Mixed reality outfit Magic Leap nets $793.5M
gamasutra.com
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Short term practical or tactical secrecy, sure. And in some industries, probably not as bad a signal. But software-heavy hardware ecosystems aren't one of those.
Outside of wars, Ultra or Manhattan just aren't that good a way to work. Why cut yourself off from the global community?
Then I come here and see you mention something that popped into my head as a related case - the Segway - and I don't feel like I'm being overly negative.
I grew up learning to deal with hype in part thanks to Saturday morning cartoon ads for action figures, so I'm trying to stay on a general "Wait-and-see" positive angle, but as time marches on, it's taxing on the patience.
>"We want you to feel empowered and connected to your friends and family and the world, in a way that feels much more natural than computing today."
They've been setting up supply chains and manufacturing.. Maybe the first product is a next gen web cam.
I'd be surprised if Magic Leap was actually able to solve both of these problems in secret separated from the rest of the world.
Secrecy - for this long seems bad. It's also not the Apple secrecy where you say nothing and then have a big reveal. Magic Leap has put out teaser trailers with no information and talked about their 'revolutionary' technology without details. That doesn't inspire confidence.
I am surprised they're able to raise so much money though, but that's a mistake that's been made before.
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...
No-one I've seen in the space is trying to do hard-AR. It's all transparent displays - us, Magic Leap, ODG, Hololens, etc.
For example, the holograms in Star Wars: They are made to look lower quality than the world around them, so it's visibly clear this is a digital projection (and not teleportation or a wormhole or something). But could you imagine if Apple released a holographic "FaceTime3D", only the holograms were monochromatic, filled with scanlines, visual noise and crappy audio quality? Reviewers would blast it, and a poor experience like that could even do more harm than good to the popularity of AR.
Apple only has to get that signal partway around one measly little planet. ;-)
The hologram standard for a dedicated device without transmission issues was much higher, seen in the holographic game board that C3P0 plays with Chewbacca on the Falcon. But in general Star Wars was smart enough to keep the technology basically gimmicky - the real targeting computers and useful stuff was 2-dimensional.
What about halos, glyphs, honeycomb shields, and ghosts? Translucent AR has plenty of potential without the ability to draw black.
>Eventually we’ll get to SF-quality hard AR, but it’ll take a while. I’d be surprised if it was sooner than five years, and it could easily be more than ten before it makes it into consumer products.
The post is already nearly 4 years old, and we've seen effectively no movement on the state of soft AR since it was written. I wonder if Michael still thinks we're going to see even very early prototype hard AR in the next 6 years.
As one of the commenters on the blog post mentions, AR in general is a whole order of magnitude beyond the next useful step. I don't need AR, just give me a wearable interface to my phone so that I don't have to pull it out of my pocket to interact with it. A simple heads up display has far fewer challenges to deal with than any AR system and would still be a huge leap forward in technology.
Isn't that the idea behind smartwatches and Google Cardboard?
I'm not too familiar with Cardboard, but I don't see how it's related.
https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/
One of my wife's friends is doing a startup where you can print out the "gun" for a first-person shooter as well, so you get an immersive VR experience using nothing but your cell-phone and a couple pieces of cardboard:
$800M on $4.33B post- is a big chunk of a company, particularly one that does not have a working product demo yet. Maybe it'll all shake out positively, but I am of the opinion that this is not real.
Lastly, all of Magic Leap's demos are very clearly not using wearable hardware (and also not being demonstrated using any kind of light-accurate reproduction). For example, metallic effects usually require "black" as a shade and things like the Lumus Optical lenses cannot reproduce such an effect (despite being basically the cutting edge of lightfield reproduction).
In short, I am bearish on Magic Leap.
Also, I am super confused as to why Magic Leap is operating their own silicon fab... That seems crazy to me.
Edit: Fixed the $'s from VC-land.
This was pretty clear even their demo from Oct 2015, despite the caption "Shot directly through Magic Leap Technology".
> Maybe it'll all shake out positively, but I am of the opinion that this is not real.
But after all, isn't that the whole point of it? :) I wonder what kind of stuff they managed to project in the eyeballs of the VCs.
The first magic leap demo I ever heard of (and, because I'm not under an NDA with them this is all hearsay) was a cup of coffee on a table. Put $WEARABLE on, now there are two cups. Which is real?
I can easily imagine that, were this convincing visually, VCs would surrender their wallets with aplomb.
Ex: in this case, when you put the glasses on there's a moment of not being able to see anything, and they just put another real coffee cup on the table.
If I recall correctly, MagicLeap has figured out how to effectively render black.
It was mentioned in the video below. The technique involved somehow tricking the human visual cortex into seeing black.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmHSIEx69TQ&t=35m18s
EDIT: Updated with a precise time on the URL.
When he talks about "we made black with light" I feel like someone is playing "hide-the-ball" because I think of black as the absence of light. Perhaps I am just not modeling the problem correctly, but I did not take away anything useful from the comments in this video :(.
Apple was extremely forthcoming with details about it from the moment it was announced. They flooded the internet with concrete images, videos, and marketing material for months prior to its release. They had video tutorials on their site showing how to use mostly all of its features long before it was available in stores.
More importantly, the Apple Watch was just the latest product from a long-established product company that was basically printing money from other products. It went through the same development cycle that all their other products go through. This is tremendously different from a brand new, completely unproven company crystallizing out of the dust, given form from hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of investor money, and then being extremely secretive about their only product on which the entire company will be based. Magic Leap and Theranos fit that mold, but Apple most certainly does not.
Furthermore, these promises of "mixed reality lightfields" make even Apple's marketing seem modest.
my question is "did they already know they were going to do a tablet, or was the tremendous hopes that consumers had that they would convince them to do so?"
surely their product roadmap now is likely much longer term than it was then, I'm just curious about the original iPad creation
Instead, my shock is the implied burn rate of these raises. LinkedIn reports Magic Leap is between 201-500 employees. They are no indications of them mass-producing a product. No sales, and their marketing seems to be exclusively articles about the enormity of their rounds.
How, then, is a company raising 790M 1.5 years after raising 500M? What possible expenditures, without mass product development, sales and marketing, consumes finances at a rate that warrants these raises?
Or, alternatively, maybe the founders and employees simply despise maintaining ownership of their company.
Probably what they are planning to do with the money is a couple of acquisitions. I'd not be surprised.
I really hope what they have is real, but my mind keeps going back to clinkle. A company that was able to raise a large sum of money with smoke and mirrors. Granted Magic Leap is raising an order of magnitude more than clinkle, but smart people have been fooled before.
I find it interesting that the top image (of the floating robot) has the text saying "no special effects" whereas the gif of the elephant in the hands (been available online for awhile) does not. This tells me that all the videos/gifs we've seen (the elephant, the whale splashing down thru the gym floor) are "aspirational" (AKA "bullshit").
Don't get me wrong, the floating robot is cool but this is doable on HoloLens (yet to ship but coming in Q1). Definitely seems like there's a real risk here of overhyping MagicLeap.
EDIT: Fixed the link to TechCrunch...If you saw the other link we're hiring :)
As far as I know, and I was pretty deep into this at one point, metallic requires black and without it you cannot achieve any sort of luster-like effects.
See the section labeled "See-through AR == additive blending only".
In the Youtube video they also seem to use a trick of defocussing the real objects in the background when their rendered foreground objects are in focus. You can see that most clearly with the planets. I think they have a macro lens on the camera to achieve this effect and I suspect that it would not be nearly so dramatic if you were to experience it with the naked eye.
A subtle problem is where to put things that don't just add noise and clutter.
Look around your house or office, where would you like digital things to sit? Ok how about when you move 2 feet this way, whats the new answer for where you would like it so it's easy to see/interact with?
I'm going to continue to be suspicious of Magic Leap until I actually see something that delivers on the promises they are making. Luckily(!) for me, I don't have enough spare money to be an investor in these things anyway...
I see AR being useful in verticals ie "pipe fitter" or "nurse".
As a general tool for everyone what is the problem solved?
"It's like an iWatch but in your vision all the time"
"you can enhance X with digital information"
"you can play games that somehow make sense in your ambient environment?"
I have not heard very many use cases that don't just sound like visual clutter for little benefit.
Balance that against what is likely to be more then putting on a pair of Raybans ie the battery pack and display bits.
What's the not-awkward input method that's even plausible? edit: Gestures have some serious downsides.
Also you'll be really sorry when you look at the wrong person.
> I see AR being useful in verticals ie "pipe fitter" or "nurse".
Hook these glasses up with google maps and other online databases will be neat.
Just think how complicated it actually is for a nurse:
- it's got to supply actually useful information that isn't fairly trivial to get by picking up a chart
- it'll have to hook up with some sort of input device
- are they carrying around the AR device and the input device at all times?
- it's got to be wearable for 8 hours or it's completely pointless (you can't use it half the time if it's essential)
- it's got to be light and durable
- for almost every hospital it'll have to have specialized software written to integrate
- an amazing UI to use it without touching anything as they can't keep cleaning their hands to use it
- there's got to be total network coverage in every hospital room, it can't cut out in wi-fi deadspots (I have no idea how good this usually is)
And those are the easy problems I can think of without any particular domain experience. I imagine it will get a lot more complicated when you know what they actually do.
Heck make it only for people I've met before, that's fine.
I'm particularly biased though. I've always been a bit skeptical of the amount of money corporate development people make ... I feel like they don't bring that much value to the table as individuals, even when the corporate development function is essential.
When you meet a good engineer, lawyer, or salesperson, you can usually pretty quickly understand what they are bringing to the table. With investment people I feel like they just make decisions, and then they aren't often measured against what the results of those decisions are.
The people that should probably actually be corporate development people ... the ones that are unsure of themselves without sufficient data. The ones that listen quietly and form measured opinions. Those awkward types ... the ones with valuable insight ... I never see that type coming to visit our offices as part of the steady stream of investors.
All I see are well put-together people, with good personalities, strong handshakes, excellently tailored clothes, good presentation skills ... and a fair understanding of the industry ... plus maybe slightly above average intelligence. They are usually warm and personable though. Its clear they have that skill.
I have no idea why the CEOs select these people for the job though. Any one of our engineers if tasked to evaluate companies like ours, would ask better questions, would be more intelligent about figuring out what is our marketing fluff, and what is actually ready to go.
1. The product is developed and released in a few years, its amazing, and everyone is happy.
2. It sucks, investors lose their money.
#1 is a win for me, #2 is a who cares.
It's a very shortsighted reasoning. If this turns out to be a completely lost investment, investors will become wary of investing in VR startups, which will have for consequences less R&D jobs in virtual reality (which itself will decrease negotiating leverage of all R&D engineers), and less VR products, sold at a more expensive price.
I don't know anybody who works at Magic Leap, but I'd rather prefer they don't waste all that money.
For example, that's a lot more than the development of the original Macintosh, roughly 0.5% of the Apollo program and roughly 3% of the Manhattan project (both in today's dollars).
The more likely possibility in my mind is media (this becomes the thing that replaces 3D movies or 3D TV) where they collect a royalty on everyones content, or perhaps theme parks (they are in Florida after all). A Hogwarts where you could actually see the spells you cast, or an Imagineered experience where you could walk through Mary Poppins' animated countryside might be capable of generating enough revenue to justify this.
So I think the market is bigger than previous numbers indicate, however I'm not sure how close to perfection it would need to be to show it's true colors. Hopefully the launch of Oculus and Vive might give us an indicator this year.
(As an anecdote,) personally I would want something like this if it actually had enough content to let me reuse the product without indefinitelly replaying tech-demos. :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/43tehp/magic_leap_r...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw0-JRa9n94
(the demo with the robot and solar system)
quite cool but I'm not sure how that converts in to a product people buy
I've tried a number of VR headsets and they all feel like a stopgap solution, there has to be something better than wearing 2 x 4" screens mounted in a cone on your head....
From what I understand, upcoming VR headsets like the Rift and Vive have pretty solid FOVs, but Microsoft's HoloLens AR headset has a significantly more limited FOV.
Edit: AFAIK, the tech they're using can support a wider FOV, but then the price jumps pretty quickly. I definitely do NOT know for sure, however; that's just what we figured when they were first announcing.
Every article has the same "mini elephant in hands" picture. I've never seen anything else.
"getting investment" === "success"
Even my JavaScript runtime knows better.
Has anyone tried the ex-Valve AR system? I think it's called castAR.
CastAR is pretty neat and damn simple, although you have to prepare the space. If I had to bet on a consumer AR technology, I'd probably bet on CastAR, although I haven't checked up on them in awhile.