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What we just learned about the Magic Leap One's hardware
- curiousgal 8y agoQueue in a blog post by the guy who despises Magic Leap.
- vernie 8y agoKarl Guttag rules.
- drcode 8y agoSay what you will about him, but his predictions have proven accurate so far: ML has made very suspect claims to investors and the public and ML's technology offers little innovation over the status quo, based on the information available so far.
- Holomakerbot 8y agoSo far it's the only headset coming to market that contains all of the following: Standalone, eye tracking, variable focal planes, hand tracking and a 6DOF controller, and a significant increase in FOV over Hololens (roughly 55 degrees to Hololens' 35). There are other AR headsets announced that may have a huge FOV but are tethered to a PC and have questionable visuals. Really, once Magic Leap is out it will be quite unique, and not just because of the tech it packs compared to the competition but because they've also been building content from their first party studio as well as numerous gaming and productivity partnerships.
- walrus01 8y agoI don't care how informative this article is, we should not be linking to pages that both prompt you for notification permission AND begin autoplaying a loud annoying video immediately upon page load.
- ilikeatari 8y agoI agree the autoplaying is annoying. I did however find value in the content. How to properly label that this link has a video that autoplays?
- dmitrygr 8y ago[mutebeforeclick]
- GameOfTrolls 8y agoCan we just start calling Magic Leap something like Theranos AR?
- shawn 8y agoHere's a clip of the intro. Decide for yourself: https://clips.twitch.tv/BreakableTentativePassionfruitPipeHype https://clips.twitch.tv/BreakableTentativePassionfruitPipeHy...
- baxtr 8y agoAm I missing something here? That video is amazingly boring. Nothing happens. She just puts on the device.
- shawn 8y agoYeah... The most worrisome aspect of the presentation for me was that it's not designed to work outdoors. They said explicitly that the initial product is aimed at indoor use. Which makes me wonder what it has that my Vive doesn't, since the field of view is apparently limited. (One of their presentations in July is titled "FOV mitigation.") Still, Magic Leap has proven time and again that they have a plan, and mixed reality is coming one way or the other. ML won't be the last player in the space.
- baxtr 8y agoWell, the whole thing reminds me of the Segway story back in the days. That didn’t play out as expected
- kuschku 8y agoIf this goes like Segway, then we can expect 10 years later cheap chinese clones, slightly modified to show up and become popular in every household. As happened with the "hoverboards" that are basically just cheap clones of the SegWay concept.
- ghaff 8y ago"Becomes popular" is more like "becomes a short-lived fad." No? I don't have sales numbers but there are any number of articles suggesting that they came and went. [1] Certainly, one doesn't hear or see much about them these days. [1] http://fortune.com/hoverboard-industry/ http://fortune.com/hoverboard-industry/
- denlekke 8y agoTheranos 2.0?
- segmondy 8y agoWorst. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/magic-leap-technology-reportedly-years-away-from-completion https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/magic-leap-technolog...
- mslate 8y agoCiting an article that is 1.5 years old? Ignored
- pedalpete 8y agoactually, I think you're missing out by ignoring that article. 'technology ... is “not really what we’re ultimately going to be shipping,” but that his company’s prototypes were good for showing investors and others' Unlike Theranos, Magic Leap has received investment from people with knowledge in the industry, so I think it is less smoke and mirrors than Theranos, but similar in that they are doing a big promotion on technology that is not ready yet. I'm not going to call it vaporware, and I don't think Tharanos was vaporware either, but they were selling to investors and their customers a product that didn't exist as they had sold it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- vkou 8y agoThis is a puff piece that doesn't answer the fundamental question - have they solved the core problems with AR - field of view, and dark images?
- shawn 8y agoAlmost a direct quote from the presentation: ML is an additive device, meaning the darker an image is, the more transparent it is. But in practice it probably isn't a problem. All that matters is that they deliver killer apps. What you can do with mixed reality vs the PC is what counts. Remember how lifechanging the original iPhone's google maps integration felt? I used to get lost. No one ever gets lost anymore. We need something like that for the mixed reality space. It's too early to know precisely what that could be, but we'd be betting on the wrong side of technology to dismiss it out of hand.
- drcode 8y agoThe problem is that they've been making lots of promises but then also publishing misleading demos that seemed to disobey the basic laws of physics (i.e. demos showing subtractive image synthesis in a compact form factor) which makes it hard to take any of their tech claims seriously.
- ghaff 8y ago>Remember how lifechanging the original iPhone's google maps integration felt? I used to get lost. No one ever gets lost anymore. Ever is a bit strong, but yeah. GPS plus maps is such a great example of how quickly and pervasively tech can embed itself until it's almost hard to remember a world before it. Tropes like refusing to stop at a gas station to ask for directions? Gone. I have a bag of maps in the back of my car. Haven't opened in years.
- dingaling 8y ago> Remember how lifechanging the original iPhone's google maps integration felt? Just for historical perspective, Google Maps Navigation for Android predated the iOS version by three years ( 2009 vs 2012 ).
- llao 8y agoClickbait you can skip without missing out on anything. All they learned is irrelevant details, sadly they did NOT say anything about the color of the top or the exact haptic feel of the third knob from the right. Nothing about the vapourware tech to learn. Skip and keep watching from your safe distance.
- sago 8y ago> All they learned is irrelevant details I disagree. Perhaps you mean that they didn't learn anything positive. I learned that it doesn't work with glasses, that it can't work outside, that the required processing puck will run so hot that it needs ventilation, and that only months before release they still have no content, specs or anything functional except a green LED. I think those things are very interesting and important. The fact that they are all very damning of the company and its product is the story.
- croshan 8y agoExactly. This article seems to try to paint the tech in a positive light, but it really shows a damning story.
- _iyig 8y agotl;dr: No specs, no demos, no video or images of what is seen through the glasses. The only functionality demonstrated live was a green LED on the glasses. Even in a world where the glasses work 100% as advertised, I’m still skeptical that goggle-vision AR will be a multi-billion dollar industry. Who wants to run around playing AR video games in their house or office? Who’d want to wear goggles and buckle a gaming PC to their belt just to check e-mail and watch YouTube? Where is the market for Magic Leap’s ideal, everything-works AR headset? Some might say industry, architecture, or medicine, but that doesn’t appear to be their focus right now, and it’s hard for me to see those niche applications justifying their billions in investment so far.
- ben_w 8y agoWhile this particular AR may be overhyped, I do expect AR to become a multi-billion-US$ industry before 2025. Even if it’s just two apps, Sunglasses.app and Google Maps pasted onto your view with no careful design, that’s still worth $30 and could run on that year’s version of the Raspberry Pi Zero. 30 million units per billion dollars, doesn’t feel unreasonable.
- dwighttk 8y agoIs sunglasses.app just slightly darkening the lenses so they work as sunglasses?
- ben_w 8y agoPretty much. People already pay a premium for photochromic lenses that take minutes to adjust, LCD can do the same in milliseconds.
- throw_away2 8y agoI just want the Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses
- 8y ago
- Animats 8y agoIt must be for real now. It has lots of blinky lights.
- kthejoker2 8y agoSave you the click: Absolutely nothing.
- amanzi 8y agoThere are a lot of big name companies betting a lot of money on the success of this device so I'm willing to give it a chance, but unless they start releasing some actual details about how well it works I remain sceptical.
- Holomakerbot 8y agoThis is one of the strongest counter arguments to all the cynicism in these comments. Sure they didn’t give specs but guess what neither did Hololens until preorders opened. The main thing they haven’t done yet is a live demo which we know is a challenge because when Microsoft did it they caught a bunch of flack for misleading the tiny FOV. For magic leap they’re not launching until end of the year. Demos are supposed to come in a couple more moths. But really what compels me Is all the partnerships. Why would Weta put their reputation on the line and say their magic leap game is launching this year if it were so obviously vaporware. Same for Framestore (big Hollywood gfx house) who announced this week that they’ve been working on content for years that will be available at launch as well. It’s one thing to be skeptical of magic leap, but it becomes harder to think that they’ve hoodwinked all these other reputable companies into making content for them for a product that is crappy or not ever coming out.there have also been about 30 other devs who have announced they’re early partners who have received hardware kits privately.
- Analemma_ 8y agoThis thing is going to be the Daikatana of AR. Tons of hype, many years late, finally delivered as garbage nowhere close to what was promised. It's a shame they couldn't ship before the VR hype flamed out, otherwise they might have at least made some of their money back from curious buyers, but now there's going to be nothing. Just get a HoloLens. That at least has shipping hardware and a real company behind it. Even if Magic Leap eventually does most of the same thing, it's not going to be so much better that it was worth all the bluster.
- yborg 8y ago"Rony Abovitz's about to make you his bitch."
- squeaky-clean 8y agoThey didn't just "not mention specs". They mentioned someone asked a hardware spec related question, and then said something along the lines of "I'm not falling for that trick question." That's waaaay worse than just silence in my opinion.
- civilitty 8y agoNo kidding. Have their staff not been trained to deflect questions using basic reasons that are omnipresent to any cutting edge hardware company? For example, "we are unable to reveal that information yet due to contractual obligations with our vendors" or "we can't talk about that yet because we are still finalizing a few minor details."
- strictnein 8y agoBets on whether or not that hockey puck just contains a Snapdragon 845 and some other COTS stuff? I'd wager significant money that it does.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- aphextron 8y agoMore likely an XR1, but yeah there's absolutely no way these guys are designing silicon. https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/29/snapdragon-xr1/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/29/snapdragon-xr1/
- drcode 8y agoThe book practically writes itself: "Tragic Leap: An un-augmented look at the reality behind a secretive startup"
- ccvannorman 8y agoIt's virtually unusable: A crystal clear post-mortem for spectacles with a foggy future
- cromwellian 8y agoThis definitely feels a lot like the people selling perpetual motion or energy devices. A CEO/Entrepreneur who uses non-standard terminology, speaks like Deepak Chopra with fanciful but fictitious sounding explanations, a kind of word salad designed to impress. I had high hopes for Magic Leap when it was first announced. I though this was going to be a device that had opaque overlay LCD or laser-retina projection so that it worked outside in daylight. I thought it would have a full on FOV. Now it seems really like a kind of Hololens 1.5. At this point, I think we may have to wait for Apple to solve workable AR glasses.
- Torn 8y agoThe fact they refuse to let people try it is such a red flag.
- Holomakerbot 8y agoThey gave private demos at GDC in March. https://twitter.com/radiocurea/status/976549719664050176?s=21 https://twitter.com/radiocurea/status/976549719664050176?s=2...
- cfadvan 8y agoKarl Kuttag was right all along I guess. Good for him, but a bit of a bummer for the dream ML was trying to sell. Of course that dream turns have been made of lies and horseshit, so...
- mattbierner 8y agoApple is going about AR right: incremental, shipping now, and already building a developer ecosystem. Smartphone based AR is mediocre at best but millions of users already can access it and provide feedback on it. Apple doesn’t have to convince users to spend $600 (at least) today on a new gadget that would still mostly be a novelty. They have bought themselves time to develop a great AR hardware product, and when they do release it, a whole ecosystem will already be in place In fact, Apple may have already won this space unless they seriously drop the ball or someone releases something amazing. I mean the hololens is shipping today and is really cool but few people seem to care because it’s so expensive and it’s not clear why you need AR. To make AR more than a novelty requires developers. Developers will go where the users are because that’s where the money is, and users go where the apps are and where their friends go. Apple is using smartphone based AR to work around this catch 22
- elialbert 8y agocan anyone think of any way to make money betting against magic leap?
- testcase_delta 8y agoIt's interesting seeing the tone in comment sections here change with time. Threads on Magic Leap used to have many defenders. Now, not so much.