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Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping
- oculusthrift 10y agosometimes i get tired of all the fakeness in the world. it seems to corrupt every part of society and makes me sick thinking about it. theranos, magic leap, and a lot more. everything seems to be overhyped bs, while the only successful things are essentially avenues to cram ads down your throat and brainwash you to spend money you don't have.
- hacker_9 10y agoThis is just what marketing looks like in the 21st century. You have to have a wow factor for people to notice you. I would suggest never trusting any announcement/trailer/teaser for anything to be honest; their aim is only to show you an 'experience' which entices you, something that makes you want to come back for more and spend money on it.
- probablybroken 10y agoI think it's certainly been the case with a lot of kickstarter projects and certain startups. There's so much pressure on people to realise short term success, and so many people willing to believe in it.
- hacker_9 10y agoWhile true this is really just a response to what the big companies have been doing for a long time. Some off the top of my head: MS Kinect trailer [1], and Hololens [2], also Ubisoft games with realistic graphics at E3 that were later downgraded [3]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2qlHoxPioM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2qlHoxPioM [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aThCr0PsyuA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aThCr0PsyuA [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNter0oEYxc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNter0oEYxc
- throwanem 10y agoI mean Watch Underscore Dogs was trash anyways, I get what you're saying but I almost don't even blame them for the E3 thing because how else were they going to polish that turd? ...and from the video I see that it's not just Watch Underscore Dogs by a long shot! It's weird to me that they keep pulling this nonsense, when amazing graphics are probably one of the biggest draws for Ubisoft Game. Maybe they're just banking on a steady supply of new gamers not savvy enough to realize that all Ubisoft games are Ubisoft Game.
- simonh 10y agoVarious brands of snake oil have been on the market for a very, very long time.
- new299 10y agoI'd like to break this down a bit. Firstly, why is this so frustrating. On a practical level, it's frustrating for engineers because to operate as engineers we have to work for these companies. It's not just the fakeness, it's the bad management that comes with it. They dilute the pool of possible good companies that we could work for. They also increase the cost of doing something actually worth while. Salaries get higher, cost of living increases. So that's why these companies are annoying to engineers. It's not just people being bitter exactly... --- The next question is why does this happen? Firstly, tech investors are not great at DD of science/basic technology startups. Maybe they hire external consultants to do the DD (due diligence). Maybe they rely on their friends (prior investments/contacts). So they roll the dice, invest in some company that looks safe (founders worked a Google etc. etc.) and their friends like. Then you get one big investor who throws a bunch of cash in. A large number of other investors throw in as well. They assume that first, big investor did the DD. This is an easy play for the investors. They don't have to do much work. It's easier than say, doing the DD on a smaller seed stage play. Once it gets bit enough, I guess they assume that they can crush other players in the same area just because they have a stack of cash. TL;DR: They don't do the DD, it's easier to make big bets than lots of small ones. It would probably be better for us, if the cash that was thrown at Magic Leap went to fund 2000 seed stage investments. But investors would find that too hard to do... That's my take anyway. I'd be interested to better understand what others think.
- throwaway21jan 10y agoa16z hasn't been too lucky with DD lately. Not just Magic Leap, I've heard that Improbable was struggling to fulfil its promises, and was being sued as a result.
- new299 10y agoBut they've only raised 22MUSD how can we expect them to have done anything yet? ;) Suing them seem like an odd thing to do.
- throwaway21jan 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- grabcocque 10y agoThat these guys are a bunch of snake oil merchants has been obvious from day zero. Sometimes the overwhelming stench of bullshit is a little too difficult to ignore.
- skc 10y agoBut one wonders why there has yet to be an exodus of talent from Magic Leap. I suspect the work is interesting for the engineers but nobody has the heart to tell the C level execs that what they are trying to sell the public is bullshit.
- hacker_9 10y agoA job's a job, and with the funding ML has got it's probably a pretty safe one for now.
- pyb 10y agoI see that they are based in Florida. Maybe part of the problem is that they just couldn't recruit the right tech talent in the first place.
- new299 10y agoThey're based in Dania Beach, Florida. I'd guess the job market is not quite as liquid as in the Bay Area. People get locked in, family commitments etc. etc.
- shostack 10y agoAnd this is a great example for why people stomach the cost of living of the Bay when that argument arises... Lower employment risk due to more high paying jobs and increased job liquidity.
- new299 10y agoYes, it's a trade off. Living somewhere expensive where there's little liquidity sucks. Living somewhere cheap, where you can get occasional well paid work and save money can also work.
- imode 10y agoI keep getting Magic Leap confused with Leap Motion. though at least the latter has a proper, released product...
- argonaut 10y agoThe first video was known to be fake back in 2015, when they released another video that explicitly stated no visual effects were used. And my guess is the second video isn't fake, but it's using their non-miniaturized technology. This is not news. Unlike Theranos (where people's health was also at stake), if/when Magic Leap fails, their investors will lose their money and capitalism will go on - this is how things are supposed to work.
- Pica_soO 10y agoThe problem is that this kind of "learning" experience propagates from CEO talk to CEO talk. Making a whole branch of technology a No-Go-Zone, even if the problems that stopped it, get solved. "We could do that, and end up like Magic-Leap.." will be the Standard slogan at every pitch.
- Analemma_ 10y agoFortunately Microsoft is not only working on the same thing but already has a shipping product, so even if Magic Leap goes under I don't think it's going to take AR with it.
- ericd 10y agoThe Hololens was pretty crappy, though. The Oculus is a much more refined experience, and even there it's not clear that it's good enough to step out of novelty into mass market. I'd say Oculus is close, and Hololens has a very long way to go.
- soneca 10y agoI believe that will be a lot of frustation when they finally launch something. But I dont believe that Microsoft Hololens has "fallen short" as they say. I believe the Hololens demo was great and transparent on how the tech is, how it shows, what it takes to produce. Not a "magical" new sci-fi world made real, but definitely more close to reality than flying cara.
- xorcist 10y agoIt's easy to fool those who want to be fooled. The likelyhood that these people developed electronics 10x smaller with 10x performance is roughly the same as my cold fusion reactor in my garage delivers free energy for all. If someone pulled that off they wouldn't need to fleece investors for their money.
- joelg 10y ago> Quick guide to spotting non-existent tech > - Refusing to give a launch date > ... > - Confusing working hard with making progress Some of these are valid, but some are inevitable for any tech that is actually revolutionary. Magic Leap's actions seem so far to be consistent with both theories. It's kind of unfortunately true that it's impossible to distinguish between the exaggerated-for-media-coverage-sake case and the actually-world-changing-but-really-technically-difficult case.
- curiousgal 10y ago"In general, signal theory says if you have a good way of proving something and a noisy way of proving something and you choose the noisy way chances are it's because you couldn't do the good way in the first place."
- camus2 10y agoThis comment is interesting : > If you were investing millions into something, would you not request a personal demo where you actually see the demo for yourself, in your own time, and see how it works? I know I would.
- wodenokoto 10y agoThe article mentions a large helmet. Any pictures of it around?
- DonHopkins 10y agoThe best thing we have so far is this revealing illustration tweeted by Rony Abovitz himself: https://twitter.com/rabovitz/status/807077358624772098?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/rabovitz/status/807077358624772098?ref_s...
- tyingq 10y agoI believe this picture from wired is supposed to be of "the beast" that they use for demos: https://assets.wired.com/photos/w_1200/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ff_magic_leap-eric_browy.jpg https://assets.wired.com/photos/w_1200/wp-content/uploads/20... There are drawings of something more helmet like in their patents, like this one: http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=D0758367&homeurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO1%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526d%3DPALL%2526p%3D1%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsrchnum.htm%2526r%3D1%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526s1%3DD758,367.PN.%2526OS%3DPN%2FD758,367%2526RS%3DPN%2FD758,367&PageNum=&Rtype=&SectionNum=&idkey=NONE&Input=View+first+page http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=D0758367&homeurl=http%3A%...
- DonHopkins 10y agoAren't most of the illustrations in their patents just unattributed tracings of other people's work? http://gizmodo.com/magic-leap-ripped-off-those-awesome-ui-concepts-1682716916 http://gizmodo.com/magic-leap-ripped-off-those-awesome-ui-co...
- Kiro 10y agoThe author of this article needs to try Hololens. The technology is definitely here.
- m_fayer 10y agoHololens was always somehow the thing that made me suspicious of Magic Leap. Because Hololens has the smell of "amazing things we can actually do." It is indeed amazing, and at the same time dorky looking and quite imperfect, much like VR is today. Hololens is where our state of the art is - and I'm quite happy with that, it's imperfect magic! So when someone comes along and essentially says "we're doing all the magical stuff we can do today but somehow removing ALL the really hard limitations, and no we won't tell you how!" it just smells like wish-fulfillment hucksterism. I can just point a finger at Hololens and say "hey, this is what today's reality ACTUALLY looks like."
- endorphone 10y agoHoloLens is being pushed with much of the same rigged demos. As a review from a few days ago mentioned- "Maybe Microsoft is saving all the wow factor for its keynotes, but my demo was a less refined and less capable version of what we've seen in on-stage demos. My experience, while impressive, felt like child's play AR compared to what's been in Microsoft's keynotes." Microsoft unveiled it well over a year ago, and still when people can actually try the device the demos are a fraction of the myth presented in their keynote. And of course these things always rely upon the development of technology, but we often get 80% and think the last 20% is the easy part when really it's the extraordinarily difficult barrier between realistically credible and a toy. The projection technology (the field refraction grid) is very interesting, and the environment mapping is fantastic, but the resolution of the device makes the demos farce out of the gate -- the total overlay resolution is 1268x720 max (in most realistic scenes much less), so when you see someone demo something like a web browser in their AR display, if you ever see the demo it's just entirely unusable (far too low of a resolution) unless you move directly in front of the projection occupying the majority of your FOV, at which point what is the point. The technology will improve, obviously, but right now it definitely falls in the category of gimmick to me, with several generations before it's remotely as usable as being pitched.
- DonHopkins 10y agoSounds like Magic Leap developed schpilkaz in their genektagazoink. The demo was like buttah. Like a big stick of buttah. I love Rony Abovitz, but he's a little ibaboodled in the kebbie. Talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping. Discuss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiJkANps0Qw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiJkANps0Qw
- Neliquat 10y agoYou see, this is the type of comment that tears me on HN. On one hand I actually lold, on the other, it added nothing but some humor to the discussion. What is the guideline here? We sure don't want to become 'insert failed or failing aggregator here'. Or the race to the bottom, who gets the 1st clever chuckleluck comment in, contest of internet points and paid marketing. So I made this comment instead.
- DonHopkins 10y agoGood meta-discussion. I assumed the article's title was a reference to the SNL skit, but there weren't any more references or allusions to it in the article, so I though other people who didn't recognize the skit might appreciate a reference. I hope my other post linking to their TEDx talk balanced out my frivolity! ;)
- bradleyjg 10y agoMy guess is it was a reference to the Voltaire quote -- "The Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."
- DonHopkins 10y agoI assumed it was Coffee Talk (which once discussed Voltaire's comment [1]), because Dania Beach is near Boca Ratan: "OK now, this show used to be hosted by my friend Paul Baldwin, but he developed shpilkis in his genechtagazoink. So now he's in Boca Raton, Florida, recovering nicely, thank you very much." -Linda Richman [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_Talk#Discussion_topics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_Talk#Discussion_topics [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_Talk#Mannerisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_Talk#Mannerisms
- Geee 10y agoIt doesn't matter if their tech doesn't yet work. Augmented reality is inevitable and someone will make it happen. Now, the logic is that whoever pours the most money into it will win the race and with patents be in a monopoly position. It's a gamble, but they have a likelihood of succeeding with money and hard work. That's what they've sold to their investors.
- Neliquat 10y agoIt seems that putting all your eggs in one tech basket counters that strategy, which is what it appears they did. In an ideal 'throw money at it until it works' situation, you would need to fund multiple new technologies to have a non trivial chance at success.
- edblarney 10y ago"Augmented reality is inevitable and someone will make it happen." True. "Now, the logic is that whoever pours the most money into it will win the race and with patents be in a monopoly position." This is not quite true :). My bet is that the quality of AR that we see in their hype videos will not be possible on a consumer scale until after the core patents have run out :). This is a 'disruptive' technology but it's still way behind practical applicability. We see this in every industry - and sometimes it takes quite a long time for products to come to fruition :)
- ggame 10y agoI'd hazard a bet that augmented reality already peaked with Pokémon Go.
- CydeWeys 10y agoPokemon Go isn't real AR though, it's just a phone app that uses the device's camera. You need dedicated hardware to do real AR. I'm withholding judgment until I see that.
- ggame 10y agoIt mixes a virtual world with the real world; thus augmenting the real world. I would argue that a fine grain occlusion (individual pixels) vs coarse grain (movable display) isn't that big of a difference with immersion. Consider that we are immersed with our phones quite a bit already. In addition the lack of 3D isn't that big of a deal given the brain fills in the details with other cues. E.g. People that go blind in one eye can adjust quite well to the lack of 3D. I personally would love a HUD for my sporting activities; e.g. Skully. But my phone is perfectly fine as a daily driver.
- jaypaulynice 10y agoThe problem is honesty isn't rewarded anymore. Someone working hard will be beaten by someone who tells all the fancy stuff...I know a lot of startups that raised millions, but their tech and growth is totally non-existent. I did some research and a lot of companies have little to no social media presence, yet are "growing" crazy. How do people find them? Add network effect and you get overly hyped stuff that don't deliver. I wish startup accelerators relied more on experienced, reputed judges in the startup's field instead of growth gimmicks. Online contests/challenges seem to be the way to find really good tech startups.
- cocktailpeanuts 10y agoI see the same phenomenon and think it's the opposite. Raising millions is not a reward. I understand why you think that way since I used to think that way too. But I learned the hard way that raising money is nothing more than the price you have to pay to get to somewhere you want. So what IS reward? Obviously, if your business does well and "growing" crazy, that's your reward. That way you didn't even have to give up your control over the company and still managed to outsmart others who wasted tons of money and didn't even get anything done. That's the reward you get for working hard honestly. I also used to think that honest people never get rewarded, and that was a couple of years ago when I was looking at all the pointless apps getting funded. Now if you look back, none of them are alive. Even the ones that were growing like crazy all die off, because most of the ones that grew like crazy were designed to grow like crazy in a synthetic manner instead of organically growing based on the value they provide to users. So the lesson is, just look at your customers. If you see that more and more people are using and buying your product, that means you are doing something right. You don't need validation from investors and the press. p.s. You can buy press anyway. Once you have enough money and traction just hire a PR agency and pitch a story for a guaranteed spot on relevant publications. This is much better than these VC funded startups wasting money doing the PR piece when they have no substance.
- misnome 10y ago> Raising millions is not a reward. They get paid for the X years it takes their startup to crash, probably quite well. Afterwards, they are considered an "Experienced entrepreneur" and thus more likely to get their foot in the door to more negotiations, given press time etc. What part of this is failing?
- ismail 10y agoI have a theory secretive + massive hype = emperor without clothes
- redgc 10y agoBenedict Evans doesn't seem like the kind of guy to fall for BS though, let alone defend it. And surely at least one of their investors had the technical due diligence capability to investigate how much computing power is in the demo "rigs" and be able to know if such power can be "miniaturized" into a consumer product by year X, perhaps allowing for a little software optimization on the way too.
- DonHopkins 10y agoWell now he does seem like that kind of guy, apparently.
- Sologram 10y agoIt is so sad to see Evan B saying Marketing phrases trying to protect his investments.
- aphextron 10y agoI lost any respect I had for that company when they released that whale video referenced in the article. Complete marketing hype nonsense.
- ryandamm 10y agoI think what's missing from this discussion is the demo is apparently really, really good. Google didn't put ~$500m, and Alibaba something like $800m, just on a whim, or some investment thesis. And everyone I've spoken to who's gotten the demo is a believer. I think this article suffers from an overly binary view of technology -- if it isn't market ready, it's vaporware. No, there's probably some real tech there (aforementioned demo), but miniaturizing / productizing is still a risk. I think the blowback has something to do with the marketing itself, and Abovitz's amazing idiosyncracies. Neither of those indicate anything about the tech, but (absent any public information) it helps fuel the hate. And from what I understand about their likely approach, it's definitely more aggressive than the HoloLens. I don't personally think that nearfield focus in a headset is that valuable, but that's just a guess. If light field displays are the tech that takes AR over the top -- from curiosity to a new computing platform -- then Magic Leap is really well positioned, vis a vis a large lead and big IP portfolio. Also, with ~$1.4 bn raised, they're too big to fail.
- new299 10y agoYou know... this thesis that they've raised 1.1BUSD so it /must/ be good just doesn't hold water for me. It's almost an argument from authority, and it's not very useful. In particular, investors have made large investments in the past which it turns out did not have a strong technical foundation. So there's track record here. Yes, there's obviously something. There's obviously a team of people doing something. That's not the argument, the argument is that a 1.1B USD investment isn't really a reasonable thing to do (and that it harms the engineering environment as I noted below).
- ryandamm 10y agoWhile I think the money raised is a vote of confidence from the investors -- and it's only a vote -- my point about "too big to fail" is actually more a sunk-cost argument. With that much funding, the worst-case glide path for Magic Leap might be to stumble along, sucking in continuation funding until it gets a product to market. (It's no Theranos.) To be clear, I'm not making predictions about ML specifically. I don't have a clue about what they're doing. My general point is that huge sums of money have both momentum and gravity of their own. (I'm not saying this is rational, good, or just -- just that it seems to be true.)
- oelmekki 10y agoSounds like Magic Leap is making the same prelaunch communication errors than Hello Games did with No Man's Sky : creating high expectations without showing much, which causes expectation to build up when people imagination feels the gaps, and cause backslash in the shape of frustrations. But to be fair, author does the exact same thing than he is accusing Magic Leap of : making claims without displaying anything to back them up. He states that Magic Leap won't happen, just like flying cars. Based on what, except his frustration of not seeing the product? Same there : "The truth is that Magic Leap cannot get its huge prototype working in a much, much smaller version". Starting a sentence with "The truth is" doesn't make it true by itself, we need evidences. As far as I know, maybe author is stating exactly what will happen, but I can't agree with him given so few evidences.
- rasz_pl 10y agoWhat do you mean by errors? They both get to keep all the money = win.
- drelihan 10y agoIt's unlikely that 500m or 800m investment is 1.) all in cash or 2.) given out on day 1. If there are proper investor controls in place, cash is likely staged in and noncash vests over time as milestones are hit. At least, I hope that is the way it is setup...
- evo_9 10y agoSimilar tech, less hype, perhaps more 'real': http://www.roadtovr.com/realview-holoscope-ar-headset-hologram-display/ http://www.roadtovr.com/realview-holoscope-ar-headset-hologr...
- evo_9 10y agoSimilar tech, less hype, perhaps more 'real'... http://www.roadtovr.com/realview-holoscope-ar-headset-hologram-display/ http://www.roadtovr.com/realview-holoscope-ar-headset-hologr...
- orasis 10y agoI saw an AR demo earlier this week using a google cardboard type setup with a phone screen and it was fairly compelling already. Based on this cheap setup I'm confident we'll see something mind blowing in the near future.
- dicroce 10y agoThey have some interesting, cool tech. It may not be miniaturizable (or it may be, dunno). But the hype about them is way too big. They have essentially put themselves in very tough spot.
- Walf 10y agoBut why do people think it can project dark?! I understand the dimly lit room demo video, where the ML graphics are all brighter than the environment, but how can you make dark whaleskin over light timber flooring by adding light?
- norea-armozel 10y agoThis is why I'm steering clear of AR since no one wants to show off the actual prototypes for various reasons. And frankly, I don't blame them for wanting to protect their technology but the fact remains if you can't show us a live and real demonstration of the devices in question then there can't be a product to buy because it effectively doesn't exist.