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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

I hope to be wrong, but secrecy like this usually doesn't bode well. Best case, I'm expecting something like Segway or Apple Watch -- overhyped from secrecy, but legitimate, but not all that amazing. Middle case is something like Theranos; not overt fraud from the beginning, but the result of a lot of pivots and coverup. But most often it is outright bad.

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?

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I was, at one time very recently, very deep in the VR/AR space. It seems to me that there will be quite a bit of time before people accept projectors pointed at their eyeballs (or however you want to explain Magic Leap's "digital light field" technology).

$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.

PS - According to Pitchbook, they did $827M on $3.5B pre, $4.33B post.

The game video also shows "recoil" and other tactile effects that have to be acted.

> all of Magic Leap's demos are very clearly not using wearable hardware

This was pretty clear even their demo from Oct 2015, despite the caption "Shot directly through Magic Leap Technology".

...attached to an optics table, cabled to a dedicated processor and power supply, betcha. It's not lying, it's just marketing and prototypes.

There is some kind of irony in the fact that an augmented reality company seems so successful in presenting investors with an image that nobody else can see.

> 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.

Cups of coffee...

I see a bunch of negative votes so I'll expand as I was not trying to be facetious or sarcastic.

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.

It'd be fantastic if it turned out that the Magic Leap demos were all just magic tricks set up to make it seem like it was really advanced VR technology.

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.

Wouldn't be the first time a bunch of high-profile investors got bilked.

>For example, metallic effects usually require "black" as a shade ...

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.

"We made black with light"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmHSIEx69TQ&t=35m18s

That's it. Thanks!

Sounds like they just make the non-black stuff brighter. Like how you see "black" on a white projector screen.

So I saw this, and while I appreciate the conjecture, the narrative sounded unconvincing to me. I think that when we start talking about computational neurobiology, it's hard to sufficiently bound the problem such that computers can model it. Computers are very good at doing stuff that humans know how to do (and repeating it a bajillion times), but it's hard to get computers to do stuff humans don't know how to do (one of the recent interesting expressions of this that is counter to this point is neural networks, but I digress).

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 :(.

Benedict Evans works for one of their investors (A16Z) and has apparently had the demo. If you follow him you know he's not prone to exaggeration and guards his reputation carefully. Here's his take on the demo:

https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/656667346837200896

Michael Abrash wrote article about why hard AR is unlikely any time soon. It's not only that you need low enough latency for the human visual system, but also the ability to draw black (which is an unsolved problem).

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-...

Disclosure: I work for Daqri

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.

I think from the demos, it's pretty clear they won't be ale to 'draw black' - BUT - I think thats probably OK. Additive only AR could still be a really cool product, could still be widely adopted, be worth $5 billion, change the world, etc...

Is it not possible to just use it in the dark for more serious stuff and use the background for black? Maybe it's too much of a limitation..

I think it's funny how much science fiction inspires current technology, but our expectations for quality are so much higher for real products than their sci-fi counterparts. In fact, in sci-fi advanced technology is often made inferior to be more relatable to current viewers/readers.

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.

Star Wars, however, has a run-down, lived-in aesthetic. That was part of its appeal: it was futurey, but it looked old. Star Trek does not have that kind of aesthetic, and its holograms do not look the same.

It could be worse, it could be Warhammer 40k tech.

Well, to be fair, they are typically talking to someone who is halfway across a galaxy.

Apple only has to get that signal partway around one measly little planet. ;-)

I think you're underselling the technology. The hologram appeared to be a small attachment to a multi-purpose droid that was recorded off of a single camera. Being able to record and project holograms on your phone would be extremely impressive even today, regardless of the fidelity. And the Palpatine hologram was likely monochromatic because it was being received in outer space.

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.

Does this connect at all with the OPs point or are you just pointing out your Star Wars knowledge?

Indeed. This reminds me of Louis CK - Everything Is Amazing And Nobody Is Happy [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8LaT5Iiwo4

It's not only that you need low enough latency for the human visual system, but also the ability to draw black

What about halos, glyphs, honeycomb shields, and ghosts? Translucent AR has plenty of potential without the ability to draw black.

Interesting blog post, but the conclusion seems hilariously optimistic to me:

>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.

"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."

Isn't that the idea behind smartwatches and Google Cardboard?

Smartwatches, sure. I have one and it's definitely an improvement over my phone alone when it comes to email and messaging. Still, I think there's potential for a Glass like device to be even more convenient.

I'm not too familiar with Cardboard, but I don't see how it's related.

Google Cardboard is a piece of cardboard (& software app) that you fold up into wearable - if quite dorky - glasses that hold your cell phone about 2 inches in front of your eyes. It's not exactly stylish, but it works - you do get a real VR experience - and it's completely free. It does augmented reality as well, using the cell phone's camera. One of my Googler friends showed me a cool demo where if you stared at a QR code in a magazine, you'd see elves and magicians battling it out on top of the pages, like a storybook come to life.

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:

http://www.realiteer.com/#intro

I got to spend a day on the show floor at SIGGRAPH this year and AR/VR was the big trend. Most of the VR demos felt empty and lacked soul, but the Realiteer GermBuster VR demo was a blast! Definitely the highlight of the VR demos. I guess it demonstrates that (relatively) low-tech doesn't keep a game from being fun :-)

"Interesting" blog post from the founder, too: http://www.magicleap.com/#/blog/atoms-not-included

An "interesting" video on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY

I'm not sure I learned anything about them, but I do feel very centered now.

From the blog post:

>"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.

For a moment, I felt bad about having reservations about the prospects of ML - I've seen some neat public videos and announcements, but they all struck me as similar to a AAA videogame release from years ago, you know, "Not actual game footage" type stuff.

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.

Slightly off topic, but I don't see how this is similar at all to the Apple Watch. What secrecy was there about it, other than the completely normal "secrecy" that every product undergoes when it hasn't even been announced yet?

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.

Just curious; recall the speculation that apple would be making a Tablet the day the original iphone came out? And apple denied it?

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

From what I understand their original plan was a tablet and, if anything, the iPhone was a bit of a trojan horse to get people to buy a 'mini-tablet' and experience its benefits while directly having a good use case (who doesn't need a phone?!).

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