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Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

techcrunch.com

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Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#61

Post by FlyingLawnmower »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #35
mosquito242 wrote: post #5

I don't know where I stand on this. To be raising such ridiculous amounts, they must have some incredible technology to demo. If they're anything close to what the second demo video shows, then they're basically building Tony Stark's home computer interface in Iron Man.

Let's hope so. We see a lot of promises with this and HoloLens, but somehow production versions are still not here. I'm still not really sure if the latter isn't just a prank, or at least mostly post-recording CG. > they're basically building Tony Stark's home computer interface in Iron Man. Since you're bringing up Marvel - I fear the reality, at least with first released products, will turn out somewhat like this:…

HoloLens has been seen and used outside of the company, however. They have been touring several cities and showing off Hololens units to developers. I am not an MS employee, but I did get to try it out and do some Q+A with Hololens developers.

http://www.inferse.com/36577/microsoft-hololens-roadshow-201...

I don't think any magic leap units have ever been used by those outside the company, but I'm excited to see what they come up with.

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#62

Post by eric_h »

oskarth wrote: post #38
toby wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would probably get shut down pretty quickly, as it would be essentially allowing a group of small-time players to make non-sports-related proposition bets.

What would be wrong with that? People do it informally all the time.

Nothing, as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately the regulatory landscape disagrees.

How betting on the performance of a company is any different from betting on the performance of an athlete or a horse just boggles my mind. Sure, in the short term the variance is lower, but it's still a fucking gamble. It's also the only legal way to gamble in all 50 states.

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#63

Post by wernerb »

Dwolb wrote: post #31

Can anyone explain what force is recoiling the shooter's hand in the second video? Or is that gun computer-generated?

The video was created by Weta Workshop who specializes in special effects. "Providing design and manufacturing for film, television and creative industries for over 20 years."

I would not put much stock (no pun intended) into this unless there are more videos like the first one in the article mentioned.

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#64

Post by josephpmay »

ljk wrote: post #41

stupid question: isn't this bad if your eyes are constantly focusing on something so close to you?

With ML's technology, you're not focusing on something close to you. That's a big part of what makes them worth so much money. They're able to project light at real focal planes.

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#65

Post by emcq »

ksenzee wrote: post #50
emcq wrote: post #27

It's easy to think of reasons why this isn't a sound investment. However, here are some thoughts why this may be sensible: * This is largely Google's investment to cover possible future success of Facebook's Occulus or Microsoft's Hololens. * They could have valuable non-tangible patents or employees. This is way past the "acquihire" funding levels, but perhaps the technology itself is valuable. Perhaps they get arou…

I guess this makes me a pedant, but it bothers me to see big O notation used as a shortcut for "within an order of magnitude." It would probably be fine if everyone on HN had taken an algorithms class and knew the formal definition. In reality, a lot of people here are still learning what that capital O thing means, and if they see it used as "within an order of magnitude" we're doing them a disservice. (As someone w…

Good point - it is kind of a lazy shortcut. Next time I'll type out the extra words :) It probably would have been sufficient just with the approx ~

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#66

Post by S4M »

ksenzee wrote: post #50
emcq wrote: post #27

It's easy to think of reasons why this isn't a sound investment. However, here are some thoughts why this may be sensible: * This is largely Google's investment to cover possible future success of Facebook's Occulus or Microsoft's Hololens. * They could have valuable non-tangible patents or employees. This is way past the "acquihire" funding levels, but perhaps the technology itself is valuable. Perhaps they get arou…

I guess this makes me a pedant, but it bothers me to see big O notation used as a shortcut for "within an order of magnitude." It would probably be fine if everyone on HN had taken an algorithms class and knew the formal definition. In reality, a lot of people here are still learning what that capital O thing means, and if they see it used as "within an order of magnitude" we're doing them a disservice. (As someone w…

Also nitpicking, but in the mathematical sense, 1000B/year or 1k/year are also O(1B)/year.

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#67

Post by hellofunk »

josephpmay wrote: post #57
emcq wrote: post #27

It's easy to think of reasons why this isn't a sound investment. However, here are some thoughts why this may be sensible: * This is largely Google's investment to cover possible future success of Facebook's Occulus or Microsoft's Hololens. * They could have valuable non-tangible patents or employees. This is way past the "acquihire" funding levels, but perhaps the technology itself is valuable. Perhaps they get arou…

As I compete with Magic Leap, I'm probably in a pretty good position to answer this question. The main reason why ML is able to attract this level of investment is that their technology is literally decades ahead of what anybody else has. I haven't had the opportunity to try their headset out, but I know some people who have, and I haven't heard a single bad thing about it. The closest metaphor I can think of is seei…

"decades" ahead? That is a bold number if you are speaking literally.

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#68

Post by josephpmay »

Dwolb wrote: post #31

Can anyone explain what force is recoiling the shooter's hand in the second video? Or is that gun computer-generated?

The first video in the article was created with their actual technology and filmed with a Black Magic camera. The second video is just CGI

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#70

Post by rsp1984 »

I've been working on AR and related technologies for almost the last decade and I've been part of the first handful of people working on Google Glass. Bottom line I've seen a lot of promising AR technologies come and go.

My personal take on this is that they may indeed have some very good, if not revolutionary, display technology. However: The big, big obstacle to delivering credible AR is latency. Contrary to VR, true see-through AR needs to have total latencies (device motion --> display photon hits the retina) of no larger than 10 - 15 ms max. The reason is that in see-through AR you're essentially competing against the human visual system in latency and the HVS is very fast.

Moreover the HVS is also extremely good in separating visual content into "layers". Whenever two things in your field of view don't move in perfect continuity with their surroundings (as it is when there AR content overlaid with latency) your brain will immediately separate them from one another, creating the impression of layers, and, in the case of see-through AR, breaking the AR illusion.

So right now I'm a semi-believer. Iff they can sort out the latency problem and deliver stable yet ultrafast tracking in a wide variety of conditions (also by far not a trivial problem) then this has a bright future.

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