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

51–60 of 176 posts

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

#51

Post by pfranz »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #27
evv wrote: post #5

Not surprising, given that the hype train was billowing at full steam. A friend of a friend interviewed there and eventually walked away saying "Wow. That is a lot of cool-aid" Meanwhile, teams like Oculus are reportedly trying to sidestep AR by investing in "mixed reality", which will bring live camera feeds in to VR, with screens still covering both eyes.

Interesting for sure, but from what I've hear from people using the Rift it's the fixed focus that gives them headaches. I know of a company that make cut scenes for A games, most of their people can't wear the Oculus for more than a few minutes. Big headaches, motion sickness, etc... Before you jump on me, this could be due to the stuff they are trying to show on the Rift -- would content make a difference? Sudden s…

I do vr projects for work occasionally and previously was in film when they were pushing stereo. Content makes a huge difference. On a flat screen the most dramatic space contrast is left-to-right, in stereo it's near to far. If you're exaggerating something you'd use those. It's way more fatiguing on your eyes to focus near to far, than left to right--it also takes like 10x as long for people to focus and recognize something that changes near-to-far.

FPS games are awful for VR when you move around with a joystick. Also, a lot of the "dramatic" things that get used to try and sell games make you dizzy. There's also some acclimation. They say devs are the worst subjects for testing of some vr demo will cause sickness.

I also think people underplay the motion sickness film and FPS video games can have on people who are unacclimated (FPS games didn't have big money pushing it in the early 90's and were on tiny, low res screens). I know I've felt motion sickness playing flight simulators and certain FPS games, especially at first. Movies like Blair Witch and Cloverfield were criticised for making people feel sick.

To address the focus problem, I've been wondering why there's not much talk about light fields for VR (maybe because of patents?).

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

#53

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#54

Post by badsock »

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…

How would that be different from an LCD, which is something they've presumably looked at and not used?

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

#55

Post by chrisseaton »

simcop2387 wrote: post #25
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…

A trick i've heard at least one of the VR devices is doing isn't re-rendering the entire scene but since most of the movement is just head tracking, it renders a larger buffer and scrolls around in that buffer between frames to get a quicker response.

That would only work if the scene was a single flat surface and you were only moving in parallel to it. If you were doing that you may as well not use VR and just look at a normal monitor. Otherwise it wouldn't match your motion, which is the problem you're trying to solve in the first place!

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

#56

Post by badsock »

Analemma_ wrote: post #10

Wow. So if Magic Leap is vaporware, does that leave Microsoft as the only ones publicly making progress in AR? Plenty of companies are shipping VR, but AR ends up being the future, HoloLens is building up quite a lead.

Not on the same scale, but castAR is definitely in the game.

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #40
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by cromwellian »

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.

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

#59

Post by cromwellian »

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.

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

#60

Post by sillysaurus3 »

badsock wrote: post #54
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…

How would that be different from an LCD, which is something they've presumably looked at and not used?

I don't know. It's similar. I wonder what the problems are with using it, then?

One idea that comes to mind is that a regular screen leaks light. If you adjust the brightness on your laptop as low as it will go, then display a black image, there's still a massive difference between what you see there vs when the screen is completely powered off. But if you take two sheets of polarizing filter and stick them in front of your screen, you can get almost perfect blackness. That's why I thought it was a different idea, since the difference is so dramatic. You can block almost all the light, whereas a regular screen doesn't seem to be able to get that kind of contrast.

Post reply on HN