12 ms·

Magic Leap 2

156 points by ppjim 4y ago

vander_elst 4y ago
If I'd use something like this for work, let's say ~8 hours a day for a year, how are the eyes affected? Are there studies around this?
- blululu 4y ago
  Probably not a great idea. Simple answer: no. Most of the people working for these companies don’t wear these things for more than 10 minutes a week.
Wronnay 4y ago
<title>Device</title> Fancy fancy... Magic Leap knows how to use the title tag...
LightG 4y ago
Again, where's my splashy whale?
machina_ex_deus 4y ago
I tried magic leap once. They really hide it in most of their pictures by using certain angles but there's a tether between the glasses and another unit that's doing the computations. That other unit gets hot during operation. When you wear it, the window in which the AR is active felt small. Like using really small glasses. And I have sight correction glasses and it felt small even for me, where I'm used to already see everything through smaller windows. It's small enough that you sometimes need to move your head to view things that you'll usually only move your eyes to see, and takes getting used to.
tomp 4y ago
So plenty of images of people wearing it but no images of what I see when I wear it? Does not inspire confidence. I'm assuming the user experience sucks. I'd be really happy to be wrong!
blululu 4y ago
This is a pretty solid AR headset as they come. Definitely a step up from their first release. The optics/display are much better and they have patched some of the worse UX bugs that made the original really hard to use. But this is still a useless product. The price point isn’t the issue. It costs less than a Next cube (adjusting for inflation). Ask the serious question: among people who work for companies like Magic Leap (who get a unit for free) how many hours a day do they use it? In my informal survey the answer is about 0.01 hours a day or about 5-10 minutes a week. I have frequently encountered people with several years of “experience” with AR headsets who are not aware of basic ergonomic issues with the display. The reality is that even people who are paid to use these things don’t get much use out of them. We still haven’t discovered the killer app? A great excuse but we have then clearly found a lot of things that are not the killer app so subtract that from the projected TAM. If these is going to be used all day every day then you would see a lot more people using this all day everyday right now.
chatterhead 4y ago
These are going to be the thing. Google glasses were too "smart" looking and frankly ripped off Steve Mann's design way too much. Magic Leap needs consumer options immediately with a focus on what Steve was doing with his glasses; truly altering reality. This is going to be so powerful. When you have AI/AR you no longer need to learn. You can go directly from welding the perfect weld to performing the perfect adenectomy. AI/AR is going to eliminate experts. It's going to be awesome.
- caslon 4y ago
  Google Glass was directly taking from Starner's work. You're getting your history wrong.
  - chatterhead 4y ago
    I wasn't aware of that. Thank you; just assumed Mann's was ripped off because he was so prominent in the space and well known. https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/02/steve_mann_on_google_glass/ https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/02/steve_mann_on_google_... This article is what provoked the assumption.
    - icedata 4y ago
      Having worked with Steve for a while, I can assure you that he believes he was ripped off. Only a judge can decide for sure.
  - sam1r 4y ago
    Didn't know this either. For anyone else curious, Starner + AR go back to the 90s [1] [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/google-glasss-thad-starner-wears-the-future https://spectrum.ieee.org/google-glasss-thad-starner-wears-t...
    - caslon 4y ago
      The person Chatterhead cites actually has work that goes back substantially earlier, but it's important to point people to the right direction so blame for Glass isn't misattributed.
mellosouls 4y ago
Already discussed a couple of days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33041677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33041677
arikr 4y ago
Is there a good video that shows what the experience is like for the wearer?
- echelon 4y ago
  Consumer : https://youtube.com/shorts/-Osv14WIopw https://youtube.com/shorts/-Osv14WIopw Design / Archviz : https://youtu.be/nJ65SbAaEBA https://youtu.be/nJ65SbAaEBA https://youtu.be/v1-miutMA60 https://youtu.be/v1-miutMA60
  - mdorazio 4y ago
    Your first video is Magic Leap 1 unless I missed something. The second two are about what you can expect, though, and pretty close to what you got with the Hololens 2 a couple years ago, except with better FoV and performance. For me personally, it's very much still not "there" as more than a novelty or tool for very specific use cases.
fefe23 4y ago
Isn't this the company world famous for not delivering upon their breathless hype for over a decade? They remind me of Star Citizen. Both have been fundraising since 2010.
- hey2022 4y ago
  What “delivery” are you expecting from Star Citizen? A version of the game that is branded as “final”? The game is playable and looks amazing. Everyone who pays for it gets to play it and gets in-game items such as a starship. I agree that the model is pretty novel, the never ending scope creep is odd… but it’s nothing like Magic Leap with its institutional investors and a sub par v1 release.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - VonGuard 4y ago
    Last time I played Star Citizen, and granted, this was 1 year ago, it was so unoptimized and buggy that, when I went into an elevator in the star port, the floor I landed at hadn't loaded yet, and a fell through the geometry, into space, and asphyxiated. This was.... oh, about 5 minutes after starting play for the first time, on an i7 machine with a 2080 and 32 GB of RAM... Not a wimpy machine. Star Citizen needs a release deadline, if for no other reason than it would force them to button up, fix bugs, and for godsake, optimize.
    - hey2022 4y ago
      I regularly watch Star Citizen gameplay videos on YouTube, it really progressed a lot in the last year. There are still some minor bugs with elevators, shafts, floors, etc. but overall game mechanics and the world they are building is unprecedented. Have a look at more recent multi-player battles, prison escapes, salvage missions, just planet exploration. I was so impressed the images kept coming up in my dreams.
      - 4y ago
aaron695 4y ago
Theranos. Fancy looking equipment that can't do what they say it can (at the high level) with mockups that are essentially fake. Demo - https://www.tiktok.com/@danieljtrujillo/video/7147395316029852971 https://www.tiktok.com/@danieljtrujillo/video/71473953160298... (They can't even create a solar system demo that doesn't really really suck) https://www.tiktok.com/@dilmerval https://www.tiktok.com/@dilmerval (This one is funny because they can't seem to find anything to show except the unboxing, but you look cool like a hacker)
- aliqot 4y ago
  why did I have to vouch for this -immediately- after it was posted? Every single post by this account is this way. Why do I find black-holed accounts so often?
  - geraldwhen 4y ago
    Probably due to the heavy shadow ban censorship.
    - aliqot 4y ago
      That needs to stop. Not one of the accounts I've come across has done anything outside of the guidelines and often are contributing substantive comments.
      - minitech 4y ago
        > Not one of the accounts I've come across has done anything outside of the guidelines How do you know that? (And/or how do you know the multi-account history of the people using the accounts?) Some might also be caught up in IP-address-based bans, but for accounts like this I expect there’s a reason they remain banned.
        aliqot 4y ago
        If someone's turned over a new leaf and hasn't committed any infractions on this new account, then we have to ask ourselves: is putting a permanent stain on their IP going too far? It's communicating that you're so odious we think you'll never change and those in your household will also be the same.
eganist 4y ago
This (https://i.imgur.com/YtW12iD.png https://i.imgur.com/YtW12iD.png) is an awful marketing pic. It's an AR headset. What's requiring him to take them off? If he has to take them off to look at something, something's wrong.
- devsatish 4y ago
  I think the point is -- its a headset that's so easy to use or just slide up on your head if you don't need .
  - eganist 4y ago
    You're probably right, but quite literally the first thing to pop into my brain when I saw that wasn't "oh hey I can put them on top of my head if I need to." It was: > Why would I have to take them off while working? Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I imagine I'm not the only one who'd wonder.
  - denzilla8080 4y ago
    Very correct. I’ve used many many different types of AR headsets and the ease of being able to come on and off is important. Because when I’m working on something with it on, I may need a more keen eye to inspect or maybe the overlays get in the way or maybe I need to write something down…..
- throwthere 4y ago
  Haha I thought the same thing with the surgeon picture. Presumably he’s operating. And that surgeon isn’t wearing any eye protection in fact which does happen but isn’t something you’d advertise.
  - eganist 4y ago
    I just noticed the surgeon one. Good catch. Why am I taking these things off? Isn't one of the main use cases for AR that I'm augmenting my reality with added context when doing something very concentration-intensive and don't want to break my focus to know a relevant detail? (like a HUD in a car?)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dqpb 4y ago
I expected to see a whale jumping out of the body of a person on the operating table. Missed opportunity.
amelius 4y ago
> Magic Leap doesn't lock developers into a closed ecosystem. Develop and ship solutions faster and across multiple channels. No app review, no approval for listings. Thank goodness. More companies should be like this.
- lostmsu 4y ago
  Can I flash a custom ROM on Leap 2?
- bdbenton 4y ago
  Seriously, trying to "capture" devs with closed ecosystems just stifles creativity and limits potential with corporate gatekeepers and walled-off technologies. The open source mindset, like with Android, is a big reason why it dominates the global mobile software market. Security is one thing, but blocking functionality and self-publishing only drives away good developers and innovative apps.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    I’ve never seen more creativity unleashed more quickly than the apple apps store. The play store is fine if you stick to known apps but it’s just full of shit otherwise. But that’s the point of an open ecosystem.
  - enw 4y ago
    > like with Android Most people when they think of Android or the Google Play store they think of a cesspool of ugly inconsistent amateurish trashware.
    - amelius 4y ago
      I think the problem is that phone makers mix up the concepts of Content-Filter and App-Store. They are orthogonal things, and should be separate.
    - iamsaitam 4y ago
      Exactly my thoughts on the subject of the iOS store. Disclaimer: I use iOS.
Kukumber 4y ago
Way way way too expensive You have to cut your profit if you want to penetrate an already difficult and competitive market They pay themselves huge salaries without customers, red flag if you want to invest https://www.comparably.com/companies/magic-leap/executive-salaries https://www.comparably.com/companies/magic-leap/executive-sa...
- rtkwe 4y ago
  They're doing the same pivot that Microsoft did with HoloLens. It's too expensive to do at a price point the consumer market will bear but businesses have an entirely different use case where cost is defrayed by the utility and/or productivity gains.
- dagmx 4y ago
  Too expensive for what market? And what products do you believe they’re competing against? They’re price competitive with other waveguide enterprise devices.
  - Kukumber 4y ago
    Competitive as: it's going to be a booming market with a lot of actors, if you are not aggressive with your pricing, it'll be hard for you to find customers willing to test your products, it'll slow down adoption, giving enough room for other actors to get ahead of you Apple's iPhone for example, a new kind of device, and their pricing was pretty aggressive, and they didn't use the "enterprise" argument to raise their price, quite the opposite Same when their launched their ARM laptops, aggressive pricing to catch people But it doesn't matter, they made the same mistake when they released Magic Leap 1, and they double down on that same mistake I'm not an investor so i don't care, but if you are, you should be worried
johnwalkr 4y ago
I'm really skeptical based on the technical specs they publish. This company promised an amazing experience and completely failed by all accounts. And this crowd knows they failed in a way where most talent left. A few years later what do they advertise as v2? 120Hz, 2000 nits, 2.4Ghz, 4MB of L3 cache, 2 RB+ (Render Backends).. Who cares? I can't find any videos that convince me the experience is good.
- cde-v 4y ago
  I’ve always heard magic leap referred to as the Theranos of VR
  - 93po 4y ago
    That's just mean :)
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  I interviewed at Magic Leap in 2017 when it was a mysterious secret company. Flew down to Ft Lauderdale and interviewed for a whole day. At the end of the day was a demo of their product, an area with 20 feet curtains across from Rony’s glass office. They put a tethered headset and the rest is complete and utter awe. Magic Leap’s tech has mimics accommodation of a real human eye (‘accommodation’ is a technical term related to depth + scale perception). They put on two demos. First one was cyberpunk brass mosquito and another was to overlay the wall in front of me with a massive theater screen. I was totally blown away by the resolution and clarity. It was like AR but with 20% window tint. Magic Leap somehow mimics accommodation of your eyes so that a 50 ft theater screen looks not like a postage stamp, both occupy the same FOV in your vision, but actually make it feel like a 50 ft screen. It was unreal. I couldn’t publicly say these things because of NDA but I don't think they give a shit anymore after 5 years and I don’t either. Magic Leap’s failure was in manufacturing from what I’ve heard from other employees working there. They had set up a line at their Florida factory, buying an old Motorola facility, but it was really hard to mass manufacture optics at an affordable price. I was totally sold on the tech. I can see why Google invested $2B in Rony’s vision. I feel bad for them because they were so secretive and made huge bets on full stack: optics to headset to content. They wanted to go all in on production of exclusive content. Sort of like the PlayStation model - Take a loss on hardware. I saw a magical campus, full of animation posters and characters, kind of like visiting Pixar studios. I also feel bad for their employees. Others are calling it the Theranos of VR but unlike them, they didn’t hurt anyone and it was worth a shot. I went on the factory floor during the interview (only a small section where calibrated optics). I saw all the stuff. It was not malice; I blame their stupid PR team that propped up so much hype that expectations were out of control. Blame Rony for that but also when you have a tech like that, I can imagine the confidence that it brings. Just remember, stuff fails. Don’t get nasty about it. There were real genuine people working there; I didn’t get the job but it was totally the right thing to happen to me in retrospect. Just sad to see what shitty PR strategy does to public - Rony probably learned a few lessons from this. I wish them good luck with this enterprise/industrial pivot. I am thinking of buying a dev kit.
sva_ 4y ago
> Compute Performance - 3x Performance What does this mean? > Price - Starting from $3,299 So what's a use case justifying blowing that kind of money on this? I don't see how they will foster an active developer community with such a starting price
- MrQuincle 4y ago
  I think there's a use case for all kinds of price levels, but there's a sweet spot. Anecdotally. I bought a 3D printer when it dropped below 1000 bucks. I bought the Emotiv Epoc when at 300 bucks. I bought a Saleae logic analyser at the same price level if I remember correctly. Same with other tools or toys. The HackRF, the Kinect, the Quest, etc. The higher the price the more you'll have to explain to people how they can justify the costs. You'll have to explain how much personnel hours are being saved, etc. The more I'm in this space (of manufacturing electronic devices) the more I'm convinced Bill of Material (BOM) and in general Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) optimization is essential. Companies that can do this in a lean manner without excessive engineering costs to do so can truly drive the price down. If there is this operational excellence, then you can truly give most power to your strategists in the sales and marketing departments. Otherwise, they have no tradeoffs to consider and are just victims of sloppy (non-cost conscious) engineering.
- 1auralynn 4y ago
  I actually was offered a free one by them, but because they would have given it as a 'gift' vs. an 'extended loan' I would have had to pay like $1k in taxes for it so I passed, knowing that I probably didn't have time to actually implement anything and that the market would be so small anyway (I had already tried one at a couple conferences).
LegitShady 4y ago
Load the page, tons of images of the device, none of what the device can render and how the results look. Based on their history my guess is overpriced and underwhelming.
- sam1r 4y ago
  Exactly, this. Instead, the primary call to action is "Where to buy"
sam1r 4y ago
I just cannot fathom how billions of dollars are spent into developing a product -- that is just marketed so poorly. The call on the landing page is "Where to buy." Buy what!?! There is not a single, cool, "everyday-relatable" use-case presented on the web announcement. I wish I could have a reason to purchase this. I'm craving just a single video or even GIF -- that depicts even the slightest, animated hint of what the interactive experience will be like -- if one were to put these MLs on.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  I’ve tried it at a friend’s place. It felt like an amusement park ride. You’ll say “wow!”, but there’s no reason to go back again.
- javajosh 4y ago
  I think they are marketing to dentists. Dentists can afford it. They are already quite technical, most of them. Most of them want to be "real" doctors and surgeons, like the ones shown in the marketing. And the stakes in dental operations are relatively low, so trying out new tech is relatively low stakes too. So they are thinking: at best, this will help my practice, at worst it's a fancy device my kids can inherit to play games. Against this hypothesis is the fact that dentists already use analog optical headgear, and this would prevent that. Also, it's not clear what software they would use to make their work better/easier. Anyway, a 1000 person company puts out an announcement like this for a reason - maybe to measure public interest to secure a new round of funding? Presumably they feel it's worth misleading people about availability in order to do that.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    > Most of them want to be "real" doctors and surgeons, like the ones shown in the marketing. The missing link between real doctors and barbers: behold the dentist.
  - the_d3f4ult 4y ago
    > "Most of them want to be "real" doctors and surgeons" I'm a doctor. No. They don't. Dentists make more money and work less. Their training is rigorous, but generally shorter. They don't take call, don't work weekends and don't have any emergencies.
qaq 4y ago
Waiting for pivot to cold fusion
theknocker 4y ago
mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
> Create innovative solutions for complex problems with the most immersive enterprise AR device So, uh, what is it? Have we figured out what to do yet after 10 years, 11 funding rounds, and billions of funding?
- disqard 4y ago
  The smartest people in the world attacked this question ("what do we use it for?") in the 90s, and nobody was able to come up with a killer app (as in, widely-applicable-once-mass-produced) then. I don't know what's fundamentally different this time, which is why I'm skeptical that the outcome will any different.
krenzo 4y ago
I'm a VR/AR developer, and here's my experience with trying to buy a Magic Leap 2 to check it out: See the PR announcement that they're shipping. Go to their web site. Click "Where to buy". Go to the first link to "Insight US". Place an order. Get a call from a representative to confirm the order. Ask the representative to clarify that Magic Leap 2 is in stock and shipping. They responded "yes." Wait a few days. Check on the status of my order: "Stock: 0", and the estimated ship date is just an automated date that increases by 3 whenever current date equals estimated ship date. Call up Insight US to ask is it in stock or not. They admit it's not in stock and won't be available until maybe December/January. Call up Magic Leap (they surprisingly have a phone line to call) and ask their sales representative if anyone has stock. They respond they don't know and to try the second supplier. Ask them what the supplier's phone number is to confirm stock. They say they don't know and that supplier only communicates through e-mail. Supplier responds via e-mail, "of course we have stock! Place an order to get an estimated ship date." I'm doubtful. So there you have it. Magic Leap 2 shipping now, maybe?
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
  Reading that back, it sounds like a complete scam you might encounter from the lowest reaches of the web. For me, Magic Leap used up any good will by over promising and under-delivering on their initial release.
  - classified 4y ago
    The number and quality of WTFs connected to the name Magic Leap is hilarious, I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole.
- skerit 4y ago
  This reminds me of my Eve Spectrum order experience.
- 1letterunixname 4y ago
  Their go-to-market / sales channel management people need to get their act together if they wish not to become a very expensive failed startup. Can't have sales be an afterthought and business culture lacking fiscal discipline until the money runs out. IYAM, paradoxically, the more money is thrown at a project, the worse the returns because there's an atrophying of resourcefulness when there's not as much survival pressure.
spoonjim 4y ago
I’ve tried this on my face and it’s very cool. I can’t say there’s any mass market for it but it is not vaporware.
1letterunixname 4y ago
Oh damn. I want work to buy MagicLeap ASAP. VR is cute for gaming but AR is where it's at. (Our AR is pretty weak IYAM.) At lot of coin was thrown into making MagicLeap but it needs to be consumerized in scaled-down products that can sell. Combine something like Oculus and ML such that there's both AR and VR in one package that's essentially also a smartphone.
singularity2001 4y ago
Their mistake is shipping a whole computer with their display. It may still be successful in enterprise settings, but externalizing the CPU/GPU to an iphone would make this device so much cheaper.

156 points by ppjim 4y ago

If I'd use something like this for work, let's say ~8 hours a day for a year, how are the eyes affected? Are there studies around this?

blululu 4y ago
Probably not a great idea. Simple answer: no. Most of the people working for these companies don’t wear these things for more than 10 minutes a week.

Wronnay 4y ago

<title>Device</title> Fancy fancy... Magic Leap knows how to use the title tag...

LightG 4y ago

Again, where's my splashy whale?

machina_ex_deus 4y ago

I tried magic leap once. They really hide it in most of their pictures by using certain angles but there's a tether between the glasses and another unit that's doing the computations. That other unit gets hot during operation. When you wear it, the window in which the AR is active felt small. Like using really small glasses. And I have sight correction glasses and it felt small even for me, where I'm used to already see everything through smaller windows. It's small enough that you sometimes need to move your head to view things that you'll usually only move your eyes to see, and takes getting used to.

tomp 4y ago

So plenty of images of people wearing it but no images of what I see when I wear it? Does not inspire confidence. I'm assuming the user experience sucks. I'd be really happy to be wrong!

blululu 4y ago

This is a pretty solid AR headset as they come. Definitely a step up from their first release. The optics/display are much better and they have patched some of the worse UX bugs that made the original really hard to use. But this is still a useless product. The price point isn’t the issue. It costs less than a Next cube (adjusting for inflation). Ask the serious question: among people who work for companies like Magic Leap (who get a unit for free) how many hours a day do they use it? In my informal survey the answer is about 0.01 hours a day or about 5-10 minutes a week. I have frequently encountered people with several years of “experience” with AR headsets who are not aware of basic ergonomic issues with the display. The reality is that even people who are paid to use these things don’t get much use out of them. We still haven’t discovered the killer app? A great excuse but we have then clearly found a lot of things that are not the killer app so subtract that from the projected TAM. If these is going to be used all day every day then you would see a lot more people using this all day everyday right now.

chatterhead 4y ago

These are going to be the thing. Google glasses were too "smart" looking and frankly ripped off Steve Mann's design way too much. Magic Leap needs consumer options immediately with a focus on what Steve was doing with his glasses; truly altering reality. This is going to be so powerful. When you have AI/AR you no longer need to learn. You can go directly from welding the perfect weld to performing the perfect adenectomy. AI/AR is going to eliminate experts. It's going to be awesome.

caslon 4y ago
Google Glass was directly taking from Starner's work. You're getting your history wrong.
- chatterhead 4y ago
  I wasn't aware of that. Thank you; just assumed Mann's was ripped off because he was so prominent in the space and well known. https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/02/steve_mann_on_google_glass/ https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/02/steve_mann_on_google_... This article is what provoked the assumption.
  - icedata 4y ago
    Having worked with Steve for a while, I can assure you that he believes he was ripped off. Only a judge can decide for sure.
- sam1r 4y ago
  Didn't know this either. For anyone else curious, Starner + AR go back to the 90s [1] [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/google-glasss-thad-starner-wears-the-future https://spectrum.ieee.org/google-glasss-thad-starner-wears-t...
  - caslon 4y ago
    The person Chatterhead cites actually has work that goes back substantially earlier, but it's important to point people to the right direction so blame for Glass isn't misattributed.

mellosouls 4y ago

Already discussed a couple of days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33041677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33041677

arikr 4y ago

Is there a good video that shows what the experience is like for the wearer?

echelon 4y ago
Consumer : https://youtube.com/shorts/-Osv14WIopw https://youtube.com/shorts/-Osv14WIopw Design / Archviz : https://youtu.be/nJ65SbAaEBA https://youtu.be/nJ65SbAaEBA https://youtu.be/v1-miutMA60 https://youtu.be/v1-miutMA60
- mdorazio 4y ago
  Your first video is Magic Leap 1 unless I missed something. The second two are about what you can expect, though, and pretty close to what you got with the Hololens 2 a couple years ago, except with better FoV and performance. For me personally, it's very much still not "there" as more than a novelty or tool for very specific use cases.

fefe23 4y ago

Isn't this the company world famous for not delivering upon their breathless hype for over a decade? They remind me of Star Citizen. Both have been fundraising since 2010.

hey2022 4y ago
What “delivery” are you expecting from Star Citizen? A version of the game that is branded as “final”? The game is playable and looks amazing. Everyone who pays for it gets to play it and gets in-game items such as a starship. I agree that the model is pretty novel, the never ending scope creep is odd… but it’s nothing like Magic Leap with its institutional investors and a sub par v1 release.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- VonGuard 4y ago
  Last time I played Star Citizen, and granted, this was 1 year ago, it was so unoptimized and buggy that, when I went into an elevator in the star port, the floor I landed at hadn't loaded yet, and a fell through the geometry, into space, and asphyxiated. This was.... oh, about 5 minutes after starting play for the first time, on an i7 machine with a 2080 and 32 GB of RAM... Not a wimpy machine. Star Citizen needs a release deadline, if for no other reason than it would force them to button up, fix bugs, and for godsake, optimize.
  - hey2022 4y ago
    I regularly watch Star Citizen gameplay videos on YouTube, it really progressed a lot in the last year. There are still some minor bugs with elevators, shafts, floors, etc. but overall game mechanics and the world they are building is unprecedented. Have a look at more recent multi-player battles, prison escapes, salvage missions, just planet exploration. I was so impressed the images kept coming up in my dreams.
    - 4y ago

aaron695 4y ago

Theranos. Fancy looking equipment that can't do what they say it can (at the high level) with mockups that are essentially fake. Demo - https://www.tiktok.com/@danieljtrujillo/video/7147395316029852971 https://www.tiktok.com/@danieljtrujillo/video/71473953160298... (They can't even create a solar system demo that doesn't really really suck) https://www.tiktok.com/@dilmerval https://www.tiktok.com/@dilmerval (This one is funny because they can't seem to find anything to show except the unboxing, but you look cool like a hacker)

aliqot 4y ago
why did I have to vouch for this -immediately- after it was posted? Every single post by this account is this way. Why do I find black-holed accounts so often?
- geraldwhen 4y ago
  Probably due to the heavy shadow ban censorship.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    That needs to stop. Not one of the accounts I've come across has done anything outside of the guidelines and often are contributing substantive comments.
    - minitech 4y ago
      > Not one of the accounts I've come across has done anything outside of the guidelines How do you know that? (And/or how do you know the multi-account history of the people using the accounts?) Some might also be caught up in IP-address-based bans, but for accounts like this I expect there’s a reason they remain banned.
      - aliqot 4y ago
        If someone's turned over a new leaf and hasn't committed any infractions on this new account, then we have to ask ourselves: is putting a permanent stain on their IP going too far? It's communicating that you're so odious we think you'll never change and those in your household will also be the same.

eganist 4y ago

This (https://i.imgur.com/YtW12iD.png https://i.imgur.com/YtW12iD.png) is an awful marketing pic. It's an AR headset. What's requiring him to take them off? If he has to take them off to look at something, something's wrong.

devsatish 4y ago
I think the point is -- its a headset that's so easy to use or just slide up on your head if you don't need .
- eganist 4y ago
  You're probably right, but quite literally the first thing to pop into my brain when I saw that wasn't "oh hey I can put them on top of my head if I need to." It was: > Why would I have to take them off while working? Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I imagine I'm not the only one who'd wonder.
- denzilla8080 4y ago
  Very correct. I’ve used many many different types of AR headsets and the ease of being able to come on and off is important. Because when I’m working on something with it on, I may need a more keen eye to inspect or maybe the overlays get in the way or maybe I need to write something down…..
throwthere 4y ago
Haha I thought the same thing with the surgeon picture. Presumably he’s operating. And that surgeon isn’t wearing any eye protection in fact which does happen but isn’t something you’d advertise.
- eganist 4y ago
  I just noticed the surgeon one. Good catch. Why am I taking these things off? Isn't one of the main use cases for AR that I'm augmenting my reality with added context when doing something very concentration-intensive and don't want to break my focus to know a relevant detail? (like a HUD in a car?)

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dqpb 4y ago

I expected to see a whale jumping out of the body of a person on the operating table. Missed opportunity.

amelius 4y ago

> Magic Leap doesn't lock developers into a closed ecosystem. Develop and ship solutions faster and across multiple channels. No app review, no approval for listings. Thank goodness. More companies should be like this.

lostmsu 4y ago
Can I flash a custom ROM on Leap 2?
bdbenton 4y ago
Seriously, trying to "capture" devs with closed ecosystems just stifles creativity and limits potential with corporate gatekeepers and walled-off technologies. The open source mindset, like with Android, is a big reason why it dominates the global mobile software market. Security is one thing, but blocking functionality and self-publishing only drives away good developers and innovative apps.
- bergenty 4y ago
  I’ve never seen more creativity unleashed more quickly than the apple apps store. The play store is fine if you stick to known apps but it’s just full of shit otherwise. But that’s the point of an open ecosystem.
- enw 4y ago
  > like with Android Most people when they think of Android or the Google Play store they think of a cesspool of ugly inconsistent amateurish trashware.
  - amelius 4y ago
    I think the problem is that phone makers mix up the concepts of Content-Filter and App-Store. They are orthogonal things, and should be separate.
  - iamsaitam 4y ago
    Exactly my thoughts on the subject of the iOS store. Disclaimer: I use iOS.

Kukumber 4y ago

Way way way too expensive You have to cut your profit if you want to penetrate an already difficult and competitive market They pay themselves huge salaries without customers, red flag if you want to invest https://www.comparably.com/companies/magic-leap/executive-salaries https://www.comparably.com/companies/magic-leap/executive-sa...

rtkwe 4y ago
They're doing the same pivot that Microsoft did with HoloLens. It's too expensive to do at a price point the consumer market will bear but businesses have an entirely different use case where cost is defrayed by the utility and/or productivity gains.
dagmx 4y ago
Too expensive for what market? And what products do you believe they’re competing against? They’re price competitive with other waveguide enterprise devices.
- Kukumber 4y ago
  Competitive as: it's going to be a booming market with a lot of actors, if you are not aggressive with your pricing, it'll be hard for you to find customers willing to test your products, it'll slow down adoption, giving enough room for other actors to get ahead of you Apple's iPhone for example, a new kind of device, and their pricing was pretty aggressive, and they didn't use the "enterprise" argument to raise their price, quite the opposite Same when their launched their ARM laptops, aggressive pricing to catch people But it doesn't matter, they made the same mistake when they released Magic Leap 1, and they double down on that same mistake I'm not an investor so i don't care, but if you are, you should be worried

johnwalkr 4y ago

I'm really skeptical based on the technical specs they publish. This company promised an amazing experience and completely failed by all accounts. And this crowd knows they failed in a way where most talent left. A few years later what do they advertise as v2? 120Hz, 2000 nits, 2.4Ghz, 4MB of L3 cache, 2 RB+ (Render Backends).. Who cares? I can't find any videos that convince me the experience is good.

cde-v 4y ago
I’ve always heard magic leap referred to as the Theranos of VR
- 93po 4y ago
  That's just mean :)
systemvoltage 4y ago
I interviewed at Magic Leap in 2017 when it was a mysterious secret company. Flew down to Ft Lauderdale and interviewed for a whole day. At the end of the day was a demo of their product, an area with 20 feet curtains across from Rony’s glass office. They put a tethered headset and the rest is complete and utter awe. Magic Leap’s tech has mimics accommodation of a real human eye (‘accommodation’ is a technical term related to depth + scale perception). They put on two demos. First one was cyberpunk brass mosquito and another was to overlay the wall in front of me with a massive theater screen. I was totally blown away by the resolution and clarity. It was like AR but with 20% window tint. Magic Leap somehow mimics accommodation of your eyes so that a 50 ft theater screen looks not like a postage stamp, both occupy the same FOV in your vision, but actually make it feel like a 50 ft screen. It was unreal. I couldn’t publicly say these things because of NDA but I don't think they give a shit anymore after 5 years and I don’t either. Magic Leap’s failure was in manufacturing from what I’ve heard from other employees working there. They had set up a line at their Florida factory, buying an old Motorola facility, but it was really hard to mass manufacture optics at an affordable price. I was totally sold on the tech. I can see why Google invested $2B in Rony’s vision. I feel bad for them because they were so secretive and made huge bets on full stack: optics to headset to content. They wanted to go all in on production of exclusive content. Sort of like the PlayStation model - Take a loss on hardware. I saw a magical campus, full of animation posters and characters, kind of like visiting Pixar studios. I also feel bad for their employees. Others are calling it the Theranos of VR but unlike them, they didn’t hurt anyone and it was worth a shot. I went on the factory floor during the interview (only a small section where calibrated optics). I saw all the stuff. It was not malice; I blame their stupid PR team that propped up so much hype that expectations were out of control. Blame Rony for that but also when you have a tech like that, I can imagine the confidence that it brings. Just remember, stuff fails. Don’t get nasty about it. There were real genuine people working there; I didn’t get the job but it was totally the right thing to happen to me in retrospect. Just sad to see what shitty PR strategy does to public - Rony probably learned a few lessons from this. I wish them good luck with this enterprise/industrial pivot. I am thinking of buying a dev kit.

sva_ 4y ago

> Compute Performance - 3x Performance What does this mean? > Price - Starting from $3,299 So what's a use case justifying blowing that kind of money on this? I don't see how they will foster an active developer community with such a starting price

MrQuincle 4y ago
I think there's a use case for all kinds of price levels, but there's a sweet spot. Anecdotally. I bought a 3D printer when it dropped below 1000 bucks. I bought the Emotiv Epoc when at 300 bucks. I bought a Saleae logic analyser at the same price level if I remember correctly. Same with other tools or toys. The HackRF, the Kinect, the Quest, etc. The higher the price the more you'll have to explain to people how they can justify the costs. You'll have to explain how much personnel hours are being saved, etc. The more I'm in this space (of manufacturing electronic devices) the more I'm convinced Bill of Material (BOM) and in general Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) optimization is essential. Companies that can do this in a lean manner without excessive engineering costs to do so can truly drive the price down. If there is this operational excellence, then you can truly give most power to your strategists in the sales and marketing departments. Otherwise, they have no tradeoffs to consider and are just victims of sloppy (non-cost conscious) engineering.
1auralynn 4y ago
I actually was offered a free one by them, but because they would have given it as a 'gift' vs. an 'extended loan' I would have had to pay like $1k in taxes for it so I passed, knowing that I probably didn't have time to actually implement anything and that the market would be so small anyway (I had already tried one at a couple conferences).

LegitShady 4y ago

Load the page, tons of images of the device, none of what the device can render and how the results look. Based on their history my guess is overpriced and underwhelming.

sam1r 4y ago
Exactly, this. Instead, the primary call to action is "Where to buy"

sam1r 4y ago

I just cannot fathom how billions of dollars are spent into developing a product -- that is just marketed so poorly. The call on the landing page is "Where to buy." Buy what!?! There is not a single, cool, "everyday-relatable" use-case presented on the web announcement. I wish I could have a reason to purchase this. I'm craving just a single video or even GIF -- that depicts even the slightest, animated hint of what the interactive experience will be like -- if one were to put these MLs on.

spaceman_2020 4y ago
I’ve tried it at a friend’s place. It felt like an amusement park ride. You’ll say “wow!”, but there’s no reason to go back again.
javajosh 4y ago
I think they are marketing to dentists. Dentists can afford it. They are already quite technical, most of them. Most of them want to be "real" doctors and surgeons, like the ones shown in the marketing. And the stakes in dental operations are relatively low, so trying out new tech is relatively low stakes too. So they are thinking: at best, this will help my practice, at worst it's a fancy device my kids can inherit to play games. Against this hypothesis is the fact that dentists already use analog optical headgear, and this would prevent that. Also, it's not clear what software they would use to make their work better/easier. Anyway, a 1000 person company puts out an announcement like this for a reason - maybe to measure public interest to secure a new round of funding? Presumably they feel it's worth misleading people about availability in order to do that.
- peteradio 4y ago
  > Most of them want to be "real" doctors and surgeons, like the ones shown in the marketing. The missing link between real doctors and barbers: behold the dentist.
- the_d3f4ult 4y ago
  > "Most of them want to be "real" doctors and surgeons" I'm a doctor. No. They don't. Dentists make more money and work less. Their training is rigorous, but generally shorter. They don't take call, don't work weekends and don't have any emergencies.

qaq 4y ago

Waiting for pivot to cold fusion

theknocker 4y ago

mudrockbestgirl 4y ago

> Create innovative solutions for complex problems with the most immersive enterprise AR device So, uh, what is it? Have we figured out what to do yet after 10 years, 11 funding rounds, and billions of funding?

disqard 4y ago
The smartest people in the world attacked this question ("what do we use it for?") in the 90s, and nobody was able to come up with a killer app (as in, widely-applicable-once-mass-produced) then. I don't know what's fundamentally different this time, which is why I'm skeptical that the outcome will any different.

krenzo 4y ago

I'm a VR/AR developer, and here's my experience with trying to buy a Magic Leap 2 to check it out: See the PR announcement that they're shipping. Go to their web site. Click "Where to buy". Go to the first link to "Insight US". Place an order. Get a call from a representative to confirm the order. Ask the representative to clarify that Magic Leap 2 is in stock and shipping. They responded "yes." Wait a few days. Check on the status of my order: "Stock: 0", and the estimated ship date is just an automated date that increases by 3 whenever current date equals estimated ship date. Call up Insight US to ask is it in stock or not. They admit it's not in stock and won't be available until maybe December/January. Call up Magic Leap (they surprisingly have a phone line to call) and ask their sales representative if anyone has stock. They respond they don't know and to try the second supplier. Ask them what the supplier's phone number is to confirm stock. They say they don't know and that supplier only communicates through e-mail. Supplier responds via e-mail, "of course we have stock! Place an order to get an estimated ship date." I'm doubtful. So there you have it. Magic Leap 2 shipping now, maybe?

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
Reading that back, it sounds like a complete scam you might encounter from the lowest reaches of the web. For me, Magic Leap used up any good will by over promising and under-delivering on their initial release.
- classified 4y ago
  The number and quality of WTFs connected to the name Magic Leap is hilarious, I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole.
skerit 4y ago
This reminds me of my Eve Spectrum order experience.
1letterunixname 4y ago
Their go-to-market / sales channel management people need to get their act together if they wish not to become a very expensive failed startup. Can't have sales be an afterthought and business culture lacking fiscal discipline until the money runs out. IYAM, paradoxically, the more money is thrown at a project, the worse the returns because there's an atrophying of resourcefulness when there's not as much survival pressure.

spoonjim 4y ago

I’ve tried this on my face and it’s very cool. I can’t say there’s any mass market for it but it is not vaporware.

1letterunixname 4y ago

Oh damn. I want work to buy MagicLeap ASAP. VR is cute for gaming but AR is where it's at. (Our AR is pretty weak IYAM.) At lot of coin was thrown into making MagicLeap but it needs to be consumerized in scaled-down products that can sell. Combine something like Oculus and ML such that there's both AR and VR in one package that's essentially also a smartphone.

singularity2001 4y ago

Their mistake is shipping a whole computer with their display. It may still be successful in enterprise settings, but externalizing the CPU/GPU to an iphone would make this device so much cheaper.