As a developer, I tend to look at things and wonder about the future: "what can I build with this?"
I'm getting the realization that the equivalent for journalists is something like: "what controversies can I write about this?"
One can hope that if MagicLeap fails at least someone will pick up the IP and continue to develop it.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/30/7954611/magic-leap-augmen...
>Magic Leap's futuristic patent art was copied from other artists' designs
>When Google-backed augmented reality company Magic Leap quietly applied for a patent, it did so with dozens of pages of futuristic (and slightly creepy) scenarios: a social media charm bracelet, a gargoyle bursting out of a box in a store, gamified cucumber chopping...
>Wait a second. That last one sounds familiar. Maybe that's because it's a line drawing of a shot from "Sight," a Black Mirror-esque short film about an augmented, sinister future. As it turns out, Magic Leap's patent art isn't so much its vision of the future as one created by various students and designers. Former Verge-r and current Gizmodo writer Sean Hollister was tipped off to a set of side-by-side comparisons that leave no doubt we're looking at copies.
>If patents are about originality, does this mean Magic Leap is hurting its claims? Not really. A great deal of patent art just shows potential designs or uses for something, in order to make the actual, more abstract claims clearer. In this case, Magic Leap is patenting an optical system that has nothing to do with the interfaces displayed here. Even bringing a copyright claim would be hard and arguably pointless. "Images such as these are setting consumer expectations of VR and AR today," the company told Gizmodo. "We wanted to use the same images to demonstrate what our technology will enable."
>The designers themselves seem ambivalent of their images' rebirth as patent art. Magic Leap appears to have neither contacted them nor credited them, but at the same time, it's showing the world how this futuristic design fiction could work. It's one thing to have someone rip off your art. It's another to have them actually make it real — if Magic Leap can actually deliver on its ambitious promises.
https://gizmodo.com/magic-leap-ripped-off-those-awesome-ui-c...
>Magic Leap Ripped Off Those Awesome UI Concepts
>Magic Leap is secretly building a headset that could blend computer graphics with the real world. Recently, we lucked into a treasure trove of illustrations from Magic Leap about what that future might hold. There's just one problem: Magic Leap didn't actually create all those awesome UI concepts. It copied them.
>The images speak for themselves. On the left of each of these comparision shots, you'll see an illustration plucked directly from this Magic Leap patent application. On the right, you'll find a screengrab from an awesome UI concept invented by someone else.
>Remember Sight, the incredible student film where a man with bionic eyes plays Fruit Ninja with a real cucumber that becomes part of his meal? Same cucumber. Same everything:
>Or how about the Ringo Holographic Interface dreamt up by then-UI-design-student Ivan Tihienko in 2008?
>Here's a augmented reality concept from interaction designer Joesph Juhnke called "The Future of Firefighting":
>And below, one from designer Michaël Harboun and his team called The Aeon Project. "What if you could travel to exotic, far-away destinations while being stuck in traffic?"
>Lastly, two images from "Meditating Mediums - The Digital 3D," which was the graduating thesis for Greg Tran at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He now designs for Samsung.
>This might also look familiar: [...]