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Since the 1st iteration of the design is apparently ready, why can't they just show a small demo? It's supposed to be shipping in 2018. They could easily have
by lvoudour 9y ago
Since the 1st iteration of the design is apparently ready, why can't they just show a small demo?
It's supposed to be shipping in 2018. They could easily have hired a team of top notch creators to showcase some of the capabilities of the device live -even if the device is still not 100% ready- instead of this silly Manhattan project secrecy. I hope they deliver as promised, but something smells fishy.
It's a pity, because unlike VR I think AR has huge potential both for consumer and industrial applications.
- lolsal 9y agoI am not affiliated with Magic Leap. I do know for a fact though that they have many independent teams working to showcase this technology.
- marricks 9y agoThat doesn't really explain why they're not showcasing it yet.
- jonknee 9y agoTo showcase it they'd need actual working hardware instead of 3D renders...
- applecrazy 9y agoI mean, if the theory that they’ve faked everything so far is true, then it could be possible for them to fake a demo.
- jonknee 9y agoI don't doubt they're working on it, I bet it's just a buggy disappointing pile.
- VectorLock 9y agoI'd wager they have something which is just enough to get people with deep pockets to give them a pile of cash on the premise of "imagine what it could be with only another billion dollars!" but is utterly underwhelming for a mass-market consumer product.
- cryptoz 9y agoThere is absolute hard evidence that they have faked videos that do not represent the reality of their product. They have a video where they show 100 people watching the Magic Leap effects without wearing any googles. With today's announcement that video is a very clear fake without any attempt to make it resemble a final or even in-development product. Their videos are fake and do not show what they are building. The product might be neat, I don't know. We do know that they lie in their videos to get attention. I have been an avid Magic Leap supporter for years. I told everyone I know about them and showed all my friends their videos. I've been gushing about them for years. All based on a lie. All my love and attention for them has been because they told us they were building a system for you to have AR without goggles. LIES. ALL LIES. Boycott Magic Leap for life.
- criddell 9y ago> They have a video where they show 100 people watching the Magic Leap effects without wearing any googles. Is that the whale in the gymnasium video? If so, then I think the people were virtual as well. It may have been an empty room.
- samlevine 9y ago> LIES. ALL LIES. It's difficult to do marketing for things that aren't yet in productized form without them being aspirational to some extent or another. Case in point, the public unveilings for the Kinect and original Mac were combinations of stuff that worked at the time of the demo and stuff they hoped to finish by the time they sold. The former didn't deliver, the latter did. It's clearly bad to overhype a product, but you have to try and reach for what you think you can do even if you're not done yet. And for new product categories you're even more dependent on marketing than for established ones.
- tigershark 9y agoThey have actual working hardware, the Rolling Stones journalist tested it extensively.
- lolsal 9y ago"It's not ready yet."
- sarreph 9y agoHelps to stunt some of the vaporware conspiracy theories though :)
- TeMPOraL 9y agoYou mean "confirm". This website does not do anything to make the product seem not vapourware, and within the context of their entire activity, it can be taken as an evidence for the product being vapourware - after all, if it actually existed, they could've shown someone something.
- sarreph 9y agoNope, not 'confirm' — my 'stunt' in that context was referring to the parent comment's insider source saying they're actively working on a proper demo... Obviously, the webpage in of itself currently could be vaporware, for all we know...
- jpalomaki 9y agoCreating good demos for wearable technology is hard. You certainly can make fancy simulations like Microsoft for their Hololens, but the devil is in the details. It's mainly about how it feels and you need to experience the technology to figure it out. I don't see much to be gained from demoing prototypes to general public. If it's main blowing - great, but does not really make a difference if you can't buy it. If it's less than mind blowing, then you will just ruin everything. Even if you then later improve the product to the mind blowing level, most have already made their minds.
- jbergstroem 9y agoSpeaking of good demos, I thought this demo-ish from the Starbreeze "AR/VR" was stack pretty cool": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x32FHiJJyhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x32FHiJJyhQ Not sure how how wide their product will spread though.. [disclaimer: I own shares in the company]
- deanCommie 9y agoThat's not a demo, that's a vision.
- jbergstroem 9y agoBetter put. As an aside: the headset and gun exists (https://www.wareable.com/vr/starvr-headset-review https://www.wareable.com/vr/starvr-headset-review). The location soon exists with enterspace vr: https://www.enterspacevr.com https://www.enterspacevr.com
- artur_makly 9y agoreal paintball is unbeatable -;) nature always wins
- yohann305 9y agoAny recommendation on how a common mortal could invest in ML?
- juanmirocks 9y agoAgreed. All previous not-really-showing-anything videos were awe inspiring. This website let me: meh. Either way, looking forward to having a set in my hands/head.
- BlackjackCF 9y agoHow do they keep raising more money?
- enraged_camel 9y agoThere is an over-abundance of capital in the economy right now (a big part of the reason why the stock market has gone up so much) so VCs are basically begging* to invest in startups that look even remotely promising. *Okay not really but you know what I mean.
- xfkechyk 9y agobecause investors get to see what they're working on firsthand
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mustacheemperor 9y agoI share the concern that there's still nothing too publically accessible, but the device itself isn't completely under wraps. The journalist in the Rolling Stone article[0] viewed a few demos built between the ML team, including one with Sigur Ros that's got a very small clip on youtube[1]. I suspect building a demo of this kind of tech that's remotely as impressive viewed on a website or youtube video is challenging. If I'd built the device as marketed I'd be concerned about giving half-baked first impressions that disrupt the hype machine, even if the device itself isn't half-baked. [0]https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-introducing-magic-leaps-mixed-reality-goggles-w514479 https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-intro... [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLtDeonCAYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLtDeonCAYE
- bastawhiz 9y agoThe device is supposed to be in the hands of actual paying customers within a year and they don't even have pictures or video of it _doing something_. Sure it might not be perfect, but there's exactly zero evidence that this product isn't just a hollow chassis. If a demo at this point comes off as half baked, isn't that a gigantic red flag that this product isn't able to cash the checks that Magic Leap is writing? Nintendo announced the Switch about six months before it shipped. Before that they announced titles, showed game demos, and talked about titles in development. Magic Leap has shown us what could be a 3D printed mockup for all we know, and has announced (to my knowledge) exactly one thing for the console (mixed reality comics). Magic Leap should be marketing the hell out of this. It's a multi-billion dollar product, and yet they have exactly zero actual footage of the actual hardware even working. Their sizzle reels have been nothing but concept art. Something is very wrong with this.
- mustacheemperor 9y agoI agree that it is concerning, but I don't see how an entire multi page article of someone's hands-on experience with the device qualifies as "exactly zero evidence this product isn't just a hollow chassis."
- 9y ago
- kilroy123 9y agoMy guess is, they are wanting more money. It's not really ready and won't ship next year. I agree something is fishy.
- baldfat 9y ago$1,887,500,000 should have been enough! https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap
- julienfr112 9y ago... and all i got was this lousy internet site. Just kidding, the internet site is really beautiful.
- whamlastxmas 9y agoMade firefox on Android crash after spending 20 seconds loading though
- _asummers 9y agoTook about 10 seconds for the dude with the goggles on to come into focus on Chrome OSX, and scroll didn't work for a good 1-2 seconds after load.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ouiea 9y agoI bet India can put a man on Mars for a fraction of that amount.
- besos_y_guapas 9y agoI'd start by building a sanitation network, but maybe that's just me
- discordianfish 9y agoI've got a HTC Vive and my expectations were really high due to all these great looking demos. In reality though, there is still today very few engaging content which leads to a lot disappointment. VR overpromised and maybe Magic Leap, while being bold in their initial vision, learned from this and is careful to increase hype before having actual good content. I mean, this doesn't seem to address end users yet.
- andybak 9y ago> In reality though, there is still today very few engaging content which leads to a lot disappointment. I keep hearing this from some sections of the VR community but I my personal feelings are entirely opposite. I simply don't have enough time for all the good VR content I've got access to. My backlog is growing. Do you have incredible amounts of free time or do you have very specific tastes? Tilt Brush and Google Earth alone should be enough to keep a normal person entertained for most of their natural life!
- discordianfish 9y agoProbably a mix of specific taste and the abundance of alternatives to do. Tilt Brush and Google Earth is super fun, but it it wears off. And when it comes to games, there are only so many games I'm interested in. Most Vive games feel more like browser/mobile games to me than the epic PC games I love. That being said, I just realized that Fallout VR and LA Noire just got released. This is the kind of content I was waiting for and in the case of Magic Leap, it will also take time until somebody invests into building good content for it.
- andybak 9y agoI see we differ then. I'm not interested in VR as another medium for AAA titles. I want to see software that could only ever be in realised in VR. And I'm quite happy for that software to be shorter and quirkier and less polished for the foreseeable future. Let a thousand flowers bloom. VR should also be bigger than gaming. Gaming would be just one application of VR - not it's raison d'etre. Anything is better than it becoming a vehicle for annual releases of Call of Duty and FIFA.
- russdill 9y agoRead the story again. He experienced the demos with some sort of surrogate hardware, not the goggles pictured. You'll note that he goes through all the demos, and then later gets his first close look at the goggles hardware. The story provides no indication that the goggle hardware is yet functional.
- tigershark 9y agoThis is absolutely false. He explicitly talks about the cameras inside the lighwear that allow the girl to keep eye contact with him.
- crusso 9y agowhy can't they just show a small demo? You know the answer to that already.
- frik 9y agoWasn't "Magic Leap" a holographic display powered by lasers?? And now it's an AR-glass, one amongh several AR-glasses. So they pivoted and the holographic display is dead?
- xt00 9y agoI have heard people say "AR has the huge potential" thing many times, yet VR seems to actually have converted from potential into something interesting -- such as gaming, viewing movies, virtual presence, etc.. while AR by definition is saying that the majority of your experience is reality and that AR is simply some overlay of information into your world and provide less content and be less immersive, but always with you.. that thing already exists and is called a smartphone.. so its unclear how AR breaks away from "just becoming an app on your phone" problem..
- cracell 9y agoWhat excites me about AR is the augmented part! What we've seen so far is more toy like. But imagine an AR tutorial app that guides you through replacing the brake pads on your car. It could point the the exact spot for the next step, instruct you which tool and size to use and all sorts of things assuming you can recognize the objects well enough and a specific tutorial was built for your car. You could even build tutorials by having it observe what you do. That sort of application is probably pretty far off but having it as a HUD instead of having to pull out your phone every 30 seconds would be super useful. In the industrial setting some workers are already using Google Glass type devices to have some information readable without pulling out a phone but those don't have any real AR features yet.
- jhiska 9y agoYou're right. It's yet another teaser. Not holding my breath.
- ehsankia 9y agoI keep telling myself that I won't take them seriously as long as there's no public demo, but big serious company who have seen behind closed doors demos keep giving huge chunks of money... They've gotten $2B in funding... with so many companies out there trying to do what Magic Leap is doing, I don't see any reason why VCs would give them so much money over the others. The only plausible explanation is that their secret demo must've been really good.
- jhiska 9y agoI'll withhold my judgement until they ship it. Early reports (RoadToVR) say that the FOV is rather bad ("about the size of a VHS tape held at medium distance"). I'll wait.
- tigershark 9y agoThey showed plenty of demos to the Rolling Stones journalist.
- pfranz 9y agoI know a couple people that got hired specifically to work on content for it. I don't know anything about what they're working on because of the secrecy of everything around Magic Leap. I imagine the reason they haven't shown anything is because they can only showcase the tech on the hardware itself, which isn't far enough along or in enough quantities to demo. I always thought the ads trying to show off some new 4k thing playing on my non-4k tv was silly.
- heurist 9y agoI know some people working on the tools side who claim Magic Leap is the real deal but won't give any details due to NDAs.
- on_and_off 9y agoI find it even way worse when there is a demo for VR or AR. If I look at the first demo of Micrososft's Hololens, it is all CGI. By itself it is fair, you just can't make a good demo from first person capture of what the headset displays. However, the demo was showing a room littered with augmented objects and minecraft blocks and people naturally interacting with them. The reality of the very tiny cone of vision of Hololens make it feel extremely misleading. In the end, it is hard to show something else that the vision of what you want to achieve and in Microsoft's case at least, there was a big gap between that and the limitations of the actual product.
- pfranz 9y agoI agree. I figured the SD/HD analogy would be easy to explain and relatable. For awhile I was demoing VR projects to non-techies (VPs, CEOs, and others). The most interesting response was when they took the headset off and they had forgotten what room they were in. Everyone's favorite demo was Tilt Brush because it showed off interactivity the most--not the ones with fancy graphics. It's hard to express those ideas without demoing it. As an aside; the demoing experience for VR is miserable. There's a very long line, people are required to set up and explain the demo and clean the equipment, and there's a learning curve and short time allotted for each demo. You can't just set up 5 unattended kiosks and let people figure it out.
- WalterSear 9y agoIt's vaporware, plain and simple. Considering the scope what they are developing (silicon that requires new fab technology), secrecy isn't the priority it would be if the problem was one that others could steal a march on by throwing money and bodies at it. If they do ship, I predict that the product might very well meet all their technical claims, but will be a miss on their claims for utility and usability.