
Magic Leap Review Part I - UpshotKnothole
https://www.kguttag.com/2018/09/26/magic-leap-review-part-1-the-terrible-view-through-diffraction-gratings/
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rhymenoceros
I think Fernando Serrano captured it perfectly:
[https://twitter.com/fernandojsg/status/1017411969169555457](https://twitter.com/fernandojsg/status/1017411969169555457)

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adpirz
Make sure the audio is on; Absolutely brilliant.

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simonebrunozzi
I don't get the audio reference; what's that music from?

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desdiv
The video is a reference to this No Man's Sky parody video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAwB7ogkik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAwB7ogkik)

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t0mbstone
Wow, I had no idea it was actually that terrible!

The fact that 85% of the normal room lighting is blocked by the lens means
that wearing it would essentially be like wearing sunglasses.

On top of that, the diffraction grating also looks like it introduces a bunch
of visual artifacts like smearing, ghosting, and rainbows.

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Animats
Well, of course it has to block most of the room lighting. They can't draw
dark. The display has to be brighter than the ambient light. I'm surprised
these things don't have an auto dimming shutter, like a welding mask, to
adjust how much outside light gets through.

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jacobush
Well, there is this rear view mirror in cars which essentially draws dark by
blocking out the area where the sun would reflect into your eye.

Expanding on that, maybe with some kind of holographic shenanigans, we can
have something that not exactly draws dark, but occludes light very cleverly.

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Animats
The update rate has to be very high and the alignment perfect or it will drive
users nuts. Which means it will probably be done soon, although not in this
round. Doing it with lightweight short path optics is also difficult. All this
stuff with diffraction gratings and Fresnel lenses makes for a crappy image.
That can sometimes be overcome; the Polaroid SX-70 camera had a very
compressed optical system with Fresnel lenses without compromising image
quality too much.[1]

The other option is simply to show the real world via a camera feeding into
the system. That's been tried many times, and it works OK, although lag will
make users faceplant or ill.

[1]
[https://www.technologizer.com/2011/06/08/polaroid/sx70-light...](https://www.technologizer.com/2011/06/08/polaroid/sx70-light-2/)

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jacobush
OMG I so much want an SX-70. I will make it happen sooner or later now that
there is film yet again for it.

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IshKebab
To be honest it doesn't look that much worse than the Hololens and the
Hololens was perfectly fine. Not perfect, sure, but technology has
limitations. People still buy LCDs even though they reflect ambient light,
don't work outdoors, etc. I don't see what the point is of complaining about
having to look through a diffraction grating if we have no other way of doing
it.

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tfha
No, hololens just isn't good enough. Won't see market traction, because it's
too unrealistic, the immersion factor too low.

There's a minimum bar of realism we need to hit to have reasonable AR and VR.
The original Vive hit that bar for VR, but nothing has hit that bar yet for
AR.

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IshKebab
Sure but that's because pretty much only because of the terrible field of
view. Not because you're looking through a diffraction grating.

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partiallypro
The worst part is that Hololens is now almost 3 years old and is going to ship
a new model next year (rumored)...so Magic Leap is also so so so far behind.
Microsoft is smartly pushing Hololens for industrial uses, where Magic Leap
plans on military contracts? There is about a 0% chance the military will be
using AR in any official capacity in the field for a while.

This kind of reminds me of Leap Motion, which is a very cool tech, but I could
never find any practical use for it....at least Leap Motions are cheap.

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Holomakerbot
This was reported just the other day:

"The original HoloLens has been out for a long time now, so a new (hopefully
cheaper) version is overdue, but it now looks like we won’t see it before
2020."

[https://www.techradar.com/news/hololens-20-could-be-
delayed-...](https://www.techradar.com/news/hololens-20-could-be-delayed-by-
windows-core-os)

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hello_asdf
Mirror:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WNHDj6...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WNHDj65VpE0J:https://www.kguttag.com/2018/09/26/magic-
leap-review-part-1-the-terrible-view-through-diffraction-
gratings/%2B&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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gwern
Theranos also talked a lot about military contracts.

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redisman
Endless pool of money with little oversight and nowhere near private-sector
level expectations on results

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scandox
> No amount of money or effort is going to change the physics of diffraction
> gratings.

On the other hand there is an amount of money and effort that will persuade
people to pretend the physics has changed.

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deltron3030
Is there a chance of proper text rendering with this technology, usable
browser windows and such?

I think overcoming the laptop screen and enabling "portable workstations"
(portable like a laptop, not phone) could replace laptops and improve desktop
-> laptop workflows.

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srrge
This is very impressive that someone would take the time to experiment an
document so thoroughly this product. I am thankful because I find this very
interesting and I always thought of Magic Leap as vaporware.

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yodon
Discussion of part 2:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18110225](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18110225)

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cm2012
The last time I compared Magic Leap to Theranos I was downvoted to -4
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16713546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16713546)).
It's interesting to see people's reasoning back then vs the product now, 6
months later.

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threeseed
You deserved to be downvoted for that because (a) it's a baseless accusation
and (b) it was intellectually lazy.

Theranos committed crimes and their fraudulent behaviour directly impacted on
people's lives. There is no evidence Magic Leap has done either and there is
nothing illegal or immoral about pivoting on your product.

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jjeaff
I agree with what you said, except, is making big promises then not delivering
really "pivoting"?

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skrebbel
Yes.

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skrebbel
I got downvotes,which is fair because my comment was stupid because I didn't
read the comments I was replying to carefully enough. I missed the "delete"
deadline so sorry about the baseless noise.

Of course delivering shitty results isn't pivoting.

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mrhappyunhappy
Of topic: who cares if you get upvotes or downvotes? Do people actually care
what others think of their comments? Please, state the unpopular opinion
however brashly you choose.

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falsedan
I see karma as a bank for paying for incredibly trashy comments: for every
upvote I vow to write at least one thoughtless hot take and defend it to the
death

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tomxor
Here take my upvotes :P take them!

