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Inside Magic Leap

forbes.com

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Re: Inside Magic Leap

#91

Post by sulam »

ubercore wrote: post #19
simplemath wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We're going to make augmented reality everything ! Repair manuals, etc" Bullshit. You're going to model and diagram every part and repair guide from every production model vehicle ever? Magic Leap would need a software development industry unto itself to build the solutions being batted lightly about in the OP like pingpong balls

I'm skeptical too, but I could envision a path where this gets a lot of the work done at a tooling level. All these products will have CAD models behind them already, AutoCad and SolidWorks, et al, could introduce tooling to pump out the assets necessary for this at not-terrible levels of effort, couldn't they?

Back in the 90's when I was doing 3D on the web, we looked at this and the results weren't compelling. The models used for CAD/CAM aren't the same sort of thing you would want a GPU to try and render in a 3D scene. Just as one trivial example, none of them had normals so you'd need to do a lot of model cleanup simply to get them to render as a solid object.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#93

Post by Bartweiss »

VanillaCafe wrote: post #65
ajmarsh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume the GTX 1080 lives in the cloud. We shall see I guess.

Latency is also critical for VR and AR

Latency is critical-path for VR not just in existing solutions, but fundamentally. Speed-of-light delays are sufficient to cripple remote-processing approaches to VR, so we won't see cloud solutions unless we're wrong about the fundamentals of relativity.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#94

Post by dblock »

I've tried the Hololens dev version. It's very cool, unlike anything else I've had on my head. Those who let me try it don't seem to be overly worried or impressed with Magic Leap, but there's no way of telling until we see both side-by-side.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#95

Post by drzaiusapelord »

neuronexmachina wrote: post #83
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uploadvr demystified this stuff a couple years ago: http://uploadvr.com/magic-leap-how-it-works/ Magic leap is a pair of glasses you wear on your face that displays AR imagery through a clear glass lens. There's a cable leading from these glasses to your pocket where you have a tablet-size device doing all the heavy lifting, most likely using mobile SoC's. Pretty sure you can't run a desktop CPU and GPU on a pocketab…

How many years will it be until Pascal-like performance is available in a tablet form-factor?

Maybe never. Pascal is 16nm process and the mid-range gaming card, the 1070, uses up to 150 watts. A "powerful" mobile chipset uses a tiny fraction of that even at its highest settings. 100 watts for the CPU and another 150watts for the GPU is a staggering 250watts of continuous power no pocket-able lithium-ion battery can handle.

If we want current gen graphics we're more than likely looking at a PC backpack solution. More than likely we'll probably be looking at some low watt solution, like the 35W AMD chipset in the Solus Q and accept a lower level of graphic quality, but still well above mobile standards. This may involve wearing a battery belt or battery hip-pouch for extended use. For lower run times the battery can be part of the headstrap with no need for anything to be pocketable.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#96

Post by revelation »

sulam wrote: post #91
ubercore wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical too, but I could envision a path where this gets a lot of the work done at a tooling level. All these products will have CAD models behind them already, AutoCad and SolidWorks, et al, could introduce tooling to pump out the assets necessary for this at not-terrible levels of effort, couldn't they?

Back in the 90's when I was doing 3D on the web, we looked at this and the results weren't compelling. The models used for CAD/CAM aren't the same sort of thing you would want a GPU to try and render in a 3D scene. Just as one trivial example, none of them had normals so you'd need to do a lot of model cleanup simply to get them to render as a solid object.

Can't you just calculate the surface normals? What am I missing?

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#97

Post by Bartweiss »

jerf wrote: post #87
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't. The bandwidth wouldn't be enough.

Bandwidth is not the problem, latency is. Bandwidth can be fixed by throwing more bandwidth at the problem. Cloud gaming has not done all that well; it's right at the edge of feasibility due to latency. VR moves it back off the edge to "unquestionably infeasible". If VR gaming were to take off and become a dominant paradigm it would make cloud gaming even harder to justify.

Gaming and banking/trading are definitely the informative projects here.

Pseudo-real-time gaming is possible, but only for regional servers. Live global gaming is off the table permanently unless known physics changes; speed of light delays are larger than human reaction times. Right now, the best we can do is predictive techniques and continental servers, which have barely enabled MMO shooters.

VR gaming worsens the problem - 80ms delays in VR are nauseating and game-ruining. Global latency isn't a solvable problem via money or devotion.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#98

Post by revelation »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #80
wrsh07 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Carmack joining Oculus was a quick reason to think: "hm, this team has people who know how to get things done and launch." Maybe Magic Leap has the same types of engineers [does Graeme have the same reputation as hyper productive dev?], but there are reasons Carmack has this reputation [1]. And I've known and worked with people like this. People who are utterly relentless. Insanely productive. And honestly? I wo…

By the time Carmack joined the Oculus Rift's CV1 technology and design was mostly finished. Carmack is reportedly focused on Oculus's mobile offerings which we have yet to see or is indeed the Santa Cruz prototype which, if rumors are to believed, is a mobile SoC powered inside-out markerless VR headset. When I saw the SC prototype I instantly thought this is what Carmack must has been working on. Not shoving cellpho…

The history between Carmack and Oculus goes much further back and predates the company itself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift#Initial_prototypes

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#99

Post by Bartweiss »

6stringmerc wrote: post #10

So clearly the author is sympathetic to the aura that Magic Leap is cultivating through secrecy and selective media engagements: > When it arrives–best guess is within the next 18 months–it could usher in a new era of computing, a next-generation interface we’ll use for decades to come. ...which may be a pretty valid statement or sentiment overall, but later in the article, we get to the crux of the "potential" futur…

Aside from mis-valuing Magic Leap, these examples are completely implausible.

Ask Pixar how much time goes into draping a single VR garment on a single body. It's hard work, regardless of how good your imaging tech is. The ongoing hurdles are about modeling, based on cloth properties and personal anatomy. The margins on "try on at home" absolutely don't justify modeling every singly piece of clothing into a technically-accurate VR solution, and if you do anything less people will return your produce when it looks nothing like the VR visualization.

Asserting that a good VR technique will justify real-world modeling is downright stilly, and it leads me to ignore non-tech assessments of whether that project is worthwhile.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#100

Post by pfranz »

kimburgess wrote: post #89
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uploadvr demystified this stuff a couple years ago: http://uploadvr.com/magic-leap-how-it-works/ Magic leap is a pair of glasses you wear on your face that displays AR imagery through a clear glass lens. There's a cable leading from these glasses to your pocket where you have a tablet-size device doing all the heavy lifting, most likely using mobile SoC's. Pretty sure you can't run a desktop CPU and GPU on a pocketab…

One important differentiating factor between this and other (consumer) HMD's is the scanning display. The Oculus et al need to render a rectangular matrix of evenly spaced pixels. If you want a larger field of view or higher resolution this comes with an exponential increase in number of pixels. With a high frequency scanning display and eye tracking you are not locked to a static spatial resolution (see https://en.m…

Foveated rendering only became relevant when Nvidia recently started supporting Multi-Resolution Shading. As new techniques and tools like this get better support we can be a lot more efficient with lower powered hardware.

It was interesting to hear Carmack last year talk about re-introducing interlacing as a way to reduce latency.

Although, I'm just reinforcing what you're saying =)

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