Comment by nakedrobot2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nakedrobot2 | Hacker News Reader

Paid PR piece, anyone? And still the writer is reaching so far they're going all the way around the world back into their own ass trying to praise this thing.

<rant> I'm so fucking done with MagicLeap. Their head conman CEO, who is, absolutely and by all accounts, an absolutely fantastic showman and salesman, has taken so much money and so much hype that it's not going to end well.

Pretty much EVERYONE who has tried the magic leap headset has basically said 'meh'. It blocks around 85% of the incoming light [1], for fuck's sake. That's the first of a very long list of 'meh'.

Why am I so pissed off about this? Because it's going to crash the AR industry (already on its knees because of an overhyped VR industry) and set it back years. Already, and for years now, no one wants to invest in an AR hardware startup because "how could you possibly beat Magic Leap?

Fuck those guys. And the dumb investors who let themselves be fondled into throwing billions? Shame on you! </rant>

The same thing happened to lightfield imaging with Lytro (who took "only" a few hundred million in comparison). Lightfield imaging has been stagnant ever since they took too much money and sucked all the oxygen out of an entire industry.

[1] https://www.kguttag.com/2018/09/26/magic-leap-review-part-1-...

I completely get your rant, but I don't see it the same way with the VR stuff. There's REALLY good VR out there... I have an HTC Vive Pro and one of my primary uses of it is for training as I'm currently in flight training, and the immersion that I get using flight simulators in 3D is just stunning. When I'm not doing that, from exercise games, to social games, to first person shooters, I can't think of playing video games not in VR.

But between the headset, computer, and everything that goes along with it, I've spend > $4k on this setup. So I get it that this is not the typical VR experience for everyone, but the issue in this space is one of price. I can't believe that if that experience could be had for, say, $500, that we wouldn't be inundated in VR stuff. Contrary to what I've seen in AR; even the top of the line stuff is still just kinda "meh"

What flight simulator would you recommend I use it with?

It really depends on your interests and skill level. There are now several with good support. There's some that give you access to flight controls by using existing VR controls and are generally a jump in and fly experience and then at the other end there's stuff like DCS which will require some additional hardware and a fair amount of learning (but totally worth it, especially with the Tomcat on the horizon)

Depends on what you are looking for. For me, systems fidelity and ability to custom design scenarios is most important, so for that I recommend Prepar3D (Lockheed Martin bought FSX and kept developing it).

Even multi-million dollar level D simulators don't quite do a good job at recreating the flight control feels, so I've given up on that altogether. But some features of the flight model --- things like P-factor, adverse yaw -- are better modeled in X-plane, and visually (at least out of the box), it beats the competition.

But the most immersive experience has got to be Prepar3D coupled with payware aircraft from PMDG. I know real Boeing airline pilots who actually have used it for training, and vouch for how well the systems are modeled.

I think there is plenty of money being spent on AR R&D right now. We are pretty sure Apple is. Michael Abrash discussed it during his Oculus Connect keynote a few weeks ago. Snapchat has certainly been public about what they want to do. This is the post-phone platform and it is really, really big. A few billion up in smoke isn't going to stop it.

The crime here is Magic Leap hyped the hell out of their product, took tons of money, was extremely opaque about it, and then severely under-deliverd. Exact opposite of Valve and Oculus.

Oculus could have shipped CV1 a couple years sooner, it is essentially identical to DK2. There was a lot of good will (and developer energy) squandered during those two years. To give just one example of where the major players have misstepped.

> Why am I so pissed off about this? Because it's going to crash the AR industry (already on its knees because of an overhyped VR industry) and set it back years. Already, and for years now, no one wants to invest in an AR hardware startup because "how could you possibly beat Magic Leap?

Found the guy who read the Palmer Luckey "Tragic Heap" article.

I'm not allowed to give details, but from my own perspective, neither the VR or AR market are as fragile as you make it out to be.

> already on its knees because of an overhyped VR industry

Is it though ?

It looks like a product that is on the cusp of breaking into the mainstream gaming market.(barring 1 or 2 big pain points)

Movement and Full wireless capabilities (in a desktop grade headset, not Quest) are the 2 big pain points for me.

___________________________________________________

I do fully agree with you on the Magic Leap though. I find it unbelievable that it received the amount of funding that it did.

Have you actually tried it? It’s mind blowing. Way better than I ever expected it’d be. To be fair, I haven’t tried any other AR system.

By many accounts, Hololens is better in most respects, and it's a few years old!

Agreed 100%.

<rant>

Full disclosure I'm a bit of an MS fan boy as they have paid my bills for going on a decade. That being said, I want a solid AR product more than I want my team to win [so to speak].

By comparison, I tried Hololens in a decently controlled demo and was blown away. The idea that Windows 10 UWP apps would 'just work' also seemed to promise an immediately useful product, and mature dev pipeline. Then I started seeing fluff pieces for Magic Leap which were also hit pieces against Hololens. This was when Magic Leap was little more than a gobble of wires in a basement and a demo no one was allowed to see. It made me mad but really just confused me.

Fast forward. The Magic Leap launches and it's lacking against most of Hololens specs and experience. The worst part of _that_ is it doesn't force MS to innovate to compete on price/features. Which makes me afraid that MS will keep it priced for the industrial clients that are currently adopting it and not deal with this nonsense in the consumer space and who can blame them?

Now a new round of paid pieces and promises of content contracts are rolling out. Even more upsetting cause when you _really_ dig into the details the _honest_ answer from anyone seems to be that Magic Leap is not really for even alpha/beta adopters.

Hololens 2 is supposed to be improved across the board and add a 70 degree FOV. Not perfect but a step towards the 130 degree sweet spot I'm waiting for.

Folks smarter than me explained that Hololens locked the FOV to 35 degrees because the math it's expotentionally harder when you start dealing with the natural curve of the eye + the curve of the headset lens + real world overlays. So I get it's a tough problem to crack if you don't tether it to an i7 gaming rig like the Meta 2.

If Hololens can just get down under $1k I think MS will own the market for awhile. _If_ they don't drop the ball....something they do with such frequency that it makes me wonder if the Illuminati is real.

</rant>

Do people really hate Microsoft _so_ much that they'll let someone defraud the industry, and pay for pieces that are on the verge of lying just so they can support something else?

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