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My first year at Magic Leap and the opportunity ahead
- dmitriid 5y agoNarrator: "It was the same subpar meh product they pretended to have already released after years of fleecing investors with pretty CGI"
- camillomiller 5y agoThe real news is that they still have capital to invest in development. I honestly thought they were already dead. They might need a rebranding.
- aaron695 5y ago> According to IDC, the AR/VR market is expected to grow to nearly $140 billion by the end of 2024. AR has nothing at all to do with VR. But I guess if you're talking about a technology that even science fiction writers can't show it doing anything other than sexually suggestive ads, your target audience isn't chasing a coherent narrative.
- KaiserPro 5y agoits interesting that they appear to only have two SLAM cameras (that I can see) I can see at the front they have two extra cameras, that look like they are a near/far pair. It'll be interesting to see what the tracking performance is
- PaulHoule 5y ago‘Enterprise’ is the right market. You can afford what this costs if it saves you the consequences of doing a concrete pour wrong.
- gilrain 5y agoThey’re pivoting to enterprise, eh. So. Industrial Leap and Magic?
- pavlov 5y agoThe post mentions that Magic Leap recently raised money at a valuation of $2B. Seems like a significant downround, considering they’d already raised at least $2.4B in the past. I’d guess their pre-launch valuation must have been closer to $10B.
- tmcw 5y agoAt least in earlier stages, Magic Leap's marketing and communications were fun and accessible. This blog post is pure corporate jargon - "engaged a number of strategic partners to further bolster our support," "accelerated the organization’s pivot to enterprise, brought our industry-leading capabilities to new customers," "our core business objectives remain focused on enterprise solutions, there continues to be intense interest in the application of Magic Leap’s technology in the consumer space"
- mritchie712 5y agoYes, this is definitely a "wtf do you actually mean" post. I can usually glean these from the first paragraph and close the tab.
- listless 5y agoWhenever I read “pivot to enterprise” from a startup, I read “we’re out of ideas”. In my own personal experience, startups who pivot to the enterprise are dying stars and that statement is a hallmark.
- bathtub365 5y agoIt sounds more like a recognition that headset-based AR has no future as a consumer product with current form factors.
- listless 5y agoThat’s a much better phrasing.
- dabeeeenster 5y agoI never quite figured out these tweets: https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/656667346837200896?lang=en-gb https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/656667346837200896?... I’ve had the Magic Leap demo. It was worth going to Florida for. https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/842399282485460992?lang=en https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/842399282485460992?... So, a while ago I said that seeing Magic Leap was the coolest thing I'd seen since the iPhone. It's now much cooler than that. Any suggestions?
- notabanker 5y agoI could be wrong on the timeline, but wasn't Ben Evans at that time a partner at Andreesen Horowitz. Partners are expected to be cheerleaders of their investments. After all difficult technologies become manifest by cheerleading them until one of them catches on.
- dabeeeenster 5y agoHe was, yes
- phonon 5y agoThe demo he refers to was not (and could never be) an actual commercial product. It was stationary and the optics were 100x what could fit on a mobile device. What they eventually shipped had very little to do with the tech used in the private demo. Turns out optical physics is not like software...
- shmatt 5y agoWhich makes another tweet of his even weirder. Someone questioned the plausibility of making that demo mobile >it’s perfectly clear. Just not public. https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/656667935205797888 https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/656667935205797888 The only difference between 2015 ML and Theranos is that faking tech in healthcare is just a lot more illegal. If they promised investors there was a definite plan the demo becomes a real product, and knew thats a lie, could they sue?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- emsy 5y agoPossible Edison 2 announcement from Theranos soon?
- kevinwang 5y agoWow, I completely missed that magic leap 1 actually came out
- throwaway123x2 5y agoI want a good consumer AR headset. VR gives me a headache and I really think AR will be more fun / integrated with our lives. It's sad that MSFT made the HoloLens enterprise only, otherwise I'd be next in line for that.
- lostgame 5y agoI wish the Oculus Quest 2 had higher quality cameras. Some of my favourite times in that experience are when I have to see the world through my googles.
- Animats 5y ago"We have accelerated the organization’s pivot to enterprise." Or, "we can't make this affordable".
- eitally 5y agoIt somewhat amuses me to see the parallels with Google Glass in this regard. I worry the enterprise market may already be quite crowded, though, and there are ample niche vendors specializing in AR for different use cases (construction, manufacturing, medicine/surgery, etc). I don't know that Magic Leap isn't a year late and a dollar short.
- rsynnott 5y ago... Huh. I had no idea they still existed; I was expecting this to be a historical artifact.
- ChuckMcM 5y agoI am impressed they aren't defunct. After all they raised $3B[1] and their valuation is $2B so they are a long way away from making their investors whole. They did replace their entire top line management team it seems so maybe that helps? A friend of mine who was approaching AR from a more theoretical point rather than a product point shared some of the physics of how many nits of brightness the display needs to produce to occlude the actual background and it is a lot. ML worked around some of that problem by shading the background think sunglasses with a 50% light reduction, which helps but then you're trying to match shading. Basically it is a really hard problem and had they not been so "out there" in their original claims I really don't think they would be so challenged in their marketing now. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap
- sjg007 5y agoHuh... dynamic lcd shading seems like a solvable problem.
- beambot 5y ago> According to IDC, the AR/VR market is expected to grow to nearly $140 billion by the end of 2024. That number seems wildly exaggerated... unless I'm missing something?
- alasdair_ 5y ago>That number seems wildly exaggerated... unless I'm missing something? Both Apple and Facebook are wildly understood to be launching AR glasses with serious marketing pushes in 2022. 100 million units sold between the two of them over 2.5 years at an average price around the price of an iPhone (so $1000) plus some app sales adds up to $140BN. I guess. I agree that even there it seems high.
- lostgame 5y agoYeah, seems way too high. I recently got an Oculus Quest 2 and was immediately stunned by the dearth of content that exists on the platform. AR/VR is a hard sell, still; besides the initial experience - and as a dev in the AR/VR industry I'm honestly waiting for when we can get rid of the screen door effect in VR and better solutions to the lighting problem in AR.
- yughurt 5y agoIf you’re interested in what’s possible atm, check out the Varjo XR-3. No screen door effect.
- chaostheory 5y agodearth of content? What are you looking for that's not there? The Quest 2 also doesn't have a noticeable screen door effect since it uses an LCD screen. The trade off is black is washed out. imo the screen door effect is only noticeable on older VR HMDs that use OLED like the first Quest. Are you sure that you have a Quest 2 headset?
- throw_m239339 5y agoI think HN is pretty set on the fact that Magic Leap is vaporware, isn't it? do they even have a product?
- pvm3 5y agothey probably have a large patent portfolio
- criddell 5y agoSurely the NDAs that were signed when they were previewing the tech to journalists have expired. I'd love to know what it was they were seeing that resulted in so many articles announcing something great was coming. For me, only the Segway (Ginger) was a bigger disappointment.
- specialist 5y agoThe tragedy is they anticipated micromobility. Which will (may) be huge. They were just ~20 years too soon. These "right idea, wrong time" fails confuse me. I just don't know what to make of it.
- moron4hire 5y agoThey do have a product. It didn't live up to Abovitz' hype, but that's also why he's not CEO anymore. The ML1 sits somewhere in the vicinity of the Hololens 1 in capability. Some things it does better, some things it does worse. For example, having a real controller was very useful as the input latency on the Hololens' hand tracking is a big impediment and not having a variety of physical buttons makes designing games with lots of different types of interactions really hard. I think Waltz of the Wizard on the Quest 2 is the only game I've seen with hand tracked input that isn't just "point and click". Wider field of view than the Hololens was nice, but it came at the price of lower pixel density. Being based on Android was a drawback for me, though. Hololens has a workspace metaphor, akin to a 3D desktop, that Magic Leap never really put much effort into. Hololens also has speech recognition as a first-class citizen, whereas Magic Leap left it up to developers to roll their own. It's really, really hard to get good performance out of Android, too. A bunch of the other stuff was just too wonky to consider. The surface meshing was unusable in real life scenarios. The hand tracking as well. A lot of people don't realize that the Hololens could do full, positional hand tracking, it just wasn't a great experience, so everyone designed around nose-pointers and just using the hand as a clicker. The hand tracking on Magic Leap was even worse, yet they went with trying to showcase it. I think, if Microsoft were to release a controller to get over the latency issues of hand tracking on the Hololens, it'd be strictly better all around. I'm rather bearish on AR devices making a big splash in the consumer market, especially ones using waveguide displays. Waveguides are a technological dead end. There isn't really any room for them to grow by even 2x, when they really need to grow by at least 20x. Good AR application design is also excruciatingly hard. What you typically end up with is a VR app made shitty by having to run on an AR headset. Oculus' approach of starting with a VR headset and adding AR-passthrough makes a lot more sense.
- the-dude 5y agoIf the projected delivery window is the entirety of 2022, it can easily slip into 2023 just as well. TL;DR : Magic Leap 2 will be released somewhere before 2025.
- simonh 5y agos/will/may
- thathndude 5y agoHere we go again . . . But in all seriousness, even if they could ship something meaningful, one wonders if the brand is tarnished such that it makes sense to re-launch with fresh branding. “Magic Leap” does not conjure up positive images in my mind. Why swim against the current unnecessarily?
- mbreese 5y agoMost people don’t know the name Magic Leap. HN is a (relatively) small bubble. The only place where the name might have a bad effect would be in hiring or raising money. But, really changing the name would be worse in that regard as it would signal that they (Magic Leap) also thought the name was tarnished.
- DonHopkins 5y agoThe point is that the name Magic Leap IS extremely and deeply tarnished, in so many ways, and Magic Leap pretending it's not just makes them look more laughably delusional than they already are (which is extremely), just like Trump still believing that he won the election. I just posted citations and quotes about just the most obvious three ways Magic Leap tarnished their own reputation from the start: 1) the sex discrimination lawsuit and nepotistic sexist bro culture, 2) blatantly ripping off other people's ideas without credit in the patent applications, 3) the ridiculous TEDX talk and fraudulent claims on the fake video "demos". But that's just the tip of the iceberg, not even touching on the flaws and shortcomings and fraudulent claims about the hardware and software itself. Magic Leap's terrible reputation has been well covered in many tech and mainstream publications, and is known quite widely both inside and outside of HN. Here's a starting point if you really don't already know about Magic Leap's well established terrible reputation: Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep Losses: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/dented-reality-magic-leap-sees-slow-sales-steep-losses?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=unlock https://www.theinformation.com/articles/dented-reality-magic... >Magic Leap had high hopes for sales of its augmented reality headset. Instead, the richly valued startup has seen slow sales of the device, recent layoffs and executive turnover. In the coming years, competition in AR will likely intensify as bigger tech companies enter the market. HN discussion of that article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21725347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21725347
- captn3m0 5y ago> Our recent round of funding (500M) and new valuation of roughly $2 billion Crunchbase says total money raised is $3B. Is it common for companies to reach a negative valuation compared to money raised?
- YetAnotherNick 5y agoIt's default, not just common. Anyone investing in research startup knows that there is slim chance that the company will be positive in valuation, just that the upper limit for valuation is very high.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stanlarroque 5y agoI can't believe VCs put another 500M$ in this (even at the same last valuation). If only we could have that money for our Lynx[0] headset... [0] https://lynx-r.com https://lynx-r.com
- drclau 5y agoYou can't believe it, because you think there's a rational process involved in investment decisions. After watching how things go for some time, I came to believe that who you are and what connections you have is far more important.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoIt is a rational process. The mistake is in thinking that anyone involved cares about technology or value delivered to customers as anything but an afterthought.
- OneTimePetes 5y ago".. thus we pivoted to projecting directly into the eye, while able to darken the background, away from purely additive drawing, making ML2 useful for outdoor and light-strong environments." Okay
- Whitehead06 5y agoThanks for the information, I will try to figure it out for more. Keep sharing such informative post. https://www.mybalancenow.page/ https://www.mybalancenow.page/
- wongarsu 5y agoIs it just me, or is that announcement full of weirdly specific statements. Like "Magic Leap 2 will be the industry’s smallest and lightest device built for enterprise adoption", implying that smaller/lighter devices exist, just not ones specifically built for enterprise adoption.
- PaulHoule 5y agoIt’s a contrast against HoloLens 2.
- wongarsu 5y agoThat makes some sense. They should have just said "smaller and lighter than AR headsets produced by any company headquartered in Redmond, WA"
- criddell 5y agoThey should stop pre-announcing and just ship something great. Nothing good has ever come from their PR machine.
- lkdjfglkj 5y agoIt's not just you. They're called weasel words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word
- somedude895 5y ago"Benito Mussolini was the kindest, most wonderful and generous man among all the axis leaders." Works wonders
- fsloth 5y agoWould be ethnical majority resident of Mussolini's Italia over Stalin's USSR 10/10. Man the bleakness of those options.
- supermatt 5y agoAre the any AR headsets that will give me a good multi-monitor setup where I can still see everything going on around me? Id happily pay $1500 for something like that.
- metafunctor 5y agoNo, that does not exist as of today. If you can settle for VR, you might be happy with Immersed and Vive Focus 3. There are no AR headsets today that would be remotely useful for day-to-day work, let alone with any kind of passable software support. Stuff from Varjo (like the XR-3) is getting there, but it's not there yet.
- dagw 5y agohttps://varjo.com/products/xr-3/ https://varjo.com/products/xr-3/ is probably as close as you'll get today. However it costs around $6k and is still far from perfect.
- dexterdog 5y agoWhy would you want the segregation of multiple monitors with a headset?
- supermatt 5y agofloating app windows would be better, but thats going to be a lot more complicated than virtual desktops. I just want a multi monitor setup without the monitors.
- cyberpsybin 5y ago*Scam Leap 2
- raesene9 5y agoI must admit I'd forgotten about Magic Leap, amazed to see they're still going and raising even more money. In my head, I always put them in a bucket with Theranos and uBeam, Startups who made product claims which experts in their fields said were not possible. I guess slick marketing wins over those doubts in some VC circles but you wonder if anyone at the early stage Magic Leap investors is getting asked tough questions about why they approved it, or if they've all just moved on to other roles.
- 908B64B197 5y ago> I must admit I'd forgotten about Magic Leap, amazed to see they're still going and raising even more money. It's basically the only alternative for an investor who wants to get into AR, other than buying MSFT of AAPL stocks. That's why, despite shipping a V1 almost as good as the HoloLens V1 they are getting funded again. Problem is, by the time Magic Leap gets it's V2 out there's a good chance we'll be seeing HoloLens V3 in the field.
- breezeTrowel 5y ago> Startups who made product claims which experts in their fields said were not possible. Can you clarify what you mean by this? What aspect is considered impossible? Augmented Reality has been around for a while. There's the Microsoft HoloLens. Not to mention all the AR demos Apple does whenever they announce a new iPhone. Check out this page, for example: https://www.apple.com/augmented-reality/ https://www.apple.com/augmented-reality/ especially the Snapchat one. You have rendered images being obscured by physical objects directly "in front" of them. If anything, Magic Leap seems a bit ordinary with only its size being the standout feature. But, even there, it looks like they're already beat by Snapchat's Specatcles (see: https://www.spectacles.com/ https://www.spectacles.com/ ) So I fail to see how Magic Leap's product claims are in any way similar to Theranos or uBeam. If anything, their claims are not that impressive given the competition.
- gurumeditations 5y agoClearly you do not know of their history leading up to the release of the first ML device. Hype, magical promises, and fake demos galore.
- simias 5y agoI didn't know Magic Leap was still a thing, I'm somewhat impressed. I definitely understand the negativity in the comments but at the same time with their experience with the v1 maybe they'll manage to deliver something useful this time? Some skepticism is definitely warranted, but I'm looking forward to actual demonstrations of this hardware. Assuming of course that this time they'll actually share proper demo footage instead of obviously bullshit marketing videos.
- LegitShady 5y agoI think they're the definition of a sunken cost fallacy for VCs. People already billions into their company hoping to get something or even anything out of it.
- leetrout 5y agoIf you have not experienced the magic leap videos do not do it justice. Heres my video flying inside my house: https://youtu.be/Grlk03MdScQ https://youtu.be/Grlk03MdScQ The jaw dropping aspects: - it correctly knows when to mask for the column - it does lighting effects from the planes headlights - it does particle collisions with my furniture when it crashes - it crashes by detecting i hit the wall It really is amazing tech but it is very unpolished. But I am very hopeful they keep pushing and it gets cheaper and more people can experience it and develop for it. This is like the amiga. We are at the infancy of AR.
- acchow 5y ago"it correctly knows when to mask for the column" correctly? https://imgur.com/h3zHxDW https://imgur.com/h3zHxDW
- leetrout 5y agoIt doesnt look as bad in stereo when you're distracted by the motion. Such an unusual experience for it to go behind something.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- taneq 5y agoTBH that's better than I expected. I'd call the column masking "barely adequate" rather than "correctly" but it's at least making an attempt to reconstruct the scene and do additive composition in realtime. Wasn't the real breakthrough meant to be to do with variable focus lightfield voodoo meaning that the rendered components looked like they 'fitted in' with the scene and could occlude as well as be occluded, rather than being additive CGI floating in front of it?
- lostgame 5y ago>> This is like the amiga. Problem is it was marketed like a supercomputer and what we got was an Amiga. Which is fine for the hobbyist nerds who can see the potential. Not so good for literally anyone else.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoThe very name is an oxymoron. Magic Leap 2? Because the first leap wasn’t magical or a leap enough.
- krolley 5y agoMagic Leap too?
- 6nf 5y agoRaising more money are they?
- idontwantthis 5y agoDoes anyone here work with super expensive "enterprise" VR/AR? My gut instinct is that they try to make something good, realize the tech to fulfill their dream is incredibly expensive, then pivot to "enterprise" to get more funding. Am I being cynical?
- Matrixik 5y agoHere example of enterprise Varjo XR3 (full version cost 6000$ plus 1500$ subscription) from someone only testing consumer VR headsets till now. In short: it's way better than best consumer headsets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOk_M1Ib5F0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOk_M1Ib5F0
- idontwantthis 5y agoI know the tech is a lot better, but is it really being used in enterprise?
- tootie 5y agoMy last company tried really hard to pitch AR/VR projects. Using headsets, phones even the Bose sunglasses. It was a huge struggle to find anything compelling to do with AR even when it worked. We ended up selling a few nifty marketing experiences and artsy installations but they were like 30 second experiences and not useful for anything. The tech "works", it's just not very compelling. Think about phone AR which works very smoothly and Apple/Google have been investing in hardware upgrades to enhance AR experiences yet it's been 5 years since Pokemon Go and no one has figured out another interesting thing to do with it.