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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

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...

corey_moncure 10y ago
>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? I personally think this would be really cool, and would facilitate entirely new modes of interaction with people in this field e.g. designers and sales workers. Imagine being able to connect with a clothing designer remotely, and have them model you in a virtual outfit before a mirror, with an practically infinite vocabulary of color, texture, and pattern at their disposal. A 2-way conversation with a design professional with a vastly accelerated prototype-feedback loop. No, I think this would be totally awesome.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I think that is a very salient observation. To reach its full potential the unit needs both pixel occlusion (which is knocking out the light your eye would normally see with light you generation) and pixel registration (which is keeping the pixel in the same place in 3-space outside of you). All of the demos focus on occlusion (the creatures seem like they really are in your room) and skate over registration accuracy. If you were going to tall someone how to fix something, registration accuracy would be critical (for example) Also people are very "forgiving" if things seem to wiggle a bit in the world but looking at the Google Tango device this weekend I got to see some of the challenges of keeping registration of the pixels high. Its frustrating if your ruler end point is "jiggling" a bit close to the spot where you want to start a measurement. So without good registration you get eye fatigue like you used to get with pilots flying long range on bumpy flights constantly looking at instruments. Only in the case of pilots they can look outside to the clouds (which don't "bump" in space).
- ebalit 10y ago
  You could always "cheat" and use a marker. It's obviously not as powerful but if I can put a marker on any surface and create a virtual screen, it would already be huge.
pvg 10y ago
If these discrepancies have made you frumpy perhaps technology that lets you easily try on new clothes is just the thing.
MrQuincle 10y ago
I was also disappointed by that statement. I would expect much more from the first applications. Let me try to be constructive and think of some: + To have a cat even if you can't feed it or clean up (elderly). + To find out how it is to have a baby, how to feed it, how to care for it. + Dating first with an avatar before going for the real deal. + Searching for things without having to open cabinets or boxes. + Colored lights etc will be outdated. Colors, paintings, candles, can all be virtual. + Augmentation including audio can give a voice to your pets, to inanimate objects, even the food on your plate. Your plant will tell you that it's thirsty. Also I think screens are definitely not outdated. I look forward to have a screen the size of a wall and "wormhole" functionality so I can virtually couple it to a similar wall somewhere else. Then I will feel much closer to my grandma for example. Or my wife to her loved ones at the other side of the ocean.
- duderific 10y ago
  I don't want to live in a world with many of those features. I don't want my pets to talk to me, have my plants tell me they're thirsty, or go on a date with an avatar. And, as a parent of a two-year-old, trust me, no sort of application can let you find out how it is to have a baby. Maybe I'm just weird or old-fashioned.
  - lifeformed 10y ago
    Yeah, I want a cat so I can pet it, not look at it.
  - MrQuincle 10y ago
    I'm happy to hear other applications. I was trying to be constructive although I'm not a VR/AR fan at all. I know my grandma didn't want pets because she is too old to bend over. I know people who carry a sack of flower rather than a baby.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    I voted him up because I want to see that movie, but I agree with you, in that I don't want to live that life.
bigtones 10y ago
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.
- bobsil1 10y ago
  They're aiming for mobile pricing, and could subsidize just like mobile, $199 + wireless contract.
- gwern 10y ago
  The way I recollect it, this is so far very different from Segway. In the runup to the Segway release/announcement, all the hype was coming from the Segway people and the press was repeating it because they had nothing else to report besides potted biographies of Dean Kamen and his previous inventions. I don't remember tech journalists going in, getting to use the Segway for hours, and coming out and telling the world that it was going to change cities forever (even if they aren't allowed to explain exactly what 'Ginger' was). With Magic Leap, on the other hand, we have many people going in, using it live, and coming out and saying it's going to change everything, including people who have been watching tech hype bubbles form & pop since before you or I were born, like Kevin Kelly. I think we can be pretty confident that there is some extremely impressive technology in there and that the descriptions are not totally bogus, even if we remain uncertain how successful it'll be (eg VR headsets are technically impressive and do deliver presence and deliver on many promises, but have not yet set the world on fire).
oelmekki 10y ago
Maybe I'm just bored, but I'm quite excited about what we will have to create as interface patterns with mixed reality. Even if there were no useful content made for it, I'm pretty sure I could spend hours trying building interfaces and see how well they go, just like I can spend hours trying to 3d print a ball or testing the limits of printing on thin air. In any way, I can't see this not being a technological advance once we'll have played with it as makers for a decent amount of years.
Bartweiss 10y ago
Aside from mis-valuing Magic Leap, these examples are completely implausible. Ask Pixar how much time goes into draping a single VR garment on a single body. It's hard work, regardless of how good your imaging tech is. The ongoing hurdles are about modeling, based on cloth properties and personal anatomy. The margins on "try on at home" absolutely don't justify modeling every singly piece of clothing into a technically-accurate VR solution, and if you do anything less people will return your produce when it looks nothing like the VR visualization. Asserting that a good VR technique will justify real-world modeling is downright stilly, and it leads me to ignore non-tech assessments of whether that project is worthwhile.
- IshKebab 10y ago
  Yeah completely implausible... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaWeWtG0tJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaWeWtG0tJQ
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    Very cool, and better than I knew existed. Thanks. And yet... Check out the bodies displayed at 2:08. A good range, but nowhere near the range in effect for real people - and at least half of them look noticeably wrong to me. The cloth displays aggressive horizontal wrinkling, in a way that makes no sense. Check out the center-most figure, whose shirt curves in below the stomach with extensive wrinkles that gravity should remove. All of the figures display confusingly broken folding on the horizontal plane - the leftmost model stretches the cloth across the chest, then displays bizarre smooth-to-wavy patterns at stomach height as you move from front to side. And as far as I can see, all of this is weak to multi-layered, stiff, or tailored cloth. So yeah, I appreciate this, but I think it's woefully inadequate to modeling even cheap, popular clothing. That's going to take a few more breakthrough as large as this one at least, so Magic Leap's VR abilities aren't nearly enough to justify this business model.
    - phobius 10y ago
      Recommend you look at this history of emerging technologies announced at SIGGRAPH. Tends not to be a linear progression at all; if the attention of more than a couple researchers is applied to any of these things then they grow very quickly - couple this with improvements in parallel processing power and it becomes quite viable. (see: physically based lighting, rigid body -> full crumple simulation, fluid dynamics, Photoshop's "smart fill", or really any game tech) Apropos of nothing: Same applies in terms of hardware - what we can do with light field cameras now was science fiction just over a decade ago, but within a couple years of crossing a research tipping point we went from 10x10' camera arrays to <$100 hand-held commercial products. source: graphics tech and SIGGRAPH nerd for the last 23 years actually there was an extremely slow build up of this tech, with a sudden and rapid escalation - but between 1908 and 2010 was a very shallow incline :)
deleted 10y ago
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corey_moncure 10y ago

>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? I personally think this would be really cool, and would facilitate entirely new modes of interaction with people in this field e.g. designers and sales workers. Imagine being able to connect with a clothing designer remotely, and have them model you in a virtual outfit before a mirror, with an practically infinite vocabulary of color, texture, and pattern at their disposal. A 2-way conversation with a design professional with a vastly accelerated prototype-feedback loop. No, I think this would be totally awesome.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I think that is a very salient observation. To reach its full potential the unit needs both pixel occlusion (which is knocking out the light your eye would normally see with light you generation) and pixel registration (which is keeping the pixel in the same place in 3-space outside of you). All of the demos focus on occlusion (the creatures seem like they really are in your room) and skate over registration accuracy. If you were going to tall someone how to fix something, registration accuracy would be critical (for example) Also people are very "forgiving" if things seem to wiggle a bit in the world but looking at the Google Tango device this weekend I got to see some of the challenges of keeping registration of the pixels high. Its frustrating if your ruler end point is "jiggling" a bit close to the spot where you want to start a measurement. So without good registration you get eye fatigue like you used to get with pilots flying long range on bumpy flights constantly looking at instruments. Only in the case of pilots they can look outside to the clouds (which don't "bump" in space).

ebalit 10y ago
You could always "cheat" and use a marker. It's obviously not as powerful but if I can put a marker on any surface and create a virtual screen, it would already be huge.

pvg 10y ago

If these discrepancies have made you frumpy perhaps technology that lets you easily try on new clothes is just the thing.

MrQuincle 10y ago

I was also disappointed by that statement. I would expect much more from the first applications. Let me try to be constructive and think of some: + To have a cat even if you can't feed it or clean up (elderly). + To find out how it is to have a baby, how to feed it, how to care for it. + Dating first with an avatar before going for the real deal. + Searching for things without having to open cabinets or boxes. + Colored lights etc will be outdated. Colors, paintings, candles, can all be virtual. + Augmentation including audio can give a voice to your pets, to inanimate objects, even the food on your plate. Your plant will tell you that it's thirsty. Also I think screens are definitely not outdated. I look forward to have a screen the size of a wall and "wormhole" functionality so I can virtually couple it to a similar wall somewhere else. Then I will feel much closer to my grandma for example. Or my wife to her loved ones at the other side of the ocean.

duderific 10y ago
I don't want to live in a world with many of those features. I don't want my pets to talk to me, have my plants tell me they're thirsty, or go on a date with an avatar. And, as a parent of a two-year-old, trust me, no sort of application can let you find out how it is to have a baby. Maybe I'm just weird or old-fashioned.
- lifeformed 10y ago
  Yeah, I want a cat so I can pet it, not look at it.
- MrQuincle 10y ago
  I'm happy to hear other applications. I was trying to be constructive although I'm not a VR/AR fan at all. I know my grandma didn't want pets because she is too old to bend over. I know people who carry a sack of flower rather than a baby.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  I voted him up because I want to see that movie, but I agree with you, in that I don't want to live that life.

bigtones 10y ago

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.

bobsil1 10y ago
They're aiming for mobile pricing, and could subsidize just like mobile, $199 + wireless contract.
gwern 10y ago
The way I recollect it, this is so far very different from Segway. In the runup to the Segway release/announcement, all the hype was coming from the Segway people and the press was repeating it because they had nothing else to report besides potted biographies of Dean Kamen and his previous inventions. I don't remember tech journalists going in, getting to use the Segway for hours, and coming out and telling the world that it was going to change cities forever (even if they aren't allowed to explain exactly what 'Ginger' was). With Magic Leap, on the other hand, we have many people going in, using it live, and coming out and saying it's going to change everything, including people who have been watching tech hype bubbles form & pop since before you or I were born, like Kevin Kelly. I think we can be pretty confident that there is some extremely impressive technology in there and that the descriptions are not totally bogus, even if we remain uncertain how successful it'll be (eg VR headsets are technically impressive and do deliver presence and deliver on many promises, but have not yet set the world on fire).

oelmekki 10y ago

Maybe I'm just bored, but I'm quite excited about what we will have to create as interface patterns with mixed reality. Even if there were no useful content made for it, I'm pretty sure I could spend hours trying building interfaces and see how well they go, just like I can spend hours trying to 3d print a ball or testing the limits of printing on thin air. In any way, I can't see this not being a technological advance once we'll have played with it as makers for a decent amount of years.

Bartweiss 10y ago

Aside from mis-valuing Magic Leap, these examples are completely implausible. Ask Pixar how much time goes into draping a single VR garment on a single body. It's hard work, regardless of how good your imaging tech is. The ongoing hurdles are about modeling, based on cloth properties and personal anatomy. The margins on "try on at home" absolutely don't justify modeling every singly piece of clothing into a technically-accurate VR solution, and if you do anything less people will return your produce when it looks nothing like the VR visualization. Asserting that a good VR technique will justify real-world modeling is downright stilly, and it leads me to ignore non-tech assessments of whether that project is worthwhile.

IshKebab 10y ago
Yeah completely implausible... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaWeWtG0tJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaWeWtG0tJQ
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Very cool, and better than I knew existed. Thanks. And yet... Check out the bodies displayed at 2:08. A good range, but nowhere near the range in effect for real people - and at least half of them look noticeably wrong to me. The cloth displays aggressive horizontal wrinkling, in a way that makes no sense. Check out the center-most figure, whose shirt curves in below the stomach with extensive wrinkles that gravity should remove. All of the figures display confusingly broken folding on the horizontal plane - the leftmost model stretches the cloth across the chest, then displays bizarre smooth-to-wavy patterns at stomach height as you move from front to side. And as far as I can see, all of this is weak to multi-layered, stiff, or tailored cloth. So yeah, I appreciate this, but I think it's woefully inadequate to modeling even cheap, popular clothing. That's going to take a few more breakthrough as large as this one at least, so Magic Leap's VR abilities aren't nearly enough to justify this business model.
  - phobius 10y ago
    Recommend you look at this history of emerging technologies announced at SIGGRAPH. Tends not to be a linear progression at all; if the attention of more than a couple researchers is applied to any of these things then they grow very quickly - couple this with improvements in parallel processing power and it becomes quite viable. (see: physically based lighting, rigid body -> full crumple simulation, fluid dynamics, Photoshop's "smart fill", or really any game tech) Apropos of nothing: Same applies in terms of hardware - what we can do with light field cameras now was science fiction just over a decade ago, but within a couple years of crossing a research tipping point we went from 10x10' camera arrays to <$100 hand-held commercial products. source: graphics tech and SIGGRAPH nerd for the last 23 years actually there was an extremely slow build up of this tech, with a sudden and rapid escalation - but between 1908 and 2010 was a very shallow incline :)

deleted 10y ago

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