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I 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 Ther

I 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 ago
  Clearly you do not know of their history leading up to the release of the first ML device. Hype, magical promises, and fake demos galore.
  - yodon 5y ago
    > Clearly you do not know ... Your comment would work just as well and could be just as informative without the personal attack
- raesene9 5y ago
  I was careful to say "product claims" and not products. I don't doubt AR is possible, but that the claims Magic Leap made in their early demonstrations were not realistic. I was thinking of the early demonstrations they had, where the lighting and occlusion just didn't seem plausible (e.g. the infamous whale demo https://youtu.be/LM0T6hLH15k?t=30 https://youtu.be/LM0T6hLH15k?t=30). These early demos were called out by skeptics as being not plausible (https://www.theregister.com/2016/12/09/magic_leap_neither_magic_nor_leaping/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/12/09/magic_leap_neither_ma... or https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-reality-behind-magic-leap?cmpid=BBD120916_TECH https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-reality-behind-m...) Is AR possible, sure, but it has restrictions and when Magic Leap's product hit the market those restrictions were obvious.
- josefresco 5y ago
  https://www.spectacles.com/creatorform https://www.spectacles.com/creatorform "The new Spectacles are not for sale."
  - excalibur 5y ago
    The Spectacles aren't even an AR headset, although they do include a cheap-looking VR viewer. They're primarily a 3D camera you can wear on your face.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  ???? the hype was around their fiber scanning display patents, they were showing investors a totally new technology that projects images into your eyeballs. There are numerous articles describing the patented pie-in-the-sky vs the state-of-the-art, just one example here: [0] > They don’t even have an decent brightness control of the pixels and didn’t even attempt to show color reproduction (requiring extremely precise laser control). Yes the images are old, but there are a series of extremely hard problems outlined above that are likely not solvable which is likely why we have not seen any better pictures of an FSD from ANYONE (ML or others) in the last 7 years. Magic Leap was unable to improve and miniaturize this technology - its a dead end - so they ended up using the same tech as everyone else [0] https://kguttag.com/2016/11/28/magic-leap-no-fiber-scan-display-fsd/ https://kguttag.com/2016/11/28/magic-leap-no-fiber-scan-disp...
- tootie 5y ago
  What they lied about was the fidelity. They made demo video in 2015 that was a fully prerendered video of what they expected their AR experience to look like. Years later, the top of line headsets are fuzzy and very limited in field of view and have not seen any adoption outside of very niche applications. https://youtu.be/ctUx3BzuQgQ https://youtu.be/ctUx3BzuQgQ
- adrr 5y ago
  I wonder if Microsoft spent $2.5 billion to develop HoloLens.
cptskippy 5y ago
> 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. What was it that experts said wasn't possible about Magic Leap? My understanding was that their product was a more advanced version of the tech in Microsoft's HaloLens and the primary challenges for both were bringing down the cost, expanding the FOV and DOF, and finding realistic use cases. Microsoft went the enterprise route, like Google did with Lens, while Magic Leap tried to release something that felt boutique.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Theranos was doing illegal things.
krageon 5y ago
I have tried the leap in practice and the experience was significantly above what I expected. The tracking worked most of the time (how???), with occasional wonkyness. The accuracy was very good (outside of the wonks). Where it is very limited is number of applications.
- cmeacham98 5y ago
  The problem, to me, looks like getting 90% of the way there is possible. However, getting from 90% to 99.9% (to get rid of that "wonkyness"), seems to be way way way harder. Magic Leap has made little to no progress in working out the kinks in their product despite raising literally billions of dollars.
  - tomas789 5y ago
    I wrote a camera/IMU tracking software (VIO) before. I can confirm this statement. Get it working is difficult and requires getting all the algos right. Getting it work reliably is a lot of rigorous testing, collecting datasets, evaluating slightest changes, tuning numerical stability, experimenting with different techniques which might work better in low light and optimizing for the hardware (VIO is intensive but the best VIO is useless if there is no computation power left for the app itself). Neither of this is required for a slick demo in well lit room and perhaps on better HW.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    The 90% statement is both true and is one of the things that really sucks people in. There are any number of technologies that kinda/sorta work as a PoC. There's a gaping chasm between that PoC and a viable working product but a lot of people look at the PoC and can imagine what the working product looks like--and think to themselves that it's only about some refinement.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  You mean the headset position tracking? That already worked very reliable on the Hololens years ago, and it works almost as well on the Quest, which is far far cheaper. It was a solved technology before the Magic Leap launched. Or did you mean some other kind of tracking?
nikanj 5y ago
> 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. I would guess this depends on whether or not they managed to hoist the stock to someone else in subsequent rounds. Investing in a scam can still be a good deal, as long as you get out before the jig is up
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  That seems to be the playbook for today's highly valued unicorns. Squeeze out all the value then dump the stock on the public before things start going down. It's not exactly a scam but it's the same kind of thinking: Doing irrational things is fine as long as you are confident there will be a greater fool later on.
- eberkund 5y ago
  *as long as you _get out_ before the jig is up
baybal2 5y ago
One on my list of mind boggling "Tech 2.0" scams were: 1. Teranos 2. Magic Leap 3. Andelur Ghost Only the last one still didn't get enough media attention. People who scored Andelur handshakes with the military & intelligence are the types who did it for Advanced Tactical Security & Communications Ltd ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651 ) Andelur is basically trying to sell the governments around the world a Chinese toy copter for millions of dollars through incredible "Tech 2.0" type marketing fudging. One thing these fellows can do for sure is a Hollywood grade CG. I was with a company on a competing bid for border patrol drone. Even I, somebody with quite good experience with CG, was initially fooled by their videos. Indeed, they intentionally were trying to numb your guard by showing it flying in the rain, and being sprayed by water. https://youtu.be/5xDEroiMQWk?t=100 https://youtu.be/5xDEroiMQWk?t=100 It took me a few minutes to figure out that the rain, and water spay in their videos were also impressively disguised computer graphics.
- notabanker 5y ago
  Do you mean Anduril? I have only a passing knowledge of Anduril, thanks for sharing your impression of them. But knowing his track record, I tend to believe Palmer Luckey has the ability to achieve daring innovations. That said, with quantum leap innovation, failure is the more likely outcome.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > Ghost is practically invisible to the targets it observes, with a frontal cross-section smaller than some of the phones I have owned over the years. Stay tuned for true invisibility. I don't tend to believe people telling something like this being credible. Especially when they try to pass lobotomised Chinese RC toy heli for "an Apex of Aerospace Engineering," and carefully photoshops all its photos to disguise its Made in China ancestry https://ibb.co/8DT5JMc https://ibb.co/8DT5JMc And now these guys seem to be heading towards starting an IPO.
    - notabanker 5y ago
      The video you shared is unbelievable (in every sense of the word).

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 ago
Clearly you do not know of their history leading up to the release of the first ML device. Hype, magical promises, and fake demos galore.
- yodon 5y ago
  > Clearly you do not know ... Your comment would work just as well and could be just as informative without the personal attack
raesene9 5y ago
I was careful to say "product claims" and not products. I don't doubt AR is possible, but that the claims Magic Leap made in their early demonstrations were not realistic. I was thinking of the early demonstrations they had, where the lighting and occlusion just didn't seem plausible (e.g. the infamous whale demo https://youtu.be/LM0T6hLH15k?t=30 https://youtu.be/LM0T6hLH15k?t=30). These early demos were called out by skeptics as being not plausible (https://www.theregister.com/2016/12/09/magic_leap_neither_magic_nor_leaping/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/12/09/magic_leap_neither_ma... or https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-reality-behind-magic-leap?cmpid=BBD120916_TECH https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-reality-behind-m...) Is AR possible, sure, but it has restrictions and when Magic Leap's product hit the market those restrictions were obvious.
josefresco 5y ago
https://www.spectacles.com/creatorform https://www.spectacles.com/creatorform "The new Spectacles are not for sale."
- excalibur 5y ago
  The Spectacles aren't even an AR headset, although they do include a cheap-looking VR viewer. They're primarily a 3D camera you can wear on your face.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
???? the hype was around their fiber scanning display patents, they were showing investors a totally new technology that projects images into your eyeballs. There are numerous articles describing the patented pie-in-the-sky vs the state-of-the-art, just one example here: [0] > They don’t even have an decent brightness control of the pixels and didn’t even attempt to show color reproduction (requiring extremely precise laser control). Yes the images are old, but there are a series of extremely hard problems outlined above that are likely not solvable which is likely why we have not seen any better pictures of an FSD from ANYONE (ML or others) in the last 7 years. Magic Leap was unable to improve and miniaturize this technology - its a dead end - so they ended up using the same tech as everyone else [0] https://kguttag.com/2016/11/28/magic-leap-no-fiber-scan-display-fsd/ https://kguttag.com/2016/11/28/magic-leap-no-fiber-scan-disp...
tootie 5y ago
What they lied about was the fidelity. They made demo video in 2015 that was a fully prerendered video of what they expected their AR experience to look like. Years later, the top of line headsets are fuzzy and very limited in field of view and have not seen any adoption outside of very niche applications. https://youtu.be/ctUx3BzuQgQ https://youtu.be/ctUx3BzuQgQ
adrr 5y ago
I wonder if Microsoft spent $2.5 billion to develop HoloLens.

cptskippy 5y ago

> 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. What was it that experts said wasn't possible about Magic Leap? My understanding was that their product was a more advanced version of the tech in Microsoft's HaloLens and the primary challenges for both were bringing down the cost, expanding the FOV and DOF, and finding realistic use cases. Microsoft went the enterprise route, like Google did with Lens, while Magic Leap tried to release something that felt boutique.

systemvoltage 5y ago

Theranos was doing illegal things.

krageon 5y ago

I have tried the leap in practice and the experience was significantly above what I expected. The tracking worked most of the time (how???), with occasional wonkyness. The accuracy was very good (outside of the wonks). Where it is very limited is number of applications.

cmeacham98 5y ago
The problem, to me, looks like getting 90% of the way there is possible. However, getting from 90% to 99.9% (to get rid of that "wonkyness"), seems to be way way way harder. Magic Leap has made little to no progress in working out the kinks in their product despite raising literally billions of dollars.
- tomas789 5y ago
  I wrote a camera/IMU tracking software (VIO) before. I can confirm this statement. Get it working is difficult and requires getting all the algos right. Getting it work reliably is a lot of rigorous testing, collecting datasets, evaluating slightest changes, tuning numerical stability, experimenting with different techniques which might work better in low light and optimizing for the hardware (VIO is intensive but the best VIO is useless if there is no computation power left for the app itself). Neither of this is required for a slick demo in well lit room and perhaps on better HW.
- ghaff 5y ago
  The 90% statement is both true and is one of the things that really sucks people in. There are any number of technologies that kinda/sorta work as a PoC. There's a gaping chasm between that PoC and a viable working product but a lot of people look at the PoC and can imagine what the working product looks like--and think to themselves that it's only about some refinement.
IshKebab 5y ago
You mean the headset position tracking? That already worked very reliable on the Hololens years ago, and it works almost as well on the Quest, which is far far cheaper. It was a solved technology before the Magic Leap launched. Or did you mean some other kind of tracking?

nikanj 5y ago

> 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. I would guess this depends on whether or not they managed to hoist the stock to someone else in subsequent rounds. Investing in a scam can still be a good deal, as long as you get out before the jig is up

spaetzleesser 5y ago
That seems to be the playbook for today's highly valued unicorns. Squeeze out all the value then dump the stock on the public before things start going down. It's not exactly a scam but it's the same kind of thinking: Doing irrational things is fine as long as you are confident there will be a greater fool later on.
eberkund 5y ago
*as long as you _get out_ before the jig is up

baybal2 5y ago

One on my list of mind boggling "Tech 2.0" scams were: 1. Teranos 2. Magic Leap 3. Andelur Ghost Only the last one still didn't get enough media attention. People who scored Andelur handshakes with the military & intelligence are the types who did it for Advanced Tactical Security & Communications Ltd ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651 ) Andelur is basically trying to sell the governments around the world a Chinese toy copter for millions of dollars through incredible "Tech 2.0" type marketing fudging. One thing these fellows can do for sure is a Hollywood grade CG. I was with a company on a competing bid for border patrol drone. Even I, somebody with quite good experience with CG, was initially fooled by their videos. Indeed, they intentionally were trying to numb your guard by showing it flying in the rain, and being sprayed by water. https://youtu.be/5xDEroiMQWk?t=100 https://youtu.be/5xDEroiMQWk?t=100 It took me a few minutes to figure out that the rain, and water spay in their videos were also impressively disguised computer graphics.

notabanker 5y ago
Do you mean Anduril? I have only a passing knowledge of Anduril, thanks for sharing your impression of them. But knowing his track record, I tend to believe Palmer Luckey has the ability to achieve daring innovations. That said, with quantum leap innovation, failure is the more likely outcome.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > Ghost is practically invisible to the targets it observes, with a frontal cross-section smaller than some of the phones I have owned over the years. Stay tuned for true invisibility. I don't tend to believe people telling something like this being credible. Especially when they try to pass lobotomised Chinese RC toy heli for "an Apex of Aerospace Engineering," and carefully photoshops all its photos to disguise its Made in China ancestry https://ibb.co/8DT5JMc https://ibb.co/8DT5JMc And now these guys seem to be heading towards starting an IPO.
  - notabanker 5y ago
    The video you shared is unbelievable (in every sense of the word).