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Magic Leap is a Tragic Heap

114 points by pain_perdu 8y ago

pain_perdu 8y ago
For anyone who didn't happen to notice, it should be noted that this review was written by Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Luckey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Luckey
- late2part 8y ago
  True. But his assertions are mostly fact based and support his thesis. Who really thinks Magic Leap holds up to the hype and is really a good use of its investment capital?
  - Miredly 8y ago
    Nothing could hold up to the amount of hype Magic Leap got, but based on what I've seen it's been an excellent use of its investment capital. They've been experimenting with new technologies for years now and they finally have a development kit that speaks to the path they plan to follow in the future. I also wouldn't trust Palmer Lucky to have anything like an objective opinion about it.
    - Lazare 8y ago
      > They've been experimenting with new technologies for years now True. > and they finally have a development kit that speaks to the path they plan to follow in the future. ...which is following the same path everyone else is, except further behind, because all those new technologies failed to work out?
- deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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gameshot911 8y ago
Let's assume for the sake of a conversation that this article is right, and Magic Leap (ML) is lackluster. What is it exactly that makes VR tech so difficult, then? ML had all the money in the world, and still (presumably) couldn't hit the mark. What exactly is missing - is it the material sciences for eye-projection systems? Ability to downsize the graphics and processing tech into a small package? What critical milestones are still missing that, when available, will allow truly immeresive VR? And anyone dare predict when they will be available?
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  Just a hypothesis here: they failed because of, not in spite of, the amount of money they had. VR/AR will succeed by making just-barely-good-enough products for specific, limited environments (surgery, repair, control of robots in remote environments, education). Then, it will get slightly better. This requires that a product with a limited market is acceptable, at first, as it was for the very early computers. Big funding encourages one to strive for too much, too soon, too all-in-one-project. Incremental change is required, and that requires that an incremental improvement in market size is good enough. I have no particular inside knowledge of this, it's just an idea/hypothesis.
  - koboll 8y ago
    Also, another factor - Magic Leap decided, perplexingly, to locate itself in a suburb west of Fort Lauderdale. Not the most far-flung location, but not exactly a tech hub, either. I was repeatedly contacted by their recruiters despite living in a completely different part of the country and having limited experience at the time. The impression it left me with is that they were really hurting for talent. Maybe the location is one reason why.
    - joezydeco 8y ago
      About 20 years ago, Motorola had a large plant in Boynton. Employed a few thousand engineers working on paging systems and eventually cellular telephony. Lots of it moved up to Chicago later on, but not all of it. What’s left there are the echoes of the employees that hung around. IIRC, XM Satellite Radio has their engineering office in Lauderdale. Wonder where they found all the RF people needed to spin that one up.
xt00 8y ago
Sadly Magic Leap I think had to ship something so they could start up a new hype cycle and get more funding. Give it 3 months and they will be talking about how they didn’t expect to sell many of this first product anyway and now they are working on the “future for sure this time”..
- jonny_eh 8y ago
  I'm surprised they shipped anything. The hype was at perpetual motion machine level.
Kapura 8y ago
This blog is going right into my special bookmarks folder along with "Microsoft Surface is on Slippery Ground" by Tim Cook and "Ford? More like BORED!" by Elon Musk.
- Sammi 8y ago
  Links? I can't find anything relevant by googling those titles myself.
  - rossdavidh 8y ago
    I'm guessing that was sarcasm, meaning something along the lines of "would you believe an article about Microsoft by Apple's CEO?"
- bradknowles 8y ago
  Like Michael Dell saying that Apple should be shut down and all the money returned to the investors? Like that?
sqs 8y ago
I was blown away by Magic Leap when I tried it a couple weeks ago. I have no affiliation with the company and was skeptical beforehand. Maybe there are other things that are better, but it was really, really cool. It felt like a new kind of thing entirely.
- mattnewport 8y ago
  What specifically blew you way compared to other AR headsets like HoloLens for example?
  - sqs 8y ago
    That’s the thing. I haven’t tried the others (except Google Glass 4-5 years ago). They might be better.
- deleted 8y ago
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kapauldo 8y ago
It's not that magic leap is bad, it's that VR is not a viable consumer product in its current state. It needs to be 10x as good at 1/10th price (occulus price).
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
I've been in AR for almost a decade now and I have always been in the "we really need Magic Leap to work" camp, as well as recognizing just how hard it really is to do AR right. I'm also not a VR fan, but appreciate how its moved the needle on these technologies broadly. That said, Palmer makes his best points with these quotes: sucked all the air out of the room in the AR space...allowed them to monopolize funding in the AR investment community That is unquestionably what happened, as, if you talked with any major VC in the last 5 years they would admit that they were waiting on Magic Leap to make a move before they would really think about seriously funding anything else. So in that sense, it's been a constant frustration. I'm still hopeful that Apple, Microsoft, FB or Google can make something compelling, and I think ML has been generally positively received - however it's always caveated as "these are the early days." Which is true, but the hype for ML has been unfortunate. Again, consumer AR - especially HMD AR - is exceptionally hard to do right, so my hat is off to ML and the amazing people they have. However even Rony Abovitz (ML CEO) agrees that they were arrogant in their approach, and I think the end result is that it's hurt the AR industry in the larger sense.
jazzyjackson 8y ago
Been anticipating this teardown ever since this hackernews post [1] comparing the promises with the patents and nailing the prediction that ML1 would be yet-another LCOS headset. Frankly I've been cheerleading their implosion ever since this farce of a TED talk [2] in 2012. An opportunity to present their technology and they jump around in monster costumes wasting everyone's time. Thwaxo's Strangely Demented Space Fudge ? This was months after securing half a billion in funding. Just left a really bad taste in my mouth. [1] https://hackernoon.com/what-is-magic-leap-really-642e1660fcc4 https://hackernoon.com/what-is-magic-leap-really-642e1660fcc... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY
stillmaned 8y ago
I got as far as "I want what is best for VR" because in my opinion is a load of crap coming from a sell-out.
captain_perl 8y ago
Ever notice the similarity between Bitcoin and VR blogs and comments? Always, "it's early days," even after years of waiting for something useful.
mentos 8y ago
Didn’t VR have the same hype train surrounding it that led to Facebook dropping a cool billion on it to acquire Oculus? To date what do we really have to show in VR? How is Oculus/Palmer any less guilty than Magic Leap? Give it 5 more years and I think we’ll call both initiatives a failure when compared against their promises.
- pochamago 8y ago
  I don't think your assessment of the VR industry is particularly sharp.
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    Why is that? As an outsider it seems like it launched as a neat gadget, but lacked staying power due to sparse content and high cost to entry.
- Mahn 8y ago
  I think you are severely underestimating the current state of VR. It's still an enthusiasts market, to be sure, but it's well past the gimmick point, there are real applications, real content, and real consumer grade hardware out there. VR after the hype is real, just not selling like gangbusters.
asciimo 8y ago
Well, if the technology isn't impressive at least they still have Neal Stephenson. He may be able to create experiences that no other VR platform offers. https://magic-leap.reality.news/news/magic-leaps-neal-stephenson-reveals-what-its-like-create-content-for-secretive-startup-0183486/ https://magic-leap.reality.news/news/magic-leaps-neal-stephe...
- sbarre 8y ago
  FWIW Neal Stephenson also supported "Clang!" [0], a notorious early (2013) Kickstarter project (also dealing with "virtual in the real") that failed pretty miserably. 0: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang/descrip...
quxbar 8y ago
Does anyone know why he left Facebook?
- mindcrash 8y ago
  He didn't leave. He was fired for unknown reasons. But according to Zuck not due to "controversial political views" (Palmer is a passionate libertarian who supported Donald Trump, several Republican senators and the Republican party both in California and Washington.), but that's quite interesting because after word got out he supported Trump he was silently stripped of management responsibilities at Oculus ("In the wake of the revelation, Luckey’s role at Facebook was quietly reduced." -- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/31/palmer-luckey-trump-supporting-vr-pioneer-leaves-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/31/palmer-lu... ) Also was a big disappointment for me personally, I got interested into Oculus due to his work and that of Carmack.

114 points by pain_perdu 8y ago

For anyone who didn't happen to notice, it should be noted that this review was written by Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Luckey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Luckey

late2part 8y ago
True. But his assertions are mostly fact based and support his thesis. Who really thinks Magic Leap holds up to the hype and is really a good use of its investment capital?
- Miredly 8y ago
  Nothing could hold up to the amount of hype Magic Leap got, but based on what I've seen it's been an excellent use of its investment capital. They've been experimenting with new technologies for years now and they finally have a development kit that speaks to the path they plan to follow in the future. I also wouldn't trust Palmer Lucky to have anything like an objective opinion about it.
  - Lazare 8y ago
    > They've been experimenting with new technologies for years now True. > and they finally have a development kit that speaks to the path they plan to follow in the future. ...which is following the same path everyone else is, except further behind, because all those new technologies failed to work out?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

gameshot911 8y ago

Let's assume for the sake of a conversation that this article is right, and Magic Leap (ML) is lackluster. What is it exactly that makes VR tech so difficult, then? ML had all the money in the world, and still (presumably) couldn't hit the mark. What exactly is missing - is it the material sciences for eye-projection systems? Ability to downsize the graphics and processing tech into a small package? What critical milestones are still missing that, when available, will allow truly immeresive VR? And anyone dare predict when they will be available?

rossdavidh 8y ago
Just a hypothesis here: they failed because of, not in spite of, the amount of money they had. VR/AR will succeed by making just-barely-good-enough products for specific, limited environments (surgery, repair, control of robots in remote environments, education). Then, it will get slightly better. This requires that a product with a limited market is acceptable, at first, as it was for the very early computers. Big funding encourages one to strive for too much, too soon, too all-in-one-project. Incremental change is required, and that requires that an incremental improvement in market size is good enough. I have no particular inside knowledge of this, it's just an idea/hypothesis.
- koboll 8y ago
  Also, another factor - Magic Leap decided, perplexingly, to locate itself in a suburb west of Fort Lauderdale. Not the most far-flung location, but not exactly a tech hub, either. I was repeatedly contacted by their recruiters despite living in a completely different part of the country and having limited experience at the time. The impression it left me with is that they were really hurting for talent. Maybe the location is one reason why.
  - joezydeco 8y ago
    About 20 years ago, Motorola had a large plant in Boynton. Employed a few thousand engineers working on paging systems and eventually cellular telephony. Lots of it moved up to Chicago later on, but not all of it. What’s left there are the echoes of the employees that hung around. IIRC, XM Satellite Radio has their engineering office in Lauderdale. Wonder where they found all the RF people needed to spin that one up.

xt00 8y ago

Sadly Magic Leap I think had to ship something so they could start up a new hype cycle and get more funding. Give it 3 months and they will be talking about how they didn’t expect to sell many of this first product anyway and now they are working on the “future for sure this time”..

jonny_eh 8y ago
I'm surprised they shipped anything. The hype was at perpetual motion machine level.

Kapura 8y ago

This blog is going right into my special bookmarks folder along with "Microsoft Surface is on Slippery Ground" by Tim Cook and "Ford? More like BORED!" by Elon Musk.

Sammi 8y ago
Links? I can't find anything relevant by googling those titles myself.
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  I'm guessing that was sarcasm, meaning something along the lines of "would you believe an article about Microsoft by Apple's CEO?"
bradknowles 8y ago
Like Michael Dell saying that Apple should be shut down and all the money returned to the investors? Like that?

sqs 8y ago

I was blown away by Magic Leap when I tried it a couple weeks ago. I have no affiliation with the company and was skeptical beforehand. Maybe there are other things that are better, but it was really, really cool. It felt like a new kind of thing entirely.

mattnewport 8y ago
What specifically blew you way compared to other AR headsets like HoloLens for example?
- sqs 8y ago
  That’s the thing. I haven’t tried the others (except Google Glass 4-5 years ago). They might be better.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

kapauldo 8y ago

It's not that magic leap is bad, it's that VR is not a viable consumer product in its current state. It needs to be 10x as good at 1/10th price (occulus price).

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

I've been in AR for almost a decade now and I have always been in the "we really need Magic Leap to work" camp, as well as recognizing just how hard it really is to do AR right. I'm also not a VR fan, but appreciate how its moved the needle on these technologies broadly. That said, Palmer makes his best points with these quotes: sucked all the air out of the room in the AR space...allowed them to monopolize funding in the AR investment community That is unquestionably what happened, as, if you talked with any major VC in the last 5 years they would admit that they were waiting on Magic Leap to make a move before they would really think about seriously funding anything else. So in that sense, it's been a constant frustration. I'm still hopeful that Apple, Microsoft, FB or Google can make something compelling, and I think ML has been generally positively received - however it's always caveated as "these are the early days." Which is true, but the hype for ML has been unfortunate. Again, consumer AR - especially HMD AR - is exceptionally hard to do right, so my hat is off to ML and the amazing people they have. However even Rony Abovitz (ML CEO) agrees that they were arrogant in their approach, and I think the end result is that it's hurt the AR industry in the larger sense.

jazzyjackson 8y ago

Been anticipating this teardown ever since this hackernews post [1] comparing the promises with the patents and nailing the prediction that ML1 would be yet-another LCOS headset. Frankly I've been cheerleading their implosion ever since this farce of a TED talk [2] in 2012. An opportunity to present their technology and they jump around in monster costumes wasting everyone's time. Thwaxo's Strangely Demented Space Fudge ? This was months after securing half a billion in funding. Just left a really bad taste in my mouth. [1] https://hackernoon.com/what-is-magic-leap-really-642e1660fcc4 https://hackernoon.com/what-is-magic-leap-really-642e1660fcc... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY

stillmaned 8y ago

I got as far as "I want what is best for VR" because in my opinion is a load of crap coming from a sell-out.

captain_perl 8y ago

Ever notice the similarity between Bitcoin and VR blogs and comments? Always, "it's early days," even after years of waiting for something useful.

mentos 8y ago

Didn’t VR have the same hype train surrounding it that led to Facebook dropping a cool billion on it to acquire Oculus? To date what do we really have to show in VR? How is Oculus/Palmer any less guilty than Magic Leap? Give it 5 more years and I think we’ll call both initiatives a failure when compared against their promises.

pochamago 8y ago
I don't think your assessment of the VR industry is particularly sharp.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Why is that? As an outsider it seems like it launched as a neat gadget, but lacked staying power due to sparse content and high cost to entry.
Mahn 8y ago
I think you are severely underestimating the current state of VR. It's still an enthusiasts market, to be sure, but it's well past the gimmick point, there are real applications, real content, and real consumer grade hardware out there. VR after the hype is real, just not selling like gangbusters.

asciimo 8y ago

Well, if the technology isn't impressive at least they still have Neal Stephenson. He may be able to create experiences that no other VR platform offers. https://magic-leap.reality.news/news/magic-leaps-neal-stephenson-reveals-what-its-like-create-content-for-secretive-startup-0183486/ https://magic-leap.reality.news/news/magic-leaps-neal-stephe...

sbarre 8y ago
FWIW Neal Stephenson also supported "Clang!" [0], a notorious early (2013) Kickstarter project (also dealing with "virtual in the real") that failed pretty miserably. 0: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang/descrip...

quxbar 8y ago

Does anyone know why he left Facebook?

mindcrash 8y ago
He didn't leave. He was fired for unknown reasons. But according to Zuck not due to "controversial political views" (Palmer is a passionate libertarian who supported Donald Trump, several Republican senators and the Republican party both in California and Washington.), but that's quite interesting because after word got out he supported Trump he was silently stripped of management responsibilities at Oculus ("In the wake of the revelation, Luckey’s role at Facebook was quietly reduced." -- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/31/palmer-luckey-trump-supporting-vr-pioneer-leaves-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/31/palmer-lu... ) Also was a big disappointment for me personally, I got interested into Oculus due to his work and that of Carmack.