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Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

theverge.com

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

#101
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do vr projects for work occasionally and previously was in film when they were pushing stereo. Content makes a huge difference. On a flat screen the most dramatic space contrast is left-to-right, in stereo it's near to far. If you're exaggerating something you'd use those. It's way more fatiguing on your eyes to focus near to far, than left to right--it also takes like 10x as long for people to focus and recognize…

I don't know anything about this topic, but there was a demo/paper at SIGGRAPH 2015 of a light-field HMD. It was a pretty popular booth, for what that's worth: http://www.computationalimaging.org/publications/the-light-f...

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

#102

Hmm interesting. So the article makes it sound like one of their faked videos was used to bring in software developers but if they come in and it's simply not working anywhere near the level shown, wouldn't that seem suspicious? I don't think this necessarily means the company is a scam or anything like that but it seems a little...suspect at least to me if I was interviewing with them. Curious if the community has a…

I can't help but have similar feelings about this, and I think your question about whether "the community has an issue with it" is especially pertinent.

Many journalists and internet pundits suggest that Magic Leap's technology was obviously over-hyped. See for example the title of The Verge's article. Adding further evidence that it was too good to be true, they used faked videos to attract software developers, as you have pointed out.

So how is it that Google, Alibaba, and Andreessen Horowitz were convinced to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars each to this company? Was it fraud, over-promising on behalf of Magic Leap's founders, or could these huge VC firms not see what everyone else could see? Is it really that easy to secure a billion dollars in funding? The question as to "what's going on here" relates as much to the startup / VC community as it does to Magic Leap.

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

#103
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"We made black with light. That's not possible, but it was two artists on the team that thought about the problem, and all of our physicists and engineers are like "well you can't make black, it's not possible." but they forgot that what we're doing - you know the whole world that you experience is actually happening in [the brain], and [the brain] can make anything." - Rony Abovitz in 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmHSIEx69TQ&feature=youtu.be...

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

#104
What is troubling about AR/MR which I feel a lot of people overlook is the limited FOV. From the demo videos shown by Magic Leap (and Hololens) on YouTube it feels as if the entire FOV is available, which is barely the case - the Hololens has an FOV of 120x120 and Magic Leap is said to have a lower angle than that. Verge covered Hololens and they mention [1] the FOV as a limitation.

1: https://youtu.be/4p0BDw4VHNo?t=3m

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

#105
post #80

Jeez this sucks. I was always behind Magic Leap with the logic that "big investors like a16z google alibaba wouldn't get suckered" but god, :( this is disappointing.

> I was always behind Magic Leap with the logic that "big investors like a16z google alibaba wouldn't get suckered" Here's a few clarifications that might change your thinking about funding announcements. Google Ventures passed on Magic Leap. Google Capital passed on Magic Leap. Sergey was enamored so Google's own balance sheet provided most of the B round. Word is that A16Z put only $3MM in -- basically enough to ge…

This is very interesting. Do you have a source on this? I can't find anything online.

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

#106
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would that be different from an LCD, which is something they've presumably looked at and not used?

I was thinking the exact same thing.

Anyone seen a TFT "filter" mounted on the front of a transparent OLED "backlight"?

Yes I'm sure they must have thought of it. Wonder what the issue is.

[edit] I read the explanation further down now

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

#107
post #95

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…

I worked on Hololens stuff at Microsoft. It does everything you describe, and IMO does it really well. It's fairly light and is wireless. The tracking is excellent. A lot of the scene parsing is done in special hardware, with low latency. It updates a persistent model of the environment, so it isn't rebuilding everything every frame.

Any particular reason you stopped working on it?

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

#108
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be fine to post some :) These things often come in clusters, though we usually penalize posts that are from a string of copycat or follow-up posts that don't add new information. I have the impression that this one does, though, albeit cribbed from a better source.

I'm not complaining. I just found it curious.

Oh good. I fear my neurons have developed complaint-shaped receptors.

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

#109
post #47

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.

Has Pokemon Go really?

The "AR" is extremely limit and I strongly suspect most players turn it off, other than to get occasional brag/joke photos.

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

#110

The whole thing sounds rather similar to everyone's favourite black turtleneck wearing entrepreneur.

Sounds like the opposite.

All of Apple's most successful products were developed mainly rumour-free (and certainly hype-free) behind closed doors, popping suddenly into the world at WWDC or similar.

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