I saw an AR demo earlier this week using a google cardboard type setup with a phone screen and it was fairly compelling already.
Based on this cheap setup I'm confident we'll see something mind blowing in the near future.
Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping
101–110 of 144 posts
Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can confirm. Work there now. Major leadership failures across the board. Engineering talent is mostly there. The "wrong team" starts at the C-level. Looking for an out in FL now -- finding it very hard to maintain salary. May move back to west coast, but not quite ready for that yet.
Are they at least paying you a Bay Area dev salary? Curious if they used retention bonuses with a big cliff? I for one will never take a job with a vesting cliff if I can help it.
A 4 year vesting with a 1 year cliff is standard, is that not what you're referring to?
Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
But one wonders why there has yet to be an exodus of talent from Magic Leap. I suspect the work is interesting for the engineers but nobody has the heart to tell the C level execs that what they are trying to sell the public is bullshit.
>But one wonders why there has yet to be an exodus of talent from Magic Leap. Was there ever an ingress of talent in the first place? I haven't seen a single technical blog, white paper, conference talk, or anything else of any substance from their engineering department. Every time I see them at a trade show it is nothing but marketing folks with zero technical information. Who is even really working on this?
They don't toot their technical horn, they go for more of the Hollywood flair (they work closely with weta workshop, the guys behind props and CG in Lord of the Rings/District 9 for example). I know some excellent technical people working there, but that side of things is very hush hush.
Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping
#104I believe that will be a lot of frustation when they finally launch something. But I dont believe that Microsoft Hololens has "fallen short" as they say. I believe the Hololens demo was great and transparent on how the tech is, how it shows, what it takes to produce. Not a "magical" new sci-fi world made real, but definitely more close to reality than flying cara.
Are you joking? Just watch the Hololens announcement trailer [1] and tell me it's as good as that. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aThCr0PsyuA
Nothing looks at all like that when actually using the Hololens.
Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping
#105I think what's missing from this discussion is the demo is apparently really, really good. Google didn't put ~$500m, and Alibaba something like $800m, just on a whim, or some investment thesis. And everyone I've spoken to who's gotten the demo is a believer. I think this article suffers from an overly binary view of technology -- if it isn't market ready, it's vaporware. No, there's probably some real tech there (afo…
> Also, with ~$1.4 bn raised, they're too big to fail.
So many companies have raised hundreds of millions/billions of dollars and then either completely blew up or became a shell of their former selves. Nothing is too big to fail, and that mentality is toxic.
Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping
#106The author of this article needs to try Hololens. The technology is definitely here.
HoloLens is being pushed with much of the same rigged demos. As a review from a few days ago mentioned-
"Maybe Microsoft is saving all the wow factor for its keynotes, but my demo was a less refined and less capable version of what we've seen in on-stage demos. My experience, while impressive, felt like child's play AR compared to what's been in Microsoft's keynotes."
Microsoft unveiled it well over a year ago, and still when people can actually try the device the demos are a fraction of the myth presented in their keynote. And of course these things always rely upon the development of technology, but we often get 80% and think the last 20% is the easy part when really it's the extraordinarily difficult barrier between realistically credible and a toy.
The projection technology (the field refraction grid) is very interesting, and the environment mapping is fantastic, but the resolution of the device makes the demos farce out of the gate -- the total overlay resolution is 1268x720 max (in most realistic scenes much less), so when you see someone demo something like a web browser in their AR display, if you ever see the demo it's just entirely unusable (far too low of a resolution) unless you move directly in front of the projection occupying the majority of your FOV, at which point what is the point.
The technology will improve, obviously, but right now it definitely falls in the category of gimmick to me, with several generations before it's remotely as usable as being pitched.
Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping
#107They have some interesting, cool tech. It may not be miniaturizable (or it may be, dunno). But the hype about them is way too big. They have essentially put themselves in very tough spot.
Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortunately Microsoft is not only working on the same thing but already has a shipping product, so even if Magic Leap goes under I don't think it's going to take AR with it.
The Hololens was pretty crappy, though. The Oculus is a much more refined experience, and even there it's not clear that it's good enough to step out of novelty into mass market. I'd say Oculus is close, and Hololens has a very long way to go.
Actually, if you had a drone with a mountedprojector, wouldnt this be a more convenient path?
Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Hololens was pretty crappy, though. The Oculus is a much more refined experience, and even there it's not clear that it's good enough to step out of novelty into mass market. I'd say Oculus is close, and Hololens has a very long way to go.
Actually, if you had a drone with a mountedprojector, wouldnt this be a more convenient path? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_retinal_display
Are you suggesting that the drone would project into your eye? What would be the advantage of that over wearing a mounted headset? Not saying it's a bad idea, I just don't really get the advantage, and it seems like there'd be some disadvantages (especially the annoying noise).
Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping
#110Sounds like Magic Leap is making the same prelaunch communication errors than Hello Games did with No Man's Sky : creating high expectations without showing much, which causes expectation to build up when people imagination feels the gaps, and cause backslash in the shape of frustrations. But to be fair, author does the exact same thing than he is accusing Magic Leap of : making claims without displaying anything to…
What do you mean by errors? They both get to keep all the money = win.