
Magic Leap Says Ex-Engineer Copied Headset for China - guyhance
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-18/secretive-magic-leap-says-ex-engineer-copied-headset-for-china
======
dirtyid
Nreal optical hardware is closer to ODGs and very different to Magic Leap.
Magic Leap acquired ODG patent portfolio recently (after effectively killing
them via some backstabby acquisition shenanigans) and is now opportunistically
patent trolling Nreal and the increasing amount of Chinese competition (Nreal
has much better visual quality at a much lower price) using post rationalized
accusations given current US-China climate. And on queue, Bloomberg Tech does
a Bloomberg Tech on the story.

~~~
iabacu
> and is now opportunistically patent trolling Nreal

Are you making this up?

I don't see any patent claim being mentioned in the article.

~~~
scotty79
I think he didn't mean that literally.

"Patent trolling" as in extorting someone who successfully implemented some
idea just because I have some claim to comming up with vaguely similar idea
first.

------
shasheene
The article reports on the lawsuit, but is light on details about the headset.
Tested recently did a 10 minute review on this headset, the 'Nreal Light' [1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9A9u-lwjTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9A9u-lwjTs)

Regardless of the merits of the lawsuit, I can see why Magic Leap would be
scared. The AR glasses looks great. They're certainly stylish enough for the
mass-market -- they look like normal glasses at first glance, they're quite
reasonably priced (at $500), and run from a regular Android phones via USB-C
(for power, as well as sensor and video data).

For reference, here's the Tested review for current Magic Leap product, the
Magic Leap One Creator Edition:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrq2akzdFq8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrq2akzdFq8).
It retails for $2295. Though it comes with controllers, eye-tracking for focal
accommodation, two waveguides displays that are used to provide two separate
physical layers to focus on.

~~~
shasheene
On the merits of the lawsuit, after reading the whole district court filing
[1], the core allegation is that the 'Nreal Light' is based on Magic Leap's
unproductized internal designs produced "after extensive investment of time
(multiple years), money (hundreds of millions of dollars spent on research and
development) and human resources (hundreds of engineers)", and that the
defendant learned about the product designs and research during his
employment, including adapting (as discussed elsewhere in this thread) Magic
Leap's proprietary font
([https://i.imgur.com/7pYZ8bp.png](https://i.imgur.com/7pYZ8bp.png))

If Nreal Light is indeed based on Magic Leap's unreleased designs, this makes
me very sympathetic to the price difference -- Magic Leap One is a development
kit backed by 5+ years of huge R&D investment, and is/was never intended for
end-users (hence the price and awful aesthetics).

The Nreal Light is an indication of what a consumer Magic Leap was going to
be: a cheaper, slimmer, less ambitious product (by avoiding multiple waveguide
displays) that appeals to a consumer market, then it's unfair and sad that
they didn't have the opportunity to go to market with their own product.

On the other hand, Magic Leap has had ample opportunity to release an
affordable high-quality AR headset so I do feel some sympathy in an employee
leveraging legitimately acquired knowledge and experience to build a
commercial product that beats its competitors. The situation may not that
different to the Traitorous Eight, or Steve Jobs infamous "adapting" of design
ideas of the Alto for the Apple Lisa and Apple Macintosh, after his visit to
Xerox PARC.

[1]
[https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.343717...](https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.343717/gov.uscourts.cand.343717.1.0_1.pdf)

------
ETHisso2017
>Magic Leap alleges that Chi Xu, who left in 2016, exploited its confidential
information to “quickly develop a prototype of lightweight, ergonomically
designed, mixed reality glasses for use with smart phones and other devices
that are strikingly similar” to the Florida-based startup’s designs.

>The startup alleges that Xu plotted during his roughly 13 months working
there to launch his own competing company in China and “neglected his work
duties” to acquire proprietary information.

While these are valid allegations to make, I'm not sure what IP "theft" has
occurred. It sounds like Magic Leap is accusing Chi of looking at Magic Leap's
designs and having the intention of launching a product in the same market and
with roughly the same form factor - but crucially, does not allege that Chi
exfiltrated any CI/trade secrets or infringed on any IP.

The second set of accusations is also kafkaesque, by the way, as they are
accusing Chi of having the intent to launch a competing company by himself -
something that many, many tech employees have dreamed of (and done) without
ever being sued. I'm not sure what that allegation is there for, honestly.

~~~
pvg
_but crucially, does not allege that Chi exfiltrated any CI /trade secrets or
infringed on any IP_

Their complaint alleges exactly that, repeatedly.

~~~
paxys
Nowhere in the complaint do they ever mention a single specific bit of
technology, code, design or patent stolen by Chi Xu. Their entire argument is
that he signed a confidentiality agreement when he started working there so
should not be able to start a competing company. This is going to be next to
impossible to enforce in California, let alone China.

~~~
gamblor956
A complaint isn't required to allege specific IP stolen. It's to allege
_general_ categories of IP stolen. Too much specificity limits the scope of
the complaint and would require an amended complaint if more IP was stolen
than originally alleged.

The next stage of the litigation process, discovery, is for determining the
specific IP pilfered (if any).

------
majia
Lessons learned from Magic Leap: don’t sign a non-compete agreement with your
employee; you have to pay and it’s legally not enforceable in California. Ask
your employee to sign a board confidentiality agreement and sue him if he
works for a competitor.

Also, I wonder if people would think differently if this case is about a
Facebook employee left to work on a social media App like google+.

~~~
elamje
Possibly, but copying a web app is substantially simpler than copying AR tech.
Considering magic leap was stealth with hundreds of millions in R&D, I would
put it in a different category than making a similar web app.

~~~
tastroder
> stealth with hundreds of millions in R&D

Wow. That number sounded high since I'm very unfamiliar with the space but
according to crunchbase [1] they took in 2.6B in funding overall. Before this
headset they mainly put out a few iterations of that gesture input device,
right?

[1] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-
leap](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap)

~~~
SahAssar
Leap Motion and Magic Leap are two different companies. The only thing Magic
Leap seem to be doing is the headset, and that took them 2.6B funding and
turned out to be at about the same level of tech as already existing products.

Leap Motion (which did the gesture recognition input stuff) was recently sold
at about a 10th of their peak valuation ($30M price from $300M valuation about
2 years ago).

~~~
diveanon
I interviewed at Magic Leap a few years ago and it was never explained to me
how they were differentiating themselves from competitors or what their
valuation was based on.

I declined the position based on the fact that their options were already
diluted without a product or revenue stream.

Maybe one day I will regret that decision when they get bought by Apple, but I
just don't see it happening.

~~~
SahAssar
I think their hope currently is to get bought for a boatload of money, but
even if they are, it's hard to see they would keep their valuation. Personally
I think of Magic Leap sorta like Juicero: overfunded, overpromised, and
thought the market would magically appear at launch.

------
phonon
Read the complaint here

[https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15787938/1/magic-
leap-i...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15787938/1/magic-leap-inc-v-
xu/)

~~~
dmix
Summary of the evidence presented in the complaint:

1) Using the same proprietary font in their logo was a really dumb idea:

> [https://i.imgur.com/7pYZ8bp.png](https://i.imgur.com/7pYZ8bp.png)

2) Alleges he engaged in internal meetings "outside the scope of his work at
Magic Leap" in order to gain useful information, while simultaneously
neglecting his duties at work as he planned to start his own company in China.
Before launching a product that looks and functions very similar to the Magic
Leap product within a 2yr timespan (quitting in mid-2016, started in 2017,
launched in 2019) while Magic Leap has been at it since 2010.

3) Their primary evidence seems to be some useless "Private Information"
confidentiality form we all sign

4) The other is some Youtube interview the Nreal founder did where he openly
admitted to being inspired by his work at Magic Leap:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcPB4POYkpc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcPB4POYkpc)

Where he basically said that Magic Leap was being too ambitious with an
"impossible" goal of trying to put it all in one small device... and he wanted
to utilize Chinese manufacturing pipelines to build the same thing but much
simpler by utilizing existing smartphone and laptop tech.

5) Finally another section compared demos by both companies, both involving
whales:

Magic Leap's whale demos:

>
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM0T6hLH15k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM0T6hLH15k)

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

Nreal's twitter picture demo:

> [https://i.imgur.com/jPIGMkf.png](https://i.imgur.com/jPIGMkf.png)

That's about it. Points 2) and 3) get repeated ad-nauseam and not very
convincingly IMO.

~~~
usaphp
> Using the exact same proprietary font in their logo was a really dumb idea

It’s not the same font. Similar but not the same. Look at letter L and A. They
are different

~~~
dmix
"e" and "a" are the same but the "L" by Nreal is custom. Additionally the "n"
in Nreal looks like half of the "m" in Magic.

Only the "Nreal" part is using the font FYI and only 3 letters directly
overlap (e, a, l).

Magic Leaps offers a similar font LominoUI on their site but it isn't entirely
the same as the logo font:

[https://creator.magicleap.com/learn/guides/design-
typography](https://creator.magicleap.com/learn/guides/design-typography)

~~~
usaphp
A is not the same. It looks similar but the cut on the bottom has different
angle. Also looking at it closer, even E is not the same. In magic leap the
top cutout is bigger than bottom one, in nreal they have the same, equal size.

~~~
dmix
Oh come on, that logo type is extremely derivative of the Magic Leap one. n/m
e, and a were essentially copied. They don't have to be exact copies to be
stolen.

I'm very pro-theft in design as a learning and inspiration tool but it's
extremely stupid when you both copy the logo font while also doing similar IP,
when the cofounder worked there previously. It makes it look like they were
baiting Magic Leap to complain. Even if the initial complaint is overall quite
weak and the whole thing is probably futile.

~~~
Lazare
> They don't have to be exact copies to be stolen.

A font would be covered under copyright so....I mean....legally, they _do_
have to be exact copies, yes. And this one is not, so the entire discussion of
the font seem legally irrelevant.

~~~
dmix
But it's certainly not helping. It amplifies the derivative nature of the
whole operation, right from the branding level to the product, regardless of
exact legal implications.

This stuff matters in personal legacy, industry/media respect, and ultimately
branding too. Unless they were purposefully going for the Chinese knock-off
look.

------
ricardobeat
Shouldn't they be busy building a product that people want instead?

~~~
daenz
I can't help but think that insiders who knew the product was doomed to fail
are breathing a sigh of relief that the blame for the killing blow won't land
on them.

------
chansiky
Things like this is what prevents capable inventors from taking the necessary
risk to develop a truly innovative product. My wish is for there to be better
legal protection for entrepreneurs bringing new products to the market, in
order to encourage innovation and long difficult r+d work.

My heart sinks every time I hear a story of copycats profiting off of the work
of someone or some company that sank tons of hours and dollars into developing
a unique product - going up down left right backwards forwards upside down
right side up headfirst ass backwards - just to find a solution, and then to
have all that effort once you’ve found the answer, be pulled from right under
your feet because someone can do it better now that the answer has been
discovered (because you put the hours to discover it). That’s just ducking
awful. I remember seeing
[this]([https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/4/2/18290492/in-
the-making-series-lumio-pressy-kickstarter-knockoffs-dragon-innovation)) about
a simple product and it made me so furious. The reality is it’s happening
everywhere.

China and Chinese culture of designer knockoffs and blatant copycatting needs
to start playing fair and follow the same laws as everyone else if they expect
to deal respectably in international markets.

I’m wondering if with things like even the font being the same, wether or not
the act of copycatting even registers as an offense to the people who do this.

And to make it clear my stance isn’t against Chinese people, some of my
favorite people in this world are Chinese, it’s against a government that
condones and does little, or turns a blind eye when a company is doing the
equivalent of removing padding from a boxing glove. If we can’t resolve
something like this through verbal communication and legal action what other
options do we have?

------
cm2012
Edit: Deleting this comment. I don't know enough about the subject matter to
speak as confidently as I was.

~~~
tootie
Magic Leap actually have a product and it's actually pretty damn good at what
it does. What they don't have is revenue. There just isn't a big enough market
for mixed reality headsets.

~~~
sheepdestroyer
What they sell is not the product that they teased. People got excited by
their amazing promises of light beamed to your eyes and we got a lackluster
Hololens bis. Bait&Switch

------
Lazare
> “Whereas Nreal purported to develop its Nreal Light product in under two
> years, Magic Leap developed its technology after extensive investment of
> time (multiple years), money (hundreds of millions of dollars spent on
> research and development) and human resources (hundreds of engineers),”
> according to the complaint.

I have no real opinion on the allegations, and if true they are serious but...

...I find it a bit hilarious that Magic Leap, a company that has been widely
criticised for over promising, under delivering, having extremely basic tech
which is _itself_ quite close to the tech of competitors, and which is well
known for spending an eye watering amount of money and time in order to obtain
very little results would offer _this_ as a supporting argument.

Just because Magic Leap spent two billion and 7 years doesn't mean a competent
engineering team couldn't do it a _lot_ faster with a _lot_ less money. :)
(Especially with entirely legitimate access to Magic Leaps hardware, and with
the benefit of years more published research across the industry.) I hope
Magic Leap has some better arguments than they managed to get published in
Bloomberg, because what's in the article is just hand wavy nonsense.

------
mindgam3
The optics of this aren't great for Magic Leap. AR pun not intended. Really
all this does is present Nreal as a legitimate threat to a company that raised
approx 100x more money* before shipping a product.

(* Magic Leap funding $2B+, nreal $16M ish)

~~~
khuey
I don't want to take any position on either Magic Leap as a product/company or
on this lawsuit, but it's not at all unusual for R&D to cost far more than
production. This is how drug development works: someone spends billions
researching and developing a drug and gets a temporary monopoly on production.
Once competition is allowed and prices are competed down to the marginal cost
of production the generics are close to free in comparison to the original
branded product.

So "Nreal copied Magic Leap's product after Magic Leap sank billion into R&D"
is an entirely plausible explanation for the comparable results despite the
dramatic gap in funding.

~~~
mindgam3
I mean, I’m not arguing that there is no plausible explanation for Magic
Leap’s inability to ship a product with only $1B in funding. The plausible
explanation is that they are running a tech startup like a drug development
company, to use your analogy, which is just a terrible way to do startups.

AR/smartglasses is not a market where you will have “generics” any time soon.
You’re going to have the iPhone of smartglasses which will dominate, and then
everyone else will try and fail to copy. Like Facebook dominating social, then
google+ failing. Or iPhone vs Android, although Android did finally manage to
achieve market share thanks to googles muscle.

Tl;dr: successful startups don’t raise billions of dollars before shipping a
product as mediocre as ML’s v1.

------
ForFreedom
I never heard of Nreal and went to their website but did not find any demos of
the product. Here's an execellent youtube video demoing their product -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9A9u-lwjTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9A9u-lwjTs)

------
Xunxi
Chinese have a good grasp of add-on innovation. Give a base product and
they'll pad it with all manner of features to make it a very marketable
product. Look at DJI's action camera's, drones, etc. I'm not even going to
touch on the age old conflict in combating apparel clones in China town.

I have a feeling its going to be very difficult to cage this kind of
innovation unless there is a recurrent policy in place to periodically ban the
import of a wide range of Chinese products.

On the other hand there are lots of super smart Chinese students in top tier
colleges who also make salient contribution to research work that benefits us
in one way or the other.

The bigger question is how do we resolve both markets to mutually benefit from
sunken R&D as opposed to how we starve consumers because of slow paced
tinkering refinements when the other party can speed the product to market.

Case in point: Lit Motors

------
AndrewKemendo
_Mr. Xu’s misuse and exploitation of Magic Leap’s image and goodwill is
further manifested in Nreal’s shameless use of whales in its demo experiences_

Are we patenting Whales in demos now? This is exactly the kind of myopia ML
continues to have - thinking they were the first ones to use a whales in a
VR/AR demo. I guess Intel was ripping off ML with Leviathan demo in 2014 [1]
and theBlu was ripping off ML with their Vive demo in 2015 [2].

[1]
[https://ronaldazuma.com/Leviathan_at_CES2014.html](https://ronaldazuma.com/Leviathan_at_CES2014.html)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFKbL-GU-
_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFKbL-GU-_U)

~~~
fencepost
Well if people are going to start doing things with animated space whales are
they crediting Disney
([https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6eS8WUoKeP0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6eS8WUoKeP0))?

Perhaps the easy availability of royalty free 3d models is relevant
([https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/animals/fish/humpback-
wha...](https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/animals/fish/humpback-whale-for-
unreal-engine-4))? Perhaps Oculus Rift museum humpback whale VR back in 2015
was an inspiration?

------
xxxpupugo
But who knows whether Magic Leap's claimed 'technology' is really there? I
mean, they don't have any product yet?

Is idea copying a thing? I don't really know...

------
ETHisso2017
This situation strikes me as very similar to what Eric Yuan of Zoom did. He
was one of Webex's founding employees and the VP of Engineering for Webex
after its acquisition by Cisco. He then left to build a lightweight competitor
that's currently cleaning Webex's clock. I wonder if Cisco should sue Eric as
well?

------
echan00
Winners: Lawyers

------
deevolution
I think everyone ultimately benefits from this. It means cheaper and more
accessible AR technology for all.

------
stevefan1999
It's just Bluehole suing Epic Games for PUBG and Fortnite all over again, get
on with it.

------
robomartin
I don't know the full story here and have not taken the time to dive into it.
Perhaps I will later. I just want to make a quick comment based on some of the
responses I've seen.

Having been the subject of market research, product plan and intellectual
property theft in the past (no, not by the Chinese) and having that
information used to launch a competing business I think I have perspective to
offer on this.

There is HUGE difference between "R&D" and just "D". "R&D" is slow, costly and
full of risk. "D" simply requires execution. Borrowing from sports talk, you
know "where the puck is going" and you can aim in that direction. You don't
have to invent much and you actually have the luxury of improving upon what
you know is and will be the technology of the "R&D" shop from which you stole.

One of the mantras of YC startups goes something like "if you are not
embarrassed by your first product...". This is usually true for hardware as
well. And, in most instances, you actually know very well what you'd like to
build next. However, hardware isn't a simple matter of a weekend pivot. You
just don't have that freedom. Not even close. So you have to go with what you
have, get it to market, make some money with it and look at introducing your
"next generation" product a year later. You can't do hardware spins in a
couple of months. The greater the volume the more you are shackled to whatever
you are shipping and it can easily be a year or more before you can put out a
significantly updated version 2.

I've seen comments about optics being sub-par and more. Well, that's the kind
of thing that can happen when you are doing "R&D" and you have to put out a
product. It could be embarrassing, but that's what you brought to the party
and that's what has to ship.

The thief, on the other hand, knows what you are shipping, what's ugly about
it, your future plans, market intelligence and much, much more. Upon gaining
this information all they have to do is align it with funding and execute on
your version 2 or 3 way before you do. While you are busy building a company
the thief can surface out of seemingly nowhere with a product that your first
product can't compete with.

This is PRECISELY what happened to me nearly twenty years ago. Our resellers,
from the US, Europe, Asia and other areas started to call me out of nowhere to
ask if we had licensed our products to company X. One of them made an
interesting comment, he said: "Martin, the material they sent me sounds and
reads exactly like what we've been talking about for more than a year" (under
NDA, of course).

Company X came into the market and put our product --which was going to be
replaced in about six months-- to shame. And they did it with MY product plan,
MY specification, MY design, MY market intelligence. The net effect was that,
ironically, when we came out with our product WE looked like we copied from
them. Which was the proverbial addition of "insult to injury".

Anyhow, not defending anyone. I don't know enough. Just wanted to react to
some of the comments that point out the thief's product is better than the
original. Well, yeah. It would be.

------
gamblor956
Chinese companies have a very long history of state-supported IP theft.

When a Chinese product so obviously mimics an American product--especially
when the chief engineer used to work for the American company--it's on the
Chinese company to prove that no IP theft occurred. They've lost the benefit
of the doubt.

~~~
ETHisso2017
What do you think about Eric Yuan and Zoom, then? He was the VP of Engineering
at Webex before he left, and then he launched Zoom (with a mostly Chinese R&D
team). Would you haul him in front of your imaginary court and prosecute him
until he proved no IP theft occurred?

~~~
gamblor956
Zoom is a US company based out of San Jose...

As Zoom is definitely within the scope of a valid CA non-compete, if it
violated any WebEx IP of wouldn't currently be a publicly treated company.

------
arkades
Hey, did Bloomberg ever retract its entirely unverified Chinese spy chip
story?

Just a reminder that they’ve blown all their credibility.

~~~
shasheene
You may not be aware of the great talk titled "Modchips of the State" [1]
(presented at 35C3 in Dec 2018).

The speaker managed to reproduce the exact single-chip hardware implant attack
suggested in the Oct 2018 Bloomberg Businessweek story [2] [3], which claimed
Amazon and Apple found malicious hardware implants in Supermicro motherboards
while conducting detailed inspections.

While Bloomberg has never retracted the story, there's an argument that the
sources have vested interests in lying to Bloomberg suggesting that attacks
developed in lab-conditions actually occurred in the real-world, in order to
raise awareness of supply-chain risks (something the current US administration
has been attempting to do for some time). There's also a suggestion that the
journalist was acting in good-faith but mixed up a few different attacks, with
the sources reluctant to clarify things. Another suggestion is that the attack
did happen, and Amazon and Apple were forced to issue denials.

It's a very fascinating story. Maybe I'm naive, but if Bloomberg was in-fact
wrong, they would issue a correction or a retraction. The fact they haven't
retracted it suggests to me that there's truth to the story.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7H3V7tkxeA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7H3V7tkxeA)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-
big-h...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-
china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJGbcjfJ7rU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJGbcjfJ7rU)

~~~
Spooky23
The fact Supermicro didn’t sue kind of says it all to me.

~~~
coverband
Indeed.

------
paxys
Magic Leap has raised $2.6 BILLION dollars in funding and have nothing to show
for it. Somehow I don't think a random guy in China is what's holding them
back.

~~~
rococode
As other commenter said, this is not really the point of this particular
article.

But I totally agree. I recently had the opportunity to try to develop (with a
team) something for the Magic Leap One over a period of about 3 months, and it
was an awful experience, a complete and utter disappointment.

Here are just some of the issues we faced:

\- terrible overheating: we offloaded most functionality (basically everything
in our app but image tracking) to a remote server and both the headset and the
lightpack would still overheat to the point of being very hot to the touch
within 5-10 minutes

\- image tracking in general pretty much doesn't work: the effective range is
like 2 feet, and even then it's laggy and inaccurate. And forget about trying
to use your own images.

\- controller drift: the tracking for the controller literally just starts
floating away. We had attached something to the controller and during demos
people would say, "woah it's just floating away" and look up as the virtual
controller slowly faded into the distance

\- unexplainable throttling: once it starts overheating, things like image
tracking just stop working, apps freeze or shut down, etc.

\- dizziness: everyone who tried it started feeling eye strain within minutes
of wearing it

\- awful field of view: to put it simply, if you look at someone eye-to-eye,
the field of view cannot even show things right above their head

\- clunky design: the lightpack is heavy and constantly getting in the way,
and the cables attaching it to the headset are very stiff

\- Lumin OS: sucks

\- controller trackpad: the least functional trackpad I've used in my life.
The circular scrolling is incredibly hard to use; our team just dropped the
entire scrolling feature for demos because not a single person we trialed with
was able to get it to work. Theoretically, it's just a circular motion with
your thumb to scroll. In practice, after 3 months of experience using the
device I was still unable scroll consistently.

\- dim screen: like wearing dark sunglasses

\- heavy headset / awkward weight distribution: it feels uncomfortably heavy
on your eyes & nose area

And there are many more issues that make it feel more like a prototype made by
a couple people in a garage than the flagship consumer product of a company
with $2.6b in funding. Really makes me think the whole thing was a big scam,
like a slightly less completely-made-up version of Theranos.

------
sheepdestroyer
Magic Leap promised Fiber Scanning Displays ; They conned everyone into
believing they had the tech to beam photons more real than reality's directly
in your eyes. Now that they baited and switched, they should just STFU. Who
cares if someone copied their disappointing actual stuff?

~~~
dproblem
Whatever they promised - The Google's and VCs of the world put in money into
them. What does that tell us about investors in this country?

~~~
dyarosla
That FOMO is rampant; if you’re waiting for the startup to prove its tech,
you’ve likely missed the investment boat already.

Just saying, there is definitely some rationale to it, esp when considering
how investment portfolios are precipitated on a few huge winners and 99%
losers.

~~~
dproblem
@dyrosla FOMO: Thank you for the explanation. I am trying to understand. The
lottery ticket on the back of engineers and workers. Any thoughts on how long
is this game going to last? Now China is playing the same game, but with
relaxed rules - to speed things up on FOMO? Do I understand this correct?

~~~
dyarosla
I’m not sure if I understand you- FOMO is just the fear of missing out on
investing in a company that has a likelihood of making it big.

In the case of Magic Leap, VCs bought into the team’s background and expertise
and banked on the likelihood of their success/impact if successful and decided
to risk it. It doesn’t mean they were 100% sold- just that the risk/reward
calculation they made was favourable.

Had they waited for Magic Leap to be a ways farther in their tech, (and had
Magic Leap delivered), the price of entry to invest would be astronomical and
the opportunity would have been ‘missed out’ on.

~~~
dproblem
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rony_Abovitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rony_Abovitz)

Why was a biomedical engineering guy (with absolutely no background in
AR/VR/graphics/CS/...) being given a billion dollar to do something that is
not up his ally at all?

What are we missing here? Which Team? I never understood this story.

~~~
dyarosla
I’d read more into what was presented that early on and with what team beyond
Abovitz.

------
m0zg
I'm pretty sure, actually, that this affects _every single company_ that has
anything the Chinese government would want. If you want to tell me that there
aren't any spies among e.g. 100K
Intel/AMD/Qualcomm/Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Apple/Facebook/Tesla/SpaceX/etc
employees, I'd say you're very naive. There are also likely domestic spies on
staff, as well. You won't even know who they are, and all the right parties
know everything they need to know. Basically any company of any consequence
which doesn't do DoD-style clearances and compartmentalization for everyone
has a bunch of spies on staff, 100% guaranteed.

