Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

theregister.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 144 posts

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#91

Post by [deleted] »

aagh_why wrote: post #52
_h_o_d_ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has already been an exodus of talent. I know one personally, and know of a lot more. They lock them down with non-disclosure settlements. Bad management, internecine politics, the whole caboodle. A pity, because it could have been very good, but they went with exactly the wrong team, and insisted people move from the Bay to Florida, which didn't help with retention.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#92

Post by Fricken »

ryandamm wrote: post #50

I 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…

Facebook bought Oculus for 2 billion, and what were they buying there? Oculus had a prototype cobbled together using off the shelf parts by a teenager in his garage, a successful kickstarter campaign, and John Carmack jumped on board.

And that made Oculus worth two thousand million dollars to Zuckerberg.

The acquisition sent a strong signal, though. Shortly afterwards a bevy of competitors, big and small, started throwing out offerings.

Maybe signalling is the only reason to make these outrageous investments. Google thinks AR is important, a massive bid on an early frontrunner can kickstart an arms race which generates talent and knowledge, and even if ML fails, so long as AR in general succeeds, a consumer tech company such as Google will be able to benefit from it.

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#93

Post by moron4hire »

ryandamm wrote: post #50

I 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…

I gotta raise a whole big stink about "but so-and-so said it was awesome and they can't be wrong".

I've been hearing the same things about the Meta 2 (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/meta-view#/entity) for months now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxwrXacMe6Y

And then I got to try it two days ago. And it was decidedly the worst AR experience I've ever had.

I have a laser-cut box of acrylic from a Kickstarter here called the Seebright Ripple that was basically "Google Cardboard for AR" that I'm about to throw away and even that was a better experience.

You can't trust first-time user reactions to mixed-reality technologies. They get lost in the concept that they are seeing any image at all. They don't know the competitor devices on the market, and don't have any comparison to be made to properly evaluate the object.

In the Meta 2's case, the only thing they had over the Hololens was wider FOV. In every other aspect, it was worse: heavier, tethered to a computer, not adjustable enough to make the image comfortably visible, extremely bad tracking, extremely bad hand gesture input. And yet, Robert Scoble thinks this is the most important product demo he's ever seen. They could have gone out onto the conference floor at where we were and found better tracking running on an iPad [0]. It was embarrassingly bad.

So what is the Magic Leap? We won't know until they actually show us. There hasn't been any real evidence on it yet.

[0] And at this point, if you're going to be tethered to a PC, you might as well just use Vive's Lighthouse tracking. Save yourself the time, money, and bad customer reactions.

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#94

Post by moron4hire »

Fricken wrote: post #92
ryandamm wrote: post #50

I 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…

Facebook bought Oculus for 2 billion, and what were they buying there? Oculus had a prototype cobbled together using off the shelf parts by a teenager in his garage, a successful kickstarter campaign, and John Carmack jumped on board. And that made Oculus worth two thousand million dollars to Zuckerberg. The acquisition sent a strong signal, though. Shortly afterwards a bevy of competitors, big and small, started thr…

> The acquisition sent a strong signal, though. Shortly afterwards a bevy of competitors, big and small, started throwing out offerings.

In the case of the HTC Vive, given the timings of product development cycles and marketing campaigns, that was just a coincidence.

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#97

Post by bobbygoodlatte »

ryandamm wrote: post #50

I 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…

I agree that Google and Alibaba pouring on hundreds of millions adds credibility. But my skepticism is more banal: I've never seen a successful technology startup built this way.

Startups need to be nimble. When you raise 1.4 billion from the outset and hire hundreds of employees, you quickly build an internal bureaucracy. That's a hard ship to steer.

Most startups need to make course corrections, both big and small, before they find product/market fit. The political & psychological difficulty of those corrections becomes quite high when you have 100's of employees.

Investment dollars are like gasoline. Too much too early and you can actually drown out the flame.

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#98

Post by ericd »

Analemma_ wrote: post #79
Pica_soO wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that this kind of "learning" experience propagates from CEO talk to CEO talk. Making a whole branch of technology a No-Go-Zone, even if the problems that stopped it, get solved. "We could do that, and end up like Magic-Leap.." will be the Standard slogan at every pitch.

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.

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#99

Post by ericd »

chillaxtian wrote: post #80
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases the companies that fail after X years have been failing for at least X-1 years. This means these guys were under total stress for X-1 years. One has no idea what that feels like if they haven't gone through the process. Another thing is, you're pretty much locked into that company for X years. Even if you realize on year 1 that it's not what you started out to build, you still need to go with it, otherw…

> In most cases the companies that fail after X years have been failing for at least X-1 years. This means these guys were under total stress for X-1 years. > One has no idea what that feels like if they haven't gone through the process. > Imagine wasting X-1 years of your life working on something you no longer "truly" believe in. That part is failing. > If you still don't agree, try raising money and starting a com…

Have you ever worked hard on something for many years and faced the prospect of it still failing? It's painful to think about your baby dying. Startup founders generally don't do it for the (usually below market) salary.

Re: Magic Leap is neither magic nor leaping

#100

Post by ratdiary »

DonHopkins wrote: post #55
Neliquat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see, this is the type of comment that tears me on HN. On one hand I actually lold, on the other, it added nothing but some humor to the discussion. What is the guideline here? We sure don't want to become 'insert failed or failing aggregator here'. Or the race to the bottom, who gets the 1st clever chuckleluck comment in, contest of internet points and paid marketing. So I made this comment instead.

Good meta-discussion. I assumed the article's title was a reference to the SNL skit, but there weren't any more references or allusions to it in the article, so I though other people who didn't recognize the skit might appreciate a reference. I hope my other post linking to their TEDx talk balanced out my frivolity! ;)

You don't have to apologize for your post (... to me, anyway, who laughed out loud). There is value in humor that is separate from information yield.
Post reply on HN