Magic Leap: A New Morning [video] | Hacker News Reader

Magic Leap: A New Morning [video]

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107 pointsDGAP82 comments

I'm not skeptical that this is real footage "shot from Magic Leap technology", however I am skeptical that the final product will be anywhere near this good. Microsoft announced HoloLens around a year ago now (I think?) and they were able to show videos like this at that time. My expectation of what the disclaimer in this video is saying is that you can use Magic Leap "technology" without using the consumer hardware. Microsoft has shown us how amazing this technology can be when you hook it up to very expensive gear that's tethered, etc.

HoloLens probably represents the best technology we've ever seen in this field, and even still you have a very limited FOV and 3D capability in the consumer product.

Sorry, but I don't think Magic Leap developers have the ability to solve this problem better than Microsoft Research.

"Wired claims the quality of Magic Leap's virtual objects "exceeds all others,"

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/19/11457880/magic-leap-photon...

43 exceeds 42.

> "shot from Magic Leap technology"

That's my main concern. Microsoft could have reasonably made the same claim about the HoloLens-on-a-Camera setup that they were using during their announcement videos that ultimately didn't show the actual view. The graphics and fidelity were really similar from what I've heard but the experience as a whole wasn't close.

My biggest concern with the video's we've seen is a) how closely this FOV matches the real thing b) what kind of processing power this will require (AR gets much less interesting if it requires a highend PC attached to do the rendering and tracking) and c) what that room actually looks like, ie every Magic Leap video that's been shown as shot through the actual technology looks like it's REALLY DIM.

Regarding FOV, I wouldn't be surprised if this did match the real thing and I wouldn't be surprised if the Hololens demo also matched the real thing. The problem is that we're looking at a video and have a hard time judging the FOV of a video. If it fills the video, it must fill our field of view, right? Well, a typical cellphone camera has a horizontal FOV of like 60 degrees, versus 180 or so for human vision. But videos don't look low FOV to us when we view them.

True, I thought of that and saw a couple people mention that when the original hullabaloo about the FOV differences started. Even if it's accurate to the actual FOV the end result is that the video doesn't give a good feel for the actual device so ideally to me it'd be done differently to give a more accurate feel to what the final FOV would look like.

HoloLens user here, based on this video alone, the experience appears to be equivalent, although holograms appear to be a bit more stable on HoloLens, which also has no trouble tracking fast head movements

Here is a video I recorded with HoloLens, but not through it, the actual holograms are transparent on the headset:

https://goo.gl/photos/S2B9A8xkvyLkPK7U8

>the actual holograms are transparent on the headset

Lovely video. You mean the holograms appear transparent in real life usage?

Have you tried watching a full movie through the HoloLens?

Could you make another video while watching a video on a 90inch screen?

Yes, the holograms are literally objects made of light so at low brightness they are transparent, but if you crank up they will appear solid but you still won't confuse it for a real object because they are so bright.

I haven't watched a whole movie on it yet, but it wouldn't be a problem, the device is reasonably comfortable so you can wear it for hours

Thanks for the initial video.

For long, I've fantasized carrying a theater screen around if you know I mean. So if you don't mind, I'd love to see the maximum size the movie app's screen could scale on the hololens.

Also, if you're doing the vid, kindly add lazy mode scene" where you lie down watching a video affixed to the ceiling.

Does the HoloLens work outdoors at all, or is it restricted to very dim lighting?

Yes it does work outside if the space has enough objects around so it can generate a model of the location. When model generation fails, it falls back to a "limited mode" where holograms follow you around instead of staying where you put them.

Oddly enough, the tracking system does not work in the dark, so you need some light to use it.

Great video. Was really hoping the baby would get up and do something when you clicked on it.

Only partially joking. There was a mental pause where I stopped to think whether something was going to occur. Testament to the overall quality of the AR.

lol that was the idea, glad you enjoyed it!

Something most people don't know about HoloLens: the holograms stay where you put them indefinitely. So if you put a browser window on a wall in your bedroom and come back after a week, it will be exactly where you left it.

The cynic in me wants to dismiss this as just another marketing video from a company yet to show us anything tangible, but the child in me desperately wants this to be a reality. Please, please let this be real.

The bottom has fine print saying the entire video was shot directly using magic leap technology and using 0 post processing with the only addition being [this] text explanation.

Given the slow movement, wonder if there was a person wearing the their tech, or if it's mechanical.

Looks like someone is wearing it.

My concern while watching the video was that things just happened without the user's intervention.

The user might as well have been watching a video.

Agree, seemed odd. If it were me, I'd find a single, complete, simple, yet "magical" behavior to demo/release; users, not tech is what matters.

yeah, the biggest plus of AR is interaction. They failed to showcase that.

That's sort of like watching a video game cinematic trailer, and saying no post processing was done on the rendered video. That might be true, but it doesn't represent the gameplay, or in this case, the experience of using the device.

Most of this video makes absolutely no sense. What messages is the user browsing? E-mails, or some type of Magic Leap messaging system? How is the 3D map of Everest generated, a trail marked out and animated on it, and attached through a message by a child? Or what about the storefront browsing 3D shoes? We could have 3D scanned shoes displayed on the internet at the moment, but no one wants to see 3D shoes, they want to see a few high resolution photos of the actual product.

Right now, they're not showing any real world use cases, and just prerendering fictitious interfaces. I feel like this demo is completely out of touch with reality. No one is going to be sending 3D presentation messages. No one is going to be making 3D storefronts. It has nothing to do with technological limitations, they're just not efficient or practical.

This demo is trying to show how it can enhance my daily life while browsing messages and content online. So, let's see someone interacting with Gmail, Spotify, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, etc. Show me why I'd want to use this device and not pull out my phone to browse e-mails or storefronts.

> No one is going to be making 3D storefronts.

This is right there with visionary phrases such as "640KB is enough". Probably not going to happen next year though.

I stand by that statement for the foreseeable future. If you look at how technology and the internet has changed in the past two decades, it's going in the opposite direction of this video. This reminds me of Flash in the late 90s, early 00s. There were countless extravagant sites with 3D elements during that time period, and they all died to make way for more efficient user experiences to consume content.

This technology has lots of interesting use cases, but what's demonstrated in the video isn't one of them.

There were probably more people making 3D storefronts twenty years ago than there are today.

Given that it's new technology and the applications that could make use of this don't exist, I think you have to give them a little more leeway with their marketing material. I agree that most of the "apps" are likely custom-built just for this demo (I'm basing this on the appearance that the apps are interactive rather than just canned videos projected into space) but that doesn't mean it's invalid to showcase those as possibilities.

What would have been really neat is to have the Everest map fixed in space and the user could walk around it and lean in to zoom. Sort of like how many sci-fi movies have 3D mapping projections (Avatar, Prometheus, etc. etc.) that the characters can walk around and sometimes physically interact with. That would have been a good demonstration that it's not just canned video.

A few decades ago, someone would have been considered totally correct to say that no one is going to be streaming live video over the internet as it's just not efficient or practical. As bandwidth, storage, and processing power tend towards infinity, all those impractical ideas suddenly become possible. Imagine being able to search the entirety of the internet instantly as you type each keystroke. Impractical? Maybe Google will crack that some day.

i agree. the parent points out some reasonable objections, like certainly the 10 year old didn't make a 3d magic-leap mount everest project for gradeschool science fair.

However, the point you make is how I interpreted it. We have the ability to do what google glass couldn't amd overlay realtime data into the real-world, also they can use data to provide contextual information.

Is it a long way off? Maybe. Maybe not. A lot of video game trailers give you a good picture of gameplay. I would play this game...

they wrote it that way specifically for perceptive people like you

Nokia got caught using professional camera gear to show off their amazing smartphone camera.

Faking this kind of stuff is not unheard of.

Am I the only person who doesn't want this tech? I love what's going on with VR and tried out a Vive this weekend, but this kind of AR just seems like it would be somewhat annoying. It would be tons of pop-ups, notifications, etc that would detract from one's quality of life. I suspect keyboard/mouse and monitor will hard to unseat in the workplace, the same way we didn't give up on laptops and desktops for ipads.

I'm already fighting this battle with my android watch. Every so often some app decides that I want notifications and then my watch vibrates what's essentially a marketing message and I, of course, check thinking its a text message or email. Thankfully this is easy to disable on a per app basis, but I can imagine it'll be much worse on AR when developers have our entire field of view to post marketing messages on. AR gaming seems like it would be pleasant, but do I really want my living room the background of all my games? Seems to me VR is the better solution in gaming, especially with cameras mounted on VR headsets like the Vive has.

AR is starting to feel like the Kinect or Google Glasses all over again. We're getting these amazing demos and everyone is excited, but no one is really thinking usability, interfaces, social exceptions, and realistic applications. Or considering how much more mature VR is right now and how it might just eat AR's lunch. With VR you are at least socially signaling "I am in a different space and not here with you", but with AR you are socially signaling "I'm here but I'm projecting a mustache on you for my own amusement and partially ignoring you while I watch funny youtube clips" which will make people uncomfortable the same way Google Glasses did.

AR or MR is the endgame. Once the technology is capable of blocking out the world then you have VR in MR. Similar attempts have been made with passthrough video with VR[1]; the tech will converge at some point, it's inevitable.

So while you may not be the only one who doesn't want this tech to come about you and anyone else who shares your sentiments are wishing for something that absolutely won't happen. As for your usability concerns, those always come later as the tech matures.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxM4vN_4jJY

It will happen in the sense that AR technology will become viable and cost-effective. I think it's far from set in stone how much it will be used outside of niche applications. Smartphones are an enormously powerful technology but they have a social limit. For instance, if you're building an app which requires people to use their phones while in conversation, and overlay information on top, that is clearly going to come up against social barriers. Just because you can build something, it doesn't mean people will use it.

It is almost undoubtedly going to be very useful in particular professional contexts, how much it goes beyond that is anyone's guess.

The problem, like you state, is not AR itself, it's that " no one is really thinking usability, interfaces, social exceptions, and realistic applications".

There is a movement that tries to move the world in a different direction, and I hope many more people will invest some serious time reading about the subject.

http://livable.media/

Here's a great place to start if you're interested:

http://nxhx.org/dfa/

> "no one is really thinking usability, interfaces, social exceptions, and realistic applications"

How true is that? It seems to me that the usability and interface concerns are actually trivial.

I'm pretty sure the bottleneck has always been a technical one, not a creative one.

You're not the only one. I personally am not a fan of VR either.

BUT... There is one use case where I would totally adopt AR/VR for, that I don't see a lot of people talking about.

If someone could make an VR/AR app that simply gives me a floor to ceiling monitor and used eye tracking, I'd be thrilled.

I currently use a pair of 4K monitors (@ 1:1) for work, and I still feel like I could use more real estate. I would guess that a pair of goggles would cost less than having more monitors, and take up less space.

The biggest issue preventing that is that to do better than your dual 4k monitors the VR goggles will have to have many more pixels on the much smaller screens, which is hard to do reliably from a manufacturing standpoint and would require an enormous amount of processing power to render at the 90FPS that VR requires to be comfortable.

Would it need more pixels if all it is doing is scrolling up and down a virtual monitor though?

If you want to see more on the screen at any one time than your current 4k screen it's going to require more pixels no matter how you arrange everything else. If you want to put it 'deeper' into the VR world than just placing the exact same screen data onto the VR screens will require multiple real pixels per fake VR screen pixels.

Also don't forget you have to have 2x panels with the increased resolution at smaller sizes than the existing monitors.

Finally if you are just scrolling through a virtual screen there's no reason that can't be done on today's monitors and we already have eye tracking tech available without having to jam that tracking into already crowded glasses.

I am willing to accept tradeoffs in resolution for more working area.

I basically have the equivalent of 8 1080p monitors, but if I can get the equivalent of more 1080p monitors over a larger area but at a lower pixel density (downscaling is ok provided I can zoom in and out), I'd be totally good with that.

Almost every article and demo I've read and watched about AR in the last couple of years mentions huge virtual screens everywhere. It's in all the Hololens demos, for example.

I haven't seen any examples where the entire field of view is basically a giant Windows or Mac desktop, which is what I'm talking about. Most of the stuff I've seen are just like the video linked in the parent thread.

There's been loads of fantasy AR interfaces designed and kicked around for ages, but before anyone can start making them though you have to get to the point that the technology is available to test on. VR was stuck in the same place that you bemoan about for AR for ages before things like the Rift started showing up and available for people to actually experiment with. Heck we're still in the crummy interface stage of VR and most of the games that have come out aren't that deep or engaging coma

> "I am in a different space and not here with you", but with AR you are socially signaling "I'm here but I'm projecting a mustache on you for my own amusement and partially ignoring you while I watch funny youtube clips" which will make people uncomfortable the same way Google Glasses did.

I don't think the difference here is as big as you make it out to be and what most people didn't like about Glass was the camera not the screen. Neither of those messages are particularly acceptable when a person wants to talk to you. If AR is actually useful social etiquette will adapt like it has for every distraction machine that has come along.

It looks very cool, but they definitely moved & rotated slowly in the video. Hopefully they can keep the motion tracking processing latency low enough to not cause nausea.

Even with the slow movement it's quite jittery. Not sure how much that affects the experience.

The other thing is the demo environment is very dark. All the lamps are dim and angled towards the walls.

Actually that's an interesting point - Oculus has shown that you can do tracking and display updates on a traditional display fast enough to appear more or less fixed to the world.

But Magic Leap's display has a physically spinning component. I wonder if you move quickly there is a gyroscopic precesion effect that distorts the display...

Spinning component?

Yeah it's a fibre optic light that spins in a spiral pattern to scan out an image, kind of like a circular CRT.

At least that's what some of their patents describe.

So this is the future! Someone trying to get work done while being totally distracted by bleeping notifications and virtual jellyfish. Grrkidsoffmylawn...

They are just showcasing all the possibilities. Their demo could be more 'real'.

You could just as easily go the other way and overlay distracting people in the room with a peaceful zen garden.

I'm sure that is representative (it doesn't seem that they've solved 'registration' yet) but I'm curious what's behind the camera lens. For all we know it looks like this: http://arcadeheroes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/swordvr.p...

Or it could be a Tango. Or a HoloLens devkit.

Have they still not hit investor saturation so they don't want to show what they have because the speculation will bring in more funds than the real thing? Or are they just building up their patents so they can own the technology while companies like MS do the heavy lifting? Do they assume whoever has the smallest AR rig wins so don't want to show their cards yet (assuming this thing is the size of a normal pair of glasses)?

Their level of secrecy is actually getting kind of annoying.

I love that this is based on a vibrating fiber optic designed for colonoscopies.

Sometimes you eat the jellyfish. Sometimes the jellyfish eat you. I guess.

This reminds me of both the NeXT Steve Jobs demo and the Knowledge Navigator video they shot during Sculley's time.

What's the deal with giving girls these masculine names? Murph? Max?

Also, this may be the hardware basis for interfaces of the future.(yes, it's neat, something similar to what many of us have been imagining for a long time I suspect. What does the actual hardware look like though?)

But is this the type of software we want? The notification, reactive model? Our time and attention is limited, the beauty of computers is we can access the info we want at any given time, and control its flow.

And yet we've set up this paradigm of being bombarded with pointless trivium, there's a business case sure, all the better to squeeze in some sponsored messages, but is there a case for human flourishing here?

How many times a day does a device of yours feed you info that only serves to distract from what you're doing at the given moment? These notifications can be turned off of course. I encourage you to do so.

"Murph" (and the space helmet too) are likely an "Interstellar" reference; Cooper's daughter was named "Murph": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/reference

Young Murph: Why did you and mom name me after something that's bad?

Cooper: Well, we didn't.

Young Murph: Murphy's law?

Cooper: Murphy's law doesn't mean that something bad will happen. It means that whatever can happen, will happen. And that sounded just fine to us.

Cool, I like those kind of subtle references. I've not seen that movie, what little I've seen about it seems interesting. Would you recommend it?

That dialogue is reminiscent of "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be." -Abraham Maslow

Edit: Well, glancing at the IMDB page, I'm guessing you would recommend, I didn't know the movie had been so well received.

The video looks very cool and the opacity of the AR images was darn good.

That said Magic Leap are still awfully light on some key details like :-

- Will it be tethered or untethered. - If it's untethered what's the FOV like (looked good in that video) - If it's untethered what's the battery life like..

They already have competition in the untethered space (hololens) and the tethered space (Meta 2), who look to be ahead of them in terms of getting a product to market (both have actual kits in the hands of 3rd party developers)

I really hope Magic leap will be good, but I must admit a level of cynicism about the lack of solid detail on the product and technology

It was hard to tell if there was any 'opacity' at all. Looks like a bright light over a dim background which seems like the only way you could physically do it, given what we know about their technology.

Magic Leap has a patent which includes: "occlusion mask device comprises a display configured to either occlude or pass light at each of a plurality of portions of the display, depending upon a pertinent command to occlude or pass light at each portion."

https://www.google.com/patents/US20130128230

Hmm well I guess we'll have to wait and see (patents can describe anything they want).

The more I think about how exciting this could be for education uses, the more reality kicks in with a dose of cynicism that no matter how whiz-bang fancy the presentation method might be, it takes actual personal work and investment to 'learn' things. I mean, sure, watching videos and clicking on stuff is great, but from my studies, I saw very little evidence that such engagements result in much of any valuable retention. Or, in other words, now instead of begging to quit piano lessons, kids can beg to stop having to work through their AR/VR Serato Club DJ Training Modules.

How to learn to code.

10 PRINT "Type a few characters"

20 PRINT "Bang head on wall"

30 GOTO 10

Need batteries? What's the battery life? Is it heavy? Only eye wear or a helmet? What's the resolution? Can I go outside wearing it? What's the price? Any SDK? What's the timeline?

After HoloLens, can this video considered revolutionary to justify 4.5B valuation based on their last round [1]?

[1] http://www.wired.com/2016/02/magic-leap-raises-the-biggest-c...

The MR effects are awesome, but for the use cases the demo targets, it needs to be more...seamless? Probably it is just the way the demo was shot. Also, I would love for them to dismiss the windows, declutter the space and pull other things back in. I understand this just showcases all possibilities, but I feel a story could be told better.

For instance, the email around Mt. Everest project was cool. Showing an interaction with the project would have been cooler. But, fun stuff nevertheless.

Curious what the head gear looked like. Also, the vibrations of the models were very jarring to me, I could barely look at it anymore by the time the video ended. Obviously this is amazing technology, but I can't adopt it until 1) It doesn't make me sick, and 2) I don't look like a total doofus while using it.

I hope this will be open hardware. That is, without a gatekeeping entity that will control sales of software on the platform. Otherwise, meh, I'll wait for a similar piece of hardware from a different manufacturer.

Demo looks cool though.

Let's be honest though: Google et al have set the standard and now it's every hardware developer's dream to create a platform that they can then use to extract 30% of all app sales on. As a heavy crowdfunder of hardware projects, it is a rare gem that isn't one of those awful closed platforms hoping to become a walled garden.

Also a long article about them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11526056.

If google glass had this, adoption would have taken off.

If I was being cynical, I'd say that's exactly why they're funding it.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/21/7026889/magic-leap-google...

Glass 2.0 is going to rocketship.

Especially if they make the hardware far more subtle somehow.

Though popup spam might give you a heart-attack.

Could become an ancient ancestor to "ghost in the shell" type of living with external memory.

Also solves the "problem" of 3D hologram TV, who would need it anymore.

> "Could become an ancient ancestor to "ghost in the shell" type of living with external memory."

If you like anime and AR, you may be interested in Dennō Coil:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennō_Coil

If google glass had more than 45 minutes of battery life it would have taken off.

If they hadn't positioned Glass as "a wifi webcam on your face!!" in all their marketing, you mean. What geeks wanted was AR. What we got was... not that.

Does the user need to wear some kind of glasses to experience this? If so, how big are they? If not, how is it achieved?

Is this Heaven? or is this Hell?

I can't tell...

Looked fun... right up until the side-effects kicked in and he started hallucinating jellyfish.

What's the field of view?

Has a timeline for Magic Leap ever been made public?

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