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

161–170 of 176 posts

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

#161

Post by Animats »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #154
shpx wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

No, they're just putting out enough light to override the background, then showing dimmer areas for black. If they have a display with enough intensity and dynamic range, they can pull this off. Eye contrast is local, not absolute, so this works within the dynamic range of the human eye.

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

#162

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Animats wrote: post #161
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, they're just putting out enough light to override the background, then showing dimmer areas for black. If they have a display with enough intensity and dynamic range, they can pull this off. Eye contrast is local, not absolute, so this works within the dynamic range of the human eye.

No, they're just putting out enough light to override the background, then showing dimmer areas for black

Right, that's how all existing HMD systems work - but generally not with the whole FOV re-rendered so it's not so cut and dry.

Note that such a system doesn't give you black ever. It gives you muddy [insert lens color on the grey spectrum].

The case you describe ends up with what is practically an opaque lens that is replicating the environment that is not virtual. So you might as well just use VR with camera pass through at that point.

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

#164

Post by AstralStorm »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #49
Animats wrote: 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…

You mean a TN LCD screen? They work exactly like this, using liquid crystal to change polarisation angle. Pretty much every LCD ever.

It can give pure black if the polarising plates and liquid crystal is accurate enough.

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

#165

Post by AstralStorm »

tedsanders wrote: post #65
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…

The problem with that solution is optical, I believe. It would work if you were able to put such a filter directly on your retina, but when you put it earlier in the path of the light, before images are focused, you cannot selectively block individual pixels as they appear on your retina. As a result, the dark spots will look blurry. (Also, if the pixels are dense enough I imagine you'll get diffraction.) Here's is M…

The answer is a higher resolution screen plus some clever adaptive optics and software. The problem is that even 8k screens do not come close to required resolution... And you also want fast refresh rate.

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

#166

Post by AstralStorm »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #81
Animats wrote: 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 What about those windows where, at a press of a button, they turn relatively opaque?

They are called LCD screens. The problem is having a high resolution one. (focus problems can be solved with adaptive optics and measuring via IR laser refraction index of the lens)

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

#167

Post by AstralStorm »

chris_va wrote: post #64
code-monkey wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You could approximate this using a standard display if you could dynamically track and respond to focal depth. That might be harder than getting a functional light field display, though.

Much easier, we have the tech in ophthalmology and adaptive lenses that are used in cellphone cameras.

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

#168

Post by AstralStorm »

rsp1984 wrote: post #139
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…

The problem is even worse. In VR you're competing on latency with human muscle feedback and what your vestibular system is telling you. In AR, you're competing with on latency with the human visual system that you're trying to augment, which is a race you can't win. The only thing you can do is try to be very fast ( everything in your vision path optimized for latency. Fun R&D project but enormously time- and capital…

AR though leaves much less of a problem with simulator sickness because normal vestibular system and motion perception is used elsewhere.

VR is a much tougher nut to crack.

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

#169

Post by AstralStorm »

jobigoud wrote: post #130
cromwellian wrote: post #58

It's not surprising because they are not basing it on any traditional widely manufactured components. It would be as if you promise to ship flat panel displays before LCD production lines have even been created and LCD only existed in the labs. So, either it's a scam, or, they legitimately plan to create a new industry which requires multiple years capital investment to get production off the ground.

But you could build a $30K prototype and show it to investors, saying that the cost would go down when mass production ramps up.

And then not deliver on the pie in the sky promise, or delay long enough that somebody spray solves the issues. Also known as a scam.

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

#170

Post by pixelcloud »

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.

Otto
Post reply on HN