Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

Post by bsanr2 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

npunt wrote: post #261

Magic Leap made one of the classic mistakes that other before-their-time products make: they tried to create a general purpose product because they didn't have a killer app that could focus their efforts. When you're building a product without a focused use case, you are pulled in a ton of different directions. In AR, this means focusing on fidelity , embodied in high resolution, wide field of view visuals, powerful…

Post by Agenttin » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

gfxgirl wrote: post #370

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oculus Quest and its 3 year old mobile chipset would like to disagree. People pay for a good experience.

The Quest is underpowered to run any of the truly compelling VR experiences. You can't play Half Life Alex on a Quest, nor No Man's Sky, Boneworks, SkyRim, Lone Echo, etc.... You basically get a 3 or 4 mobile class experiences and then you're done. Yes you can use the link, but then you need an NVidia 1650 RTX or better which means you're a high end gamer already and so were not this supposed "mass market" PSVR is st…

Post by janekm » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

stripline wrote: post #420

janekm wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that very unlikely. Pedestrian navigation isn't exactly a major use case for most people and is pretty well covered by phones and smartwatches already. Could have been useful for food delivery drivers (cyclists), but then we're right back into specialist markets.

I disagree. You could make the same argument that texting and phone calls are handled by smartphones, so why need the apple watch? I personally hate looking down at my phone to navigate while walking around in an unfamiliar city.

Post by wpietri » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #154

wpietri wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But nothing about the crisis changes fundamentals negatively for at-home entertainment. Covid-19 is a convenient excuse here. > Did they really raise that much money without a concrete go-to-market strategy? I'm sure they had a nominal strategy. But if you take the anthropologist-from-Mars perspective on Magic Leap, it looks like their real business was selling feelings of excitement to investors. This is a common ph…

Living off the money of "believer" investors seems to be a tried and true tech business strategy. Why sell hard tech to lots of customers when you can sell dreams to a handful of rich investors? One can argue that Silicon Valley is simply an enormous apparatus for transferring wealth from investors to landlords by way of tech employees.

Post by bredren » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #145

bredren wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a quick survey of posts in /r/virtualreality revealed this thread [1] asking about a "missing" media blitz on the Quest. The reaction was that the demand for the device so outpaces supply Facebook shouldn't advertise it. But the OP points out something I hadn't though of, which is that VR represents a potential opportunity in the times of social distancing. If Coronavirus becomes like the normal flu, where seaso…

> If Coronavirus becomes like the normal flu, where seasonal vaccines offer only partial coverage[2]--social distancing will become something people get very good at and want to maximize the bounds of experience in. There's no way that social distancing or shelter in place becomes a seasonal norm of any kind. Maybe some people will wear masks more often and we'll shake hands less. That's about it.