10 ms·

Magic Leap goes to Finland in pursuit of VR and AR talent

99 points by SkarredGhost 10y ago

koolba 10y ago
Curious how this is #8 on the front page with 3 points[1]. Even more curious what the actual product of this company is going to be. A VR dev kit? Their website is devoid of anything but videos of people going "Ooohh!" at special effects. [1]: http://archive.is/AwjrF http://archive.is/AwjrF EDIT: Added link to snapshot.
- cma 10y ago
  Supposedly AR glasses with multiple focal planes and with localized occlusion (blacking out the world; don't know if this part is being done at the different focal planes, I'm more skeptical of it than any of the other parts, because all of their through-glasses views have been in very dim rooms).
  - mojomark 10y ago
    > Supposedly AR glasses with multiple focal planes and with localized occlusion (blacking out the world; I recommend being more specific when referring to occlusion with respect to AR systems. There are two primary forms: (1) "Real Occlusion" in which selected wavefronts are blocked (occluded) such that a transparent near-eye display is capable of displaying black, (2) "Virtual Occlusion" in which real objects are actively scanned/tracked to permit virtual objects to appear occluded being real objects. ML system claims both capabilities, and I agree with you that Real Occlusion is several orders of magnitude more difficult. I think real occlusion is valuable, because in addition to displaying black it enables images to appear solid vice translucent. However, I don't feel it's an absolutely necessary feature for a quality AR systems. After all, ultra bright projection displays present perfectly fine images without displaying true black. They simply exploit the properties of human eye perception with respect to brightness contrast of adjacent pixels. An AR system can do the same. Personally, I would prefer to have a quality AR system with unlimited FOV constraints and virtual occlusion capability sooner rather than wait for real occlusion to be perfected.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- bobsil1 10y ago
  How Magic Leap probably works, based on patents: http://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will-work http://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will-...
bpicolo 10y ago
> While Magic Leap is clearly going after talent in locations that have established themselves in fields integral to VR/AR. Florida – where the company is headquartered – is a burgeoning gaming and graphics hub with Orlando as one of the biggest video game development communities in the US. Except they're in Ft. Lauderdale? Still pretty skeptical of Magic Leap given time-to-market(public demo, etc). I do hope they do well, though - I grew up in the area, cool to see some interesting tech there.
existencebox 10y ago
So here's my concern with Magic Leap. (And I say this with friends working there, so I WANT them to succeed more than anything, but I can't help but look askew at some of the secrecy) If their technology is _so critically secret_ that everything needs to be under more NDA/IP protection than I've seen in almost any other consumer product, one would think that implies it's readily duplicatable if someone just had the secret sauce? But in that case, one would expect to see more results after how long they've been in dev. I've heard in many cases founders/VCs laugh at the concept of "keeping your million dollar idea secret" because of the concern that someone will steal it, let alone a concept so complex that a group of some of the better specialists in this area (AR/VR/robotics/wearables/vision) have taken this long to bring a product to market. So is the concern just about entities like Google/MSR who would show up out of the blue willing to throw essentially endless money at the problem? Because off the top of my head they have not shown a great track record of even executing on _their own_ ideas with a compelling end product on a fast enough time-scale to be competitive against someone with a multi year lead. I'm just not sure I follow the benefit of this level of secrecy compared to the amount of skepticism it naturally generates in someone who would love to be an early adopter.
- mstresh 10y ago
  Put it the other way: what would be the benefit of publicly disclosing their secret sauce? Perhaps to help fuel their recruiting pipeline, but I can't think of any other good reasons to do so. They don't have a product out, their secret sauce might change, Google/MSR might be working on something similar and just need a few hints in the right direction to get there, they get to keep a big first-mover advantage in whatever area their tech enables them to move into, and there's no opportunity for possible early adopters like yourself to get in on the action yet. I'm guessing their tech isn't so much "critically secret" as there just isn't a benefit to their business case for publicizing what they are doing
- akhatri_aus 10y ago
  If it is easily duplicatable this strategy allows them to build up tonnes of labour that would take a copier a lot of time to replicate. So there's a bit of time to capture up profits and evolve to the next iteration.
pawanpe 10y ago
#4 now http://archive.is/82Q85 http://archive.is/82Q85
6stringmerc 10y ago
Okay, I'm probably not the first or only person to have this sneaking suspicion, but here it goes anyway: This run-up to Magic Leap is giving me déjà vu of the Segway.
- xt00 10y ago
  was totally thinking the same thing... 100% whatever they release unless it cures cancer and does AR and VR and uses displays that are like 1 million PPI, I think people are gonna be disappointed.. they are doing themselves a huge disservice by keeping it so hyped and so quiet.. same thing with the segway, people thought by the time it would launch that it would be like a legit hoverboard that shot beams of antigravity out the bottom.. then they launch and show people riding on two wheels with kids helmets and kneepads and elbow pads on.. I was like... um, no...
Jommi 10y ago
Anybody want to actually discussed the news specifically, rather than just generally discussing magicleap yet again. Or maybe the analysis was just So spot on? Not sure.
- josephpmay 10y ago
  The article is seeping with misinformation. Not sure why it reached the front page vs. the other Magic Leap pieces that have come out this week.
  - Jommi 10y ago
    Hey thanks for responding! What parts are misinformation?
    - josephpmay 10y ago
      Off the top of my head: -Magic Leap is located in Hollywood/Plantation/Fort Lauderdale which is nowhere near Orlando -For now, Magic Leap is not in the VR space, rather they are augmented/mixed reality -Magic Leap is very much a hardware play, not a software one. From what I've heard (and this could be incorrect), their headset runs a heavily-modified version of Android, not a new operating system developed from scratch.
- heeen2 10y ago
  Does not really surprise me they picked Helsinki out of all the cities in europe, they already absorbed a bunch of ex Nokia talent
sagivo 10y ago
I like the facet that they don't follow the hype and actually open offices where they can find the best talent for their company. they did the same by opening an office in Israel as well where they can find a lot of VR/AR experience.
davesque 10y ago
I fear magic leap is riding the hype train more than is healthy. They're setting their potential future customers up for disappointment. It seems unlikely to me that whatever they're working on is so revolutionary that we're all going to agree that the secrecy was necessary. I'd be interested to know if there's any precedent for this kind of strategy working to increase profits. The only examples I can think of (e.g. Segway) are ones in which the hype actually worked against adoption of the product when it was released. At the end of the day, I really do hope they succeed. It will be great when someone comes up with the analogue of the first iPhone except for AR.
- supermatt 10y ago
  Most people (including the technical) that I've mentioned the name to, don't recognise it or know what it does. Maybe its just us hyping it up amongst ourselves?
  - vikascoder 10y ago
    Suffice to say the tech that Magic Leap has is so much leaps and bounds better than Hololens that it will derail Microsoft's AR train completely once its launched. The hype is very real and so is the tech.
    - efnx 10y ago
      And how do you know this?
mrfusion 10y ago
I feel like we've been waiting for this product for almost ten years now. When is it coming?
- efnx 10y ago
  I agree. I've been waiting since the Burger King vr boy.
mark_kalvelage 10y ago
Does anyone have any advice on how to start doing VR/AR development? What tools are used and knowledge is required?
- glaze 10y ago
  Get Unity or Unreal. Unity uses C#, Unreal uses C++ or a visual scripting system called Blueprints.
- doublerebel 10y ago
  Microsoft has a series of tutorials using Unity for Hololens. Udacity just launched a new VR course using Unity as well. However, performance can be a critical factor depending on the app, and C++ may be the only solution. For that you need low-level knowledge of shader+texture+render techniques, which for Hololens is generally all in DirectX. There are very few business-oriented frameworks for any of the devices, almost everything is designed for gaming (short scripts and machine-oriented code organization). Implementing most of what we normally imagine being part of an 'app' has to be done from scratch. Source: I am doing a Hololens startup.
skc 10y ago
I've been binging on Black Mirror episodes. So all this secrecy about whatever they are building is giving me the creeps.
bane 10y ago
At last, a VR/AR version of the classic game, "My Summer Car" http://www.amistech.com/msc/ http://www.amistech.com/msc/
zump 10y ago
Why Finland and not Australia? What's the Silicon Valley insiders attitude towards Australia?

99 points by SkarredGhost 10y ago

Curious how this is #8 on the front page with 3 points[1]. Even more curious what the actual product of this company is going to be. A VR dev kit? Their website is devoid of anything but videos of people going "Ooohh!" at special effects. [1]: http://archive.is/AwjrF http://archive.is/AwjrF EDIT: Added link to snapshot.

cma 10y ago
Supposedly AR glasses with multiple focal planes and with localized occlusion (blacking out the world; don't know if this part is being done at the different focal planes, I'm more skeptical of it than any of the other parts, because all of their through-glasses views have been in very dim rooms).
- mojomark 10y ago
  > Supposedly AR glasses with multiple focal planes and with localized occlusion (blacking out the world; I recommend being more specific when referring to occlusion with respect to AR systems. There are two primary forms: (1) "Real Occlusion" in which selected wavefronts are blocked (occluded) such that a transparent near-eye display is capable of displaying black, (2) "Virtual Occlusion" in which real objects are actively scanned/tracked to permit virtual objects to appear occluded being real objects. ML system claims both capabilities, and I agree with you that Real Occlusion is several orders of magnitude more difficult. I think real occlusion is valuable, because in addition to displaying black it enables images to appear solid vice translucent. However, I don't feel it's an absolutely necessary feature for a quality AR systems. After all, ultra bright projection displays present perfectly fine images without displaying true black. They simply exploit the properties of human eye perception with respect to brightness contrast of adjacent pixels. An AR system can do the same. Personally, I would prefer to have a quality AR system with unlimited FOV constraints and virtual occlusion capability sooner rather than wait for real occlusion to be perfected.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
bobsil1 10y ago
How Magic Leap probably works, based on patents: http://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will-work http://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will-...

bpicolo 10y ago

> While Magic Leap is clearly going after talent in locations that have established themselves in fields integral to VR/AR. Florida – where the company is headquartered – is a burgeoning gaming and graphics hub with Orlando as one of the biggest video game development communities in the US. Except they're in Ft. Lauderdale? Still pretty skeptical of Magic Leap given time-to-market(public demo, etc). I do hope they do well, though - I grew up in the area, cool to see some interesting tech there.

existencebox 10y ago

So here's my concern with Magic Leap. (And I say this with friends working there, so I WANT them to succeed more than anything, but I can't help but look askew at some of the secrecy) If their technology is _so critically secret_ that everything needs to be under more NDA/IP protection than I've seen in almost any other consumer product, one would think that implies it's readily duplicatable if someone just had the secret sauce? But in that case, one would expect to see more results after how long they've been in dev. I've heard in many cases founders/VCs laugh at the concept of "keeping your million dollar idea secret" because of the concern that someone will steal it, let alone a concept so complex that a group of some of the better specialists in this area (AR/VR/robotics/wearables/vision) have taken this long to bring a product to market. So is the concern just about entities like Google/MSR who would show up out of the blue willing to throw essentially endless money at the problem? Because off the top of my head they have not shown a great track record of even executing on _their own_ ideas with a compelling end product on a fast enough time-scale to be competitive against someone with a multi year lead. I'm just not sure I follow the benefit of this level of secrecy compared to the amount of skepticism it naturally generates in someone who would love to be an early adopter.

mstresh 10y ago
Put it the other way: what would be the benefit of publicly disclosing their secret sauce? Perhaps to help fuel their recruiting pipeline, but I can't think of any other good reasons to do so. They don't have a product out, their secret sauce might change, Google/MSR might be working on something similar and just need a few hints in the right direction to get there, they get to keep a big first-mover advantage in whatever area their tech enables them to move into, and there's no opportunity for possible early adopters like yourself to get in on the action yet. I'm guessing their tech isn't so much "critically secret" as there just isn't a benefit to their business case for publicizing what they are doing
akhatri_aus 10y ago
If it is easily duplicatable this strategy allows them to build up tonnes of labour that would take a copier a lot of time to replicate. So there's a bit of time to capture up profits and evolve to the next iteration.

pawanpe 10y ago

#4 now http://archive.is/82Q85 http://archive.is/82Q85

6stringmerc 10y ago

Okay, I'm probably not the first or only person to have this sneaking suspicion, but here it goes anyway: This run-up to Magic Leap is giving me déjà vu of the Segway.

xt00 10y ago
was totally thinking the same thing... 100% whatever they release unless it cures cancer and does AR and VR and uses displays that are like 1 million PPI, I think people are gonna be disappointed.. they are doing themselves a huge disservice by keeping it so hyped and so quiet.. same thing with the segway, people thought by the time it would launch that it would be like a legit hoverboard that shot beams of antigravity out the bottom.. then they launch and show people riding on two wheels with kids helmets and kneepads and elbow pads on.. I was like... um, no...

Jommi 10y ago

Anybody want to actually discussed the news specifically, rather than just generally discussing magicleap yet again. Or maybe the analysis was just So spot on? Not sure.

josephpmay 10y ago
The article is seeping with misinformation. Not sure why it reached the front page vs. the other Magic Leap pieces that have come out this week.
- Jommi 10y ago
  Hey thanks for responding! What parts are misinformation?
  - josephpmay 10y ago
    Off the top of my head: -Magic Leap is located in Hollywood/Plantation/Fort Lauderdale which is nowhere near Orlando -For now, Magic Leap is not in the VR space, rather they are augmented/mixed reality -Magic Leap is very much a hardware play, not a software one. From what I've heard (and this could be incorrect), their headset runs a heavily-modified version of Android, not a new operating system developed from scratch.
heeen2 10y ago
Does not really surprise me they picked Helsinki out of all the cities in europe, they already absorbed a bunch of ex Nokia talent

sagivo 10y ago

I like the facet that they don't follow the hype and actually open offices where they can find the best talent for their company. they did the same by opening an office in Israel as well where they can find a lot of VR/AR experience.

davesque 10y ago

I fear magic leap is riding the hype train more than is healthy. They're setting their potential future customers up for disappointment. It seems unlikely to me that whatever they're working on is so revolutionary that we're all going to agree that the secrecy was necessary. I'd be interested to know if there's any precedent for this kind of strategy working to increase profits. The only examples I can think of (e.g. Segway) are ones in which the hype actually worked against adoption of the product when it was released. At the end of the day, I really do hope they succeed. It will be great when someone comes up with the analogue of the first iPhone except for AR.

supermatt 10y ago
Most people (including the technical) that I've mentioned the name to, don't recognise it or know what it does. Maybe its just us hyping it up amongst ourselves?
- vikascoder 10y ago
  Suffice to say the tech that Magic Leap has is so much leaps and bounds better than Hololens that it will derail Microsoft's AR train completely once its launched. The hype is very real and so is the tech.
  - efnx 10y ago
    And how do you know this?

mrfusion 10y ago

I feel like we've been waiting for this product for almost ten years now. When is it coming?

efnx 10y ago
I agree. I've been waiting since the Burger King vr boy.

mark_kalvelage 10y ago

Does anyone have any advice on how to start doing VR/AR development? What tools are used and knowledge is required?

glaze 10y ago
Get Unity or Unreal. Unity uses C#, Unreal uses C++ or a visual scripting system called Blueprints.
doublerebel 10y ago
Microsoft has a series of tutorials using Unity for Hololens. Udacity just launched a new VR course using Unity as well. However, performance can be a critical factor depending on the app, and C++ may be the only solution. For that you need low-level knowledge of shader+texture+render techniques, which for Hololens is generally all in DirectX. There are very few business-oriented frameworks for any of the devices, almost everything is designed for gaming (short scripts and machine-oriented code organization). Implementing most of what we normally imagine being part of an 'app' has to be done from scratch. Source: I am doing a Hololens startup.

skc 10y ago

I've been binging on Black Mirror episodes. So all this secrecy about whatever they are building is giving me the creeps.

bane 10y ago

At last, a VR/AR version of the classic game, "My Summer Car" http://www.amistech.com/msc/ http://www.amistech.com/msc/

zump 10y ago

Why Finland and not Australia? What's the Silicon Valley insiders attitude towards Australia?