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The 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 m

The 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 ago
I 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."
- bastawhiz 9y ago
  The article, remarkably, has scant few details on the author's experience with the product. This quote sums up my skepticism: >instead they were constructed to give visitors who pass through the facility under non-disclosure agreement, a chance to see the magic in action. It's a controlled environment with purpose-built demos for folks under NDA. There's no videos, renderings from actual hardware, or substantive critiques on the fidelity of the device's output. The only negative criticism is that it has a rectangular viewport which doesn't fill your field of view. I can't believe that's the only negative thing that could be said about this. Not a single comment on FPS, glitches, or any other problems. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I could totally see this demo as being fudged. The computations could be happening off-device with video streamed over wifi. We've heard before that Magic Leap has struggled to miniaturize their hardware, with the last version looking like a proton pack...what better way to demo it than to fake the demo? I want real evidence that the cute hockey puck has a real computer inside, not just anecdotes from an NDAed journalist in a lab environment.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > It's a controlled environment with purpose-built demos for folks under NDA Magic Leap pulled a similar stunt with The Information around the same time last year [1]. Seems like they found a more pliant journalist in The Rolling Stone. "In March of last year, it released a video online titled “Just Another Day in the Office at Magic Leap.” Shot from the perspective of one of its employees working at his desk, all appears normal until robots start falling from the ceiling and converging on the worker, who picks up a toy gun and starts blasting his enemies into tangled lumps of virtual metal. The video, viewed 3.4 million times on YouTube, was meant to demonstrate a game people were playing with Magic Leap’s headset. It had been used for more than a year to recruit employees to South Florida. 'This is a game we’re playing around the office right now,' Magic Leap wrote in the description of the video. But no such game existed at the time, according to two former employees with direct knowledge. The video was not actually filmed using any Magic Leap technology. It was made by New Zealand-based special effects company Weta Workshop, which has worked on movies like 'Mad Max: Fury Road' and 'The Hobbit,' the employees said. One of them called it an 'aspirational conceptual' video. The employees said some at the company felt the video misled the public. ... In addition to the bulky demo connected to a computer, Mr. Abovitz showed The Information a prototype of the compact device it intends to build. It looked as if somebody fastened electronics to every inch of a pair of wire-framed glasses. It had a multi-layered, flat lens. He would not turn the device on, but assured a reporter that it worked just as well as the larger, helmet-like device. Mr. Abovitz would not discuss details of the technology, repeatedly responding to probing questions with the phrase 'Squirrels and Sea Monkeys.'" I think Magic Leap is another Theranos. A second, independently-developed HoloLens makes for a respectable incremental business. But that nugget of truth has been leveraged to a $6 billion hallucination. Maintaining that hallucination could have forced management to lie to investors, to the public and to their employees. [1] https://www.theinformation.com/the-reality-behind-magic-leap https://www.theinformation.com/the-reality-behind-magic-leap
    - mlevental 9y ago
      I pick you: you people are insane. they have raised based off of demos. vcs come in, get the demo, sign a check (because it's that fucking good). I know at least 4 people personally that have gotten demos and it's very real.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
stickfigure 9y ago
In their defense, it looks like some sort of dev kit is supposed to be in the hands of paying developers ("creators"). That might be a pretty raw product.
tigershark 9y ago
I guess you didn't follow it at all. Magic leap showed the demo to a lot of people and the Rolling Stones journalist extensively tested it. How can you suggest that it is just a plastic mockup? As for the content there are hundreds of people working on it both in house and in selected partners like Weta.
- bastawhiz 9y ago
  I explained further here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15971433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15971433 It would be trivial to fake the demo. You can buy the parts to stream HD video wirelessly for a few hundred bucks. If they're using a small server farm to render the output, isn't that cheating? If they can show it to a journalist in a lab, why not make a marketing demo in a park? Like I said, I'll believe it when I see it.
  - ericd 9y ago
    Except it has to do a bunch of other things to do what they described convincingly.

mustacheemperor 9y ago

I 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."

bastawhiz 9y ago
The article, remarkably, has scant few details on the author's experience with the product. This quote sums up my skepticism: >instead they were constructed to give visitors who pass through the facility under non-disclosure agreement, a chance to see the magic in action. It's a controlled environment with purpose-built demos for folks under NDA. There's no videos, renderings from actual hardware, or substantive critiques on the fidelity of the device's output. The only negative criticism is that it has a rectangular viewport which doesn't fill your field of view. I can't believe that's the only negative thing that could be said about this. Not a single comment on FPS, glitches, or any other problems. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I could totally see this demo as being fudged. The computations could be happening off-device with video streamed over wifi. We've heard before that Magic Leap has struggled to miniaturize their hardware, with the last version looking like a proton pack...what better way to demo it than to fake the demo? I want real evidence that the cute hockey puck has a real computer inside, not just anecdotes from an NDAed journalist in a lab environment.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > It's a controlled environment with purpose-built demos for folks under NDA Magic Leap pulled a similar stunt with The Information around the same time last year [1]. Seems like they found a more pliant journalist in The Rolling Stone. "In March of last year, it released a video online titled “Just Another Day in the Office at Magic Leap.” Shot from the perspective of one of its employees working at his desk, all appears normal until robots start falling from the ceiling and converging on the worker, who picks up a toy gun and starts blasting his enemies into tangled lumps of virtual metal. The video, viewed 3.4 million times on YouTube, was meant to demonstrate a game people were playing with Magic Leap’s headset. It had been used for more than a year to recruit employees to South Florida. 'This is a game we’re playing around the office right now,' Magic Leap wrote in the description of the video. But no such game existed at the time, according to two former employees with direct knowledge. The video was not actually filmed using any Magic Leap technology. It was made by New Zealand-based special effects company Weta Workshop, which has worked on movies like 'Mad Max: Fury Road' and 'The Hobbit,' the employees said. One of them called it an 'aspirational conceptual' video. The employees said some at the company felt the video misled the public. ... In addition to the bulky demo connected to a computer, Mr. Abovitz showed The Information a prototype of the compact device it intends to build. It looked as if somebody fastened electronics to every inch of a pair of wire-framed glasses. It had a multi-layered, flat lens. He would not turn the device on, but assured a reporter that it worked just as well as the larger, helmet-like device. Mr. Abovitz would not discuss details of the technology, repeatedly responding to probing questions with the phrase 'Squirrels and Sea Monkeys.'" I think Magic Leap is another Theranos. A second, independently-developed HoloLens makes for a respectable incremental business. But that nugget of truth has been leveraged to a $6 billion hallucination. Maintaining that hallucination could have forced management to lie to investors, to the public and to their employees. [1] https://www.theinformation.com/the-reality-behind-magic-leap https://www.theinformation.com/the-reality-behind-magic-leap
  - mlevental 9y ago
    I pick you: you people are insane. they have raised based off of demos. vcs come in, get the demo, sign a check (because it's that fucking good). I know at least 4 people personally that have gotten demos and it's very real.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

stickfigure 9y ago

In their defense, it looks like some sort of dev kit is supposed to be in the hands of paying developers ("creators"). That might be a pretty raw product.

tigershark 9y ago

I guess you didn't follow it at all. Magic leap showed the demo to a lot of people and the Rolling Stones journalist extensively tested it. How can you suggest that it is just a plastic mockup? As for the content there are hundreds of people working on it both in house and in selected partners like Weta.

bastawhiz 9y ago
I explained further here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15971433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15971433 It would be trivial to fake the demo. You can buy the parts to stream HD video wirelessly for a few hundred bucks. If they're using a small server farm to render the output, isn't that cheating? If they can show it to a journalist in a lab, why not make a marketing demo in a park? Like I said, I'll believe it when I see it.
- ericd 9y ago
  Except it has to do a bunch of other things to do what they described convincingly.