Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes • Hacker News Board

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#51

Post by AndrewKemendo » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

QAPereo wrote: post #49

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your links: The hardware is yet to be revealed (but it'll presumably use a headset) they waved away the fact that reducing it down to a wearable pair of glasses and an affordable computer was far from inevitable. The truth is that Magic Leap cannot get its huge prototype working in a much, much smaller version. Nobody who knows anything about AR ever thought it was anything but some form of glasses.

I would argue that the number of people who know much about the technical side of this is less than a rounding error against the population who watched that demo. Edit: Given the seeming impossibility of an FSD like the one they’re still selling to investors, it may be ML’s investors are not part of the “know much about...” side.

That matters why? The majority of marketing materials for any technology are vague, abstracted and non-technical.

That someone would make an assumption about something that they have no knowledge about, that isn't even available to them, means what exactly?

You guys are shouting at clouds.

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#52

Post by bhouston » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #46

bhouston wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the circles I run in, it was fairly well known that it was some type of fiber optic light scanning and "lightfield" technology. They shared this officially with their investors as well. Here is one of their investor documents from late-2013: http://www.kguttag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2013-07-12... On page 37, it states "Enabled by Proprietary Scanning Fiber Projector" Page 148 "Enabled by Proprietary Ultral…

Right, as I said it's always been known to be glasses.

You are right that it has always been "glasses" in a rough sense of the word- at least when I read the actual details, even though their simulated PR videos often showed it without glasses and way more vivid and with larger FOVs than it could have been in real-life. But the lightweight ultra thin glasses they promised and the tech they said would be inside them is not what they are actually delivering. But technically they are both "glasses".

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#53

Post by trevyn » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #42

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, hold on there, Magic Leap never promised anything like that. No official marketing, patent or legal documents or anyone familiar with the space said anything about a form factor that was anything other than glasses ever.

In the circles I run in, it was fairly well known that it was some type of fiber optic light scanning and "lightfield" technology. They shared this officially with their investors as well. Here is one of their investor documents from late-2013: http://www.kguttag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2013-07-12... On page 37, it states "Enabled by Proprietary Scanning Fiber Projector" Page 148 "Enabled by Proprietary Ultral…

For anyone else who may have fallen in this linguistic trap: it was a tiny projector that projected a lightfield directly into a user’s eye.

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#54

Post by AndrewKemendo » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 4:39 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #52

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, as I said it's always been known to be glasses.

You are right that it has always been "glasses" in a rough sense of the word- at least when I read the actual details, even though their simulated PR videos often showed it without glasses and way more vivid and with larger FOVs than it could have been in real-life. But the lightweight ultra thin glasses they promised and the tech they said would be inside them is not what they are actually delivering. But technicall…

I don't know what to say other than point out that until the ML One "reveal," ML has never officially promised or revealed anything publicly to anyone about the tech that would eventually reach consumers.

Nothing in interviews, talks etc... have they said anything about what they would deliver, on what timeline or in what form factor. Not in the wired interview the Information article, anywhere. Their patents have a wide range of designs and cover a lot of territory, which means basically nothing aside from optionality.

The "promises" about a ML product come from many "technical" people speculating based on no first hand knowledge. It's really astonishing and possibly really impressive depending on the outcome, how ML has really let the technoverse drive the narrative about them as a company and their product. It's like fan-fiction almost.

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#55

Post by cryptoz » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #39

cryptoz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they were a product that did not require goggles or glasses or anything. They promised that you could see the effects without any glasses or contacts or anything on your face. Either they engaged in highly illegal false advertising about their current product or their old product was too magic and futuristic so they cancelled it. Not sure which. But they pivoted from a non-goggles technology to a googles-technolo…

Whoa, hold on there, Magic Leap never promised anything like that. No official marketing, patent or legal documents or anyone familiar with the space said anything about a form factor that was anything other than glasses ever.

> No official marketing

Actually all of their official marketing promised this in the earliest years. Here is an example, I remember there are more as well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/woahdude/comments/3q5bxc/magic_leap...

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#56

Post by yorwba » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #34

kguttag wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPU of The Brain author seems to be well meaning and nice guy but he don't not understand optics. The parallel fiber idea is "optically silly" but it takes some understanding of light to prove it is impossible too. It is yet another example of trying to fool people. I did try and explain this before on my blog over a year ago. See http://www.kguttag.com/2016/11/20/magic-leap-separating-magi... and scroll down to…

> Basically you have multiple fibers going in a circle each with their center of origin it becomes impossible to get them to act like a single image for use in near eye optic. Why would they go in a circle when all they need to do is provide a single wavelength on a single axis? A single axis movement seems to be enough, no? > In the case of near eye optics, there is no way to get the multiple projector image collima…

> Why would they go in a circle when all they need to do is provide a single wavelength on a single axis?

Going in a circle (really a trochoid) is actually a pretty smart way to scan a 2D surface with a single light ray, you basically just rotate the vibrating fiber's plane of vibration around an axis to produce a cone of light. If you wanted to have only a single axis movement, you'd need many more fibers, one for each row of pixels.

>> In the case of near eye optics, there is no way to get the multiple projector image collimated AND seamlessly put together.

> Unless they did something completely crazy and invented a method to do this.

Did you read kguttag's argument on the matter? The reason this doesn't work is because the optics for collimation depend on the incoming angle of the light, so it must happen close enough to the light sources that the different light cones do not overlap. Then the light still expands within the optics before it gets straightened out, so there needs to be some gap for tolerance. So either they end up with some stray light rays that go into undesirable directions, or there is a gap at the border between the different regions.

Now maybe they showed a demo of this with visible artifacts to people and they were still blown away. Most likely they also told them that there was still room for improvement, while leaving open where exactly the fundamental limits are. Maybe they will release the imperfect version of their product than can actually be built, and people will still love it despite not living up to the marketing.

The problem is not that Magic Leap's ideas are completely useless or impossible to implement, just that they are significantly overhyping the expected capabilities of the finished product.

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#57

Post by drcode » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

sbarre wrote: post #35

sprafa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your articles are mildly helpful. However it's also possible that ML has new insights into this technology or that they have developed new tech whose patent is still under consideration? What if you're right and these particular patents are just FUD designed to mislead competitors and they're going with something else? All of the possibilities could be true. I find it hard to dismiss the personal anecdotes of people…

I would think Occam's razor would prevail here.. Sure, ML might have discovered/invented some new tech or method that disproves all the previous established knowledge, and they are sitting on some revolutionary new product.. But is that more likely than the idea that they thought they could pull off this technological "leap" in theory, and in practice eventually realized they could not?

Well, some would argue Occam's razor would state "Lots of people who've seen the demo of the technology where impressed, maybe this means they created impressive technology"

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#58

Post by QAPereo » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #51

QAPereo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the number of people who know much about the technical side of this is less than a rounding error against the population who watched that demo. Edit: Given the seeming impossibility of an FSD like the one they’re still selling to investors, it may be ML’s investors are not part of the “know much about...” side.

That matters why? The majority of marketing materials for any technology are vague, abstracted and non-technical. That someone would make an assumption about something that they have no knowledge about, that isn't even available to them, means what exactly? You guys are shouting at clouds.

You seem to be conveniently ignoring the years of patent and investor material, while simply hand-waving away deceptive marketing materials. Worse, you’re adding nothing here except the truly dubious currency of your personal incredulity.

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#59

Post by mojomark » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #23

UncleEntity wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Were they lying or did they not know what they are doing? This (less biased) article[0] seems to suggest your analysis is a bit off. Isn't there some old saying about how an engineer can mathematically prove a bumblebee can't fly? [0] https://gpuofthebrain.com/blog/2016/7/22/how-magic-leap-will...

That article doesn't really address the issue of the fiber speed except for "By using a piezoelectric actuator to achieve this scanning, one can maintain scan rates on the order of 10s of kHz" 10 kHz at a framerate of more than 100 Hz gives you less than 100 vibrations per frame. If each vibration covers a single row of pixels, you need at least a dozen fiber displays to produce a high-resolution display. There will…

@yorwba - You are correct, of course the fiber scan retinal display is feasible (albeit certainly very difficult to implement in an array for a wide FOV AR display). Please don't subscribe to the nonsense issued in the subject blog.

For proof of concept, one need only look at the fiber scan endoscope demos:

https://youtu.be/1UF9fJtZHAY

This is essentially the same technology, but operated in reverse (i.e. using the scanning fiber as a camera vice an image projector).

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#60

Post by alasdair_ » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 5:03 AM UTC

na85 wrote: post #45

rubidium wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not disagreeing that the saying may be made up, but Scientist != engineer. This is Especially applicable here in photonics and sight. Most engineering works in approximations that get taught as rules. One needs to be very careful of the assumptions they're making about the physical world and eyesight when discussing AR.

>Scientist != engineer Evaluates to false. Engineering is applied science, and thus all engineers are in fact scientists.

Arithmetic is applied mathematics, and thus all kindergartners are mathematicians.