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Inside Magic Leap

forbes.com

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Re: Inside Magic Leap

#121

Post by IanDrake »

bobsil1 wrote: post #113
IanDrake wrote: post #31

These guys might just be the WebVan of AR. Building a campus before you've sold V1 of your product? That's idiotic. Don't get me wrong, this could be incredibly cool in a vacuum. But reality often has different needs. I hope I'm wrong.

I think the factory is part of the campus. And they need a factory because the parts are custom.

And WebVan needed a distribution network and warehouses.

I'm not saying they're not making an awesome product. I'm saying it's possible not enough people will want to buy it in order to justify building a factory and campus.

It's not my money though and I've never seen the product. This is obviously a HUGE gamble that will either be a raging success or will become a joke about the follies of venture capital (i.e. WebVan 2.0).

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#122

Post by Nition »

MrQuincle wrote: post #66
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…

I was also disappointed by that statement. I would expect much more from the first applications. Let me try to be constructive and think of some: + To have a cat even if you can't feed it or clean up (elderly). + To find out how it is to have a baby, how to feed it, how to care for it. + Dating first with an avatar before going for the real deal. + Searching for things without having to open cabinets or boxes. + Colo…

All I really need personally is glasses that can show me text when I look at someone reminding me what their name is.

That Terminator tech - seamless glasses that let you assign and view little annotations on things.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#123

Post by awesomerobot »

BatFastard wrote: post #74
russdill wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been doing this for how many years? And sinking how much money into content development? How about developing an actual product?

Isn't this what you dream of as a developer, the budget to do things right? Rather then pushing a demo into an actual commercial product?

Yes and no, you want to have a ton of time tinkering in a lab and the room to experiment and fail... but who would know Edison if he didn't eventually ship the lightbulb?

Also considering how litigious/secretive things are — it must suck to work on something for so long and be contractually obligated to avoid talking about it in public.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#124

Post by mojomark »

bobsil1 wrote: post #111
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…

- Unlike VR, they don't have to render backgrounds - FOV is apparently their big advantage, along with focus zones - They could do hard occlusion with an LCD mask. Or they could punt til v2, and soft-occlude with blur using their stacked diffraction plates.

> - They could do hard occlusion with an LCD mask. Or they could punt til v2, and soft-occlude with blur using their stacked diffraction plates.

Unfortunately, you cannot easily achieve "hard occlusion" with an LCD mask. Pinlight display is a project that did explore that idea: http://pinlights.info

LCDs can attenuate individual rays of light. However, the images we see of real objects in our environment are generated from light in the form of planar wave fronts. So, if you have a near eye LCD micro display and you turn on a single LCD pixel in an attempt to block light emanating from a certain point on a real object, most of the light emanating from that point will simply go around the LCD pixel, enter the pupil and for a point on you retina. The total brightness of the image will dim a little dependant on the size of the LCD pixel, but not by much for a single microdisplay pixel (i.e. a few micron pitch).

The Pinlight papers do talk about ways around that issue, using LCD diffraction pattern masks, but I still think the residual diffraction and reduced overall lens transparency associated with the LCD micro display makes the approach an even bigger challenge.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#125

Post by lifeformed »

duderific wrote: post #76
MrQuincle wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also disappointed by that statement. I would expect much more from the first applications. Let me try to be constructive and think of some: + To have a cat even if you can't feed it or clean up (elderly). + To find out how it is to have a baby, how to feed it, how to care for it. + Dating first with an avatar before going for the real deal. + Searching for things without having to open cabinets or boxes. + Colo…

I don't want to live in a world with many of those features. I don't want my pets to talk to me, have my plants tell me they're thirsty, or go on a date with an avatar. And, as a parent of a two-year-old, trust me, no sort of application can let you find out how it is to have a baby. Maybe I'm just weird or old-fashioned.

Yeah, I want a cat so I can pet it, not look at it.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#126

Post by Retric »

criddell wrote: post #90
Retric wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you include 'hover-boards' these battery powered, two wheeled, self balancing, things sold over 2.5 million of the things in just the USA in 2015. So, it really is becoming increasingly widespread. You can see this as and extension of the skateboards vs scooters vertical stick argument. PS: For comparson 17.5 million cars where sold in 2015 and 12.5 million bikes with 20+" wheels.

I haven't seen a hover board since the spring.

There where safety/manufacturing issues and now patent issues.

http://mashable.com/2016/03/16/segway-hoverboard-patent/#ZFs...

Anyway, I think we are just seeing the hype / adoption cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle Basically, when nobody has X a lot of people get it all at once, but soon enough people have it and so they wait till the old one breaks before getting a replacement. Still if long terms sales stabilize at say 1 million units per year that's still significant.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#127

Post by bobsil1 »

mojomark wrote: post #124
bobsil1 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Unlike VR, they don't have to render backgrounds - FOV is apparently their big advantage, along with focus zones - They could do hard occlusion with an LCD mask. Or they could punt til v2, and soft-occlude with blur using their stacked diffraction plates.

> - They could do hard occlusion with an LCD mask. Or they could punt til v2, and soft-occlude with blur using their stacked diffraction plates. Unfortunately, you cannot easily achieve "hard occlusion" with an LCD mask. Pinlight display is a project that did explore that idea: http://pinlights.info LCDs can attenuate individual rays of light. However, the images we see of real objects in our environment are generate…

Depends on size of occluded area? If I block the sun with my thumb, some light does go around, but it's still a decently effective mask.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#128

Post by doczoidberg »

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

critical but not impossible to fix. I can't find it but Microsoft published a video some time ago to realize cheap VR/AR headsets which do rendering in the cloud

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#129

Post by bobsil1 »

IanDrake wrote: post #121
bobsil1 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the factory is part of the campus. And they need a factory because the parts are custom.

And WebVan needed a distribution network and warehouses. I'm not saying they're not making an awesome product. I'm saying it's possible not enough people will want to buy it in order to justify building a factory and campus. It's not my money though and I've never seen the product. This is obviously a HUGE gamble that will either be a raging success or will become a joke about the follies of venture capital (i.e. Web…

Some kind of AR will pretty clearly be a big wave (processing components shrinking, but input/output still human size, so they get virtualized).

The funds need to make big bets, this one looked good: best tech from UW prof, a founder who's sold a hardware co for >$1B before.

It depends very much on execution: polish, price, apps.

Re: Inside Magic Leap

#130

Post by jonplackett »

Does anyone know if it works the same as the hololens in that it is purely additive light - it can only make the image brighter rather than being able to make black pixels. This severely limits the kind of thing hololens will ever be able to do - it certainly isn't going to be replacing any screens.
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