

~~~
bastawhiz
The device is supposed to be in the hands of actual paying customers within a
year and they don't even have pictures or video of it _doing something_. Sure
it might not be perfect, but there's exactly zero evidence that this product
isn't just a hollow chassis. If a demo at this point comes off as half baked,
isn't that a gigantic red flag that this product isn't able to cash the checks
that Magic Leap is writing?

Nintendo announced the Switch about six months before it shipped. Before that
they announced titles, showed game demos, and talked about titles in
development. Magic Leap has shown us what could be a 3D printed mockup for all
we know, and has announced (to my knowledge) exactly one thing for the console
(mixed reality comics).

Magic Leap should be marketing the hell out of this. It's a multi-billion
dollar product, and yet they have exactly zero actual footage of the actual
hardware even working. Their sizzle reels have been nothing but concept art.
Something is very wrong with this.

~~~
mustacheemperor
I agree that it is concerning, but I don't see how an entire multi page
article of someone's hands-on experience with the device qualifies as "exactly
zero evidence this product isn't just a hollow chassis."

~~~
bastawhiz
The article, remarkably, has scant few details on the author's experience with
the product. This quote sums up my skepticism:

>instead they were constructed to give visitors who pass through the facility
under non-disclosure agreement, a chance to see the magic in action.

It's a controlled environment with purpose-built demos for folks under NDA.

There's no videos, renderings from actual hardware, or substantive critiques
on the fidelity of the device's output. The only negative criticism is that it
has a rectangular viewport which doesn't fill your field of view. I can't
believe that's the only negative thing that could be said about this. Not a
single comment on FPS, glitches, or any other problems.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I could totally see this demo as being
fudged. The computations could be happening off-device with video streamed
over wifi. We've heard before that Magic Leap has struggled to miniaturize
their hardware, with the last version looking like a proton pack...what better
way to demo it than to fake the demo?

I want real evidence that the cute hockey puck has a real computer inside, not
just anecdotes from an NDAed journalist in a lab environment.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _It 's a controlled environment with purpose-built demos for folks under
> NDA_

Magic Leap pulled a similar stunt with _The Information_ around the same time
last year [1]. Seems like they found a more pliant journalist in _The Rolling
Stone_.

"In March of last year, it released a video online titled “Just Another Day in
the Office at Magic Leap.” Shot from the perspective of one of its employees
working at his desk, all appears normal until robots start falling from the
ceiling and converging on the worker, who picks up a toy gun and starts
blasting his enemies into tangled lumps of virtual metal. The video, viewed
3.4 million times on YouTube, was meant to demonstrate a game people were
playing with Magic Leap’s headset. It had been used for more than a year to
recruit employees to South Florida. 'This is a game we’re playing around the
office right now,' Magic Leap wrote in the description of the video.

But no such game existed at the time, according to two former employees with
direct knowledge. The video was not actually filmed using any Magic Leap
technology. It was made by New Zealand-based special effects company Weta
Workshop, which has worked on movies like 'Mad Max: Fury Road' and 'The
Hobbit,' the employees said. One of them called it an 'aspirational
conceptual' video. The employees said some at the company felt the video
misled the public.

...

In addition to the bulky demo connected to a computer, Mr. Abovitz showed The
Information a prototype of the compact device it intends to build. It looked
as if somebody fastened electronics to every inch of a pair of wire-framed
glasses. It had a multi-layered, flat lens. He would not turn the device on,
but assured a reporter that it worked just as well as the larger, helmet-like
device. Mr. Abovitz would not discuss details of the technology, repeatedly
responding to probing questions with the phrase 'Squirrels and Sea Monkeys.'"

I think Magic Leap is another Theranos. A second, independently-developed
HoloLens makes for a respectable incremental business. But that nugget of
truth has been leveraged to a $6 billion hallucination. Maintaining that
hallucination could have forced management to lie to investors, to the public
and to their employees.

[1] [https://www.theinformation.com/the-reality-behind-magic-
leap](https://www.theinformation.com/the-reality-behind-magic-leap)

~~~
tigershark
So are you explicitly saying that the Rolling Stones journalist is lying? And
the only supposed "proof" you bring is an article over an year old written
when the miniaturised prototype didn't even exist?

~~~
pharrington
"This is a game we’re playing around the office right now,' Magic Leap wrote
in the description of the video."

"In addition to the bulky demo connected to a computer, Mr. Abovitz showed The
Information a prototype of the compact device it intends to build. It looked
as if somebody fastened electronics to every inch of a pair of wire-framed
glasses. It had a multi-layered, flat lens. He would not turn the device on,
but assured a reporter that it worked just as well as the larger, helmet-like
device."

Your post agrees that one year ago, Magic Leap was lying about the technology
they had. JumpCrisscross only asserts that given all publicly available
information, Magic Leap is probably still lying.

~~~
tigershark
This is absolutely false, the Rolling Stones journalist tested extensively the
miniaturised prototype.

~~~
pharrington
The article begins with the author describing several demos, _only after
which_ he is guided to a _different room_ where he has, in his own words, "My
first close look at the full Magic Leap hardware."

Rony Abovitz calls the chips supposedly powering his tech "Sea Monkeys."

~~~
tigershark
"I noticed that when I moved or looked around, her eyes tracked mine. The
cameras inside the Lightwear was feeding her data so she could maintain eye
contact."

~~~
pharrington
Yes. The machines used to render that demo were, _in the author 's own words,_
not the full Magic Leap hardware.

edit: Also, even if that demo was the advertised Magic Leap hardware, it still
only responded to camera movement, and Miller said the demo had capabilities
that he refused to actually display.

------
JumpCrisscross
Magic Leap has a track record of outright lying [1]. Everything in this
"unveiling" looks like CGI. There is no store and nothing is shipping until
"2018".

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/8/13894000/magic-leap-ar-
mi...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/8/13894000/magic-leap-ar-microsoft-
hololens-way-behind)

~~~
TotempaaltJ
Apparently it's real:

[https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-
intro...](https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-introducing-
magic-leaps-mixed-reality-goggles-w514479)

Common concerns, like FOV (not very big), are addressed in this article:

> The viewing space is about the size of a VHS tape held in front of you with
> your arms half extended. It’s much larger than the HoloLens, but it’s still
> there.

~~~
electrichead
I wonder how many people would have no idea how big a VHS tape is.

~~~
mikestew
Our family had one of the early consumer VCR/camcorders around 1980. I still
had to go grab one out of an old box to see how good my memory of its
dimension is. Answer: meh, kinda close, but not an accurate unit of
measurement even for a guy that used them from the beginning. And that’s
because even old people haven’t touched one in a good ten years.

But, hey, _Stranger Things_ , amirite? We’re all 80s-ophiles or something.

------
iamleppert
The naysayers here are funny. There's a fundamental basis for the technology
thats rooted in physics and a mathematical model describing how to attain
perfect bragg compliance in lightfield displays that has been well documented.
But I didn't come here to argue about whether such a thing could exist in the
world or not.

Let's turn instead to more practical matters. The reason they needed a lot of
money is because no one on earth manufactures displays with the specs required
to manipulate light in such a way. This isn't taking some already existing
LCOS micro-displays and shoving them into an enclosure with fish-eye lenses.
Oculus doesn't make their own displays and didn't spend the last 10 years
perfecting them; that tech already existed because it came from the projector
industry as a direct result of trying to make smaller projectors. What these
guys are trying to do is basically as hard or harder than setting up a state
of the art semiconductor company, that just so happens to be making a chip
with special optical properties at the same time. Manufacturing stuff takes
boat loads of money, let alone stuff that is that small. How long and how much
money did it take to go from CRT->LCD is the correct frame of reference. They
basically have to engineer and design the factory in tandem with developing
the product/prototype. Not an easy feat, or cheap.

They could partner with one of the existing fab companies but its not clear
that would be any more efficient because most of those companies are setup in
such a way that is highly customized based on whatever fab and process tech
the company specializes in or adopted, and most that deal with precision
optical stuff (displays) are based on ancient and rudimentary liquid crystal
and polarizer tech that is optimized for smartphones or TVs -- nowhere near
what's required here. It's useful to know that even Apple doesn't make or
design their own displays (although they do heavily influence the technology),
but they do design custom processors and such.

I know its hard for the average reader here to visualize that someone was
given a billion dollars to make something, without ever having made such a
thing before and not yet releasing a product. And it probably makes people
here mad, when they are struggling to raise a modest amount of money for their
own startup. However, generally people who have billions to invest on high
risk super high tech ideas aren't as stupid as people here would have you
believe.

~~~
taytus
>However, generally people who have billions to invest on high risk super high
tech ideas aren't as stupid as people here would have you believe.

Counterpoint: Theranos.

Never assume investors are smarter than us mere mortals.

~~~
iamleppert
Very true about Theranos, but in that case they hadn't even revealed how the
technology worked, and the claims they made implied not only a novel core
technology but some kind of discovery in physics/science as well, by someone
without a formal science background who couldn't explain the science behind
her technology. How do you measure something that occurs once per million
unless you collect at least a million samples? Most people who understand
basic science knew that company had a high chance of being fake. And if I
recall properly, most of their investors were from the conventional startup
industry, not biotech, and they thought they could play house in biotech
without understanding what they were investing in.

I would be inclined to believe the same of MagicLeap but in their case the
science is already well understood and has been done in an analog form for a
long time, using techniques similar to conventional off-axis holography.

~~~
bastawhiz
I'm less skeptical about their display technology and more skeptical about the
ML/computer vision and 3D rendering (for both eyes, as light fields) that they
claim to cram into a tiny hockey puck along with a battery.

------
buro9
I'm pretty optimistic about Magic Leap, and lightfield technology in general.

Where I see it really shining is as a successor to staged plays, and cinema.

The thought of allowing viewers to really deeply immerse, comfortably for long
periods of time, to control the point of focus, to move around.

Kurosawa would shoot movies by building whole sets with all walls intact that
worked from every angle, and having the actors perform the scene over and over
like a contiguous play, and then this would eventually be shot from 3 fixed
points in a single take, offering a consistent and seamless edited final
version with perfect continuity... imagine this with an array of lightfield
cameras capturing the set and actors, and using CGI to gap fill angles where
necessary... and then allowing people to experience cinema from within the
set.

Or, imagine animated cinema where the animations are real-time inserted into a
set that you move around and interact with. The magical real being tangibly
real.

Beyond games, beyond the AR/VR as we've experienced, I think that there's a
really rich content vein that could be tapped within pure entertainment
consumption, and that of the technologies lightfield tech may give the best
control and experience to consumers.

~~~
nradov
That would require an order of magnitude more money and effort for movie
production. For example, sets would have to look real from multiple angles
instead of being just slapped together to work for a single shot. And there's
no evidence that audiences actually want this level of interactivity in their
"lean back" entertainment.

~~~
659087
After going out to see a movie for the first time in a few years this past
weekend, I can't really picture many of the overweight families I saw fully
reclined shoveling hamburgers into their faces wanting to get up and
"interact" with a movie.

~~~
buro9
But could you picture a set in the round with all of the audience sitting in a
circle in a tiered auditorium, and a set being rendered over the audience and
actors performing in the middle?

Shakespeare in the round would be given a fully immersive experience, and it
didn't require any person to move at all... it simply means that from the
perspective of each individual the set is fully complete and hides the
audience as much as possible and gives each observer a unique angle, focus
point.

That an actor could interact with a modern object (foam stick) that is
rendered as an epoch suitable object (a longsword) would be possible.

The possibilities are really quite something, for the scenario of "each viewer
has a lightfield viewer and the scene, set and objects can be rendered in
real-time for them".

~~~
nradov
Even if you could solve the tremendously difficult technical problems, that's
just not an experience that mass market entertainment audiences would want to
pay for on a frequent basis.

------
kirillzubovsky
In my opinion, the new Magic Leap seems to do exactly what Microsoft Hololens
could do two years ago. The only advantage they could have is in the UI, which
MS 100% failed at, and in content availability which was really poor for MS as
well.

This thing could be huge, if the first people who try it on find an abundance
of interactive experiences, so much that they rave about it, and make everyone
else want one. Best yet, if this all happens in public spaces.

Again, personal experience with MS lens is the basis for this, but having
played with it, I am not overly optimistic here. This would be interesting.

~~~
cma
I think they will have some ability to have variable focus, and it sounds like
the field of view is slightly bigger, but not by enough yet.

~~~
Ajedi32
The form factor also looks significantly better.

~~~
Groxx
It's hard to do worse on this than the HoloLens. That headset is ridiculous.
Uncomfortable and hard to position correctly.

------
joshstrange
The first headset to give me virtual monitors that I can use day-to-day in
lieu of my physical monitors will have my money in a heartbeat. I'd love to be
able to carry a headset to/from work and have essentially the same multi-
display experience at home/coffee shop/work/etc. I don't care if it's VR/AR.

~~~
al2o3cr
This comes up a lot in VR/AR discussions, but IMO it's the _least_ likely
application in the near to medium term. There's just not enough pixels in the
headset to accurately simulate multiple high-resolution monitors.

For instance, the Hololens is rumored to have 1280x720 resolution per-eye - so
a screen that consumes the entire visual field is only 720p, and "simulated
displays" that were farther away would be worse.

~~~
erikpukinskis
People keep saying this over and over but I don’t understand. Why does a HMD
need the same resolution as a monitor in order to do the same job? Wouldn’t
the HMD be equivalent to having like sixteen 1600x1200 displays all around
you, and isn’t that at least as good as a single 4K monitor?

You could have one virtual display with close to your face for high resolution
information, and then dozens of peripheral displays further back for ambient
information. Displays can move forward and back with subtle head movements.
Why is the hardware resolution the limit? Isn’t it more of a UI problem?

It’s like people are assuming the VR desktop is limited to being an exact
replica of their physical monitor, but why would you do that?

~~~
Groxx
A good chunk of it is that text is unreadable in current headsets unless it's
far larger than what most people are used to. So that 720p hololens gives you
_at best_ a 720p monitor's worth of text at a time[1]. Sure, you can have any
number of virtual displays around you at any desirable resolution - they're
just unusable until you get close enough that you only see a tiny piece at a
time.

To your specific example of " _You could have one virtual display with close
to your face for high resolution information, and then dozens of peripheral
displays further back for ambient information._ ", yes, absolutely. That makes
sense. But the "close to your face" one would show you less than a paragraph
of text, if you could actually see the peripheral ones all the time. Useful at
times, to be sure, but not equivalent in all (I'd argue "most") situations.

[1]: plus some fudge-factor, because you can read a bit better than with a
comparative screen - the change in how the text lands on pixels as you move
gives you a slightly higher "effective" resolution... though text at this size
is still plenty difficult to read, so you still don't want to rely on it.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Why are you arguing a position at all? Why aren’t you curious about what’s
possible?

------
postit
Nice solidworks render. What about showing the real product?

~~~
moron4hire
All of the imagery on the front page of
[https://www.oculus.com/rift](https://www.oculus.com/rift) is CG

~~~
TeMPOraL
But Oculus actually has those products on the market, and unlike Magic Leap,
it's not universally recognized as vapourware.

~~~
moron4hire
You may forget what 2015 was like. The Oculus Kickstarter was in 2012. By 2015
there were a lot of people questioning whether or not the CV1 was actually
going to happen. Yes, we had the DK1 and DK2 at that point, but we're not
actually talking about a very long period of time here. Magic Leap first
formed in 2010. It's said that the iPhone took 7 years to develop, basically
in secret, for an established company with consumer electronics experience,
with other products to live off of.

I've been pretty critical of Magic Leap and their teasing in the past, and
while we haven't seen any real evidence that the product is real, we also
haven't seen any real evidence that it isn't.

~~~
IshKebab
I remember, and I don't recall anyone seriously doubting whether or not CV1
would happen. Plus, as you say they had publicly available prototypes. The
original Kickstarter had real videos of prototypes and John Carmack saying it
was great. Totally different situation.

------
indescions_2017
Looks like good design choices to me. Separating the power and compute from
goggles reduces weight on the headset. Its ideally suited to be integrated
into a special ops soldier's helmet for use on the battlefield. Or a surgical
visor for a telemedicine operating theatre.

It's very much Day One for this. HoloLens has been a stealth hit for Microsoft
this year. Its the kit ($3K) I'm most excited to try out. Its quite possible
all design prototyping and additive manufacturing software interfaces will
have a head-mounted 3D input component soon.

And that's just the enterprise market. For retail consumers, check out
Fragments to see the possibilities of turning turning home or public spaces
into immersive gaming environments:

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

------
jolesf
I can't not think about this Hyper-Reality video when AR advances are
announced. [https://vimeo.com/166807261](https://vimeo.com/166807261)

~~~
scroot
Hard to fathom why everyone is optimistic about this. Hasn't recent history
overwhelmingly demonstrated that adding AR tech to out current culture will
result in exactly the situation from the video?

~~~
Kiro
The video is exactly how I want the future to be. 100% wired in.

~~~
sergiotapia
I too want to deliver pizzas in a black car while dodging skateboard Kouriers.

~~~
QAPereo
Maybe releasing the nam-shub of Enki in SV would be wise.

------
runesoerensen
Also see this story for more
[https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-
intro...](https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-introducing-
magic-leaps-mixed-reality-goggles-w514479)

~~~
slazaro
Is there an actual difference between this "Mixed Reality" and AR, or are they
just inventing a new term for marketing purposes?

~~~
notyourday
They really need to add "blockchain based" to the description.

~~~
mlevental
[https://www.arcona.io/](https://www.arcona.io/)

~~~
CharlesDodgson
wow this actually looks like a parody!

------
StavrosK
I'm happy to see the website stressing something I've thought VR would do
well: Act as a display for my computer desktop. I would _love_ to just take my
laptop and these glasses with me and be able to have N screens all around me
anywhere I want. Imagine working at a cafe with various large displays all
around you showing all the windows you have open.

If this is cheaper than my three displays (and the resolution isn't too
terrible), it's already saving me money.

~~~
oelmekki
That's my intent as well: use MR to replace monitors, then progressively
switch to monitor-less apps.

There may be a limitation, though: resolution. If we are have 9 virtual
monitors, each displaying content at 2500x1200 (random pick), performances may
not follow.

But then I guess, we only need to focus on one at a time. Maybe those
additional monitors could work if we lower resolution of those not directly
where our eyes are looking at, and just blur them for good rendering.

~~~
Nihilartikel
To say nothing of whether magic leap is real - when vr/ar technology catches
up there's a trick to get around this. It should be possible to track gaze
precisely and only render the high resolution 'fovea' at high detail. The rest
can be very low res and nobody would know. This will probably be important in
graphics and gaming first though, where they can focus all of the gigaflops on
sampling illumination raycasts in the most sensitive area of vision. It's
actually pretty wasteful to render an entire UHD monitor at full resolution
when the eye can't even discern a word at one end of a sentence when the fovea
is focused on the other.

------
brians
This unveiling doesn’t commit to the shape of the product. It doesn’t describe
technical details, like the processing power, number or spectrum of cameras,
radios, anything. It doesn’t commit to a price range, like “under $1200”.

What’s unveiled?

~~~
notyourday
They need more money. Magicleap looks like a typical dot com era borderline
scam of the nineties: something is always right around the corner, if only
there was more money...

~~~
derEitel
"Look how many people we got to sign up on our website! Can we have more
funding now?"

------
nikanj
So, we can sign up now, but they still haven't shown the tech to anyone
without an extremely heavy NDA? I'll wait for Anandtech or similar outfit to
put out at least a tweet about the viability of the technology.

------
eganist
Good lord they really needed a decent industrial design team on hand, though I
guess no one's wearing this out in public, so good looks probably aren't as
necessary. I'm just afraid of the _image_ of people using this causing it to
go the way of the Segway -- we all remember how Dean Kamen and team envisioned
it revolutionizing intraurban transport, yeah?

Anyway, I'm glad to see something came of Magic Leap.

~~~
ransom1538
"I guess no one's wearing this out in public"

Yes. Currently it is birth control for your face.

~~~
escapecharacter
This is a great time to reference this image:
[http://www.wearcam.org/steve5.jpg](http://www.wearcam.org/steve5.jpg)

------
donatj
What I want to know, more than anything, is where this image is used in the
page?

[https://www.magicleap.com/_next/images/5099815a87b8b930e9846...](https://www.magicleap.com/_next/images/5099815a87b8b930e98463a421da04c2.png)

I was inspecting the network traffic of the page and found this image…

~~~
mshenfield
[https://www.magicleap.com/stories](https://www.magicleap.com/stories)

------
chasing
The old demo videos from a year or two ago showed that the Magic Leap could
not do opaque black. Black = transparent on their clear screens.

If that's still the case, then every single example image on their site is a
misrepresentation. They all show black and indicate the Magic Leap can do
opacity.

I call bullshit until I see that they've solved that problem.

~~~
bhouston
Just put a backing LCD in the line of sight so it can darken. And project on
top of that. I think it is possible to solve.

~~~
russdill
Nope, sorry. The backing LCD will be out of focus. The whole AR thing is a lot
of technology that sounds simple, but ends up being really really hard in
practice.

------
shenaor
My south Floridian side really wants them to be successful, but my techie side
despises their secrecy and "demos" aka photoshopped graphics and cgi videos.

~~~
codelitt
I live here too. We unfortunately have built a reputation of our value only
being skin deep and superficial – from our real estate to our transit to our
restaurants and nightlife to our startup community. This reputation is not
entirely without merit; we need to do better.

Knowing all that – I want this to be amazing, but I am keeping my expectations
in check. To me, this all seems too familiar. Lots of flash and shine, but I
don't see anything concrete.

~~~
fuzzfactor
Did you grow up in Ft. Lauderdale like I did?

Most people there have always been from somewhere else, I didn't always fit in
as well being born in Florida.

from above:

>>I don't understand why this entire field seems so focused on gaming, and not
productivity

>Because they think that gamers will pay. Unfortunately, I see that they got a
wrong idea. It has a vibe of a semibotched Kickstarter project, except backers
here are not private individuals, but gigacompanies.

>A type of a gamer who spends 15k usd on a gaming rig to crush opponents in
Quake 3 in ultracompetitive environment, will not care a bit about this toy.

>The founder of the company comes from a socioeconomic strata whose people
have that characteristic. A Boston "old money family (R)" born man may see
that selling gaming stuff to quite a lot of relatively rich people dumping 15k
on a gaming rig is a good business idea, proceeds to build a company built
around that idea with all audicious bold claims being received with accolades
from other people like him, but never actually bothers to figure out what
things matter in a gaming gear.

>If you have read his personal blog from naughties before he deleted it, you
will get that his ways can be said to be well beyond "nebulous". He wrote
stuff like "solving global problems" while maintaining that tone you usually
see from people who flood the internet with something very insubstantial like
"saving African children with Agile, innovation, and seven sigma framework..."

>Ok, back to the botches kickstarter line. As happens often with such
projects, original claims performance get scaled down, company barely manages
to deliver a downrated product after missing the delivery deadlines multiple
times, product works so so, and in the end it ends in your drawer for good. A
year down the line the company simply shuts down the cloud service for the
widget and you are left with an expensive paperweight. I expect magic leap to
follow this route.

then there's this:

>Given what is known about the mechanisms of high end confidence tricks, what
is different about the operation of Magic Leap that indicates that it is not a
confidence trick

Similar to the way that SV is decades ahead in software engineering,
Hollywoood (Calif.) almost a full century ahead in moving picture
entertainment, and Houston with its petro/chemicals, Ft. Lauderdale leads the
pack in confidence leverage, selling to investors their very own dreams in the
most "creative" ways like no place else. Lots of locations are desirable for
different reasons and give rise to extreme leadership in regional specialties
like these, where most outsiders are completely out of their element. Magic
leap is already successful on its own terms without needing actual paying
customers yet or even a shippable product, what's the hurry to put icing on
the cake, even if it becomes possible? I wouldn't expect them to be as
competitive at selling to customers compared to the pitches they have already
delivered and won.

Vapor ware has existed much longer and more traditionally in hardwares than in
softwares to begin with.

The most well-honed So. Fla. ventures always have a very realistic possibility
of truly making money, the persuasive confidence being focused on distorting
the probablity rather than on complete fraud. After all, fraud would be
illegal, even in So. Fla. where you traditionally did not ask people what they
do for a living, that would be rude since there's so little opportunity to
earn a legitimate income compared to parts north. You're supposed to have
money before you go there.

When I was a youngster Ft. Lauderdale was a much smaller yachting community,
but more so than ever it looks like "hook, line, and sinker" will always be
some of the most prominent pastimes enjoyed by those who specialize in this
type of activity. All the yachtsmen I knew were only looking for the biggest
fish, not interested in the small fry. That was for commercially viable
fishermen who didn't even own a pleasure craft.

People probably don't have much memory from the last time, of course Port St.
Lucie isn't exactly South Florida proper. Not as big a venture but could be
considered a POC in an area not as thoroughly overfished as Broward:

[https://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2014/07/23/flo...](https://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2014/07/23/florida-
lawsuit-calls-digital-domain-de-facto.html)

With Facebook and all, everybody knows SV is where the biggest fish are these
days. You go where the money is, or even better bring them to you.

Anyway, I am completely "confident" I could get a better return for the
investors in Theranos than for those lured in to Magic Leap based on what each
of these groups has to work with at the present time, if given the opportunity
to steward each of these companies' present assets from this point forward.
Surely I have seen what looks like some of the huge cash put into Magic Leap
already trickle down into photonic advances that will make money for somebody
someday, and from the looks of Theranos there have got to be some outstanding
people in there somewhere with amazing breakthroughs that I would have an
unfair advantage exploiting.

Only problem is, not so sure it would be a positive return for either one, the
better bet may just be starting from scratch or getting in on the ground floor
of a much smaller outfit in either case.

------
muxator
Moderators: the posted link contains a tracking snippet
(...?utm_source=reveal&utm_medium=TW&utm_campaign=WTDO)

Would it be feasible to remove it?

------
whatever_dude
> The photos are not renderings, and the only retouching that was done was to
> edit out some sensitive IP.

From an update to Ars Technica's article [1], via a Magic Leap spokesperson.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/12/magic-leap-finally-
an...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/12/magic-leap-finally-announces-a-
headset-but-its-vague-rendered-in-photoshop)

------
scandox
This is going to sound super dumb and I haven't been following AR / VR at
all...but I thought Magic Leap were creating AR technology that worked
_without Goggles_? As in projected visible light that I could see with my
naked eye? Am I mad?

~~~
danielvf
Yes, you are mad. :)

Magic leap has always been about wearing something - the've just deliberately
never shown any of their devices in their videos.

~~~
scandox
Good to know :). I won't worry too much about objective reality either then.

~~~
cryptoz
You are _not mad_. This thread and Magic Leap are gaslighting everyone. You
said,

> but I thought Magic Leap were creating AR technology that worked _without
> Goggles_

Yes, that's because they lied to you and deliberately told you that the
product would work without goggles. That is all over their early marketing.

~~~
scandox
I must be the perfect Netizen because I seem to be quite happy to accept
anyone's judgement on whether I am mad or not.

But good, great. I'm not mad.

------
slazaro
They've been very secretive in the past in showing actual results, only
releasing simulations and videos that look real but aren't (fooling people
into thinking they actually had something), and that makes me doubt anything
they say they'll release until they show actual specs and actual videos of
people using it, opinions on their experience, etc.

At least now they have release dates and supposedly that means they actually
have something, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they have.

------
AriaMinaei
I was always wondering why HoloLens is insisting on packing the
batteries/processor on the headset. I'm very pleased to see Magic Leap going
the other way. There is just more room for volume and weight in a pocket than
on a user's head.

Yes, the wire would be somewhat annoying, but I'm optimistic wireless tech
will get there soon enough.

------
evo_9
So is it still 1500 bucks?

And I guess they don't remember Trip Hawkins overpriced bid at entertainment
dominance, the 3DO? Cause this thing has a the whiff of 3DO all over it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_3DO_Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_3DO_Company)

~~~
rasz
3DO actually shipped, and had one very good game.

~~~
PostOnce
which game? An exclusive?

Star Control II was on other platforms, but was great on 3DO,
[http://sc2.sourceforge.net/](http://sc2.sourceforge.net/) is free now and a
deep game. Like 2D Mass Effect I thought. (Star Control II: The Ur-Quan
Masters)

I also enjoyed Return Fire and PoliceNauts which are both available on other
platforms also. Wing Commander III maybe?

~~~
rasz
road and track Need for Speed, had other ports, but 3do was arguably the best
version.

------
doublerebel
Gesture recognition is glossed over in the Rolling Stone article, and Magic
Leap is also using a 6dof hand controller. Hololens and Meta also only support
basic gestures, since as Leap Motion showed significant power draw is required
to run high speed depth cameras.

The eye tracking feature will be a game-changer though, if they really have it
working.

Disappointed to see that the advertised game with a team of 55 is robots
shooting at you through space portals. Hololens has already shipped two
(RoboRaid, Holo Raid).

~~~
Impossible
Yes, the input features alone make Magic Leap a more interesting device to
develop for than Hololens, even if the field of view is similar.

------
stuntkite
I believe in their light field tech. I think there are a bunch of ways easier
light fields that do good enough can be achieved at a price point here and
now, but they are big dreamers and the leader with all that cash.

All that considered though, WHY IS THAT HEADSET MOCKUP SO UGLY? Forgive the
caps but the industrial design on this thing; I'm not talking about the form
factor or the fixed sizing, I'm talking about the bevels, profile, and
texture. It looks like a knockoff ergo keyboard from 2001. Go Scandinavian
minimal cyberprep. Like Frank Lloyd Wright designed a living room for Daft
Punk. Failing that, go full cyberpunk and make this thing true to the
prototype it is. Let me feel like it's my DNI to my Ono Sendai.

I know it's just a rendering, but they should find with some of them dollars
an industrial designer with some teeth and an opinion. This is the most
exciting thing ever if it works as advertised. If they are limiting because of
constraints, them making it cooler to wear is even more important. They've
been a hype machine; that TED talk for their launch was ridiculous. Design by
committee Steampunk goggles that look like a couple 2002 MS laser mice want to
breed on my face is boring and stupid.

Light me up Magic Leap.

------
knolan
At least it’s something. But a few renders of dodgy looking goggles and some
fake Weta demos don’t instill much confidence until we see hardware in our
hands.

------
masswerk
I still wonder, how responsive mixed reality UIs and/or content presentation
may be implemented in a general way.

E.g., your app requires a user selection of one out of 5 tools, which are to
be displayed, ready to pick, in a line-up on a flat surface at approximately
table height. But there is no such surface, or the surface is already
cluttered with other (voluminous) objects. – How do you proceed? Maybe, you're
going for a fallback solution hovering in plain air. But then, there's the
same issue with the "play field" or free of obstacles floor space or table
real estate, obscure floor plans, etc.

I'm finding this problem with nearly all of the content advertised, in demo
videos, etc. How is this to be solved in real life?

------
syntaxing
Whoa! Hopefully they deliver after almost five (?) years of promises. I wonder
if this has anything with the leak of the initial prototype (a huge backpack
you have to wear). Maybe they were forced to release something substantial.

------
mitsubishi77
It appears online music publication Pitchfork has been given a preview/demo as
well.

Somewhat coincidentally (or not) at the same day Icelandic music-greats Sigur
Ros were there to check out a new iteration of the AR-app they have been
developing together with Magic Leap for the past 4 years.

[https://pitchfork.com/features/article/is-secretive-
virtual-...](https://pitchfork.com/features/article/is-secretive-virtual-
reality-startup-magic-leap-dreaming-up-the-future-of-music/?mbid=homepage-
more-latest-and-video)

Pretty interesting read.

------
maxst
> Our lightfield photonics generate digital light at different depths and
> blend seamlessly with natural light

ooooook... How many cameras? Can I make a 3D photo with those cameras? That
would be nice.

------
bredren
Curious how this sync's with Tim Cook's claim that the tech for good AR
glasses 'doesn't exist' yet

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/11/16458944/apple-ar-
glasse...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/11/16458944/apple-ar-glasses-tech-
doesnt-exist-says-tim-cook)

------
scroot
We do not have a culture that is anywhere close to prepared for this kind of
technology. It should be patently clear from the past 20 years that this is
the case.

For example, here's a realistic vision of how it plays out:

[https://vimeo.com/166807261](https://vimeo.com/166807261)

------
JepZ
Btw. with my mobile Chrome I couldn't see much more than a large gradient on
the first screen (before scrolling down) and the mobile view in my normal
chrome looks much more impressive (similar to the desktop version) than the
page I saw on my phone (via wifi). To me I looks like my phone triggered some
bug while loading the page.

------
perseusprime11
Doesn’t seem any different from Hololens. Can somebody fill me in?

~~~
moron4hire
Maybe you're not very familiar with the Hololens. It looks very different to
me. The "goggles" look seems to indicate the rendering will cover the full
field of view. The computer pack seems to indicate they are either going for
greater visual fidelity or longer battery life (or both). And the controller
is more akin to the desktop VR systems than Hololens' janky hand gestures
(though I would honestly prefer someone just solve hand gestures already).

This is a lot more different from the Hololens than the Vive and Rift are from
each other.

~~~
Androider
"The viewing space is about the size of a VHS tape held in front of you with
your arms half extended. It’s much larger than the HoloLens, but it’s still
there.

“I can say that our future gen hardware tech significantly expands the field
of view,” Miller says. “So the field of view that you are looking at on these
devices is the field of view this will ship with.

From [https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-
intro...](https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-introducing-
magic-leaps-mixed-reality-goggles-w514479)

------
marban
Most Steampunkish goggles ever.

------
michaelbuckbee
TL;DR - it's cool. Lightfields are potentially a transformative tech (and this
makes MagicLeap really different than other AR companies). We'll still have to
wait until we get actual hardware to see how well it works.

I follow this space fairly closely, so here is some context for this.

The first thing to keep in mind about AR is that the "target" for all of these
devices is really 5 to 10 years out when the assumption is that an AR
goggles/device will replace smartphones.

This is why Google + everyone else are cool with dumping a billion+ dollars
into MagicLeap, why FB bought Oculus (Yes, Oculus is currently a VR company,
but Michael Abrash and others have publicly stated that is only because it's a
more tractable problem than AR), etc. without an immediate payback / shipping
device. How many trillions is owning the tech that replaces smartphones worth?

And there's a decent chance that MagicLeap will do this as they're taking a
very different approach to the display technology than anyone else.
Competitors like HoloLens, Meta, and about a dozen different smaller companies
all have some version of a LCD display reflecting off an angled visor.

Meta - [https://www.metavision.com/](https://www.metavision.com/) \- the
design is like you took a baseball cap, glued a smartphone screen under the
brim pointing down and then attached a plexiglass visor to reflect the images
up at you.

HoloLens - [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/hololens](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens) \- you can see similar
things here with all their layers of visors.

This reflective LCD approach is well understood and in relative terms "cheap"
(aka you can buy good LCD screens at volume b/c of the existing smartphone
market), but the result is necessarily a very washed out image, it doesn't
look real or solid.

What MagicLeap is doing display wise is something very different. Rony's first
company (sold for $1.2B) used fiber optics for seeing what was happening
inside of a person while they were getting surgery. Imagine a light + fiber in
your heart and the fiber is "scanning" back and forth to get a picture of what
the valves of your heart look like.

Now _flip_ that - so instead you have fiber optics projecting light into your
eye and the resulting image is indistinguishable from reality b/c it's just
more light.

The presumption and rumors all along have been that this lightfield tech is
real and amazing enough to open the wallets of some of the smartest people on
the planet - but initially required something like the arm+lens setup that you
use at the optometrist and a massive gaming PC to make it work.

What MagicLeap has been doing with all this time and money has been trying to
shrink this system down. There have been leaked reports of "backpack" setups
that were more or less a battery and a PC motherboard zip tied to a person.
This announcement at least draws a line in the sand with regards to shipping a
portable lightfield product and it may turn out to really be something
special.

------
olegkikin
Every single lightfield device hides the specs till the launch date. And then
it turns out that even if the resolution of the underlying display/camera is
10-20 megapixels, you have to divide it by 9 or 16 to get the actual
resolution, which inevitably ends up being very blocky.

------
RachelF
The Register has probably the best analysis on this:

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/20/magic_leap/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/20/magic_leap/)

------
daveheq
I scrolled through the site and am still not quite sure I'm understanding what
this is about or how it feasibly works... I guess that's what I get with
modern hip web design marketing BS based on "feelings".

------
bogomipz
I have to scroll down to the 5th and 6th frames to learn what this product is
for?

------
KaoruAoiShiho
So this is the primary innovation here:

>Digital Lightfield Our lightfield photonics generate digital light at
different depths and blend seamlessly with natural light to produce lifelike
digital objects that coexist in the real world. This advanced technology
allows our brain to naturally process digital objects the same way we do real-
world objects, making it comfortable to use for long periods of time.

Can someone explain in detail how this works and is better / different than a
display? Also if this will kill the entire OLED business.

------
rsbartram
Interesting tech. First reviews we have about Magic Leap One is that it has
the same draw backs as Microsoft's Hololens. They both lack real world field
of view and are limited by the design. We covered the Hololens use at the LA
Auto Show which is now in place at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los
Angeles. [https://latechnews.org/mixed-reality-hololens-
experience/](https://latechnews.org/mixed-reality-hololens-experience/)

------
jkempe11
It's really weird that their careers page has no listings.

~~~
pro_zac
It has a ton of listings! Maybe they were updating it earlier.
[https://www.magicleap.com/careers](https://www.magicleap.com/careers)

------
hitekker
Is it weird that the first thing we see in a new product unveiling isn't the
product?

I'm having trouble thinking of other, decent reveals that would choose this
marketing angle.

~~~
robotresearcher
How about the famous Apple Macintosh 1984 promo?

~~~
chasing
The Super Bowl ad ran _two days_ before the Macintosh was released for sale.

I think that's a little different.

~~~
robotresearcher
That's right: Apple had the product ready for sale, and they _still_ didn't
have the product as the first thing you saw. You just get a glimpse at the
end.

------
russdill
Two interesting things I noticed. One is that the demos he experienced were
not using the "goggles" pictured. You'll note that in the chronology, he sees
the demos, and then later:

"My first close look at the full Magic Leap hardware comes in a secluded space
upstairs that resembles a fashion showroom."

So the demos and any tests of field of view were done with surrogate hardware.
It could have even been a modified hololens.

Second, they seem to be backing away from lightfield. I'm guessing they are
switching to sending a single plane with pre-rendered depth of field based on
Abovitz super long, super incoherent rambling monologue.

"Suddenly, if the theory was right, technology didn’t need to capture the
entirety of the light field and recreate it, it just needed to grab the right
bits of that light field and feed it to the visual cortex through the eye."

And of course later:

In theory, a light field should allow you to look past a created image to the
reality behind it and have that closer image lose some focus. The
demonstrations I went through didn't really present an opportunity to see if
the goggles could do that effectively. So I asked if the technology supported
multiple focal planes. "Magic Leap's Lightwear utilizes our proprietary
Digital Lightfield technology, which is our digital version of an analog
lightfield signal,

------
miheermunjal
I just find it hard to see how this is different / competes against the
Hololens. They already have a couple years of market presence and after all
the marketing/campaigns by Magic Leap, the product is the same (with the same
qualms like FOV).

I will say that creator studio piece looks great, given Weta and other studio
parternships.

~~~
mlevental
their key tech is not the wearable or slam it's the lightfield rendering

------
givinguflac
Say it with me: vaporware! I’d love to be proven wrong, but there is
absolutely no way they’ll ship a day before December 31, 2018. And I’ll be
shocked if even that happens.

They’ve never shown a public demo because the private hardware demo is very
likely built with insanely more expensive kit than they could ever sell to a
normal person.

------
dfee
What would the ownership situation look like ina company like this? It’s
raised nearly a couple billion, but has not delivered a single unit.

What is realistically the ownership of the founding team at this point, and
how would they go about raising all this capital and still maintaining some
semblance of ownership and control?

------
Freak_NL
I wonder if these (in contrast with the glasses you get for a 3D film) are
usable in combination with normal glasses?

~~~
clement75009
Looks like they're not. From the Rolling Stone article: "the company will also
take prescription details to build into the lenses for those who typically
wear glasses."

That's not great at all if it means you can't share your headset.

~~~
pmontra
It's probably because of the need to go to market quickly (a simple design
helps) but I wonder if there is at least one founder of those companies that
needs prescription glasses. Apparently all of them have perfect eyesight or
wear contact lenses.

------
IronWolve
I am really looking forward to AR. I thought microsoft mixed reality was both
AR/VR, then found out MR is just a marketing term. The MR devices do not have
AR capability.

So Magic Leap would be the first commercial AR product? Thats kinda neat. 8K
VR will be out in 2018 but also the first AR.

------
zmix
Kids growing up with this will have a totally different view onto the world
than their parents! ;-)

------
aorav
The entire presentation, and the look of the glasses reminds me of the quite
dystopian short Movie 'More':
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk)

------
maxpert
Exciting! Can't wait to try it! From design stand point looks more promising
than HoloLens.

------
Steeeve
A retread of a google glass demo is a long way off from what they were
marketing two years ago.

------
DennisAleynikov
Whoa magic leap finally hatched. Buddhist philosophy and an obsession with the
cgi computers from iron man - I've been mentally imagining how ar labels and
menus looked over my real life for years! This is a dream come true

Can't wait to see this in person!

------
drawnwren
It looks like they're lagging far behind the industry with the input device.
Vive and Oculus are very focused on finger tracking / improving the motion
controller experience. I'm curious how far behind the rest of the device is.

~~~
ClassyJacket
They could literally just slap a LeapMotion on it and be one-up on Oculus and
Vive for the types of interactions that would be useful in AR.

I've used the LeapMotion in VR and it's amazing. The VR headset controllers
work well for their purpose, gaming - low latency, high reliability, high
freedom of movement (can put it behind you etc.), and having physical buttons.
But the LeapMotion tracks your fingers and feels really natural - without
holding anything or placing trackers.

------
achow
Is MagicLeap Lightfield tech same as that of Red's $1200 holographic
smartphone display (announced few months back)?

CEO Jim Jannard has revealed that RED is creating the screen in partnership
with a company called Leia Inc. A spin-off from Hewlett-Packard labs, it calls
itself "the leading provider of light field holographic display solutions for
mobile," and the key words "light field" gives us a pretty good idea as to how
it works.

Light field displays use multiple layers of LCDs with a "directional
backlight," letting you see two different views of the same object with each
eye, producing a 3D effect. [https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/08/red-leia-
holographic-sma...](https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/08/red-leia-holographic-
smartphone-display/)

------
oliwarner
They should spend less time registering meaningless trademarks, and more time
just telling people what the hell it is they're selling.

This is an augmented reality device, yet it doesn't say that anywhere on the
page.

------
bluedino
In all seriousness, porn would be an amazing application for this technology.

~~~
mattbierner
The medium brings new opportunities sure, but also its own challenges. For
example, capturing convincing 3D representations of live people is really
difficult. Even just motion capture in specially designed studios isn’t easy.

Besides 2D overlays, I suspect that most AR applications will use avatars
instead of trying to digitize real people. An unrealistic or cartoonish avatar
would also avoid any uncanny valleyness and quite likely would even be part of
the appeal

~~~
doublerebel
Microsoft has 2 Mixed Reality studios now that do 3D capture, one in SF and
the other in Seattle, which they rent out for VR game creation and other
purposes.

NVidia also has a 3D video capture tech called Virtual Eye. Rumor has it
modern compression brings the video within 20% of 2D video size.

While it's not yet feasible for an AR headset to do such dense capture, the
tech is not far off.

------
b1daly
I have a feeling that using a UI that lacks haptic feedback will be exhausting
to use over extended periods of time.

The idea of waving my arms around in the air for ten hours does not fill me
with anticipatory glee!

------
candiodari
> "Displays On Demand"

Whilst I am excited about the prospect of doing this myself, in the hands of
the advertising web this is effectively "advertise _inside_ your competitors'
store(s)"

------
cat199
> Magic Leap One is built for creators who want to change how we experience
> the world.

nice that it's built for creators, but ... if it's only built for creators who
will actually use whatever they created?

------
ganners
Nice easter-egg when you shake your mouse over the first room at the top!

~~~
pmontra
Turn volume off before trying that in an office :-)

------
thisisit
I am sorry but the scrolling on website is a bit annoying. For one, it
wouldn't move until the images loaded and then mouse is constantly confused
between zooming and scrolling up and down.

~~~
leecarraher
Let's just hope that the clunky scroll site is not indicative of their overall
regard for usability.

------
kalal
I like the separation of glasses from compute power. The design itself seems
cool, a little bit inspired by Ghost in the Shell. But imagine putting this on
average dude, the coolness is gone ;)

------
pvelagal
I am really excited with this announcement ! Hope to get my hands on one of
these and experience it. With future updates, i hope the glasses will look
less bulky.

------
gallerdude
The "real" and digital worlds will be merged in ways unimaginable. The
breakdown of the physicality of the world has begun (and I'm really excited).

------
gt_
Looking for resolution and FOV specs, not seeing anything.

------
starchild_3001
Yeah, right. Those are called "welding glasses" :)

Sorry, I could not stop it. Hope the technology is amazing, and people will
overlook how it appears.

------
Gracana
Yikes. [https://i.imgur.com/Ys8IewX.png](https://i.imgur.com/Ys8IewX.png)

~~~
calcifer
What are you viewing it on? Looks fine for me with FF on Linux.
[https://i.imgur.com/MFb0tx9.png](https://i.imgur.com/MFb0tx9.png)

~~~
Gracana
IE 11. :)

My job involves lots of windows-only proprietary junk so my work machine is
very windows-y. I wouldn't normally do this to myself.

------
Friedduck
How is this an improvement over VR headsets already on the market?

------
phamilton
> Our lightfield photonics generate digital light

is it just me, or is "digital light" an absolute nonsense term?

~~~
whoisjuan
Unless they are saying that the light is generated through a digital
micromirror device:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_micromirror_device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_micromirror_device)

------
ilaksh
So it has a computer system based on Linux? Tough for me because my VR project
uses several Windows APIs.

~~~
coolspot
Every advanced tech is using *nix.

------
oliviergg
Did you notice that the only visible book is 'Snow Crash' From Stephenson ?
Some hidden message ?

~~~
salmonfamine
I believe that Stephenson is currently employed by Magic Leap, weirdly enough.

~~~
the_rosentotter
Makes sense. One of the ways well-known authors make money is by selling bogus
endorsements. Basically just giving someone the right to quote them that they
like their product. I doubt Stephenson's "employment" with Magic Leap goes
much deeper than that.

------
sagivo
Snapchat Spectacles failed, yet they nailed one thing that Magic Leap didn't -
design.

------
vbuwivbiu
Until this tech is as "convenient" as ordinary spectacles it will remain niche

------
pmarreck
The attractiveness of their model does nothing to hide the dorkiness of those
glasses.

------
dxhdr
"Calling all designers, developers and creatives."

Call me when you've got a user base.

------
Grollicus
This is a nonsense name, some useless design effects and the first sentence I
read is "We're adding another dimension to computing". Which is an insult to
everyone working in computing to this day because it claims everything we've
done is a null set.

Can someone please tldr this without marketing bullshit?

------
erric
Well funded and by companies like Google. Hope this keeps going well for them!

------
Lapsa
scrolled a bit and got bored - tired of non-sensical marketing bragging

------
meri_dian
This thing I'd gonna be the AR Hardware version of Duke Nukem.

------
Walf
Why do they keep implying that they can project dark?

------
fmitchell0
i know i shouldn't be, but i'm very excited.

~~~
Ahks
you really shouldn't be

------
homarp
Nice for them to prepare for Apple and their glasses.

~~~
starchild_3001
Lol :) Probably true. Showing the how not to do it, before Apple finally
figures it out.

------
tinus_hn
What's with the tags in the URL? Is this an ad?

~~~
grzm
It was likely a blind copy-paste by the submitter, or submitted using the HN
bookmarklet. You can contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer and
ask them to update the link.

------
davidw
How'd they manage to get a Porg as a logo?

------
keypusher
Nothing on that page makes me want to buy one.

------
seanmoore
So why does AR even exist? Is it too expensive to just have an outward facing
camera (or 2 or 5) and re-render everything on the eye screens in real-time?

~~~
mlevental
I'm so shocked at this question that I don't know how to answer it other than
yes it is very expensive to render in high resolution high fov low latency

~~~
seanmoore
So AR is essentially a transitional technology until we have better computers?

e: so I realize AR might be around for a while in things other than Goggles
(like phones where resources are limited), but for fully goggled in people I
assume VR > AR in nearly every way.

------
ranman
Would be cool to see this with Sumerian.

------
zenkat
Website repeatedly crashes on iOS, both Chrome and Safari. Hope the QA on
their world-changing AR is better the website.

------
baybal2
Their website is very slow

------
olivermarks
They may be working on an Enron trading room demo....

More seriously I'm still hoping it will be amazing...

------
wahlis
Where do the cables go?

------
supergirl
not sure if this page is aimed at regular people, but by reading it I don't
know what this device is. I would guess some kind of AR. what I can read is
that it's for creators and it will change the world.

------
hyperpallium
Wait, weren't they discredited for fraudulent demos about a year back?

------
fishmeat
Anyone else experiencing some crazy lay with the site?

------
untog
Looks great. Get back to me when it's real.

------
jbirer
interesting

------
muxator
Opened the link on a mobile phone. Got a full screen image with the following
text: "welcome to day one". OK, let's scroll a bit. This is the text that
follows: "We're adding another dimension to computing. Where digital respects
the physical."

What's this site about? What's the product?

I understand that designing a website is tricky, but - to me - this site seems
an example of something aesthetically pleasing, but very cryptic from a
content point of view.

~~~
npgatech
This kind of thing drives me crazy! But, for a small project that’s not
obvious to anyone - this makes sense.

Look at Apple’s full iPhone landing page. It’d be silly to explain at the top
“iPhone is a wireless digital communication device.” It’s obvious that dude is
wearing glasses that look like AR/VR headset. You ain’t gotta spell it out for
people.

~~~
ben20gmt7
It would be silly because everyone knows what an iPhone is. Not everyone knows
what Magic Leap is. When I first saw it I couldn’t figure out what it was. Bad
website.

~~~
npgatech
You seriously can’t tell it’s a AR/VR headset by looking at a guy wearing
glasses with two wires coming out of it?

You may not know what MagicLeap - the company - is, but you certainly don’t
need to be told it’s a AR/VR headset.

I agree with obscure random crap that shows up on HN and takes forever to
figure out what it is. This isn’t one of those cases. It’s utterly obvious.

------
ramijames
Oh shit. Guys! Guys! The future is here!

------
okket
So what does this thing do?

------
spalt
i don't want something beaming light into my eye at close range. just doesn't
seem appealing to me.

also, how is this different than castAR?

~~~
russdill
You are aware that the power or intensity of photons does not diminish over
range, correct? Things that are closer are appear brighter because they cover
a greater field of view. You could keep something at the same luminosity but
make it larger and it's the same effect as bringing it closer. Also, you see
precisely because photons are beamed into your eyes.

------
Thinpad
this ones a sure piece of junk :) which will not appeal to 90% of population.
Who will wear that device and roam around carrying a light pack and a
controller. There is a long way to go and Apple will refine this piece!

------
suyash
From those cables, Looks like it will be tethered to a computer. For that
reason I'll be out.

------
deft
I said they would have to be changing the world to be getting all this
investor support. This does not change the world. Not even close.

------
ZenoArrow
They haven't unveiled jack shit. Just another bunch of 3D renders. Unveiling
your product should mean a little more than some sketches of what you'd like
to build.

------
DiabloD3
So, I don't know how this sort of thing works.

When do investors start suing for fraud?

------
JKCalhoun
From the title, I somehow thought I was going to get a link to this (Leap
Frog, Magic Touch):

[https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/I/81x3li7Wp%2...](https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/I/81x3li7Wp%2BL._SL1500_.jpg)

------
Ajedi32
This is actually really exciting. Still not a lot of details on specs or
pricing (which is what will ultimately determine whether this succeeds or
not), but from what we've seen so far I think this is the first consumer-
focused AR product which has the potential to gain a real substantial level of
adoption. The Oculus Rift DK1 of AR, as it were.

Though with recent advances in AR and VR tech, the Magic Leap doesn't seem as
magical as it did when they first started teasing it several years back.
Looking at the trends over the last year or so, I think it was only a matter
of time before _someone_ came out with a product like this. (In fact, what
they announced here today almost seems like a cross between a Microsoft
Hololens and an Oculus Santa Cruz headset.) The real innovation Magic Leap
seems to be bringing to the table is their "lightfield" display; though it's
hard for me to judge how big of a deal that will be without trying it for
myself.

~~~
Tepix
It's a "Creators edition", that doesn't sound cosumer focused at all.

~~~
Ajedi32
> Abovitz' view that this first release of hardware is workable and good,
> could explain why they’re calling it the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition. To
> Magic Leap, creators are developers, brands, agencies, but also early
> adopter consumers. “The consumers who bought the first Mac, or the first
> PCs,” he says. “Everyone who would have bought the first iPod. It’s that
> kind of group. But it’s definitely not just a development kit. If you’re a
> consumer-creator you are going to be happy.”

Source: [https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-
intro...](https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-introducing-
magic-leaps-mixed-reality-goggles-w514479)

------
patientplatypus
So...how's this different than the Microsoft HoloLens? Seems to be a huge let
down considering the hype machine.

Also, the form factor makes me want to vomit. Look there are 2 possible market
segments you could go for that might buy this thing - the staid corporate type
that is potentially looking for a toy that they can convince their SO is
actually for work. In that case it should look like a pair of chunky raybans
or horn rim glasses. The other segment is the hip crowd that wants to have
something flashy and fashion forward. Just google "cute <insert preferred
gender here> wearing ski goggles". People love those things.

Instead what they made is something you put on your face that makes you look
like an asshole. No one likes looking like an asshole.

The cage that houses the cameras and the viewing screen is made of plastic.
Any idiot with a 3d printer can make this in their garage. The important bits
are all cabled to a hip harddrive anyway (also, really no wireless?). You have
to ask yourself, if they can't do the easy things, why would we expect them to
do the hard things (ie make this thing actually work)?

~~~
anotheryou
A true light field projection would be nice. If you look at the background in
a 3D movie it's blurry, with a light field it would come in to focus.

This is probably also what makes the projection bulky and why there are
optical fibers running up (if it was anything else you could have used a
single one). If this delivers what it promises, I wouldn't even mind wearing a
light backpack for it.

And they are probably at this stage:
[https://images.contentful.com/bl73eiperqoo/2309lfO8h64WWYECO...](https://images.contentful.com/bl73eiperqoo/2309lfO8h64WWYECOGkqiU/c6d6e55d1f27bdb78deda20dd226decf/Smaller_XR_Cat_2x.png)
so sure to make it to the form factor, but not pretty yet :)

~~~
Ajedi32
> And they are probably at this stage

No, that's where they were [almost three years ago][1]. They [now][2] refer to
that early prototype as "The Cheesehead".

[1]: [https://img.wennermedia.com/620-width/magic-leap-mixed-
reali...](https://img.wennermedia.com/620-width/magic-leap-mixed-reality-
concept-glasses-835a461a-47a0-4d07-acee-0f57f5ce3a53.jpg)

[2]: [https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-
intro...](https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-introducing-
magic-leaps-mixed-reality-goggles-w514479)

