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Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

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Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#101

Post by the_duke »

bredren wrote: post #70
cfontes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oculus Quest has been a major hit, do you have any info on facebook walking away from VR? I just don't think they are with the amount of work they are doing on the Oculus ecosystem atm.

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…

> VR represents a potential opportunity in the times of social distancing.

I always assumed that Facebook is playing the long game with VR, with the end goal being a re-imagined Second Life.

They need to wait until the technology is cheap/mature enough though, which is probably 5-10 years out.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#102

Post by qppo »

mattw815 wrote: post #73
gamegoblin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume they must have had a killer demo. 1. Put the goggles on some investor's head (in a normal looking room, but with known lighting and spatial properties...). 2. Show them some flashy demo that has some limitations, but promise that with their investment, they will be able to remove those limitations. 3. Investors, who probably lack the deep knowledge of optics to know that those limitations aren't so trivial,…

I've had the opportunity to demo their product on 3 different occasions. Each time it was a clunky interaction, stopped working in the middle of the demo, and I left thinking my kid's Playstation VR could run circles around their tech.

they allegedly had an insane demo for investors only, before around 2016 (at least that's when I heard of it) you needed to sign an NDA to even get in the room to see it.

The consumer product is quite lacking compared to what people said was a demonstration of game changing technology.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#103

Post by microtherion »

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #8

They're exploring a sale valued at $10B, but it's doubtful who would have the appetite to buy it at this valuation. Google declined a follow on round recently, Apple has been developing their own tech for years, and Facebook has quietly stepped away from AR/VR. Magic Leap is reminiscent of another company with "Magic" in its name: General Magic ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic ). They both made a product…

> They're exploring a sale valued at $10B, but it's doubtful who would have the appetite to buy it at this valuation.

One of the sentences in the article that leapt out at me from the article was "Magic Leap is one of the most well-capitalized consumer hardware startups ever, having raised more than $2.6 billion from investors":

* "most well-capitalized" sounds very awkward.

* How much they raised is hardly indicative of how well-capitalized they are at the moment (in the sense of runway), without knowing how much of it they spent already.

* The article makes it sound like huge investments are all upside. But they carry a significant downside as well, because all those investors wanting to see a return will significantly increase the price tag if the company wants to sell itself.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#104

Post by godzillabrennus »

adam_fallon_ wrote: post #75

I sort of always knew it was the job of VCs to hype up their portfolio, but i've never seen it as bare faced as when Benedict Evans was shilling Magic Leap saying things along the lines of "Magic Leap was the coolest thing I'd seen since the iPhone. It's now much cooler than that." and "I’ve had the Magic Leap demo. It was worth going to Florida for." Well that looks a bit silly now doesn't it.

Might turn out to be about as silly as believing in and investing in General Magic.

They may have failed but their impact is felt everywhere.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#105

Post by daeken »

tootie wrote: post #66
trollied wrote: post #24

Wow, they burned billions. Karl Guttag has blogged about them for years, debunking their technology. Hi blog is a good read for all things in the AR/VR space https://www.kguttag.com/

Their tech is actually pretty decent. It's as good as anything else on the market. Their biggest mistake has been setting sky high expectations and just not coming close. If you got a cold demo of Magic Leap you'd probably be blown away. If you watch their simulated demo from however many years ago, then try on the headset you'll be sorely disappointed.

> It's as good as anything else on the market.

I've owned and extensively tested nearly every AR device that's been on the market in the last 10 years. I can conclusively say: the Magic Leap is garbage for anything more than short-term entertainment. Between the extremely dim visuals, the horrible rainbow effects on every bit of text you display, and the awful resolution, it's not just bad for anything other than games; it's nigh unusable.

If I could go back and stop myself from spending the money on an ML1, I absolutely, without question would do so.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#106

Post by Rochetshipz »

strangeloops85 wrote: post #28
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #8

They're exploring a sale valued at $10B, but it's doubtful who would have the appetite to buy it at this valuation. Google declined a follow on round recently, Apple has been developing their own tech for years, and Facebook has quietly stepped away from AR/VR. Magic Leap is reminiscent of another company with "Magic" in its name: General Magic ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic ). They both made a product…

Not sure if Facebook is stepping away from AR/VR. Oculus/ Facebook reality labs is still hiring plenty of folks in the optics/ photonics world.. even making announcements over the last week on open positions.

This is an uninformed opinion yeah. Facebook is recruiting HEAVILY and appears to have the published state-of-the-art research in the field. They also recently acquired a hot startup in the field, Scape based in London, and kickstarted Facebook Reality Labs in London which is hiring. They are also hiring in Seattle.

If someone wants to look how Microsoft is also doing from a engineering PoV, watch this cool video from Marc Pollefys from ETH Zurich/Microsoft. It was made for a technical-minded scene and shows the behind-the-scene, some potential issues (privacy) and where it is going next https://vimeo.com/380218937

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#107

Post by wpietri »

adam_fallon_ wrote: post #75

I sort of always knew it was the job of VCs to hype up their portfolio, but i've never seen it as bare faced as when Benedict Evans was shilling Magic Leap saying things along the lines of "Magic Leap was the coolest thing I'd seen since the iPhone. It's now much cooler than that." and "I’ve had the Magic Leap demo. It was worth going to Florida for." Well that looks a bit silly now doesn't it.

I don't trust Evans at all, but I'm going to partially defend that here. There's a long history of technology being absolutely amazing the first time you use it and then not mattering at all. E.g., the Segway was going to revolutionize transport.

The 3D space is particularly prone to this. I count at least 5 waves of 3D innovation going back to the Great Exhibition in 1851. 3D movies were going to revolutionize things twice, in the 1950s and a decade ago. Over and over, this stuff is absolutely amazing for a hot minute and then nobody cares.

Of course, Evans is sold as a brilliant pundit and now VC genius, so if anybody should understand that novelty doesn't equal a business model, it's him. But as you suggest, Upton Sinclair's quote applies here: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it."

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#108

Post by qppo »

duxup wrote: post #81

The sheer volume of cash and talent thrown into something that hadn't yet found a market is sort of amazing / seemed like a huge amount of cart before the horse. It seems generally like they decided to do X, Y, Z but needed to invent A, B, C before they could get there, let alone know if anyone wanted X, Y, Z.....

I don't want to doxx myself so I'm intentionally leaving out details, and you can take this comment as rumor and baseless.

But based on the people I know (personally) who work there - there wasn't a lot of talent being thrown at the product. I think their organization is incapable of bringing a product to market, even if that market existed.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#109

Post by tmh79 »

slg wrote: post #2

Does this officially place the Magic Leap's consumer device on the list of the biggest vaporware products in the history of the tech industry? I don't know whether there was some tech hurdle they could never get over or if they were just straight up selling a fantasy from the beginning, but this result has seemed to be the likely destination for years.

They weren't selling a fantasy, they were selling real tech. Their block has been "consumerizing" it.

My understanding (from sources who have experienced the demo) is that their first demo was BONKERS. They projected light right onto the users eyes, so instead of having a AR heads up display, you had a light beam projecting images into your eye so they could add elements into your field of vision and make it look like they were naturally there. The issue is that they couldn't get that demo into any sort of a state where it could be commercialized. The rig was the size of a large room, the person hooked in was basically required to be stable for the duration of the experience. The eye-tracking for projecting was difficult and worked alright but not 100%. The funding they received was based on the demo of tech. After they realized they wouldn't be able to commercialize it, they transitioned to a more classic AR setup. The magic leap tech will work, but it will be 10-20 years until we are able to use it.

Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans

#110

Post by leeoniya »

gonehome wrote: post #88
adam_fallon_ wrote: post #75

I sort of always knew it was the job of VCs to hype up their portfolio, but i've never seen it as bare faced as when Benedict Evans was shilling Magic Leap saying things along the lines of "Magic Leap was the coolest thing I'd seen since the iPhone. It's now much cooler than that." and "I’ve had the Magic Leap demo. It was worth going to Florida for." Well that looks a bit silly now doesn't it.

Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping. I think they couldn’t get it to a place where it could be small enough to be useful? Hopefully when Apple ships AR hardware for real it’ll be what it should be. Magic leap will be kind of like General Magic or the creative nomad jukebox - right idea but too early with hard…

> Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping.

i think that technology was CGI:

https://hothardware.com/news/magic-leap-admits-outrageous-au...

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