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Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

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Re: Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

#41

Post by munchbunny »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #27
evv wrote: post #5

Not surprising, given that the hype train was billowing at full steam. A friend of a friend interviewed there and eventually walked away saying "Wow. That is a lot of cool-aid" Meanwhile, teams like Oculus are reportedly trying to sidestep AR by investing in "mixed reality", which will bring live camera feeds in to VR, with screens still covering both eyes.

Interesting for sure, but from what I've hear from people using the Rift it's the fixed focus that gives them headaches. I know of a company that make cut scenes for A games, most of their people can't wear the Oculus for more than a few minutes. Big headaches, motion sickness, etc... Before you jump on me, this could be due to the stuff they are trying to show on the Rift -- would content make a difference? Sudden s…

It's a mix of a few things.

First there's plain old motion sickness. The first time I flew in Elite Dangerous in VR, I tried swooping into a landing pad slot. It was a maneuver I could do ok autopilot from playing in a flat screen, but when I pitched up hard, my stomach dropped. My body was expecting G's it just wasn't feeling. I had to take the Rift off and take some deep breaths to ward off the nausea. I don't usually get motion sickness. I can read on shaky busses with no problems.

Second is simulator sickness, which I think comes from latency and resolution issues? This also hits people differently. I have friends who can only do minutes with the Rift on. I can last as long as my face can take the pressure of the headset, meaning an hour or two at a time.

All in all, yeah, some people just won't be able to handle cutrent gen VR for various reasons.

Re: Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

#43

Post by blahblah12 »

pj_mukh wrote: post #36
Analemma_ wrote: post #10

Wow. So if Magic Leap is vaporware, does that leave Microsoft as the only ones publicly making progress in AR? Plenty of companies are shipping VR, but AR ends up being the future, HoloLens is building up quite a lead.

"Magic Leap is vaporware" Where are you getting that? The article seems to imply that feature to feature they are matching the Hololens and that is the worst case scenario. Edit: On second thought you maybe meeting the exact definition of Vaporware in that they are not manufacturing it yet[1]. No indication that they won't be able to though. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware

The fact that they're still far away from getting to market . . . . Their platform strat of making devs work in seattle/sf and timeshare the devices . . . makes it seem as if they're going to fail super hard. Hololens is clearly out front. The device itself is really impressive. And I imagine V2 of the hardware is coming soon. Wait for more credible players to enter the space for real competition.

Re: Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

#44

Post by code-monkey »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #24
kevinburke wrote: post #8

So VR is hard enough - to avoid jitter that makes users feel sick you have to respond to a user's head movement, render a new frame with the new information the user should see, respond to any button presses, then draw the frame, in under 14-20ms. Magic Leap was always a much more difficult problem... they have to respond to a user's head movement, parse the scene the user is looking at (which could be anything), fig…

So VR is hard enough - to avoid jitter that makes users feel sick you have to respond to a user's head movement, render a new frame with the new information the user should see, respond to any button presses, then draw the frame, in under 14-20ms. A bit of a tangent, but: for some people, it's impossible for VR to avoid making them feel sick. It's fundamental to them wearing a VR headset rather than a technical chall…

Technically this would be possible to overcome with a light field display. Light field displays are currently very far off from becoming commercially viable.

Re: Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

#45

Post by guycook »

> But at least one of these videos — showing an alien invader game that let the wearer of the supposed headset or glasses make use of real-world objects — was created by visual effects studio Weta Workshop. Prior to today, it was believed Weta had simply created the visual assets for the game. However, The Information reveals the entire video was created by the studio.

Was this ever really in doubt? You don't have to be a physicist or AR expert to note that throughout the video they occlude bright background colours with dark AR elements - somehow projecting 'black light'. Whilst I wouldn't expect the man on the street to pick this up it would be nice if journalists about to pen a breathless puff piece would at least give the subject matter 30 seconds of consideration.

Re: Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

#46

Post by Ph0X »

Animats wrote: post #40
kevinburke wrote: post #8

So VR is hard enough - to avoid jitter that makes users feel sick you have to respond to a user's head movement, render a new frame with the new information the user should see, respond to any button presses, then draw the frame, in under 14-20ms. Magic Leap was always a much more difficult problem... they have to respond to a user's head movement, parse the scene the user is looking at (which could be anything), fig…

That's not the big unsolved problem with augmented reality. Those are all problems VR systems can already solve with enough money and transistors behind them. The AR big problem is displaying dark. You can put bright things on the display, but not dark ones. Microsoft demos their VR systems only in environments with carefully controlled dim lighting. The same is true of Meta. Laster just puts a dimming filter in fron…

The part that's surprising to me is how instantly popular of a startup it became with so little information. Was this "demo" they gave so damn good that all the investors (some really reputable ones such as Google) started throwing money at it, without doing their research to see how real it was?

Sounds very suspicious to me.

Re: Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

#47

Post by hoodoof »

I don't want my living room as the backdrop for games - it's kind of a mess at the moment.

I want to be taken OUT of the real world to a virtual world.

Seems a dumb idea to be displaying stuff onto my living room.

Outside things, maybe that different - as Pokemon go has proven.

Re: Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

#48

Post by aub3bhat »

Having used Microsoft HoloLens for more than a month. Microsoft is doing a disservice to a great product by dropping the ball on HoloLens compatible games & software. It has potential to greatly transform gaming. It ought to start dropping the price and releasing more titles.

Re: Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

#49

Post by sillysaurus3 »

Animats wrote: post #40
kevinburke wrote: post #8

So VR is hard enough - to avoid jitter that makes users feel sick you have to respond to a user's head movement, render a new frame with the new information the user should see, respond to any button presses, then draw the frame, in under 14-20ms. Magic Leap was always a much more difficult problem... they have to respond to a user's head movement, parse the scene the user is looking at (which could be anything), fig…

That's not the big unsolved problem with augmented reality. Those are all problems VR systems can already solve with enough money and transistors behind them. The AR big problem is displaying dark. You can put bright things on the display, but not dark ones. Microsoft demos their VR systems only in environments with carefully controlled dim lighting. The same is true of Meta. Laster just puts a dimming filter in fron…

The AR big problem is displaying dark. You can put bright things on the display, but not dark ones.

There is actually a solution (EDIT: nope, see replies), but it's tricky: If you stack two sheets of polarizing filters on top of each other, then rotate them, you can get them to pass all light at 0 degrees rotation and block all light at 90 degrees rotation. It's like special paper that adjusts brightness depending on how much it's rotated relative to the sheet of paper behind it. https://www.amazon.com/Educational-Innovations-Polarizing-Fi...

So you could imagine cutting a series of circular polarizing filters and using them as "pixels". If you had a grid of 800x600 of these tiny filters, and a way to control them at 60 fps, you'd have a very convincing way of "displaying dark" in real time.

It'd require some difficult R&D to be viable. Controlling 800x600 = 480,000 tiny surfaces at 60fps would take some clever mechanics, to put it mildly. Maybe it won't ever be viable, but at least there's theoretically a way to do this.

A minor problem with this approach is that the polarizing filter may affect the colors behind it. But humans are very good at adapting to a constant color overlay, so it might not be an issue.

Re: Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

#50

Post by Jerry2 »

Karl Guttag, one of the MagicLeap critics and analysts has an interesting update on what he thinks ML will actually release [0]. The product they might release is actually different from what all the hype has been about: LCOS Microdisplay, two sequential focus planes, Variable Focus, photonics Chip.

[0]: http://www.kguttag.com/2016/12/06/magic-leap-when-reality-hi...

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