
Magic Leap: A New Morning [video] - DGAP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmdXJy_IdNw
======
iLoch
I'm not skeptical that this is real footage "shot from Magic Leap technology",
however I am skeptical that the final product will be anywhere near this good.
Microsoft announced HoloLens around a year ago now (I think?) and they were
able to show videos like this at that time. My expectation of what the
disclaimer in this video is saying is that you can use Magic Leap "technology"
without using the consumer hardware. Microsoft has shown us how amazing this
technology can be when you hook it up to very expensive gear that's tethered,
etc.

HoloLens probably represents the best technology we've ever seen in this
field, and even still you have a very limited FOV and 3D capability in the
consumer product.

Sorry, but I don't think Magic Leap developers have the ability to solve this
problem better than Microsoft Research.

~~~
rtkwe
> "shot from Magic Leap technology"

That's my main concern. Microsoft could have reasonably made the same claim
about the HoloLens-on-a-Camera setup that they were using during their
announcement videos that ultimately didn't show the actual view. The graphics
and fidelity were really similar from what I've heard but the experience as a
whole wasn't close.

My biggest concern with the video's we've seen is a) how closely this FOV
matches the real thing b) what kind of processing power this will require (AR
gets much less interesting if it requires a highend PC attached to do the
rendering and tracking) and c) what that room actually looks like, ie every
Magic Leap video that's been shown as shot through the actual technology looks
like it's REALLY DIM.

~~~
tgb
Regarding FOV, I wouldn't be surprised if this did match the real thing and I
wouldn't be surprised if the Hololens demo also matched the real thing. The
problem is that we're looking at a video and have a hard time judging the FOV
of a video. If it fills the video, it must fill our field of view, right?
Well, a typical cellphone camera has a horizontal FOV of like 60 degrees,
versus 180 or so for human vision. But videos don't look low FOV to us when we
view them.

~~~
rtkwe
True, I thought of that and saw a couple people mention that when the original
hullabaloo about the FOV differences started. Even if it's accurate to the
actual FOV the end result is that the video doesn't give a good feel for the
actual device so ideally to me it'd be done differently to give a more
accurate feel to what the final FOV would look like.

------
rfurlan
HoloLens user here, based on this video alone, the experience appears to be
equivalent, although holograms appear to be a bit more stable on HoloLens,
which also has no trouble tracking fast head movements

~~~
rfurlan
Here is a video I recorded with HoloLens, but not through it, the actual
holograms are transparent on the headset:

[https://goo.gl/photos/S2B9A8xkvyLkPK7U8](https://goo.gl/photos/S2B9A8xkvyLkPK7U8)

~~~
Adaptive
Great video. Was really hoping the baby would get up and do something when you
clicked on it.

Only partially joking. There was a mental pause where I stopped to think
whether something was going to occur. Testament to the overall quality of the
AR.

~~~
rfurlan
lol that was the idea, glad you enjoyed it!

------
neotek
The cynic in me wants to dismiss this as just another marketing video from a
company yet to show us anything tangible, but the child in me desperately
wants this to be a reality. Please, please let this be real.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Am I the only person who doesn't want this tech? I love what's going on with
VR and tried out a Vive this weekend, but this kind of AR just seems like it
would be somewhat annoying. It would be tons of pop-ups, notifications, etc
that would detract from one's quality of life. I suspect keyboard/mouse and
monitor will hard to unseat in the workplace, the same way we didn't give up
on laptops and desktops for ipads.

I'm already fighting this battle with my android watch. Every so often some
app decides that I want notifications and then my watch vibrates what's
essentially a marketing message and I, of course, check thinking its a text
message or email. Thankfully this is easy to disable on a per app basis, but I
can imagine it'll be much worse on AR when developers have our entire field of
view to post marketing messages on. AR gaming seems like it would be pleasant,
but do I really want my living room the background of all my games? Seems to
me VR is the better solution in gaming, especially with cameras mounted on VR
headsets like the Vive has.

AR is starting to feel like the Kinect or Google Glasses all over again. We're
getting these amazing demos and everyone is excited, but no one is really
thinking usability, interfaces, social exceptions, and realistic applications.
Or considering how much more mature VR is right now and how it might just eat
AR's lunch. With VR you are at least socially signaling "I am in a different
space and not here with you", but with AR you are socially signaling "I'm here
but I'm projecting a mustache on you for my own amusement and partially
ignoring you while I watch funny youtube clips" which will make people
uncomfortable the same way Google Glasses did.

~~~
slantyyz
You're not the only one. I personally am not a fan of VR either.

BUT... There is one use case where I would totally adopt AR/VR for, that I
don't see a lot of people talking about.

If someone could make an VR/AR app that simply gives me a floor to ceiling
monitor and used eye tracking, I'd be thrilled.

I currently use a pair of 4K monitors (@ 1:1) for work, and I _still_ feel
like I could use more real estate. I would guess that a pair of goggles would
cost less than having more monitors, and take up less space.

~~~
rtkwe
The biggest issue preventing that is that to do better than your dual 4k
monitors the VR goggles will have to have many more pixels on the much smaller
screens, which is hard to do reliably from a manufacturing standpoint and
would require an enormous amount of processing power to render at the 90FPS
that VR requires to be comfortable.

~~~
slantyyz
Would it need more pixels if all it is doing is scrolling up and down a
virtual monitor though?

~~~
rtkwe
If you want to see more on the screen at any one time than your current 4k
screen it's going to require more pixels no matter how you arrange everything
else. If you want to put it 'deeper' into the VR world than just placing the
exact same screen data onto the VR screens will require multiple real pixels
per fake VR screen pixels.

Also don't forget you have to have 2x panels with the increased resolution at
smaller sizes than the existing monitors.

Finally if you are just scrolling through a virtual screen there's no reason
that can't be done on today's monitors and we already have eye tracking tech
available without having to jam that tracking into already crowded glasses.

~~~
slantyyz
I am willing to accept tradeoffs in resolution for more working area.

I basically have the equivalent of 8 1080p monitors, but if I can get the
equivalent of more 1080p monitors over a larger area but at a lower pixel
density (downscaling is ok provided I can zoom in and out), I'd be totally
good with that.

------
npatrick04
It looks very cool, but they definitely moved & rotated slowly in the video.
Hopefully they can keep the motion tracking processing latency low enough to
not cause nausea.

~~~
IshKebab
Actually that's an interesting point - Oculus has shown that you can do
tracking and display updates on a traditional display fast enough to appear
more or less fixed to the world.

But Magic Leap's display has a physically spinning component. I wonder if you
move quickly there is a gyroscopic precesion effect that distorts the
display...

~~~
svig
Spinning component?

~~~
IshKebab
Yeah it's a fibre optic light that spins in a spiral pattern to scan out an
image, kind of like a circular CRT.

At least that's what some of their patents describe.

------
wrs
So this is the future! Someone trying to get work done while being totally
distracted by bleeping notifications and virtual jellyfish.
Grrkidsoffmylawn...

~~~
sirtaj
You could just as easily go the other way and overlay distracting people in
the room with a peaceful zen garden.

------
Negative1
I'm sure that is representative (it doesn't seem that they've solved
'registration' yet) but I'm curious what's behind the camera lens. For all we
know it looks like this: [http://arcadeheroes.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/03/swordvr.p...](http://arcadeheroes.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/03/swordvr.png)

Or it could be a Tango. Or a HoloLens devkit.

Have they still not hit investor saturation so they don't want to show what
they have because the speculation will bring in more funds than the real
thing? Or are they just building up their patents so they can own the
technology while companies like MS do the heavy lifting? Do they assume
whoever has the smallest AR rig wins so don't want to show their cards yet
(assuming this thing is the size of a normal pair of glasses)?

Their level of secrecy is actually getting kind of annoying.

------
awinter-py
I love that this is based on a vibrating fiber optic designed for
colonoscopies.

------
astletron
Sometimes you eat the jellyfish. Sometimes the jellyfish eat you. I guess.

------
phodo
This reminds me of both the NeXT Steve Jobs demo and the Knowledge Navigator
video they shot during Sculley's time.

------
cb18
What's the deal with giving girls these masculine names? Murph? Max?

Also, this may be the hardware basis for interfaces of the future.(yes, it's
neat, something similar to what many of us have been imagining for a long time
I suspect. What does the actual hardware look like though?)

But is this the type of software we want? The notification, reactive model?
Our time and attention is limited, the beauty of computers is we can access
the info we want at any given time, and control its flow.

And yet we've set up this paradigm of being bombarded with pointless trivium,
there's a business case sure, all the better to squeeze in some sponsored
messages, but is there a case for human flourishing here?

How many times a day does a device of yours feed you info that only serves to
distract from what you're doing at the given moment? These notifications can
be turned off of course. I encourage you to do so.

~~~
Erwin
"Murph" (and the space helmet too) are likely an "Interstellar" reference;
Cooper's daughter was named "Murph":
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/reference](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/reference)

Young Murph: Why did you and mom name me after something that's bad?

Cooper: Well, we didn't.

Young Murph: Murphy's law?

Cooper: Murphy's law doesn't mean that something bad will happen. It means
that whatever _can_ happen, will happen. And that sounded just fine to us.

~~~
cb18
Cool, I like those kind of subtle references. I've not seen that movie, what
little I've seen about it seems interesting. Would you recommend it?

That dialogue is reminiscent of " _A musician must make music, an artist must
paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What
one can be, one must be._ " -Abraham Maslow

Edit: Well, glancing at the IMDB page, I'm guessing you would recommend, I
didn't know the movie had been so well received.

------
raesene6
The video looks very cool and the opacity of the AR images was darn good.

That said Magic Leap are still awfully light on some key details like :-

\- Will it be tethered or untethered. \- If it's untethered what's the FOV
like (looked good in that video) \- If it's untethered what's the battery life
like..

They already have competition in the untethered space (hololens) and the
tethered space (Meta 2), who look to be ahead of them in terms of getting a
product to market (both have actual kits in the hands of 3rd party developers)

I really hope Magic leap will be good, but I must admit a level of cynicism
about the lack of solid detail on the product and technology

~~~
IshKebab
It was hard to tell if there was any 'opacity' at all. Looks like a bright
light over a dim background which seems like the only way you could physically
do it, given what we know about their technology.

~~~
jyxent
Magic Leap has a patent which includes: "occlusion mask device comprises a
display configured to either occlude or pass light at each of a plurality of
portions of the display, depending upon a pertinent command to occlude or pass
light at each portion."

[https://www.google.com/patents/US20130128230](https://www.google.com/patents/US20130128230)

~~~
IshKebab
Hmm well I guess we'll have to wait and see (patents can describe anything
they want).

------
6stringmerc
The more I think about how exciting this could be for education uses, the more
reality kicks in with a dose of cynicism that no matter how whiz-bang fancy
the presentation method might be, it takes actual personal work and investment
to 'learn' things. I mean, sure, watching videos and clicking on stuff is
great, but from my studies, I saw very little evidence that such engagements
result in much of any valuable retention. Or, in other words, now instead of
begging to quit piano lessons, kids can beg to stop having to work through
their AR/VR Serato Club DJ Training Modules.

~~~
zappo2938
How to learn to code.

10 PRINT "Type a few characters"

20 PRINT "Bang head on wall"

30 GOTO 10

------
gokhan
Need batteries? What's the battery life? Is it heavy? Only eye wear or a
helmet? What's the resolution? Can I go outside wearing it? What's the price?
Any SDK? What's the timeline?

After HoloLens, can this video considered revolutionary to justify 4.5B
valuation based on their last round [1]?

[1] [http://www.wired.com/2016/02/magic-leap-raises-the-
biggest-c...](http://www.wired.com/2016/02/magic-leap-raises-the-biggest-c-
round-in-venture-history/)

------
svig
The MR effects are awesome, but for the use cases the demo targets, it needs
to be more...seamless? Probably it is just the way the demo was shot. Also, I
would love for them to dismiss the windows, declutter the space and pull other
things back in. I understand this just showcases all possibilities, but I feel
a story could be told better.

For instance, the email around Mt. Everest project was cool. Showing an
interaction with the project would have been cooler. But, fun stuff
nevertheless.

------
seibelj
Curious what the head gear looked like. Also, the vibrations of the models
were very jarring to me, I could barely look at it anymore by the time the
video ended. Obviously this is amazing technology, but I can't adopt it until
1) It doesn't make me sick, and 2) I don't look like a total doofus while
using it.

------
amelius
I hope this will be open hardware. That is, without a gatekeeping entity that
will control sales of software on the platform. Otherwise, meh, I'll wait for
a similar piece of hardware from a different manufacturer.

Demo looks cool though.

~~~
fapjacks
Let's be honest though: Google et al have set the standard and now it's every
hardware developer's dream to create a platform that they can then use to
extract 30% of all app sales on. As a heavy crowdfunder of hardware projects,
it is a rare gem that isn't one of those awful closed platforms hoping to
become a walled garden.

------
dang
Also a long article about them here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11526056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11526056).

------
ck2
If google glass had this, adoption would have taken off.

~~~
ZenoArrow
If I was being cynical, I'd say that's exactly why they're funding it.

[http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/21/7026889/magic-leap-
google...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/21/7026889/magic-leap-google-
leads-542-million-investment-in-augmented-reality-startup)

~~~
ck2
Glass 2.0 is going to rocketship.

Especially if they make the hardware far more subtle somehow.

Though popup spam might give you a heart-attack.

Could become an ancient ancestor to "ghost in the shell" type of living with
external memory.

Also solves the "problem" of 3D hologram TV, who would need it anymore.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "Could become an ancient ancestor to "ghost in the shell" type of living
> with external memory."

If you like anime and AR, you may be interested in Dennō Coil:

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

------
jonahx
Does the user need to wear some kind of glasses to experience this? If so, how
big are they? If not, how is it achieved?

------
jpeg_hero
Is this Heaven? or is this Hell?

I can't tell...

------
foreigner
Looked fun... right up until the side-effects kicked in and he started
hallucinating jellyfish.

------
Nogwater
What's the field of view?

------
10dpd
Has a timeline for Magic Leap ever been made public?

