12 ms·

The Magic Leap Con

185 points by danso 8y ago

taytus 8y ago
I'm not by any stretch an expert in VR/AR, but a couple of weeks ago I finally tried Magic Leap. My first reaction was: "What a piece of crap!! This is it?" And yes... that it was. If you have never tried it, is 100X (and I'm being generous) less impressive than the super fake demo video they posted.
- Groxx 8y ago
  That was pretty much my experience with HoloLens. Uncomfortable headset, awkward and inaccurate hand gestures, and like a postage-stamp-size viewport. You couldn't see anything functional in the least due to viewport alone, and the low resolution killed any hope you may have had left. Tracking was mostly alright about 95% of the time, in an office setting which is probably borderline ideal (lots of high-contrast edges and corners all over), but even while relatively still it made plenty of mistakes. All of which I gather the Magic Leap is better on... by less than 50%. In two years. AR has unbelievably misleading advertising. To enough of a degree that I think they should be fined rather significantly. Remember the HoloLens Minecraft "demo" videos? Or the full 3D models on the user's desk, nearly the size of the screen or keyboard? You couldn't even cover a coffee mug at that distance.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    I was still somewhat impressed exactly by the HoloLenses very fast (and quite accurate) tracking. I think it was the absolutely right trade-off.
    - Groxx 8y ago
      Yeah, most of the time it was very solid, only barely perceptible lag. Fairly impressive when it was working smoothly :) Issues I had were mostly when it failed and started sliding around while I stood still, or jumped a bit and stayed wrong for a couple seconds.
  - puranjay 8y ago
    The technology hype cycle over the last decade has been pretty disappointing. I was promised by now, I'd be 3D printing my sneakers, spend my time killing zombies in VR, and paying for DLC with crypto Of these, only VR seems even remotely close to reaching its original promise
    - iliis 8y ago
      About those sneakers: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:285404 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:285404 ;) But yeah, I agree that there's much too much hype around a lot of stuff...
      - DonHopkins 8y ago
        Space Invaders sneakers leave 3D printed footprints worth 01 point each! https://www.newarteditions.com/invader-sneakers-speed-balls/ https://www.newarteditions.com/invader-sneakers-speed-balls/ (Sorry, all sold out -- I mean GAME OVER!)
  - kthejoker2 8y ago
    Baker Hughes GE has an awesome Hololens demo where they offload the processing to a GPU rack and get some insane voxels, resolutions and responsiveness. But yeah the onboard stuff is just soso. But of course you seem to be looking for a polished product,most of these AR solutions are aspirational and designed to help build reference implementations and AR Development capabilities.
- empath75 8y ago
  In comparison I was way more impressed by the oculus and vive than I expected to be. Vr gets a bit boring after a while but I’ve never seen anyone try it who didn’t have an expression of joy on their face.
  - 1stcity3rdcoast 8y ago
    I tried Oculus for the first time yesterday and was very impressed. My last experience with VR was in the 90s, so my baseline was low, but it was a truly incredible experience.
  - jarsin 8y ago
    VR is an experience like going to a movie theater to get lost in another world, which is why it has a future.
Apocryphon 8y ago
> Magic Leap is almost entirely built on the visions of grown men wanting to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds. Its chief focus is entertainment, games, diversions—cinematic reality, sure; pushing the frontiers of computing? Not as much. I’ll repeat my half-baked idea: the future of VR and AR is digital workplaces for better teleconferencing. Make it truly seamless to talk to colleagues while working remote. Disrupt office work as we know it and fix the externalities of commuting and being tied to a physical workplace. Why escape into fantasy worlds when you can make living in the real world more bearable?
- kmlx 8y ago
  "Make it truly seamless to talk to colleagues while working remote." Some of us work remotely in order to avoid constant disruption (especially software development). As such the queueing of IM conversations from colleagues is a good thing in this scenario. The quality of the code that I write grows exponentially the less people ping me on Skype. While in the office code development was tertiary to various meetings, presentations, the occasional interview, even birthdays.
  - Apocryphon 8y ago
    I admit, part of this is productivity theater. If you can simulate face time, seamless visibility at a meeting, sparking ideas spontaneously around the water cooler, etc., then maybe those dictating corporate conduct might actually be more willing to entertain mass adoption of remote work. As of now remote work is certainly feasible, but it’s definitely steps removed from the actual experience of being in person. Also, my proposal isn’t meant to benefit engineers exclusively- teleconferencing through virtual workplaces should ideally help anyone who works in an office, not just those who are accorded more responsibilities that don’t involve social interaction.
- sgt101 8y ago
  Yeah, you'll have to have a way to record yourself and encode/decode/transmit in real time though.... Maybe in twenty years...
edoo 8y ago
The cell phone analogy is appropriate. This is first generation tech. Within 30 years it will be amazing and unobtrusive. Think eyeglasses or contact lenses with photo realistic rendering. I think it will be as important as the radio and TV was in shaping society both commercially and privately.
- pg_bot 8y ago
  "Within 30 years... it will be as important as the radio and TV was in shaping society both commercially and privately" Care to make your prediction interesting? I'd be willing to take the opposite side of that bet.
  - germinalphrase 8y ago
    http://longbets.org http://longbets.org
    - pg_bot 8y ago
      I'd be willing to wager $500, if anyone wants to take the other side.
- taytus 8y ago
  The difference is that the iPhone was revolutionary. Yeah, no copy/paste and no app store on V 1.0 but it was a game changer from the beginning.
  - tokyodude 8y ago
    There are over 15 years of PDAs before the iPhone. It didn't appear out of thin air. It was an evolution from Newton->Palm Pilot->Clie->Windows CE PDAs->Sony Clie->iPhone Yes, it was the one that got everything right and it did bring about a revolution but it was evolutional step. It shipped with cellular data (all previous PDAs it was optional). It had an interface designed for a finger rather than a stylus. But, if you were a geek and had PDA from 1995 though 2007 you had already had a PDA in your pocket, where already sending emails from your pocket, browsing the internet, downloading apps, etc... AR will follow some similar progression. Today's AR is too large (same as Newton), with a bad display (same as Newton), too expensive (same as Newton), crappy OS (same as Newton). But someone will get it right eventually and bring about an AR revolution.
clickok 8y ago
Originally I found the Magic Leap extremely exciting, because in contrast to phones or tablets, whose touchscreens limit what sort of applications are feasible, AR could allow for arbitrary interfaces. These interfaces could be present alongside the real world, making them both more convenient and maybe less of an attention-vortex. This is (among other things) what Magic Leap pitched, and comparing the actual product to their press releases is to note a vast discrepancy. Still, hope springs eternal, so while I wasn't impressed, I know how hard AR is and I wasn't inclined to judge too harshly-- maybe it will get better as technology improves. After having read the article, I find myself rooting for them to fail. This is a company that has taken (and arguably squandered) billions of dollars to release a slightly cheaper HoloLens. Instead of feeling abashed, they continue blithely on, even having the temerity to invite developers to their platform because the rest of the world (and in particular, other platforms) has so much "baggage" and "negativity". As the article notes, this is a company that is propped up by oligarchs, settles sex discrimination lawsuits, and is pursuing military contracts with repressive regimes. Although to be fair, improving soldiers' lethality is the only use case they've articulated that justifies the price. Now that the missed expectations and general shadiness are starting to catch up with them, they're moving to attract developers. Somehow, despite all the money, they haven't been able to pay for an idea to justify the hype-- what else could you call it but a con?
- pg_bot 8y ago
  I generally agree with everything you've said except for the act of settling a sex discrimination lawsuit being a negative signal. The existence of a sex discrimination lawsuit is certainly not a positive signal for any prospective employer, but it takes both parties to come to an agreement to settle. Settlement is also the overwhelmingly likely outcome of most lawsuits (> 90% chance). The prospect of going to trial concentrates the mind wonderfully. A clarity descends. Sometimes you learn things about your own case that you didn't know before. (that it sucks - maybe) Trials can be unpredictable, better to come to an agreement that both parties can live with than to roll the dice.
  - Paradigma11 8y ago
    The problem is that the harasser is most likely in a position of power and can afford to live comfortably with quite a few such agreements.
Farradfahren 8y ago
The original Iphone wanted to eat cartographers lunch money. It wanted to be a layer between you and the world. The Leap wants tot eat IKEAs and the whole decoration industrys money. It wants to be a layer between you and the world. It might also be a attempt to stop the world move into this direction. If you creat a billion dollar ship wreck, it takes a whole manager generation to fade and loose that mental reef from theire mind-maps. The vision of Vernor Vinge in Rainbows End is still valid in my opinion.
dymk 8y ago
This article confirms a lot of the suspicions I had about Magic Leap's product, which is unfortunate. Had the company not overhyped the product and shipped with expectations so high, perhaps they could have had something which would actually impress the general public. Unrelated, this weird aside is my least favorite part of the article: > Magic Leap is almost entirely built on the visions of grown men wanting to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds ... > It is telling that the most compelling glimpse of a possible future with Magic Leap was relayed to me by nonwhite, non-male product manager There's this implication that the white male leadership is only interested in the frilly escapist aspect of the product, and it's those in minority groups who are actually going to be pushing the boundaries of tech. Why include this in the article? Does the author honestly believe that's true? Do jabs at white men get clicks and heads nodding.now?
- Farradfahren 8y ago
  This civil war of opinion, can get the click rate up, if your article gets dragged into a flamewar or two. From the point of somebody selling ammonition- somalia is a beautiful country.
- ealexhudson 8y ago
  Interesting that you see that as a "jab against white men" - I read it as a jab against monoculture. That the company's monoculture is middle aged white cis dudes is kind of beside the point. A company this big needs to address most, if not all, people. The need for escapist leisure activity is something only relatively privileged people have. You only have to look at Google Glass to see what that limited appeal does to a product. It's a valid commercial consideration.
  - bsenftner 8y ago
    The point is a common journalistic mechanism: throw in a controversial side note, and somewhere morons will make that an issue and drive readership of the article in outrage. You fell into this con...
    - 8y ago
srrge 8y ago
This iPhone analogy is full of crap. Apple delivered the fisrt iPhone with the software it needed to be, in itself, very usefull! The app developers came after, when a user base had already been created.
- sytelus 8y ago
  It’s most misused analogy. If you have crappy product that no one is buying, compare it to iPhone v1.
  - inawarminister 8y ago
    Well, the writer compared Magic Leap to Apple Newton, which was... too early for the aims?
- Fnoord 8y ago
  The first iPhone had many flaws but none of these were false advertising, and it also had some unique abilities. For example, it sported a capacitive touchscreen (touchscreens were mostly resistive back in 2007), it featured multitouch (you need a capacitive touchscreen for that), yet it didn't have 3G (it had EDGE), lacked copy/paste, lacked a repository ("app store"), lacked applications, and required a contract. Add to that that Apple already existed, had a solid fanbase, and already released their first product for mass market (iPod), and well... Steve Jobs reality distortion field. Who knows what would've happened if Apple was a very new company with no such fanbase, history, or CEO.
- rdiddly 8y ago
  I think it's wishful thinking. Everybody WANTS it to be the next iPhone, because the iPhone was wildly successful. That level of investing acumen unfortunately amounts to not much more than noticing that the iPhone happened. Like I noticed the Beatles happened, but saying my band is the next Beatles doesn't make it so. The iPhone and the Beatles were both products of very unique circumstances including a lot of plain random luck.
sytelus 8y ago
Key stats: Caraeff says that 50,000 user accounts have been created there. He wouldn’t tell me the number of times the software developer kit has actually been downloaded, though he said it was fewer than that, or the number of Leap headsets shipped, which was fewer still.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
I feel that if AR finally gets to work in form of glasses, it'll have a bifurcated market - one will be entertainment for masses, the second one will be support tool for things like manufacturing. Which is kind of sad, because genpops will get toys, and the tools will go to corps. But I guess that's supply and demand. I just hope the entertainment glasses will be open enough to support a cottage industry of small software shops & open source coders doing tools for individual productivity. Now I hope one day we'll get AR contact lenses or some other form of inconspicuous AR. I'd love to have the ability to switch it on and do some compute at a whim, without fumbling with special glasses, and having to mind the social situation in which I'm in. As for Magic Leap - I get that AR is hard, but this level of hype is inexcusable. They're burning through general interest in the field and trust towards everyone working in it for sake of some quick buck. The sooner they get forced to realign with reality, the better.
Reason077 8y ago
Magic Leap reminds me a lot of the early days of Segway. There’s some cool tech there somewhere, but the hype vastly exceeds the reality. Build up expectations too high and you’re going to leave everyone disappointed.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  And then South Park does an episode on "it". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OACjYGw6BkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OACjYGw6BkA
kolderman 8y ago
coughhydrogen onecough
sago 8y ago
Here's why I am immediately skeptical. People think games are easy. People think entertainment is a solution. That is almost always a sign of someone in trouble. In reality, entertainment is the reddest of red markets. It is incredibly difficult to make a compelling experience. Even more difficult to sell it. Include risk in the calculation and you are literally better off working for minimum wage than writing a game. It is absolutely no coincidence that this conference mostly showed off games. And - by all reports - very crappy ones, with game play you would expect from a game jam (albeit dressed up in million-dollar graphics). It is no coincidence they haven't got a proven game studio on board: their flagship game is created _under contract_ by a VFX company. Games are not your Trojan horse use case. Figure out what your product is for. Get it in consumers hands. And you can bet your ass game devs will exploit it (iPhone anyone?). Otherwise you are a novel gaming peripheral. And you are going to have to work _a lot harder_ to show games worth playing. Even VR is struggling (and, I would say, failing) there. So far, Google glass is still the most compelling AR tool I've seen.
- tigershark 8y ago
  Google glass doesn’t even qualify as AR, it’s just a HUD. And it had a huge amount of disadvantages, even hololens, for certain use-cases, was destroying it for AR.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dna_polymerase 8y ago
What is AR supposed to be good for anyways? I see all those fancy demo videos (which are of course fake) and still ask myself what problem AR could solve. Magic Leap as well as the HoloLens require much computing power sitting next to you under the table, so you are not mobile with those headsets. So what real problem could this solve?
- bsenftner 8y ago
  It will end up being a "better phone". The best application is telepresence: create a virtual space to work with a team, but no one is physically present, everyone is remote. Yet able to turn on/off presence in the shared space as needed to accomplish their group task at hand. Kind like Slack, but with the ability to communicate in nearly any form, from small non-obtrusive msg bubbles (like a text) to full video windows when necessary showing whatever needs to be visualized to answer questions. The "killer app" is enabling ones physical location to be irrelevant to working with others.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  What is AR good for today? Almost nothing. What is it's potential? HUGE Why do you need monitors if you have AR contact lens. Project as many monitors as you want where ever you want them. Sit in cafe and make it appear as if you have a 60 inch monitor on the table in front of you and a few tablets on the table. In a conference room show a 3D model of building, bridge, or physical project and discuss it with the team pointing directly at parts of the model that appear simulated in the shared projection. Basically imagine any hologram scene in a Sci-fi movie like say showing the 2nd Death Star in Return of the Jedi. Those scenes assume some kind of magic 3D projector. Maybe that will be possible someday but it's nearly possible today if everyone is wearing AR glasses or contacts Project data about people at a conference next to each person. Just like people at a conference wear badges except with AR badges they can be much larger with more info. Have the AR point out the person you're looking for by putting a marker over their head or draw navigation prompts as you walk around. Show virtual drawing surfaces allowing you to draw or annotate anything. just a few ideas
  - tokyodude 8y ago
dorkwood 8y ago
I can't help but feel the world jumped into "the future is here" mode way too early. AI, AR, VR -- these have all promised sci-fi-esque experiences that simply can't be delivered with current technology. I suspect it's to do with the fact that innovation is slowing down across the globe, yet the public expects it to continue at the same pace it's been running for the past 50 years. The market wants the next computer, the next internet, the next iPhone. What happens when it doesn't show up?
- ishi 8y ago
  What makes you say that innovation is slowing down across the globe?
- bsenftner 8y ago
  Journalism stopped paying journalist, so the good ones left, the famous ones got paid more, and the industry changed from new information delivery to sitting on top of fabricated outrage media that tells you how to think. We have no "journalism" in the united states, only a propaganda arm delivering fractured propaganda originating from their largest advertiser block.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  I've had amazing "sci-fi" experiences in VR. Lone Echo on Oculus, Farpoint on PSVR, and others. So blown away that certain geners of non-VR games are not completely non-compelling to me. Those 2 games, while not the best games ever, gave me the feeling of "being there". The difference between playing games on a monitor and games in VR, the good ones, is like the difference between a picture of the grand canyon and being and the grand canyon. The picture does no justice. Sure it might be pretty but it gives no sense of the scale and presence. You don't feel that there's a mile deep canyon that's 20 miles to the other side. You just see a pretty picture. In VR though you do get that sense of scale. That volcano in the distance in Farpoint actually feels 3 miles high with a 20 mile high plum of ash. Hiding behind a piece of rock actually feels like hiding and not "pressing the hide button".
cubaia 8y ago
Looks like that conference had two completely different audiences. As a developer, I tend to look at things and wonder about the future: "what can I build with this?" I'm getting the realization that the equivalent for journalists is something like: "what controversies can I write about this?"
- kashprime 8y ago
  I don't get the hate; I played around with the Hololens for a bit and while the FOV issues are hard to ignore, both devices are steps forward into an interesting and likely THE interface for future computing. One can hope that if MagicLeap fails at least someone will pick up the IP and continue to develop it.
  - DonHopkins 8y ago
    Like the way Magic Leap picked up so many other people's literal designs and IP in their patent applications? https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/30/7954611/magic-leap-augmented-reality-patent-art-copied-designers https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/30/7954611/magic-leap-augmen... >Magic Leap's futuristic patent art was copied from other artists' designs >When Google-backed augmented reality company Magic Leap quietly applied for a patent, it did so with dozens of pages of futuristic (and slightly creepy) scenarios: a social media charm bracelet, a gargoyle bursting out of a box in a store, gamified cucumber chopping... >Wait a second. That last one sounds familiar. Maybe that's because it's a line drawing of a shot from "Sight," a Black Mirror-esque short film about an augmented, sinister future. As it turns out, Magic Leap's patent art isn't so much its vision of the future as one created by various students and designers. Former Verge-r and current Gizmodo writer Sean Hollister was tipped off to a set of side-by-side comparisons that leave no doubt we're looking at copies. >If patents are about originality, does this mean Magic Leap is hurting its claims? Not really. A great deal of patent art just shows potential designs or uses for something, in order to make the actual, more abstract claims clearer. In this case, Magic Leap is patenting an optical system that has nothing to do with the interfaces displayed here. Even bringing a copyright claim would be hard and arguably pointless. "Images such as these are setting consumer expectations of VR and AR today," the company told Gizmodo. "We wanted to use the same images to demonstrate what our technology will enable." >The designers themselves seem ambivalent of their images' rebirth as patent art. Magic Leap appears to have neither contacted them nor credited them, but at the same time, it's showing the world how this futuristic design fiction could work. It's one thing to have someone rip off your art. It's another to have them actually make it real — if Magic Leap can actually deliver on its ambitious promises. https://gizmodo.com/magic-leap-ripped-off-those-awesome-ui-concepts-1682716916 https://gizmodo.com/magic-leap-ripped-off-those-awesome-ui-c... >Magic Leap Ripped Off Those Awesome UI Concepts >Magic Leap is secretly building a headset that could blend computer graphics with the real world. Recently, we lucked into a treasure trove of illustrations from Magic Leap about what that future might hold. There's just one problem: Magic Leap didn't actually create all those awesome UI concepts. It copied them. >The images speak for themselves. On the left of each of these comparision shots, you'll see an illustration plucked directly from this Magic Leap patent application. On the right, you'll find a screengrab from an awesome UI concept invented by someone else. >Remember Sight, the incredible student film where a man with bionic eyes plays Fruit Ninja with a real cucumber that becomes part of his meal? Same cucumber. Same everything: >Or how about the Ringo Holographic Interface dreamt up by then-UI-design-student Ivan Tihienko in 2008? >Here's a augmented reality concept from interaction designer Joesph Juhnke called "The Future of Firefighting": >And below, one from designer Michaël Harboun and his team called The Aeon Project. "What if you could travel to exotic, far-away destinations while being stuck in traffic?" >Lastly, two images from "Meditating Mediums - The Digital 3D," which was the graduating thesis for Greg Tran at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He now designs for Samsung. >This might also look familiar: [...]
ArtWomb 8y ago
You can watch the full conference keynote here: Magic Leap L.E.A.P. Conference Keynote | Live from Los Angeles, October 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV8oGahOSgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV8oGahOSgc
DonHopkins 8y ago
>"You know that weird sensation when it feels like everyone around you is participating in some mild mass hallucination, and you missed the dosing?" Yeah, Stanislaw Lem wrote a book about that, which Ari Folman made into a movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMMI8HWhqEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMMI8HWhqEc >An EPIC scene from "The Congress" (2014) >A short but entirely mesmerizing drug come-down, reality dissolving scene from the film "The Congress" (2014) based on the 1971 novel "The Futurological Congress" by Stanisław Lem. All rights to the makers. Such a great movie. Quite different than the book, but they both stand on their own and deal with fascinating issues, and it's well worth reading and watching both, like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner. >The Congress Official US Release Trailer (2014) - Robin Wright Fantasy Movie HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkDyKWKNeaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkDyKWKNeaE
- bsenftner 8y ago
  One of my favorte films of all time. Practically nobody has seen it, and for many that do they fixate on trivial points. The film and book are monumental intellectual works, and are being missed by many who would dearly love them.
  - DonHopkins 8y ago
    Speaking on fixating on trivial points -- ;) -- I really love the emotionally stunning and deeply self referential scene at the crux of the movie, between Robin Wright and Harvey Keitel, in Paul Debevec's Light Stage studio at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies. http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/3d-body-scan-and-emotion-capture-in-the-congress http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/3d-bo... http://gl.ict.usc.edu/LightStages/ http://gl.ict.usc.edu/LightStages/
    - bsenftner 8y ago
      Great scene. Thanks for linking it. So many layers in this film...
dwighttk 8y ago
>You know that weird sensation when it feels like everyone around you is participating in some mild mass hallucination, and you missed the dosing? Google Glass was a different (but related) product and I remember going to one of their "come try Glass" events and feeling the same way.
novaleaf 8y ago
> “Today, our world feels divided.” Rony Abovitz, CEO of the infamous mixed reality startup Magic Leap stood awkwardly on a circular stage first sentence. holy negativity batman.
zarriak 8y ago
We are at the point where the most gripping experience is contextual browsing. What if instead of just showing you the recipe it actually used ar to demonstrate how to do each action of the thing it was showing. It seems absurd that this kind of thing is the first thing you can think of but companies that have billions of dollars invested in to them are unable to come up with any compelling idea of what they have all the money in the world to throw at a dartboard and still none of it even hits.
aj7 8y ago
One note. There were at least 10 startups that failed to produce LCD projector displays, which are now ubiquitous and cheap. There were at least 20 startups that failed at non-piercing blood glucose measurement, which is now accessible and not outrageously expensive. So something will come of this. But Magic Leap is going down.
mb_72 8y ago
Billions of dollars and still charging a pretty penny for the hardware? Should have put several million into making free headsets available to developers vetted to some basic degree, and see what happens
joshsyn 8y ago
This is what you get when CEOs are overly optimistic while the tech isn't just there yet.

185 points by danso 8y ago

I'm not by any stretch an expert in VR/AR, but a couple of weeks ago I finally tried Magic Leap. My first reaction was: "What a piece of crap!! This is it?" And yes... that it was. If you have never tried it, is 100X (and I'm being generous) less impressive than the super fake demo video they posted.

Groxx 8y ago
That was pretty much my experience with HoloLens. Uncomfortable headset, awkward and inaccurate hand gestures, and like a postage-stamp-size viewport. You couldn't see anything functional in the least due to viewport alone, and the low resolution killed any hope you may have had left. Tracking was mostly alright about 95% of the time, in an office setting which is probably borderline ideal (lots of high-contrast edges and corners all over), but even while relatively still it made plenty of mistakes. All of which I gather the Magic Leap is better on... by less than 50%. In two years. AR has unbelievably misleading advertising. To enough of a degree that I think they should be fined rather significantly. Remember the HoloLens Minecraft "demo" videos? Or the full 3D models on the user's desk, nearly the size of the screen or keyboard? You couldn't even cover a coffee mug at that distance.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  I was still somewhat impressed exactly by the HoloLenses very fast (and quite accurate) tracking. I think it was the absolutely right trade-off.
  - Groxx 8y ago
    Yeah, most of the time it was very solid, only barely perceptible lag. Fairly impressive when it was working smoothly :) Issues I had were mostly when it failed and started sliding around while I stood still, or jumped a bit and stayed wrong for a couple seconds.
- puranjay 8y ago
  The technology hype cycle over the last decade has been pretty disappointing. I was promised by now, I'd be 3D printing my sneakers, spend my time killing zombies in VR, and paying for DLC with crypto Of these, only VR seems even remotely close to reaching its original promise
  - iliis 8y ago
    About those sneakers: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:285404 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:285404 ;) But yeah, I agree that there's much too much hype around a lot of stuff...
    - DonHopkins 8y ago
      Space Invaders sneakers leave 3D printed footprints worth 01 point each! https://www.newarteditions.com/invader-sneakers-speed-balls/ https://www.newarteditions.com/invader-sneakers-speed-balls/ (Sorry, all sold out -- I mean GAME OVER!)
- kthejoker2 8y ago
  Baker Hughes GE has an awesome Hololens demo where they offload the processing to a GPU rack and get some insane voxels, resolutions and responsiveness. But yeah the onboard stuff is just soso. But of course you seem to be looking for a polished product,most of these AR solutions are aspirational and designed to help build reference implementations and AR Development capabilities.
empath75 8y ago
In comparison I was way more impressed by the oculus and vive than I expected to be. Vr gets a bit boring after a while but I’ve never seen anyone try it who didn’t have an expression of joy on their face.
- 1stcity3rdcoast 8y ago
  I tried Oculus for the first time yesterday and was very impressed. My last experience with VR was in the 90s, so my baseline was low, but it was a truly incredible experience.
- jarsin 8y ago
  VR is an experience like going to a movie theater to get lost in another world, which is why it has a future.

Apocryphon 8y ago

> Magic Leap is almost entirely built on the visions of grown men wanting to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds. Its chief focus is entertainment, games, diversions—cinematic reality, sure; pushing the frontiers of computing? Not as much. I’ll repeat my half-baked idea: the future of VR and AR is digital workplaces for better teleconferencing. Make it truly seamless to talk to colleagues while working remote. Disrupt office work as we know it and fix the externalities of commuting and being tied to a physical workplace. Why escape into fantasy worlds when you can make living in the real world more bearable?

kmlx 8y ago
"Make it truly seamless to talk to colleagues while working remote." Some of us work remotely in order to avoid constant disruption (especially software development). As such the queueing of IM conversations from colleagues is a good thing in this scenario. The quality of the code that I write grows exponentially the less people ping me on Skype. While in the office code development was tertiary to various meetings, presentations, the occasional interview, even birthdays.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  I admit, part of this is productivity theater. If you can simulate face time, seamless visibility at a meeting, sparking ideas spontaneously around the water cooler, etc., then maybe those dictating corporate conduct might actually be more willing to entertain mass adoption of remote work. As of now remote work is certainly feasible, but it’s definitely steps removed from the actual experience of being in person. Also, my proposal isn’t meant to benefit engineers exclusively- teleconferencing through virtual workplaces should ideally help anyone who works in an office, not just those who are accorded more responsibilities that don’t involve social interaction.
sgt101 8y ago
Yeah, you'll have to have a way to record yourself and encode/decode/transmit in real time though.... Maybe in twenty years...

edoo 8y ago

The cell phone analogy is appropriate. This is first generation tech. Within 30 years it will be amazing and unobtrusive. Think eyeglasses or contact lenses with photo realistic rendering. I think it will be as important as the radio and TV was in shaping society both commercially and privately.

pg_bot 8y ago
"Within 30 years... it will be as important as the radio and TV was in shaping society both commercially and privately" Care to make your prediction interesting? I'd be willing to take the opposite side of that bet.
- germinalphrase 8y ago
  http://longbets.org http://longbets.org
  - pg_bot 8y ago
    I'd be willing to wager $500, if anyone wants to take the other side.
taytus 8y ago
The difference is that the iPhone was revolutionary. Yeah, no copy/paste and no app store on V 1.0 but it was a game changer from the beginning.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  There are over 15 years of PDAs before the iPhone. It didn't appear out of thin air. It was an evolution from Newton->Palm Pilot->Clie->Windows CE PDAs->Sony Clie->iPhone Yes, it was the one that got everything right and it did bring about a revolution but it was evolutional step. It shipped with cellular data (all previous PDAs it was optional). It had an interface designed for a finger rather than a stylus. But, if you were a geek and had PDA from 1995 though 2007 you had already had a PDA in your pocket, where already sending emails from your pocket, browsing the internet, downloading apps, etc... AR will follow some similar progression. Today's AR is too large (same as Newton), with a bad display (same as Newton), too expensive (same as Newton), crappy OS (same as Newton). But someone will get it right eventually and bring about an AR revolution.

clickok 8y ago

Originally I found the Magic Leap extremely exciting, because in contrast to phones or tablets, whose touchscreens limit what sort of applications are feasible, AR could allow for arbitrary interfaces. These interfaces could be present alongside the real world, making them both more convenient and maybe less of an attention-vortex. This is (among other things) what Magic Leap pitched, and comparing the actual product to their press releases is to note a vast discrepancy. Still, hope springs eternal, so while I wasn't impressed, I know how hard AR is and I wasn't inclined to judge too harshly-- maybe it will get better as technology improves. After having read the article, I find myself rooting for them to fail. This is a company that has taken (and arguably squandered) billions of dollars to release a slightly cheaper HoloLens. Instead of feeling abashed, they continue blithely on, even having the temerity to invite developers to their platform because the rest of the world (and in particular, other platforms) has so much "baggage" and "negativity". As the article notes, this is a company that is propped up by oligarchs, settles sex discrimination lawsuits, and is pursuing military contracts with repressive regimes. Although to be fair, improving soldiers' lethality is the only use case they've articulated that justifies the price. Now that the missed expectations and general shadiness are starting to catch up with them, they're moving to attract developers. Somehow, despite all the money, they haven't been able to pay for an idea to justify the hype-- what else could you call it but a con?

pg_bot 8y ago
I generally agree with everything you've said except for the act of settling a sex discrimination lawsuit being a negative signal. The existence of a sex discrimination lawsuit is certainly not a positive signal for any prospective employer, but it takes both parties to come to an agreement to settle. Settlement is also the overwhelmingly likely outcome of most lawsuits (> 90% chance). The prospect of going to trial concentrates the mind wonderfully. A clarity descends. Sometimes you learn things about your own case that you didn't know before. (that it sucks - maybe) Trials can be unpredictable, better to come to an agreement that both parties can live with than to roll the dice.
- Paradigma11 8y ago
  The problem is that the harasser is most likely in a position of power and can afford to live comfortably with quite a few such agreements.

Farradfahren 8y ago

The original Iphone wanted to eat cartographers lunch money. It wanted to be a layer between you and the world. The Leap wants tot eat IKEAs and the whole decoration industrys money. It wants to be a layer between you and the world. It might also be a attempt to stop the world move into this direction. If you creat a billion dollar ship wreck, it takes a whole manager generation to fade and loose that mental reef from theire mind-maps. The vision of Vernor Vinge in Rainbows End is still valid in my opinion.

dymk 8y ago

This article confirms a lot of the suspicions I had about Magic Leap's product, which is unfortunate. Had the company not overhyped the product and shipped with expectations so high, perhaps they could have had something which would actually impress the general public. Unrelated, this weird aside is my least favorite part of the article: > Magic Leap is almost entirely built on the visions of grown men wanting to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds ... > It is telling that the most compelling glimpse of a possible future with Magic Leap was relayed to me by nonwhite, non-male product manager There's this implication that the white male leadership is only interested in the frilly escapist aspect of the product, and it's those in minority groups who are actually going to be pushing the boundaries of tech. Why include this in the article? Does the author honestly believe that's true? Do jabs at white men get clicks and heads nodding.now?

Farradfahren 8y ago
This civil war of opinion, can get the click rate up, if your article gets dragged into a flamewar or two. From the point of somebody selling ammonition- somalia is a beautiful country.
ealexhudson 8y ago
Interesting that you see that as a "jab against white men" - I read it as a jab against monoculture. That the company's monoculture is middle aged white cis dudes is kind of beside the point. A company this big needs to address most, if not all, people. The need for escapist leisure activity is something only relatively privileged people have. You only have to look at Google Glass to see what that limited appeal does to a product. It's a valid commercial consideration.
- bsenftner 8y ago
  The point is a common journalistic mechanism: throw in a controversial side note, and somewhere morons will make that an issue and drive readership of the article in outrage. You fell into this con...
  - 8y ago

srrge 8y ago

This iPhone analogy is full of crap. Apple delivered the fisrt iPhone with the software it needed to be, in itself, very usefull! The app developers came after, when a user base had already been created.

sytelus 8y ago
It’s most misused analogy. If you have crappy product that no one is buying, compare it to iPhone v1.
- inawarminister 8y ago
  Well, the writer compared Magic Leap to Apple Newton, which was... too early for the aims?
Fnoord 8y ago
The first iPhone had many flaws but none of these were false advertising, and it also had some unique abilities. For example, it sported a capacitive touchscreen (touchscreens were mostly resistive back in 2007), it featured multitouch (you need a capacitive touchscreen for that), yet it didn't have 3G (it had EDGE), lacked copy/paste, lacked a repository ("app store"), lacked applications, and required a contract. Add to that that Apple already existed, had a solid fanbase, and already released their first product for mass market (iPod), and well... Steve Jobs reality distortion field. Who knows what would've happened if Apple was a very new company with no such fanbase, history, or CEO.
rdiddly 8y ago
I think it's wishful thinking. Everybody WANTS it to be the next iPhone, because the iPhone was wildly successful. That level of investing acumen unfortunately amounts to not much more than noticing that the iPhone happened. Like I noticed the Beatles happened, but saying my band is the next Beatles doesn't make it so. The iPhone and the Beatles were both products of very unique circumstances including a lot of plain random luck.

sytelus 8y ago

Key stats: Caraeff says that 50,000 user accounts have been created there. He wouldn’t tell me the number of times the software developer kit has actually been downloaded, though he said it was fewer than that, or the number of Leap headsets shipped, which was fewer still.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

I feel that if AR finally gets to work in form of glasses, it'll have a bifurcated market - one will be entertainment for masses, the second one will be support tool for things like manufacturing. Which is kind of sad, because genpops will get toys, and the tools will go to corps. But I guess that's supply and demand. I just hope the entertainment glasses will be open enough to support a cottage industry of small software shops & open source coders doing tools for individual productivity. Now I hope one day we'll get AR contact lenses or some other form of inconspicuous AR. I'd love to have the ability to switch it on and do some compute at a whim, without fumbling with special glasses, and having to mind the social situation in which I'm in. As for Magic Leap - I get that AR is hard, but this level of hype is inexcusable. They're burning through general interest in the field and trust towards everyone working in it for sake of some quick buck. The sooner they get forced to realign with reality, the better.

Reason077 8y ago

Magic Leap reminds me a lot of the early days of Segway. There’s some cool tech there somewhere, but the hype vastly exceeds the reality. Build up expectations too high and you’re going to leave everyone disappointed.

DonHopkins 8y ago
And then South Park does an episode on "it". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OACjYGw6BkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OACjYGw6BkA

kolderman 8y ago

coughhydrogen onecough

sago 8y ago

Here's why I am immediately skeptical. People think games are easy. People think entertainment is a solution. That is almost always a sign of someone in trouble. In reality, entertainment is the reddest of red markets. It is incredibly difficult to make a compelling experience. Even more difficult to sell it. Include risk in the calculation and you are literally better off working for minimum wage than writing a game. It is absolutely no coincidence that this conference mostly showed off games. And - by all reports - very crappy ones, with game play you would expect from a game jam (albeit dressed up in million-dollar graphics). It is no coincidence they haven't got a proven game studio on board: their flagship game is created _under contract_ by a VFX company. Games are not your Trojan horse use case. Figure out what your product is for. Get it in consumers hands. And you can bet your ass game devs will exploit it (iPhone anyone?). Otherwise you are a novel gaming peripheral. And you are going to have to work _a lot harder_ to show games worth playing. Even VR is struggling (and, I would say, failing) there. So far, Google glass is still the most compelling AR tool I've seen.

tigershark 8y ago
Google glass doesn’t even qualify as AR, it’s just a HUD. And it had a huge amount of disadvantages, even hololens, for certain use-cases, was destroying it for AR.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dna_polymerase 8y ago

What is AR supposed to be good for anyways? I see all those fancy demo videos (which are of course fake) and still ask myself what problem AR could solve. Magic Leap as well as the HoloLens require much computing power sitting next to you under the table, so you are not mobile with those headsets. So what real problem could this solve?

bsenftner 8y ago
It will end up being a "better phone". The best application is telepresence: create a virtual space to work with a team, but no one is physically present, everyone is remote. Yet able to turn on/off presence in the shared space as needed to accomplish their group task at hand. Kind like Slack, but with the ability to communicate in nearly any form, from small non-obtrusive msg bubbles (like a text) to full video windows when necessary showing whatever needs to be visualized to answer questions. The "killer app" is enabling ones physical location to be irrelevant to working with others.
tokyodude 8y ago
What is AR good for today? Almost nothing. What is it's potential? HUGE Why do you need monitors if you have AR contact lens. Project as many monitors as you want where ever you want them. Sit in cafe and make it appear as if you have a 60 inch monitor on the table in front of you and a few tablets on the table. In a conference room show a 3D model of building, bridge, or physical project and discuss it with the team pointing directly at parts of the model that appear simulated in the shared projection. Basically imagine any hologram scene in a Sci-fi movie like say showing the 2nd Death Star in Return of the Jedi. Those scenes assume some kind of magic 3D projector. Maybe that will be possible someday but it's nearly possible today if everyone is wearing AR glasses or contacts Project data about people at a conference next to each person. Just like people at a conference wear badges except with AR badges they can be much larger with more info. Have the AR point out the person you're looking for by putting a marker over their head or draw navigation prompts as you walk around. Show virtual drawing surfaces allowing you to draw or annotate anything. just a few ideas
- tokyodude 8y ago

dorkwood 8y ago

I can't help but feel the world jumped into "the future is here" mode way too early. AI, AR, VR -- these have all promised sci-fi-esque experiences that simply can't be delivered with current technology. I suspect it's to do with the fact that innovation is slowing down across the globe, yet the public expects it to continue at the same pace it's been running for the past 50 years. The market wants the next computer, the next internet, the next iPhone. What happens when it doesn't show up?

ishi 8y ago
What makes you say that innovation is slowing down across the globe?
bsenftner 8y ago
Journalism stopped paying journalist, so the good ones left, the famous ones got paid more, and the industry changed from new information delivery to sitting on top of fabricated outrage media that tells you how to think. We have no "journalism" in the united states, only a propaganda arm delivering fractured propaganda originating from their largest advertiser block.
tokyodude 8y ago
I've had amazing "sci-fi" experiences in VR. Lone Echo on Oculus, Farpoint on PSVR, and others. So blown away that certain geners of non-VR games are not completely non-compelling to me. Those 2 games, while not the best games ever, gave me the feeling of "being there". The difference between playing games on a monitor and games in VR, the good ones, is like the difference between a picture of the grand canyon and being and the grand canyon. The picture does no justice. Sure it might be pretty but it gives no sense of the scale and presence. You don't feel that there's a mile deep canyon that's 20 miles to the other side. You just see a pretty picture. In VR though you do get that sense of scale. That volcano in the distance in Farpoint actually feels 3 miles high with a 20 mile high plum of ash. Hiding behind a piece of rock actually feels like hiding and not "pressing the hide button".

cubaia 8y ago

Looks like that conference had two completely different audiences. As a developer, I tend to look at things and wonder about the future: "what can I build with this?" I'm getting the realization that the equivalent for journalists is something like: "what controversies can I write about this?"

kashprime 8y ago
I don't get the hate; I played around with the Hololens for a bit and while the FOV issues are hard to ignore, both devices are steps forward into an interesting and likely THE interface for future computing. One can hope that if MagicLeap fails at least someone will pick up the IP and continue to develop it.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  Like the way Magic Leap picked up so many other people's literal designs and IP in their patent applications? https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/30/7954611/magic-leap-augmented-reality-patent-art-copied-designers https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/30/7954611/magic-leap-augmen... >Magic Leap's futuristic patent art was copied from other artists' designs >When Google-backed augmented reality company Magic Leap quietly applied for a patent, it did so with dozens of pages of futuristic (and slightly creepy) scenarios: a social media charm bracelet, a gargoyle bursting out of a box in a store, gamified cucumber chopping... >Wait a second. That last one sounds familiar. Maybe that's because it's a line drawing of a shot from "Sight," a Black Mirror-esque short film about an augmented, sinister future. As it turns out, Magic Leap's patent art isn't so much its vision of the future as one created by various students and designers. Former Verge-r and current Gizmodo writer Sean Hollister was tipped off to a set of side-by-side comparisons that leave no doubt we're looking at copies. >If patents are about originality, does this mean Magic Leap is hurting its claims? Not really. A great deal of patent art just shows potential designs or uses for something, in order to make the actual, more abstract claims clearer. In this case, Magic Leap is patenting an optical system that has nothing to do with the interfaces displayed here. Even bringing a copyright claim would be hard and arguably pointless. "Images such as these are setting consumer expectations of VR and AR today," the company told Gizmodo. "We wanted to use the same images to demonstrate what our technology will enable." >The designers themselves seem ambivalent of their images' rebirth as patent art. Magic Leap appears to have neither contacted them nor credited them, but at the same time, it's showing the world how this futuristic design fiction could work. It's one thing to have someone rip off your art. It's another to have them actually make it real — if Magic Leap can actually deliver on its ambitious promises. https://gizmodo.com/magic-leap-ripped-off-those-awesome-ui-concepts-1682716916 https://gizmodo.com/magic-leap-ripped-off-those-awesome-ui-c... >Magic Leap Ripped Off Those Awesome UI Concepts >Magic Leap is secretly building a headset that could blend computer graphics with the real world. Recently, we lucked into a treasure trove of illustrations from Magic Leap about what that future might hold. There's just one problem: Magic Leap didn't actually create all those awesome UI concepts. It copied them. >The images speak for themselves. On the left of each of these comparision shots, you'll see an illustration plucked directly from this Magic Leap patent application. On the right, you'll find a screengrab from an awesome UI concept invented by someone else. >Remember Sight, the incredible student film where a man with bionic eyes plays Fruit Ninja with a real cucumber that becomes part of his meal? Same cucumber. Same everything: >Or how about the Ringo Holographic Interface dreamt up by then-UI-design-student Ivan Tihienko in 2008? >Here's a augmented reality concept from interaction designer Joesph Juhnke called "The Future of Firefighting": >And below, one from designer Michaël Harboun and his team called The Aeon Project. "What if you could travel to exotic, far-away destinations while being stuck in traffic?" >Lastly, two images from "Meditating Mediums - The Digital 3D," which was the graduating thesis for Greg Tran at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He now designs for Samsung. >This might also look familiar: [...]

ArtWomb 8y ago

You can watch the full conference keynote here: Magic Leap L.E.A.P. Conference Keynote | Live from Los Angeles, October 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV8oGahOSgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV8oGahOSgc

DonHopkins 8y ago

>"You know that weird sensation when it feels like everyone around you is participating in some mild mass hallucination, and you missed the dosing?" Yeah, Stanislaw Lem wrote a book about that, which Ari Folman made into a movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMMI8HWhqEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMMI8HWhqEc >An EPIC scene from "The Congress" (2014) >A short but entirely mesmerizing drug come-down, reality dissolving scene from the film "The Congress" (2014) based on the 1971 novel "The Futurological Congress" by Stanisław Lem. All rights to the makers. Such a great movie. Quite different than the book, but they both stand on their own and deal with fascinating issues, and it's well worth reading and watching both, like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner. >The Congress Official US Release Trailer (2014) - Robin Wright Fantasy Movie HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkDyKWKNeaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkDyKWKNeaE

bsenftner 8y ago
One of my favorte films of all time. Practically nobody has seen it, and for many that do they fixate on trivial points. The film and book are monumental intellectual works, and are being missed by many who would dearly love them.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  Speaking on fixating on trivial points -- ;) -- I really love the emotionally stunning and deeply self referential scene at the crux of the movie, between Robin Wright and Harvey Keitel, in Paul Debevec's Light Stage studio at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies. http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/3d-body-scan-and-emotion-capture-in-the-congress http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/3d-bo... http://gl.ict.usc.edu/LightStages/ http://gl.ict.usc.edu/LightStages/
  - bsenftner 8y ago
    Great scene. Thanks for linking it. So many layers in this film...

dwighttk 8y ago

>You know that weird sensation when it feels like everyone around you is participating in some mild mass hallucination, and you missed the dosing? Google Glass was a different (but related) product and I remember going to one of their "come try Glass" events and feeling the same way.

novaleaf 8y ago

> “Today, our world feels divided.” Rony Abovitz, CEO of the infamous mixed reality startup Magic Leap stood awkwardly on a circular stage first sentence. holy negativity batman.

zarriak 8y ago

We are at the point where the most gripping experience is contextual browsing. What if instead of just showing you the recipe it actually used ar to demonstrate how to do each action of the thing it was showing. It seems absurd that this kind of thing is the first thing you can think of but companies that have billions of dollars invested in to them are unable to come up with any compelling idea of what they have all the money in the world to throw at a dartboard and still none of it even hits.

aj7 8y ago

One note. There were at least 10 startups that failed to produce LCD projector displays, which are now ubiquitous and cheap. There were at least 20 startups that failed at non-piercing blood glucose measurement, which is now accessible and not outrageously expensive. So something will come of this. But Magic Leap is going down.

mb_72 8y ago

Billions of dollars and still charging a pretty penny for the hardware? Should have put several million into making free headsets available to developers vetted to some basic degree, and see what happens

joshsyn 8y ago

This is what you get when CEOs are overly optimistic while the tech isn't just there yet.