1. Put the goggles on some investor's head (in a normal looking room, but with known lighting and spatial properties...).
2. Show them some flashy demo that has some limitations, but promise that with their investment, they will be able to remove those limitations.
3. Investors, who probably lack the deep knowledge of optics to know that those limitations aren't so trivial, throw money at them. Because if those limitations (e.g. FOV, opacity) were removed, it would be world-changing tech.
1. Put the goggles on some investor's head.
2. Investor catches COVID-19 and dies.
Nobody wants to share VR or AR gear any more. The whole idea of location based VR / AR entertainment centers is deadly now.
If it's so great you can't believe it without trying it yourself, and nobody wants to stick their head in a device that anybody else has been drooling and coughing and vomiting in, it doesn't matter how great it is, nobody's going to try it.
There's a price range where I could see buying one to be shared by everyone in my house, but not one for each individual.
For example, Valve Index is in that category for me.
Why shouldn't I? The exterior surfaces of "electronics" are just glass, plastic or aluminum and lysol seems to work fine on all three. It's sold in plastic bottles so it's not like it'd create nerve gas or something.
Not that I generally take marketing claims seriously, but lysol advertises itself as appropriate for use on electronics: https://www.lysol.com/cold-flu/home/how-to-clean-electronics... If there were any real danger, I expect their lawyers might not let them do that.
Some cleaners can mess up the texture of rubber parts too
"Facebook also noted that alcohol-based wipes and cleaners are not recommended for use on the lenses. The lenses can be damaged by alcohol, so users should opt to use a dry microfiber cloth instead. If a smudge is being stubborn, users can dab a small amount of water on the cloth as well, but alcohol should not be used on lenses at all, according to the company."
1: https://www.amazon.com/Vive-Disposable-Hygiene-Cover-Starter...
The consumer product is quite lacking compared to what people said was a demonstration of game changing technology.
It makes it sound to me more like a Séance (with its usual implications) than anything else. Or, for an easier to understand analogy, selling a Disney ride as if it was real.
More like Dean Kamen's launch of "Ginger" in 2001.
You make X in dirty money, then invest it into a cool sounding company promising groundbreaking stuff that has a bunch of big known investors on board already. If the company does well, you take the clean money out with a nice profit on top. If it doesn’t work out, hopefully you pulled out at a level where you lost some money but not much. And it still returns you clean money at the end, so the goal is accomplished.
Typically, this kind of money laundering is done through retail businesses like restaurants and such, but it is way easier to just drop those money as an investment into another company, rather than maintaining your own retail business. Plus, the amount of money you could launder by investing is way higher, since it isnt as suspicious to drop a few hundred millions on a startup investment, as opposed to claiming that your small restaurant that is almost always empty is bringing you tens of millions per year.
Also curious on how it would work. If a rich foreign national decides to invest into a random startup, i dont think US has the ability to look into where the money came from, unless that foreign national claims to have made those money in the US.
Again, could totally be wrong here, so please someone correct me if that’s the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investmen...
Not speaking from direct experience, only logical first principles. I think the money needs to be laundered before i vesting in US firms.
> Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
So maybe similar reasons to WeWork.
They made some Incredibles 2 style goggles.