
Inside Magic Leap - t23
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2016/11/02/inside-magic-leap-the-secretive-4-5-billion-startup-changing-computing-forever/#7e4ba0c9e83f
======
6stringmerc
So clearly the author is sympathetic to the aura that Magic Leap is
cultivating through secrecy and selective media engagements:

> _When it arrives–best guess is within the next 18 months–it could usher in a
> new era of computing, a next-generation interface we’ll use for decades to
> come._

...which may be a pretty valid statement or sentiment overall, but later in
the article, we get to the crux of the "potential" future of the device /
platform:

> _Eventually Magic Leap sees its greatest impact in business applications,
> especially medical imaging and retail (imagine “trying on” garments at home,
> seamlessly). But as with most technologies, entertainment offerings will
> lead the way._

I might be picking on a low hanging fruit here, but seriously, one of the
compelling reasons to look forward to Magic Leap is so it can have a tie in
with the Home Shopping Network or QVC or Nieman Marcus?

The more and more I see the little teaser images (and the occasional demo reel
like the office game) I'm cautiously suspicious the technology is perfectly
reasonable but figuring out great content for the platform will be the
difference between whether it will align with the hype and promotion or be
closer to the storyline of the Nintendo Virtual Boy.

I'm just frumpy after years of seeing the difference between renders for PR
purposes and actual in-game / in-environment footage as a player / user,
which, I do think as tech has improved, isn't happening as much anymore in
commercials and whatnot, which I like. This particular situation and eventual
roll out will prove a lot I'm sure, one way or another..."soon-ish" as he
says...

~~~
bigtones
This has about as much hype as Ginger (Segway Transporter) did before it was
launched. Disrupting multi-billion dollar industries in a single bound,
changing the world forever at it's launch.

But in reality what it really takes to disrupt an industry is both a
disruptive product and a really compelling mass-market price point. One of the
reasons the Segway PT failed is it was $6k to buy. That severely limits the
addressable market to only the rich and those that really want a new form of
transport.

This is the same problem Magic Leap and Microsoft's Hololens have. If the
product is more than say around $700, it's not going to be a mass consumer
product, and it's not going to disrupt entire industries. The iPhone is a good
example of a product that is sold for about the maximum price point a user can
tolerate in most countries, and even then a lot of iPhones are sold in
installments to bring the upfront cost down.

I find it hard to imagine that Magic Leap can hit that entry level price point
in a Version 1 product, and if they can't then there will be quite a few big
tech companies gunning to catch up with their technology by the time they hit
a V2 to erode there exclusivity. Just look at how Google turned Android around
after the iPhone launched to go with full screen touch just 6 months after the
iPhone.

~~~
kriro
Counterpoint: the classical POV is that you start with a niche and worry about
crossing the chasm later (and they require very different marketing strategies
etc.). I'd argue Tesla is a modern example of executing that overall strategy
from the getgo.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Tesla is / was only a half-niche though, cars are a strong and established
market. They also had the (huge) benefit that their customers got tax breaks
and subsidies because their cars are emission-free, dropping their effective
price.

------
debatem1
I've been hearing rumors about these guys for years and it never seems to be
any more than what's in this article-- "we saw some special effects and our
wallets flipped themselves out of our back pockets onto the table and began
spewing money".

People so often underestimate the difficulty of productizing significant UI
changes, not realizing that getting content to migrate to the new shiny will
be at least as hard as getting rid of Flash on the web.

~~~
wrsh07
John Carmack joining Oculus was a quick reason to think: "hm, this team has
people who know how to get things done and launch."

Maybe Magic Leap has the same types of engineers [does Graeme have the same
reputation as hyper productive dev?], but there are reasons Carmack has this
reputation [1].

And I've known and worked with people like this. People who are utterly
relentless. Insanely productive. And honestly? I would always bet on them.
Every single time. It's just a major key that I don't know anything about on
the Magic Leap team.

[1]: [http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/27/how-john-carmack-
pestered-...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/27/how-john-carmack-pestered-
microsoft-to-let-him-make-minecraft-for-gear-vr/)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
By the time Carmack joined the Oculus Rift's CV1 technology and design was
mostly finished. Carmack is reportedly focused on Oculus's mobile offerings
which we have yet to see or is indeed the Santa Cruz prototype which, if
rumors are to believed, is a mobile SoC powered inside-out markerless VR
headset. When I saw the SC prototype I instantly thought this is what Carmack
must has been working on. Not shoving cellphones into $20 goggles and working
out the kinks like many think mobile VR would turn out.

I think there's some practical considerations here with the "magic engineer"
who can do anything quickly and, of course, the laws of diminishing or even
negative returns outlined in books like the Mythical Man-Month. Even the
impressive Santa Cruz is years out from being sold. Graphically it cannot
compete with the PC-based systems it would ultimately compete with.

~~~
revelation
The history between Carmack and Oculus goes much further back and predates the
company itself:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift#Initial_prototypes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift#Initial_prototypes)

------
jhallenworld
I'm thinking that Hololens rev. 2 will be out before Magic Leap rev. 1 is out
and will be cheaper. So unless Magic Leap is an order of magnitude better than
Hololens, they have failed.

Say what you will about Microsoft, at least they already have a platform on
which this "new era of computing" can be based: Windows. That is to say, it
makes tremendous more sense to evolve from what we have now into the "new era
of computing", than to write an entire platform from scratch, which is what I
assume Magic Leap is trying to do.

~~~
SparkyMcUnicorn
Hololense = 1268 * 720 pixels per eye

Magicleap = supposedly infinite (or they don't exist at all?)

Hololens says they have 2.3 million “light points”. I don't know much about
light points other than a few paragraphs, but I wonder how Magicleap actually
measures light density and how/if it compares or correlates.

~~~
bobsil1
MLeap is scanned, but they'll have a limit on the switching speed of the laser
+ color components.

~~~
smaddox
Diode lasers can easily amplitude modulate at 10s of MHz, which can provide
more effective pixels than 4k displays. If they're still using the
piezoelectric beam steering they demo'd a while back, then that will likely be
their scanning speed limiter, and thus the pixel density limiter. Their most
recent patents suggest they've moved on to something more advanced, though, so
it's tough to say for sure.

Regardless, GPUs will likely limit the render resolution for the first one or
two products. Upscaling might be possible, though.

------
fossuser
I may regret this comment in the future, but Magic Leap represents the worst
of tech to me. Extreme secrecy while at the same time pushing vapid press
releases in the media without sharing any real information.

Either collaborate and share or be secret and reveal, but this is the worst
combination. If there was a way to short this company I would do it.

------
spyder
I believe Magic Leap has a new kind of display technology, but the article is
pretty bullshit-sounding with statements like this:

 _" Throw out your PC, your laptop and your mobile phone, because the
computing power you need will be in your glasses, and they can make a display
appear anywhere, at any size you like."_

Yeah sure, they not only made a new display tech but integrated the computing
power of desktops or laptops into glasses. I wonder how they cool the GTX 1080
cards on your head...

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Uploadvr demystified this stuff a couple years ago:

[http://uploadvr.com/magic-leap-how-it-works/](http://uploadvr.com/magic-leap-
how-it-works/)

Magic leap is a pair of glasses you wear on your face that displays AR imagery
through a clear glass lens. There's a cable leading from these glasses to your
pocket where you have a tablet-size device doing all the heavy lifting, most
likely using mobile SoC's. Pretty sure you can't run a desktop CPU and GPU on
a pocketable device.

You don't get 1080gtx performance or anything remotely close to that with a
setup like this. Its mobile-level graphics. Oculus's recent showing of its
mobile SoC-based Santa Cruz prototype shows fairly poor graphics compared to
PC-based VR like the Rift or Vive. I imagine the Magic Leap has less pixels to
push considering it isn't doing any backgrounds, but still, those very
impressive marketing shots of high resolution dragons flying around and
interacting with you might not really be possible without a lot of compromises
on graphic quality, fov, framerate, etc. Worse, no one wants to talk about
transparency, especially in well-lit rooms. The few hands-on Hololens reports
we've gotten make this out to be a big issue, as well as fov, and
fundamentally the Magic Leap and what hololens is using could be the same or
very similar technologies.

My gut feeling is that no one has yet to handle the transparency issue (and
this is why MS can show off the hololens with confidence) and because of that
it makes sense for Magic Leap to keep its product secretive. The tech press
was not too kind to Hololens prototypes due to transparecy issues and Magic
Leap doesn't need that kind of negative press as it continues to fund-raise
and develop its product.

~~~
kimburgess
One important differentiating factor between this and other (consumer) HMD's
is the scanning display.

The Oculus et al need to render a rectangular matrix of evenly spaced pixels.
If you want a larger field of view or higher resolution this comes with an
exponential increase in number of pixels. With a high frequency scanning
display and eye tracking you are not locked to a static spatial resolution
(see
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveated_imaging](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveated_imaging)).

There's a whole bunch of other problems when it comes to a render pipeline for
something links this, but at least on the physical front it enables super high
perceived resolution with less overall points of light to render.

~~~
pfranz
Foveated rendering only became relevant when Nvidia recently started
supporting Multi-Resolution Shading. As new techniques and tools like this get
better support we can be a lot more efficient with lower powered hardware.

It was interesting to hear Carmack last year talk about re-introducing
interlacing as a way to reduce latency.

Although, I'm just reinforcing what you're saying =)

~~~
xorxornop
Huh, interlacing is a neat idea to reduce latency, but I'm guessing you'd want
a form of intra-frame temporal anti-aliasing, otherwise it might look pretty
fugly. Whether or not this would neutralise any latency advantage due to the
computational overhead of doing this, I'm not sure...

~~~
pfranz
Found where Carmack talked about it[1].

For VR, the consensus I've seen seem to push for multi-sample AA > full-screen
AA > temporal AA (I feel like I've even seen no AA is better than temporal
AA). I'm not quite sure if it's performance, architecture (they really prefer
forward renderers instead of deferred renderers for low latency), or
aesthetics. In the little bit I've done, when just playing with knobs temporal
AA looks better to me. Without AA specular highlights are way too distracting
and pop too much.

This reference[2] talks about the extra velocity buffer needed for temporal AA
and the fact it tends to over-blur which can fuzz out fine details (low
resolution is a touchy subject in VR).

There's a lot of moving pieces when making decisions. In talking about
interlacing, he was ideally talking about not having to create a whole image
buffer before sending data to the hardware--just rendering parts (well,
scanline) of the image that moved.

[1]
[https://youtu.be/gn8m5d74fk8?t=10m54s](https://youtu.be/gn8m5d74fk8?t=10m54s)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk3WUk5T2TQ&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk3WUk5T2TQ&feature=youtu.be&t=2525)

------
edblarney
Ok - it seems that they 'absolutely' have something bewildering, and eye-
popping. There are enough 'no information' testimonials by smart people to get
that.

 __BUT __

I 'm still pretty weary of billions getting pumped into a business that
remains unproven.

\+ Maybe development is very expensive \+ Maybe the goggles cost to much \+
Maybe they just don't have quite enough content to justify the high costs \+
Maybe the experience 'isn't quite there'

So many times these 'wow' toys have proven to be near-duds when they actually
hit market reality.

I can't wait to try it, but I'm also looking forward to seeing the reality of
it.

~~~
talmand
I remember that we were going to revamp existing cities and build new cities
in accordance to this wonderful transportation device that would change
everything, of which I cannot recall the name. I currently see them used as
joke props in movies.

~~~
Retric
If you include 'hover-boards' these battery powered, two wheeled, self
balancing, things sold over 2.5 million of the things in just the USA in 2015.
So, it really is becoming increasingly widespread.

You can see this as and extension of the skateboards vs scooters vertical
stick argument.

PS: For comparson 17.5 million cars where sold in 2015 and 12.5 million bikes
with 20+" wheels.

~~~
0xffff2
> So, it really is becoming increasingly widespread.

I don't know if this is really true. I saw a lot of hoverboards on my
university campus last year. I don't see nearly as many this year. I'd like to
see sales data for at least another year before declaring that anything is
becoming increasingly widespread.

~~~
Mtinie
Earlier in the year I would have attributed this to issues with the supply
chain and how hard it was to get the upgraded devices. Now, however, I believe
that the exploding battery issues heavily reported in the media and the
subsequent Amazon refund program put a massive cool on purchasing and usage.

------
sagivo
Magic Leap goes against all the concepts we learned in "startup schools" \-
launch fast and iterate, get feedback, pivot and grow with your users etc..

they work away from the public for product they don't know if the public want.
it's a bet, i hope it will pay off.

~~~
swalsh
These guys aren't building an invoicing app. They're building a brand new
high-tech platform. The traditional startup approach clearly isn't going to
work well here. The line for what a "minimum viable product" could be is
pretty high... and once it is out, you can't upgrade it again (well not cost
effectively at least). Hardware has a different cycle. Traditional waterfall
methodology is still kind of essential for hardware. Frankly, I'm super
excited something like this is coming out of a startup, and not Apple. It's
nice to have some diversity.

~~~
bpicolo
> Traditional waterfall methodology is still kind of essential for hardware.

I mean, if you read the article they claim they're doing Agile-hardware
instead

------
maxxxxx
Has there ever been a company that built this kind of hype over years and then
in the end actually delivered something truly revolutionary? Judging from
companies like Cuil (not sure if the name is right), Segway or Color they will
fizzle out once their product gets on the market, if ever.

~~~
BatFastard
If past history is the only thing to go on you are correct. However there are
quite a few level A players investing huge sums of money in this. I have to
think they are paying attention.

~~~
maxxxxx
I have Theranos as counterexample for the A player argument :). But my main
question is: is there a an example where such an approach worked and
revolutionized the industry? I can't think of any.

~~~
Mtinie
I'm not exactly sure how to classify it. Would you consider early
institutional investors in Microsoft, Amazon, or Facebook?

Anecdotally I've heard that lots of VC firms passed on all three during their
very early days, but I'm not convinced that those are good examples of
completely new markets.

------
defen
Magic Leap is starting to set off my Theranos detectors...

~~~
davesque
It's not setting off your Segway detectors?

------
joezydeco
Here's a peek at your future....

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

~~~
hughes
Honestly it would take that level of visual fidelity and environmental
awareness for the leap to live up to the hype and expectations.

~~~
joezydeco
Leap most certainly won't do this. But give it twenty years.

------
JumpCrisscross
Magic Leap has been bleeding talent as a result of their relocating from the
Bay Area to Florida [1]. As I understand it, this decision was made by and for
one of their (independently wealthy) founders.

[1] [http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/careers/fl-magic-
leap-n...](http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/careers/fl-magic-leap-new-
building-20151013-story.html)

~~~
jhallenworld
This article brings up a big issue: even if Magic Leap fails to deliver, they
just might own all of the relevant patents. This could make AR needlessly
expensive for decades.

~~~
sharemywin
except they seem like they're all business method or software patents which
will much hard to enforce:

At the time the Mayo case was decided, there was some uncertainty over whether
it applied only to natural principles (laws of nature) or more generally to
patent eligibility of all abstract ideas and general principles, including
those involved in software patents. The Alice decision confirmed that the test
was general.

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

~~~
sharemywin
Federal Circuit has been invalidating software patents at an alarming rate
ever since, all relying on the Alice decision.

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/patent-eligibility-
criteria-l...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/patent-eligibility-criteria-
light-alice-concept-idea-fatih-ozluturk)

------
aedocw
I thought this analysis[1] of how it might work based on the patents was
really illuminating, and made at least some of the hype seem deserved.

[1]: [http://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-
will-...](http://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will-work)

------
simonebrunozzi
I stopped reading Forbes.com because of their "malware" policy.

~~~
intrasight
Me too - and because their web site sucks. Fortunately, there's usually an
adequate TL;DR for anything posted to HN

------
IanDrake
These guys might just be the WebVan of AR. Building a campus before you've
sold V1 of your product? That's idiotic.

Don't get me wrong, this could be incredibly cool in a vacuum. But reality
often has different needs.

I hope I'm wrong.

~~~
bobsil1
I think the factory is part of the campus. And they need a factory because the
parts are custom.

~~~
IanDrake
And WebVan _needed_ a distribution network and warehouses.

I'm not saying they're not making an awesome product. I'm saying it's possible
not enough people will want to buy it in order to justify _building_ a factory
and campus.

It's not my money though and I've never seen the product. This is obviously a
HUGE gamble that will either be a raging success or will become a joke about
the follies of venture capital (i.e. WebVan 2.0).

~~~
bobsil1
Some kind of AR will pretty clearly be a big wave (processing components
shrinking, but input/output still human size, so they get virtualized).

The funds need to make big bets, this one looked good: best tech from UW prof,
a founder who's sold a hardware co for >$1B before.

It depends very much on execution: polish, price, apps.

------
Grefu
"Changing Computing Forever" is the new "Making the world a better place" ?

------
Cyph0n
Sorry, but this article is way to fluffy. Big words, and not much to show for
it. The way I see it, it's basically an ad for the author's upcoming book.

Magic Leap itself does seem to be doing amazing stuff, given how much money
has been pumped into it. At least, I hope that's the case!

------
joncp
When a headline follows the format /change(d|ing) .* forever$/. I figure it's
fluff and not worth my time. Am I wrong?

~~~
donpdonp
I put on a Magical Leap and you won't believe what happens next!

~~~
truth_sentinell
Pun intended

------
giulianob
The author did an AMA on Reddit where he answered a bunch of questions:
[https://redd.it/5azhtx](https://redd.it/5azhtx)

------
M_Grey
Uh huh... this is a case of, "Maybe it is, maybe it will, but I'll believe it
a week after I see it."

------
bananabill
This is going to end up like that one episode of Angela Anaconda where they're
all really excited about the new Jiggle Fruit but it ends up tasting bad and
they don't like it.

------
QuantumRoar
Asking to turn off the adblocker and at the same time showing the following
quote:

"I'm doing the thing that scares me the most every single day."

Like what? Browsing without an adblocker?

------
bobsil1
AR headsets already exist, are not vaporware, already are selling into
enterprise markets (e.g. Atheer, Lumus). They're clunky and expensive.

MLeap is the only one I know of which has raised the $ needed for consumer-
level polish and price. Probably because of the mini fiber-scan display and
diffraction zone plates for natural focus. The other major pieces (waveguide
or holo lens, IR TOF camera, SLAM, eye tracking, voice) have been done before.

------
aaron695
> Ask your virtual assistant to deliver a message to a coworker and it might
> walk out of your office, reappear beside your colleague’s desk via his or
> her own MR headset and deliver the message in person.

Why do people buy into this junk.

The easiest way is plain text. email/slack etc

VR is useless for the office. Things are solved via text/speech, occasionally
a graph helps but we all know they are mostly for show.

A magical ability to make things 3D doesn't make work easier.

> In one of its demos the Magic Leap team shows off a computer-generated
> “virtual interactive human,” life-size and surprisingly realistic. Abovitz
> and his team imagine virtual people (or animals or anything else) as digital
> assistants–think Siri on steroids

How does a 3d Siri make the backend suddenly easier?

The AI to analysis what you are saying? The AI to answer correctly? The tech
to speak smoothly to you? The things that actually matter and work fine in 2d.

A good computer game can costs 100's of millions. These are going to be even
more expensive. Even gaming will take a while to kick off.

------
franciscop
I just watched the Season 3 of Black Mirror, which gives a totally different
perspective to this article

------
dblock
I've tried the Hololens dev version. It's very cool, unlike anything else I've
had on my head. Those who let me try it don't seem to be overly worried or
impressed with Magic Leap, but there's no way of telling until we see both
side-by-side.

~~~
yakz
It's cool, but the fov is narrow, and the area of visible pixels changes
significantly with the position and orientation of the device relative to your
eyes. Reach up and slide it a little bit up or down on your nose and you
gain/lose enough area that you can spend minutes adjusting knobs and fittings
to find something that seems usefully minimal. It's not particularly
comfortable in general. And, as a wireless standalone unit compared to a
desktop computer, it renders relatively very low quality 3d graphics because
of the need for high framerate stereoscopic output and the typical constraints
of a several-years-ago smartphone.

------
votr
I want to believe Magic Leap is going to deliver.

With investments from tech companies AND banks AND movie studios, and with
half-a-dozen R&D outposts all over the world, it's hard to believe these
investors just bought into vaporware.

~~~
mey
Having worked with VC's before, there isn't always a clear domain
understanding of the problem they are investing in. Additionally, once funding
snowballs, later investors can incorrectly assume due diligence has been taken
care of by earlier investors.

I would expect that we've seen what MagicLeap is targeting in both Google
Glass and later Microsoft HoloLens. So conceptually the systems and optics are
proven at some early stage. Instead of projecting into a lens that is then
reflected into the eye, they claim they are projecting directly into the eye.
Either way the optics should be similar. This means that as with any AR
(instead of VR) system, they will not be able to project the absence of light
in a brightly lit environment. (Creating shadows/darkness should be
impossible)

~~~
bobsil1
Probably similar to HoloLens, very different from Glass.

There are ways to hard-occlude, e.g. LCD mask, but might be punted til a later
version.

------
sharemywin
This seems to me a lot like the segway.

------
firstworldman
The fact that Beeple was impressed with this is enough to get me excited about
it. Granted, his reaction may have something to do with the ML team sitting
right beside him as he demoed the product... so, cautiously optimistic then.
It will be something cool.
[https://twitter.com/magicleap/status/752540648323026944](https://twitter.com/magicleap/status/752540648323026944)

------
lossolo
I saw some video from Magic Leap some time ago, some animated character got
behind the chair in augmented vr. Aren't they just using infrared to get
distance to object, then they are using ML to classify and distinct them all,
then when they have sizes of object they calculate behind which element their
character will be so they can position it good and make parts of it
transparent while crossing under the chair?

------
jonplackett
Does anyone know if it works the same as the hololens in that it is purely
additive light - it can only make the image brighter rather than being able to
make black pixels. This severely limits the kind of thing hololens will ever
be able to do - it certainly isn't going to be replacing any screens.

------
nirav72
I get this feeling that Magic Leap is marginally better than Micrsoft's
Hololens. But after seeing the Hololens, they decided that they need more work
to beat Microsft. Marginally better isn't going to cut it.

------
astannard
I originally heard the projected images directly onto your retina, if that is
the case I don't know how it would work with eye movements? Very interested to
see what is underneath all the hype.

------
lootsauce
Seems like most people here are skeptical/dubious of ML. I don't blame them
there is a lot of hype. But it is quite fascinating technology. If you look
seriously at the detailed technical coverage on how the technology works [1]
and watch the recent Stanford lecture by Brian Schowengerdt [2], Co-Founder of
Magic Leap, then I think you will see why ML is actually quite special.

Personally I am fascinated and optimistic about the potential represented by
scanning fiber + waveguide display for AR and VR. I'm optimistic about the
future of this tech platform far more than any other AR/VR tech out there
mainly owing to form factor it affords (lightweight glasses) and the superior
bio-compatibility of the light-field it produces (all day use). On principal
its imagery is clearly light-years ahead of anything using a flat screen with
lenses and its potential form factor could be surprisingly close to regular
glasses. The image quality and form factor are huge part of why this tech
could replace phone or a tv or a laptop. I am sure the first iterations will
be cool but not perfect. I expect a progression much like that of the iPhone.
It works, its awesome, then it keeps getting better and better and better.

IMHO this really does look like a viable platform for the future of computing
for the next 10-20 years. People still buy PCs but the laptop largely replaces
most uses for it other than hard-core gaming. Similarly I could see the same
effect happening with screens vs ML over time. I say all this with the caveat
that the form factor really is much much closer to glasses than something like
HoloLense.

Here are couple things I have learned about the tech that kind of blew my
mind:

* The same tech used to display the light-field can also be used to capture images of they eye for eye tracking, no extra camera needed. It is conceivable that the same scanning fiber technology could be used to dramatically miniaturize the sensors needed for SLAM inputs as well.

* The detail falloff of human vision from a small point in the center is huge. We largely piece together a detailed picture over time in our minds with quick eye movements. This means that good eye-tracking + foveated rendering largely mitigates concerns about achieving a very high perceived resolution with manageable IO.

* I assumed this kind of display would only be able to produce semitransparent ghostly images. Not so. Apparently it can block incoming light from points where it is projecting.

* It is not simple stereoscopy, the light hitting the eye is focusable at the distance the virtual object appears to exist in real space rather than at the surface of the waveguide. This is why it is so compatible with the human visual system and can be used all day as opposed to other tech. This has to do with how the visual system to point both eyes at an object in space is wired in sync with the system that focuses the lenses. No other system, to my knowledge, accommodates this linkage and thus causes strain. Watch the video to understand this more.

[1] [http://uploadvr.com/magic-leap-how-it-works/](http://uploadvr.com/magic-
leap-how-it-works/) [2] [https://talks.stanford.edu/brian-schowengerdt-human-
sensory-...](https://talks.stanford.edu/brian-schowengerdt-human-sensory-
systems-perception-and-immersive-digital-experiences/)

~~~
occamjmv
Hi there, About usability: I have used the hololens for entire battery charges
(about 3hours). I work on various experiments in AR, including path finding,
assembly, etc. Had no noticeable eye fatigue. Hololens works great already,
and although light field may bring a technology imporvement, ML seems to come
a tad too late (I mean, all the ML videos I have seen can be produced with an
hololens)... but I'd love to be convinced.

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tigershark
I don't think that hololens with its tiny FOV can do anything vaguely
comparable to what ML can do with a much larger one from what I've read
around.

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occamjmv
I'd say yes and no. Many people who have complained about the small FOV of
Hololens expect applications where you want virtual stuff everywhere.
Certainly nice for all around usage, but not necessary for many others. Again,
after hours of continuous use, I've come to "forget" the FOV problem. The key
is to switch from eye movement to head movement. When you know you have to
look straight at the virtual content to see it, it's actually quite
manageable. Don't get me wrong: I'll take 120° anytime, but I _know_ it's
around the corner, with Hololens or ML. In the meantime, I'll take what
_exists_. I've seen so much vaporware in 25 years in the AR field...

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xorxornop
So what makes this display tech any different (more special) from that in
Hololens? Because it sounds very similar, if not identical..?

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schnelle
In a nutshell, Hololens has a fixed focal depth of 2m and objects are scaled
proportionally to mimic distance. Magic Leap uses stacked optical elements
that can be turned on/off (source of the name digital wave guide they use) and
each plane is a different focal depth. So, by mimicking the way light would
reach the eye normally, the ML results in more realistic objects in the world.

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jheriko
i'm hoping its real... but all that time and all the hype with no substance is
confidence shaking. i mean, why would you not allay the obvious fears of
investors and potential customers?

there are also the deep technical problems which are widely acknowledged in
the field and clearly not addressed. a top spec desktop machine struggles to
keep up with your eyes movements /if they are known in advance/ \- the idea
that a pear of glasses coupled with /any/ peripheral, even one the size of
your house, can contain the hardware to do this in real-time is quite far-
fetched - even accounting for sensors with feedback and clever mechanical
tricks.

there is no mention of how to deal with occlusion. no amount of throwing light
at your retina can solve that problem... you need something to intelligently
block it out. the marketing hype images make this seem like a solved
problem...

maybe there is something that works, but i have no faith that magic leap is
anything more than a scam targetting VCs. the same opinion i have grudgingly
kept since i first saw anything of it... because its a cool idea and i want
it.

i hope these issues are publicly addressed so i can buy it early in confidence
instead of waiting to see if its as good as the sales-pitch... which, sadly,
there is no indication it will be - because none of the obvious issues have
been addressed.

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kriro
Some sort of near eye light field display maybe? Funny company regardless with
the hype updates and secrecy.

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evilnig
Next Theranos I'm calling it.

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jarnix
I wish I can combine Magic Leap with AR glasses.

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jarnix2
Or maybe already get a Magic Leap!

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jarnix
Nobody knows if the tech exists yet!

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TY
Nothing really new in this article, we have read bunch of these before...

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qaq
They need to merge with Palantir

