Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Magic Leap’s technology may be years away from completion

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 176 posts

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

#151

Post by obj-g »

guycook wrote: post #45

> 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…

Yeah, it's funny how they think they got some scoop here. It was obviously a concept video. Totally obvious, and not just from what you mentioned, just the look and feel of the whole thing in general.

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

#152

Post by obj-g »

pavlov wrote: post #147
Tosh108 wrote: post #146

Interesting to see that everyone here is so eager to assume that the article is right. The article might be right, but it's also just gossip.

The Information is a highly respected source, and the story was written by Reed Albergotti: https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/reed-albergotti It's investigative journalism, not gossip.

Maybe, but it's still full of speculation.

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

#153

Post by xkcd-sucks »

gech wrote: post #96
ryanSrich wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially considering the nightmare of a funding climate we have. Those demos must have been truly life altering to warrant the $500m in investment. Profitable startups with hockey stick like growth can't even raise a couple million...damn.

Why is this post greyed out? Did people downvote it? Is not a reasonable question to ask why capital is wasted?

Perhaps growth just isn't a great metric for future growth. For example, tons of food-delivery and pet-product startups have exponential growth early on and evaporate a bit later when the product ceases to be sold at cost and a newer competitor appears.

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

#154

Post by AndrewKemendo »

shpx wrote: post #103
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #49

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…

"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/w…

That was a nauseatingly obtuse way to say "We're trying to create a standing wave on the retina."

That approach is devastatingly hard, but probably the best way to do it.

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

#155

Post by scott_karana »

danieltillett wrote: post #120
scott_karana wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wasn't referring to Steve, but the CEO of a far more recent fallen unicorn.

Gotcha. Thanks for the correction

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

#156

Post by obj-g »

RangerScience wrote: post #138
RangerScience wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that level of black is a good thing for AR. If you can't distinguish the augmentation from reality, I'd argue that's a bad thing.

Let me be clearer: Being able to show black is super important for AR. For one thing, it's a pain in the ass to read text on a transparent HMD , because you never know what colors will be behind the letters. You can make some educated guesses, and put up your own background colors for the text, but since everything has opacity, it'll always matter what's physically behind the "hologram" . Yes, yes, it's still not a h…

And that would necessarily be bad?

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

#157

Post by pfranz »

renox wrote: post #134
pfranz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works for very, very minimal differences. It's the Oculus that does this. It guesses where your head will be, renders the scene at that location, and distorts the image slightly to match its guess vs reality. It also introduces a bit of softness, but seems to work pretty well. But it does re-render the whole image each frame.

>It's the Oculus that does this. And the PS no? I think that all the VR system will (optionally) do this to reduce the processing power needed.

I have no idea about the PSVR. It's probably the VR device I've heard the least about (technically). I own one, and it works pretty well, but I don't know much about it.

From my understanding this won't do anything to reduce power processing, it's all about reducing latency. That final transform happens at the last moment, with the most up-to-date head tracking information. I kind of figured it happened in the headset hardware itself in order to reduce the latency as much as possible.

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

#158

Post by Animats »

RangerScience wrote: post #138
RangerScience wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that level of black is a good thing for AR. If you can't distinguish the augmentation from reality, I'd argue that's a bad thing.

Let me be clearer: Being able to show black is super important for AR. For one thing, it's a pain in the ass to read text on a transparent HMD , because you never know what colors will be behind the letters. You can make some educated guesses, and put up your own background colors for the text, but since everything has opacity, it'll always matter what's physically behind the "hologram" . Yes, yes, it's still not a h…

Right. Pictures of what people see through the goggles seem to be either carefully posed against dark backgrounds (Meta [1]) or totally fake (Magic Leap[2], Microsoft[3]) It's amazingly difficult to find honest through-the-lens pictures of what the user sees. When you do, they're disappointing.

[1] http://media.bestofmicro.com/V/H/563597/original/Meta-Collab... [2] http://www.roadtovr.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/magic-lea... [3] https://winblogs.azureedge.net/devices/2016/02/MSHoloLens_Mi...

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

#159

Post by MorePowerToYou »

temuze wrote: post #77

Can anyone name a company that raised significant money pre-launch in a party round and that turned out okay? Color, Clinkle, Theranos, Magic Leap... they all have that in common. I'd be interested if there are counter examples.

Don't forget about uBeam! https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/16/05/14/1548248/former-em...

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

#160

Post by pavlov »

obj-g wrote: post #152
pavlov wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Information is a highly respected source, and the story was written by Reed Albergotti: https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/reed-albergotti It's investigative journalism, not gossip.

Maybe, but it's still full of speculation.

Everything in The Information's article seems sourced to me. Some of the sources are "former employees" or similarly vague, but the reporter had an actual demonstration of Magic Leap's latest and greatest.
Post reply on HN