13 ms·

Mr 2022

250 points by kguttag 5y ago

echelon 5y ago
I've barely cracked the surface of this and it's already one of the best analytical breakdowns of new tech I've seen. Thank you, kguttag! This is obviously a very hot market. Where do you see AR vs VR in 2 years? Five years? Do you think these companies will have supply chain issues? Do you think AR will face adoption issues? It seems like the lack of light, "glowing eyes", eye tracking cutouts, and other issues will be big hurdles for all companies in this space. I'll come back with more technical questions after I finish reading. This is great.
- kguttag 5y ago
  While the market is "hot" in terms of awareness, it is still a very small market facing major technical challenges. I think AR while useful in enterprise markets (measured in the 100's of thousands a year) is a long way from being ready for the mass consumer market. I am seeing a lot of progress in some areas and will be publishing an article later this week on them. In particular both Dispelix and Digilens have made considerable progress on the "glowing eyes" issues (Dispelix all but eliminates it). Avegant has a very nice small LCOS light engine that pairs nicely with the Dispelix waveguide. I think the biggest problem for AR is that the expectations are very high and the physics is very tough. Many physical optical features within a few wavelengths of light were diffraction ruins everything.
  - p1necone 5y ago
    It seems to me like a regular VR headset + dual cameras on the front might be able to get much better results than actual AR?
    - germinalphrase 5y ago
      Even if it did, people won’t wear them in public. Google Glass looked half normal and people were still getting accosted in restaurants.
      - p1necone 5y ago
        That doesn't matter for industrial applications though.
      - callalex 5y ago
        Yes, but that problem was much more “Google” than “glass”.
        germinalphrase 5y ago
        Perhaps so. I’m just skeptical that the viewed would accept such VR-pass through style goggles even if the viewer finds them innocuous.
        f6v 5y ago
        I was working on enterprise Google Glass apps in 2014. The problem was lack of applications. You could do very few things with it beyond showing some text and pictures.
      - nine_k 5y ago
        People freak out at the idea of cameras of some random dude constantly watching them. This is a bit funny because they'd be watched by multiple cameras in any restaurant or supermarket. OTOH the viewpoint of the overhead monitoring cameras is very distinctive, and the resolution is usually barely enough to see a face. The Glass's camera gave more "normal" and higher-resolution footage.
        smilespray 5y ago
        There is no irony here. People freak out because it's worn by a _person_ who, specifically, is watching _them_. You'd probably react similarly if somebody, during a party, for no reason kept pointing a recording microphone at you, even though there were voice assistants like Alexa in the room.
      - f6v 5y ago
        People are discussing whether AR device could be worn in public. But I’m wondering: should it? I mean, I’m the last guy to question novel technology. I was desperate to get the first smartphones. But why would you want an always-on screen in public?
    - kguttag 5y ago
      I think this is a "grass is greener" type argument. There are also massive problems with pass-through AR (VR with cameras).
      - Fordec 5y ago
        I'm not entirely sure it is. Pass through has serious engineering hurdles to get over first with latency, power consumption, weight etc. But the waveguide method has limitations rooted in physics and math that won't change until 30%+70% stops equalling 100%. I know which one I'd put more Hope's in.
  - Miraste 5y ago
    Did you get to try the Avegant prototype? It sounds quite promising.
    - kguttag 5y ago
      Yes, I took the picture of Avegant used in the article. The Avegant and Dispelix waveguide combination looks pretty good. It is only a prototype without any tracking/slam. It is a display only demonstration by a component company. I was impressed by the size of the Avegant engine and the transparency and lack of forward projection by the Dispelix prototype. They are claiming they will get 2,000 nits to the eye out of the design which should be good enough for outdoor use IF they have some form of clip-on sunglasses (2,000 nits is not enough for outdoors in full sunlight without some help). The current Avegant engine has an optical component in that was depolarizing the light from the LCOS display and losing contrast so they wanted me to wait to take through the lens pictures. The image from the current prototype looked sharp but did lack contrast.
binarynate 5y ago
Thanks for the article! It's very interesting to see what Magic Leap is up to. Any rumblings about how Microsoft is progressing on Hololens 3? Also, a side note—I develop [Unity libraries for displaying web browsers in 3D][1], including a package for Hololens because I received many customer requests for it. In contrast, I've received relatively few requests to support Magic Leap, which leads me think that the adoption of ML1 has been quite low in comparison. [1]: https://vuplex.com https://vuplex.com
- kguttag 5y ago
  Thanks, The rumor mill is that Microsoft has slowed down development of HL3 development with many people leaving. Most famously, Bernard Kress, and optical architect of Hololens 1 and 2 has left for Google. There were very few Magic Leap Ones ever sold. The number I hear is between 5,000 and 10,000 units sold for money with about as many units given away. Hololens 2 seems to be shipping about 70K to 100K units per year but it is not clear if that has peaked or not. The display quality is very poor as I have written about extensively, but the ergonomics are good enough for some industrial applications. I get the sense that ML2 was too far gone and with money running out to react to ML2 and thus still has terrible ergonomics. With blocking 80% of the light, not supporting ordinary glasses, and having a cable which is a snag hazard, the future looks bleak for Magic Leap 2 as it was for ML1. I don't know if they would have been a success, but at least they would have had a shot in the same space as HL2 if they had reworked the serious ergonomic problems. The dimming feature is a differentiation that resulted in them missing the market altogether.
  - binarynate 5y ago
    Thank you very much for the info! The detail about Kress joining Google is fascinating, as is the contrast in sales numbers for Hololens 2 and ML1. Hololens 2 is the most advanced AR headset that I've used so far, so it's helpful to hear from you that its display quality is poor compared to others. Despite the display quality, I've been blown away by what it's capable of, and I look forward to seeing how this space evolves over the next 5 years.
  - mustacheemperor 5y ago
ABeeSea 5y ago
I’ve loved your posts for years on piercing through the smoke and mirrors on Magic Leap. Thanks for another great breakdown!
- kguttag 5y ago
  Thanks
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  https://philip.greenspun.com/humor/media-lab.html https://philip.greenspun.com/humor/media-lab.html >Generation of Bits >Tales of shame and degradation in the Big Idea Lab >by Hunter S. Negroponte [...] >The Big Lie >Media Lab critics (there have been a few) have occasionally questioned the practical application of our work. Well, have you heard about the Holographic Television? No longer a device found only in the back of comic books, we've actually made this sucker work. An honest-to-god motion-picture hologram, produced in the Media Lab basement on a 2000 pound holography table by computers, lasers and mirrors spinning at 30,000 RPM. It's real! It works! Life Magazine even came in to photograph it in action (of course, they had to fill the room with smoke so the lasers would show up on film). Practical application? Sure, it requires a 2000 pound air-suspended rock table and a Connection Machine II to run, but hell, everyone knows the price of computing power and 2000 pound rock tables is cut in half every year. My point, however, is more mundane: we have created a demo literally from smoke and mirrors, and the Corporate World bought it. Even my good friend Penn (or ``Penn,'' as I call him) Jillette would be proud. >In fact, I'm a few points up on Penn. You may have heard of the Interactive Narrative work that is proceeding in the lab. Folks, I'll be honest with you for a moment. I know as well as you do that it's a stinking load of horseshit. Roger Ebert said ``Six thousand years ago sitting around a campfire a storyteller could have stopped at any time and asked his audience how they wanted the story to come out. But he didn't because that would have ruined the story.'' You think Hollywood would have learned this lesson from the monster ``success'' that Clue, the Movie enjoyed several years ago. But no! I've repackaged the ``Choose your own Adventure'' novels of childhood as Digital Information SuperHighway Yadda Yadda crap, and again, they bought it! Sony right this minute is building an interactive movie theater, with buttons the audience can push to amuse themselves as the story progresses. Dance for me, Corporate America! I'm SHIT-HOT! >Why, just the other day I listened to a member of my staff explain to potential sponsors that we had spent \$US 4,000,000 of Japanese sponsor dollars to construct a widescreen version of ``I Love Lucy'' from the original source. And HE SAID IT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE! CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE THAT? Boy, I bet those Nips wish they had their money back now! Earthquake? No, we can't do much to rebuild your city, but we SURE AS HELL can give you a 1.66:1 cut of Lucy to fit all those busted HDTVs of yours! HA HA HA! [...]
tootie 5y ago
This is both really impressive and really disappointing. The technology has been refined to an incredible degree but it sounds it's still nowhere near the fidelity that would make it useful. It may the biggest VC money pit in SV.
- sroussey 5y ago
  In Florida, not SV
  - brownkonas 5y ago
    Funded by SV, vision alignment with SV which is probably more important than where it’s made. However it is certainly impressive that they’re making a lot of progress in a tropical latitude, a feat that hasn’t been replicated by many successful tech companies.
    - gumby 5y ago
      > Funded by SV, vision alignment with SV Actually apart from Google, their investors are nontraditional: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap/company_f... The “usual suspects” all passed. Even google’s venture fund passed but Sergei decided to do it. I think ML is an example where not being from the valley was kind of an advantage for them on the fundraising side.
      - fuzzfactor 5y ago
        Not just any part of Florida. Although today things are culturally much more homogenous, this particular town 50 years ago already had a long tradition of starting companies with the express intention of becoming comfortable to begin with bringing in money from investors only. The dream is that the venture could actually pay off someday and then everybody involved will really profit phenomenally when the company is sold. Not so much pursuing product sales where value needs to be added. You're selling a dream that naturally appeals to investors more so than retail customers who would want something tangible sooner. Who has more money anyway? "Real estate" was usually the financial vehicle but you had to be able to sell "false estate" (Everglades) as if it was really a good investment. Well it truly had no place to go but up ;) Quite unlike nearby Miami or Palm Beach even, and nothing like Tampa or Orlando and the other places. Much more prominent dream-selling element in company founders (among the smaller number) by far than SV at the time. You've got to really be persuasive. SV sure has come a long way in this regard now. This time it's not real estate but technology, crafted to appeal to SV investors. A number of years before Magic Leap got attention, there had been a very embarassing "Digital "Dream" up the coast in Martin or St. Lucie where they were going to make it like a little SV. The idea was to create a ground-up "ecosystem" where young people can have the kind of opportunities in software & game development they could only dream about. There was a real estate component in that one so they broke ground, started developing a campus and everything, but once the investments quit coming in they were done. Plus real estate had become uncertian in ways that had never occurred there. Some respected investors did lose a lot plus I think even some quasi-government development agency went down. After the details came out the general consensus was they were taken for a ride the whole time.
dataviz1000 5y ago
Do you think if they focused on creating a monochrome AR display first for applications in engineering and medicine it would have been adopted creating a path for the company to later research and develop a multicolor device? Seems like they lost. Wouldn't it have been better to start simple? They never released a MVP.
- kguttag 5y ago
  I don't think the issue is color. Their original product was trying to differentiate on Vergence Accommodation Conflict (VAC) and did a poor job of it. They were also going after the consumer with a product that was always going to be way too expensive for consumers with an image quality that was going to be too poor. They also made what I think is a bad set of trade-offs in terms of ergonomics and human factors. The problem with medicine is that is it a tiny market. You can't justify the type of money they were trying to raise for that market. Under Abovitz, they were always a swing for the fences company. All the above said, nobody I know of is making money selling AR headsets today. They are either subsidized by VC or other investment money or by big companies funding R&D efforts. The market is not other product areas where you can make money with an MVP and grow the product.
  - dataviz1000 5y ago
    I vaguely remember Rony and friends reversing the concept of the endoscope product they developed prior to have the moving fiber optic strand project light into the side of a lens which would channel the light and reflect it into eyes instead of capturing light and projecting it onto a light sensor in the case of the endoscope. Everything they did had fiber optic strands for RGB on that original idea. Having one color would have been an easier place to start. Nonetheless, it seems like they had other more difficult unrelated problems such as Vergence Accommodation Conflict.
- nine_k 5y ago
  There used to be a number of good monochrome AR projectors for industrial and military use last few years. They look pretty unlike a sleek consumer device, and are expensive, say, $1000 for just the display. For a business, it's peanuts; for a consumer and even prosumer device, it's a pretty significant sum, for a monochrome display not good for gaming.
hirundo 5y ago
Karl, do you have any thoughts on the Simula One project? I see that you specialize in AR, but it looks like there is massive crossover in tech. The Simula team pitches this as the next popular form factor in business computing. Anything to that?
- kguttag 5y ago
  As you wrote, I don't follow VR. That said, I'm very skeptical that a VR headset will work in place of a computer monitor for long term use with business computing.
baybal2 5y ago
We designed a number of ar, an vr glasses. Engineers of most buzzwordy brands don't seem to have had "optics 101" during their engineering education. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28839541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28839541 > Holographic waveguides, and such are a dead end development with a substandard image quality which you cannot do anything about, as well as its inefficiency (these waveguides waste 70-90%+ of light.) > The fundamental problem is that the amount of image light transferred is inversely proportional to the amount of light obscured. — they are extremely inefficient, and there is physically no way around this.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
moralestapia 5y ago
Very nice in-depth analysis, thanks kguttag. My personal bet on this space is that kura.tech's product is going to be the real deal; but it is exciting to see that the AR field in general is starting to enter its own plateau of productivity and we may start seeing great products soon.
- kguttag 5y ago
  I think we need to see Kura actually demonstrate that their technology works. You might want to see this video (queued to his discussion of Kura at CES 2022: https://youtu.be/S0heZVN5NCs?t=1328 https://youtu.be/S0heZVN5NCs?t=1328
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    >I think we need to see Kura actually demonstrate that their technology works. Indeed.
excalibur 5y ago
> The more I think back about the presentation and other aspects not covered in this article, such as their ability to design and manufacture their own waveguides, the more I agree with the people that think the presentation was more of a “For Sale” sign. Which differs from other such presentations how?
- wpietri 5y ago
  From the article: "Sometimes a very open presentation is given by a company trying to sell the company."
fnord77 5y ago
Nice article. btw, ML has gotten $3.5B in funding! https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap
- callalex 5y ago
  I assume in this case your acronym “ML” references the company Magic Leap?
wpietri 5y ago
Back in October, when Facebook made a lot of "metaverse" noise, I wrote a thread looking at the history of stereoscopic 3D from the 1850s to the present as a way of explaining why I think facehugger VR is going nowhere. Somebody turned up to complain that going back to the Civil War era wasn't sufficiently big picture for him: "You need a long view. All the serious players are still in the Mercury phase. The Gemini and Apollo phases of XR are coming this decade and into the 2030s. An $800b company will likely spend $100b+ getting there. You need a wide aperture to understand what is going on." https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/1454135053697519619 https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/1454135053697519619 What I didn't realize until later was that the rando reply came from no less a presence than Rony Abovitz, Magic Leap's exiled founder, who apparently now spends his time vanity searching for "Magic Leap" so he can reenact XKCD 386. There are many things I find jaw-dropping about his views, but my biggest question is: Why did he raise and burn $3.5 billion dollars if that's only 3.5% of the cost of "getting there"? Which is a roundabout way of saying I think kguttag is right when he says, "ML2 looks like a product designed for the consumer market, but it was seen that it would be far too expensive for that market, it was recast as an 'enterprise' device." To me it's a not-great solution desperately looking for a problem.
- samplatt 5y ago
  Quick link to XKCD 386, for others - https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
- nwatson 5y ago
  The same Abovitz that did this abomination of a TEDx talk ... https://youtu.be/w8J5BWL8oJY https://youtu.be/w8J5BWL8oJY
  - wpietri 5y ago
    What, and I mean this sincerely, the fuck? I have been to a bunch of experimental theater over the years, so I was prepared to accept the initial setup. But he didn't pull it together at all!
  - mdoms 5y ago
bajook 5y ago
Optical AR is a dead end. Passthrough AR with VR goggles and 8K cameras on the outside will be the way that wins.
- kguttag 5y ago
  If you are talking for many "game playing" applications you may be correct. But it be ridiculous to thing that people are going to be going out in public with a VR headset with cameras (known as Passthrough AR). On top of a number of human factor issues, it would dangerously block a person's view of the real world.
  - Paradigma11 5y ago
    Just crank the FoV slider up to maximum.
- valine 5y ago
  No one wants to wear a headset if it makes them look stupid. If AR glasses are a dead end then mass adoption of AR outside of gaming/enterprise is likely DOA.
  - zhoujianfu 5y ago
    Last time I went skiing I noticed ski goggles kind of look cool, and are the perfect form factor for pass through ar. I think that’ll be the form it finally takes when Apple makes it cool.
    - smilespray 5y ago
      Show up to your next work meeting wearing ski goggles and report back to us.
      - zhoujianfu 5y ago
        AFTER the Apple ads..
thebigman433 5y ago
I dont see how this ends up any differently than ML1. Relatively good headset that has some technical advantages, and is obviously impressive at some level for what was produced with smaller amounts of money, but for what? It still has major disadvantages, and with the stability of ML compared to Microsoft, I wouldnt particularly put long term faith in the former if I was a company looking to purchase these. The whole thing definitely looks like a ML1 holdover from when they thought they were going to somehow hit the consumer market. Personally I think that a simple birdbath design with a decent display is one of the better ways to enter the market if you want to move a relatively large amount of units. Also Karl Guttag is an amazing blogger. His articles are the sole reason why I got seriously interested in AR and NED hardware. Now Im looking to make part of a career out of it.
ryandrake 5y ago
Wow, talk about a tech news blind spot: I honestly though Magic Leap wasn't even around anymore. Last news I heard about them was they burned through $billions, their product woefully (almost fraudulently) failed to meet any of the hype they set out, they sold a handful of units, and then the company folded. How on earth are they still in business?
- ramesh31 5y ago
  >I honestly though Magic Leap wasn't even around anymore. Last news I heard about them was they burned through $billions, their product woefully (almost fraudulently) failed to meet any of the hype they set out, they sold a handful of units, and then the company folded. How on earth are they still in business? AR/VR in general has hit the "slope of enlightenment" portion of the hype cycle [0]. Talented people are still diligently working on this stuff behind the scenes and advancing the state of the art, even though mainstream adoption has a ways to go. [0] https://hobi.com/gartner-hype-cycle-emerging-tech-potential/gartner-hype-cycle-emerging-tech-potential/ https://hobi.com/gartner-hype-cycle-emerging-tech-potential/...
  - mdoms 5y ago
    In my experience when someone tells me where something is on the hype cycle (especially if it's on the left hand side) I immediately know it's going absolutely nowhere. My hit rate with this heuristic is upwards of 95%.
  - deanCommie 5y ago
    I'd like to believe that's true, but has any meaningful progress been made? VR games seemed to have plateaued in novel immersive experiences - people show off their Oculuses and Vives with the same tech demos. The Meta VR presentations are embarassingly primitive, marginally better than Second Life from 2 decades ago. The AR demos I see on Android and iOS (measuring the length table; having a dog run around on top of it) have not improved in fidelity in 3-4 years. I think what Microsoft is doing with Hololens for the industrial sector is VERY cool, and is a meaningfully significant branch: Having a mechanic receive plans remotely and projected on top of an engine or a door and get overlaid instructions for repair is going to be either revolutionary or a dystopian collapse of skilled trades as every company decides to replace training and high paying trade jobs with Hololenses and remote experts. I'm cynical, but at least it's going somewhere impactful. But what's happening on the consumer side? Facebook's vision is nauseating. Snapchat, Google, and Apple have gone totally quiet. I assume they're in stealth mode waiting to unleash something and blow our minds? That would be pretty great I suppose.
Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago
I treat any and all Magic Leap announcements with a pinch of salt these days. I'm old enough to remember their then stealth mode claims to have invented a device that would revolutionize society, put a stop to world hunger, prevent war, abolish capitalism, etc. etc.
Temino 5y ago
I realized a few days ago that AR is more for robots and automation than for humans. Imagine a company supporting ar in there product for maintenance. They need to describe there Maschine to a point that AR can create an overlay and a step by step guide. If you do this so that your technician can do it so can a robot. If we ever make the effort to export 3d models from things and make them available, I believe we will see ML extracting repair steps and robots executing them before humans walking around with AR gogles.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  Why would a robot need AR at all? And the challenge with building a repair robot is not to provide it with information about the item, it's in understanding the information and physically manipulating the item.
  - Temino 5y ago
    A robot doesn't need ar. That's my point I tried making. As soon as you actually use ar for people, at that point you have enough data for a robot to just do it instead. As soon as you start creating ar support for it, you no longer need it.
    - Grustaf 5y ago
      I'm saying that this is not correct at all. There is no lack of data, but it's very very difficult to make a robot that can autonomously manipulate things well enough to repair things. It's not lacking data, it's about physical control.
      - picsao 5y ago
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
For years I haven't been excited by anything in the VR space. I tried them, even with the running apparatus and the slippery shoes, and it was fun. But that's it. Nor the Leap, the Quest or the Hololens interest me very much. It doesn't bring much into my life, but promise to take a lot from it. Besides, the fact it's backed by companies with a not so good track record at respecting their users, and some of them, at making closed proprietary platforms, doesn't make me want to dive in. But recently, 2 projects started to get me excited: - the Tilt 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzr-IeyWj40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzr-IeyWj40 - the Simula: https://simulavr.com/ https://simulavr.com/ They are both trying to be very good at a very specific use case, which I think is a better way to approach the problem right now since we don't have VR solved. The vibes their creators give is also much more human, in an "internet from the 90" kind of way. The Tilt 5 already works well, and people using it all report that it's the best VR experience they had to date. They also make it easy to port games from existing platforms, and actually talk to communities such as war-hammer 40k players and board game lovers, instead of staying in their ivory tower wrapped in secret to finally come down as our lord and savior. Plus I love board games. The Simula is only a concept, and it may very well end up being vaporware like many kickstarter projects. But I want it to succeed so badly. First, it's just linux. No proprietary platform BS. It tells me it wants me to use my current apps, and works with FOSS and standards instead of trying to spoon feed me some expensive locked down metaverse crap. And I can really see the value of unlimited screen space and a full immersion work experience, especially since the device is optimized for text readability.
- thrwawy283 5y ago
  Just added myself for notification when their kickstarter begins (Simula). I wish they went with an AMD APU, instead of Intel Xe graphics. The youtube gameplay comparisons seem to give AMD a big edge in well... everything. I'll definitely be backing this. I want to play Tabletop Simulator on all of my walls and ceilings. :-) (Thanks for telling me!)
  - kanetw 5y ago
    An APU is on the table for future iterations :)
TootsMagoon 5y ago
Karl Guttag is a very experienced and interesting person. "The AR Show" has two very good interviews with him the cover a lot of ground on displays and history of computing. https://www.thearshow.com/podcast/111a-karl-guttag-part-1 https://www.thearshow.com/podcast/111a-karl-guttag-part-1 https://www.thearshow.com/podcast/006-karl-guttag-pt2 https://www.thearshow.com/podcast/006-karl-guttag-pt2

250 points by kguttag 5y ago

I've barely cracked the surface of this and it's already one of the best analytical breakdowns of new tech I've seen. Thank you, kguttag! This is obviously a very hot market. Where do you see AR vs VR in 2 years? Five years? Do you think these companies will have supply chain issues? Do you think AR will face adoption issues? It seems like the lack of light, "glowing eyes", eye tracking cutouts, and other issues will be big hurdles for all companies in this space. I'll come back with more technical questions after I finish reading. This is great.

kguttag 5y ago
While the market is "hot" in terms of awareness, it is still a very small market facing major technical challenges. I think AR while useful in enterprise markets (measured in the 100's of thousands a year) is a long way from being ready for the mass consumer market. I am seeing a lot of progress in some areas and will be publishing an article later this week on them. In particular both Dispelix and Digilens have made considerable progress on the "glowing eyes" issues (Dispelix all but eliminates it). Avegant has a very nice small LCOS light engine that pairs nicely with the Dispelix waveguide. I think the biggest problem for AR is that the expectations are very high and the physics is very tough. Many physical optical features within a few wavelengths of light were diffraction ruins everything.
- p1necone 5y ago
  It seems to me like a regular VR headset + dual cameras on the front might be able to get much better results than actual AR?
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    Even if it did, people won’t wear them in public. Google Glass looked half normal and people were still getting accosted in restaurants.
    - p1necone 5y ago
      That doesn't matter for industrial applications though.
    - callalex 5y ago
      Yes, but that problem was much more “Google” than “glass”.
      - germinalphrase 5y ago
        Perhaps so. I’m just skeptical that the viewed would accept such VR-pass through style goggles even if the viewer finds them innocuous.
      - f6v 5y ago
        I was working on enterprise Google Glass apps in 2014. The problem was lack of applications. You could do very few things with it beyond showing some text and pictures.
    - nine_k 5y ago
      People freak out at the idea of cameras of some random dude constantly watching them. This is a bit funny because they'd be watched by multiple cameras in any restaurant or supermarket. OTOH the viewpoint of the overhead monitoring cameras is very distinctive, and the resolution is usually barely enough to see a face. The Glass's camera gave more "normal" and higher-resolution footage.
      - smilespray 5y ago
        There is no irony here. People freak out because it's worn by a _person_ who, specifically, is watching _them_. You'd probably react similarly if somebody, during a party, for no reason kept pointing a recording microphone at you, even though there were voice assistants like Alexa in the room.
    - f6v 5y ago
      People are discussing whether AR device could be worn in public. But I’m wondering: should it? I mean, I’m the last guy to question novel technology. I was desperate to get the first smartphones. But why would you want an always-on screen in public?
  - kguttag 5y ago
    I think this is a "grass is greener" type argument. There are also massive problems with pass-through AR (VR with cameras).
    - Fordec 5y ago
      I'm not entirely sure it is. Pass through has serious engineering hurdles to get over first with latency, power consumption, weight etc. But the waveguide method has limitations rooted in physics and math that won't change until 30%+70% stops equalling 100%. I know which one I'd put more Hope's in.
- Miraste 5y ago
  Did you get to try the Avegant prototype? It sounds quite promising.
  - kguttag 5y ago
    Yes, I took the picture of Avegant used in the article. The Avegant and Dispelix waveguide combination looks pretty good. It is only a prototype without any tracking/slam. It is a display only demonstration by a component company. I was impressed by the size of the Avegant engine and the transparency and lack of forward projection by the Dispelix prototype. They are claiming they will get 2,000 nits to the eye out of the design which should be good enough for outdoor use IF they have some form of clip-on sunglasses (2,000 nits is not enough for outdoors in full sunlight without some help). The current Avegant engine has an optical component in that was depolarizing the light from the LCOS display and losing contrast so they wanted me to wait to take through the lens pictures. The image from the current prototype looked sharp but did lack contrast.

binarynate 5y ago

Thanks for the article! It's very interesting to see what Magic Leap is up to. Any rumblings about how Microsoft is progressing on Hololens 3? Also, a side note—I develop [Unity libraries for displaying web browsers in 3D][1], including a package for Hololens because I received many customer requests for it. In contrast, I've received relatively few requests to support Magic Leap, which leads me think that the adoption of ML1 has been quite low in comparison. [1]: https://vuplex.com https://vuplex.com

kguttag 5y ago
Thanks, The rumor mill is that Microsoft has slowed down development of HL3 development with many people leaving. Most famously, Bernard Kress, and optical architect of Hololens 1 and 2 has left for Google. There were very few Magic Leap Ones ever sold. The number I hear is between 5,000 and 10,000 units sold for money with about as many units given away. Hololens 2 seems to be shipping about 70K to 100K units per year but it is not clear if that has peaked or not. The display quality is very poor as I have written about extensively, but the ergonomics are good enough for some industrial applications. I get the sense that ML2 was too far gone and with money running out to react to ML2 and thus still has terrible ergonomics. With blocking 80% of the light, not supporting ordinary glasses, and having a cable which is a snag hazard, the future looks bleak for Magic Leap 2 as it was for ML1. I don't know if they would have been a success, but at least they would have had a shot in the same space as HL2 if they had reworked the serious ergonomic problems. The dimming feature is a differentiation that resulted in them missing the market altogether.
- binarynate 5y ago
  Thank you very much for the info! The detail about Kress joining Google is fascinating, as is the contrast in sales numbers for Hololens 2 and ML1. Hololens 2 is the most advanced AR headset that I've used so far, so it's helpful to hear from you that its display quality is poor compared to others. Despite the display quality, I've been blown away by what it's capable of, and I look forward to seeing how this space evolves over the next 5 years.
- mustacheemperor 5y ago

ABeeSea 5y ago

I’ve loved your posts for years on piercing through the smoke and mirrors on Magic Leap. Thanks for another great breakdown!

kguttag 5y ago
Thanks
DonHopkins 5y ago
https://philip.greenspun.com/humor/media-lab.html https://philip.greenspun.com/humor/media-lab.html >Generation of Bits >Tales of shame and degradation in the Big Idea Lab >by Hunter S. Negroponte [...] >The Big Lie >Media Lab critics (there have been a few) have occasionally questioned the practical application of our work. Well, have you heard about the Holographic Television? No longer a device found only in the back of comic books, we've actually made this sucker work. An honest-to-god motion-picture hologram, produced in the Media Lab basement on a 2000 pound holography table by computers, lasers and mirrors spinning at 30,000 RPM. It's real! It works! Life Magazine even came in to photograph it in action (of course, they had to fill the room with smoke so the lasers would show up on film). Practical application? Sure, it requires a 2000 pound air-suspended rock table and a Connection Machine II to run, but hell, everyone knows the price of computing power and 2000 pound rock tables is cut in half every year. My point, however, is more mundane: we have created a demo literally from smoke and mirrors, and the Corporate World bought it. Even my good friend Penn (or ``Penn,'' as I call him) Jillette would be proud. >In fact, I'm a few points up on Penn. You may have heard of the Interactive Narrative work that is proceeding in the lab. Folks, I'll be honest with you for a moment. I know as well as you do that it's a stinking load of horseshit. Roger Ebert said ``Six thousand years ago sitting around a campfire a storyteller could have stopped at any time and asked his audience how they wanted the story to come out. But he didn't because that would have ruined the story.'' You think Hollywood would have learned this lesson from the monster ``success'' that Clue, the Movie enjoyed several years ago. But no! I've repackaged the ``Choose your own Adventure'' novels of childhood as Digital Information SuperHighway Yadda Yadda crap, and again, they bought it! Sony right this minute is building an interactive movie theater, with buttons the audience can push to amuse themselves as the story progresses. Dance for me, Corporate America! I'm SHIT-HOT! >Why, just the other day I listened to a member of my staff explain to potential sponsors that we had spent \$US 4,000,000 of Japanese sponsor dollars to construct a widescreen version of ``I Love Lucy'' from the original source. And HE SAID IT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE! CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE THAT? Boy, I bet those Nips wish they had their money back now! Earthquake? No, we can't do much to rebuild your city, but we SURE AS HELL can give you a 1.66:1 cut of Lucy to fit all those busted HDTVs of yours! HA HA HA! [...]

tootie 5y ago

This is both really impressive and really disappointing. The technology has been refined to an incredible degree but it sounds it's still nowhere near the fidelity that would make it useful. It may the biggest VC money pit in SV.

sroussey 5y ago
In Florida, not SV
- brownkonas 5y ago
  Funded by SV, vision alignment with SV which is probably more important than where it’s made. However it is certainly impressive that they’re making a lot of progress in a tropical latitude, a feat that hasn’t been replicated by many successful tech companies.
  - gumby 5y ago
    > Funded by SV, vision alignment with SV Actually apart from Google, their investors are nontraditional: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap/company_f... The “usual suspects” all passed. Even google’s venture fund passed but Sergei decided to do it. I think ML is an example where not being from the valley was kind of an advantage for them on the fundraising side.
    - fuzzfactor 5y ago
      Not just any part of Florida. Although today things are culturally much more homogenous, this particular town 50 years ago already had a long tradition of starting companies with the express intention of becoming comfortable to begin with bringing in money from investors only. The dream is that the venture could actually pay off someday and then everybody involved will really profit phenomenally when the company is sold. Not so much pursuing product sales where value needs to be added. You're selling a dream that naturally appeals to investors more so than retail customers who would want something tangible sooner. Who has more money anyway? "Real estate" was usually the financial vehicle but you had to be able to sell "false estate" (Everglades) as if it was really a good investment. Well it truly had no place to go but up ;) Quite unlike nearby Miami or Palm Beach even, and nothing like Tampa or Orlando and the other places. Much more prominent dream-selling element in company founders (among the smaller number) by far than SV at the time. You've got to really be persuasive. SV sure has come a long way in this regard now. This time it's not real estate but technology, crafted to appeal to SV investors. A number of years before Magic Leap got attention, there had been a very embarassing "Digital "Dream" up the coast in Martin or St. Lucie where they were going to make it like a little SV. The idea was to create a ground-up "ecosystem" where young people can have the kind of opportunities in software & game development they could only dream about. There was a real estate component in that one so they broke ground, started developing a campus and everything, but once the investments quit coming in they were done. Plus real estate had become uncertian in ways that had never occurred there. Some respected investors did lose a lot plus I think even some quasi-government development agency went down. After the details came out the general consensus was they were taken for a ride the whole time.

dataviz1000 5y ago

Do you think if they focused on creating a monochrome AR display first for applications in engineering and medicine it would have been adopted creating a path for the company to later research and develop a multicolor device? Seems like they lost. Wouldn't it have been better to start simple? They never released a MVP.

kguttag 5y ago
I don't think the issue is color. Their original product was trying to differentiate on Vergence Accommodation Conflict (VAC) and did a poor job of it. They were also going after the consumer with a product that was always going to be way too expensive for consumers with an image quality that was going to be too poor. They also made what I think is a bad set of trade-offs in terms of ergonomics and human factors. The problem with medicine is that is it a tiny market. You can't justify the type of money they were trying to raise for that market. Under Abovitz, they were always a swing for the fences company. All the above said, nobody I know of is making money selling AR headsets today. They are either subsidized by VC or other investment money or by big companies funding R&D efforts. The market is not other product areas where you can make money with an MVP and grow the product.
- dataviz1000 5y ago
  I vaguely remember Rony and friends reversing the concept of the endoscope product they developed prior to have the moving fiber optic strand project light into the side of a lens which would channel the light and reflect it into eyes instead of capturing light and projecting it onto a light sensor in the case of the endoscope. Everything they did had fiber optic strands for RGB on that original idea. Having one color would have been an easier place to start. Nonetheless, it seems like they had other more difficult unrelated problems such as Vergence Accommodation Conflict.
nine_k 5y ago
There used to be a number of good monochrome AR projectors for industrial and military use last few years. They look pretty unlike a sleek consumer device, and are expensive, say, $1000 for just the display. For a business, it's peanuts; for a consumer and even prosumer device, it's a pretty significant sum, for a monochrome display not good for gaming.

hirundo 5y ago

Karl, do you have any thoughts on the Simula One project? I see that you specialize in AR, but it looks like there is massive crossover in tech. The Simula team pitches this as the next popular form factor in business computing. Anything to that?

kguttag 5y ago
As you wrote, I don't follow VR. That said, I'm very skeptical that a VR headset will work in place of a computer monitor for long term use with business computing.

baybal2 5y ago

We designed a number of ar, an vr glasses. Engineers of most buzzwordy brands don't seem to have had "optics 101" during their engineering education. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28839541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28839541 > Holographic waveguides, and such are a dead end development with a substandard image quality which you cannot do anything about, as well as its inefficiency (these waveguides waste 70-90%+ of light.) > The fundamental problem is that the amount of image light transferred is inversely proportional to the amount of light obscured. — they are extremely inefficient, and there is physically no way around this.

deleted 5y ago
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moralestapia 5y ago

Very nice in-depth analysis, thanks kguttag. My personal bet on this space is that kura.tech's product is going to be the real deal; but it is exciting to see that the AR field in general is starting to enter its own plateau of productivity and we may start seeing great products soon.

kguttag 5y ago
I think we need to see Kura actually demonstrate that their technology works. You might want to see this video (queued to his discussion of Kura at CES 2022: https://youtu.be/S0heZVN5NCs?t=1328 https://youtu.be/S0heZVN5NCs?t=1328
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >I think we need to see Kura actually demonstrate that their technology works. Indeed.

excalibur 5y ago

> The more I think back about the presentation and other aspects not covered in this article, such as their ability to design and manufacture their own waveguides, the more I agree with the people that think the presentation was more of a “For Sale” sign. Which differs from other such presentations how?

wpietri 5y ago
From the article: "Sometimes a very open presentation is given by a company trying to sell the company."

fnord77 5y ago

Nice article. btw, ML has gotten $3.5B in funding! https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap

callalex 5y ago
I assume in this case your acronym “ML” references the company Magic Leap?

wpietri 5y ago

Back in October, when Facebook made a lot of "metaverse" noise, I wrote a thread looking at the history of stereoscopic 3D from the 1850s to the present as a way of explaining why I think facehugger VR is going nowhere. Somebody turned up to complain that going back to the Civil War era wasn't sufficiently big picture for him: "You need a long view. All the serious players are still in the Mercury phase. The Gemini and Apollo phases of XR are coming this decade and into the 2030s. An $800b company will likely spend $100b+ getting there. You need a wide aperture to understand what is going on." https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/1454135053697519619 https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/1454135053697519619 What I didn't realize until later was that the rando reply came from no less a presence than Rony Abovitz, Magic Leap's exiled founder, who apparently now spends his time vanity searching for "Magic Leap" so he can reenact XKCD 386. There are many things I find jaw-dropping about his views, but my biggest question is: Why did he raise and burn $3.5 billion dollars if that's only 3.5% of the cost of "getting there"? Which is a roundabout way of saying I think kguttag is right when he says, "ML2 looks like a product designed for the consumer market, but it was seen that it would be far too expensive for that market, it was recast as an 'enterprise' device." To me it's a not-great solution desperately looking for a problem.

samplatt 5y ago
Quick link to XKCD 386, for others - https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
nwatson 5y ago
The same Abovitz that did this abomination of a TEDx talk ... https://youtu.be/w8J5BWL8oJY https://youtu.be/w8J5BWL8oJY
- wpietri 5y ago
  What, and I mean this sincerely, the fuck? I have been to a bunch of experimental theater over the years, so I was prepared to accept the initial setup. But he didn't pull it together at all!
- mdoms 5y ago

bajook 5y ago

Optical AR is a dead end. Passthrough AR with VR goggles and 8K cameras on the outside will be the way that wins.

kguttag 5y ago
If you are talking for many "game playing" applications you may be correct. But it be ridiculous to thing that people are going to be going out in public with a VR headset with cameras (known as Passthrough AR). On top of a number of human factor issues, it would dangerously block a person's view of the real world.
- Paradigma11 5y ago
  Just crank the FoV slider up to maximum.
valine 5y ago
No one wants to wear a headset if it makes them look stupid. If AR glasses are a dead end then mass adoption of AR outside of gaming/enterprise is likely DOA.
- zhoujianfu 5y ago
  Last time I went skiing I noticed ski goggles kind of look cool, and are the perfect form factor for pass through ar. I think that’ll be the form it finally takes when Apple makes it cool.
  - smilespray 5y ago
    Show up to your next work meeting wearing ski goggles and report back to us.
    - zhoujianfu 5y ago
      AFTER the Apple ads..

thebigman433 5y ago

I dont see how this ends up any differently than ML1. Relatively good headset that has some technical advantages, and is obviously impressive at some level for what was produced with smaller amounts of money, but for what? It still has major disadvantages, and with the stability of ML compared to Microsoft, I wouldnt particularly put long term faith in the former if I was a company looking to purchase these. The whole thing definitely looks like a ML1 holdover from when they thought they were going to somehow hit the consumer market. Personally I think that a simple birdbath design with a decent display is one of the better ways to enter the market if you want to move a relatively large amount of units. Also Karl Guttag is an amazing blogger. His articles are the sole reason why I got seriously interested in AR and NED hardware. Now Im looking to make part of a career out of it.

ryandrake 5y ago

Wow, talk about a tech news blind spot: I honestly though Magic Leap wasn't even around anymore. Last news I heard about them was they burned through $billions, their product woefully (almost fraudulently) failed to meet any of the hype they set out, they sold a handful of units, and then the company folded. How on earth are they still in business?

ramesh31 5y ago
>I honestly though Magic Leap wasn't even around anymore. Last news I heard about them was they burned through $billions, their product woefully (almost fraudulently) failed to meet any of the hype they set out, they sold a handful of units, and then the company folded. How on earth are they still in business? AR/VR in general has hit the "slope of enlightenment" portion of the hype cycle [0]. Talented people are still diligently working on this stuff behind the scenes and advancing the state of the art, even though mainstream adoption has a ways to go. [0] https://hobi.com/gartner-hype-cycle-emerging-tech-potential/gartner-hype-cycle-emerging-tech-potential/ https://hobi.com/gartner-hype-cycle-emerging-tech-potential/...
- mdoms 5y ago
  In my experience when someone tells me where something is on the hype cycle (especially if it's on the left hand side) I immediately know it's going absolutely nowhere. My hit rate with this heuristic is upwards of 95%.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  I'd like to believe that's true, but has any meaningful progress been made? VR games seemed to have plateaued in novel immersive experiences - people show off their Oculuses and Vives with the same tech demos. The Meta VR presentations are embarassingly primitive, marginally better than Second Life from 2 decades ago. The AR demos I see on Android and iOS (measuring the length table; having a dog run around on top of it) have not improved in fidelity in 3-4 years. I think what Microsoft is doing with Hololens for the industrial sector is VERY cool, and is a meaningfully significant branch: Having a mechanic receive plans remotely and projected on top of an engine or a door and get overlaid instructions for repair is going to be either revolutionary or a dystopian collapse of skilled trades as every company decides to replace training and high paying trade jobs with Hololenses and remote experts. I'm cynical, but at least it's going somewhere impactful. But what's happening on the consumer side? Facebook's vision is nauseating. Snapchat, Google, and Apple have gone totally quiet. I assume they're in stealth mode waiting to unleash something and blow our minds? That would be pretty great I suppose.

Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago

I treat any and all Magic Leap announcements with a pinch of salt these days. I'm old enough to remember their then stealth mode claims to have invented a device that would revolutionize society, put a stop to world hunger, prevent war, abolish capitalism, etc. etc.

Temino 5y ago

I realized a few days ago that AR is more for robots and automation than for humans. Imagine a company supporting ar in there product for maintenance. They need to describe there Maschine to a point that AR can create an overlay and a step by step guide. If you do this so that your technician can do it so can a robot. If we ever make the effort to export 3d models from things and make them available, I believe we will see ML extracting repair steps and robots executing them before humans walking around with AR gogles.

Grustaf 5y ago
Why would a robot need AR at all? And the challenge with building a repair robot is not to provide it with information about the item, it's in understanding the information and physically manipulating the item.
- Temino 5y ago
  A robot doesn't need ar. That's my point I tried making. As soon as you actually use ar for people, at that point you have enough data for a robot to just do it instead. As soon as you start creating ar support for it, you no longer need it.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    I'm saying that this is not correct at all. There is no lack of data, but it's very very difficult to make a robot that can autonomously manipulate things well enough to repair things. It's not lacking data, it's about physical control.
    - picsao 5y ago

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

For years I haven't been excited by anything in the VR space. I tried them, even with the running apparatus and the slippery shoes, and it was fun. But that's it. Nor the Leap, the Quest or the Hololens interest me very much. It doesn't bring much into my life, but promise to take a lot from it. Besides, the fact it's backed by companies with a not so good track record at respecting their users, and some of them, at making closed proprietary platforms, doesn't make me want to dive in. But recently, 2 projects started to get me excited: - the Tilt 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzr-IeyWj40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzr-IeyWj40 - the Simula: https://simulavr.com/ https://simulavr.com/ They are both trying to be very good at a very specific use case, which I think is a better way to approach the problem right now since we don't have VR solved. The vibes their creators give is also much more human, in an "internet from the 90" kind of way. The Tilt 5 already works well, and people using it all report that it's the best VR experience they had to date. They also make it easy to port games from existing platforms, and actually talk to communities such as war-hammer 40k players and board game lovers, instead of staying in their ivory tower wrapped in secret to finally come down as our lord and savior. Plus I love board games. The Simula is only a concept, and it may very well end up being vaporware like many kickstarter projects. But I want it to succeed so badly. First, it's just linux. No proprietary platform BS. It tells me it wants me to use my current apps, and works with FOSS and standards instead of trying to spoon feed me some expensive locked down metaverse crap. And I can really see the value of unlimited screen space and a full immersion work experience, especially since the device is optimized for text readability.

thrwawy283 5y ago
Just added myself for notification when their kickstarter begins (Simula). I wish they went with an AMD APU, instead of Intel Xe graphics. The youtube gameplay comparisons seem to give AMD a big edge in well... everything. I'll definitely be backing this. I want to play Tabletop Simulator on all of my walls and ceilings. :-) (Thanks for telling me!)
- kanetw 5y ago
  An APU is on the table for future iterations :)

TootsMagoon 5y ago

Karl Guttag is a very experienced and interesting person. "The AR Show" has two very good interviews with him the cover a lot of ground on displays and history of computing. https://www.thearshow.com/podcast/111a-karl-guttag-part-1 https://www.thearshow.com/podcast/111a-karl-guttag-part-1 https://www.thearshow.com/podcast/006-karl-guttag-pt2 https://www.thearshow.com/podcast/006-karl-guttag-pt2