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Comment by berberous | Hacker News Reader

Magic Leap was AR not VR. VR blocks your view entirely with a screen. MagicLeap overlays onto the real world.

I’ve tried Magic Leap and HoloLens, and in my opinion, the tech is just too early for a successful consumer product.

The very first Oculus made me think “I want this now”. Magic Leap made me think “Interesting, but I don’t actually want to use this until it’s far more advanced, which feels like it’s probably decades away”.

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The first Oculus made me think "interesting, but I don't actually want to use this until it's far more advanced". The Vive made me think "I want this now".

I understand if it took until the Vive for you to want it, but the gap between the Oculus DK2 and the Vive was only two years. You could see the Vive was not “far away” from the DK2 when using it, it was incremental improvements quickly within reach. And since then the Index and Quest have continued to make huge improvements, and it feels like Meta’s headset pipeline will continue to advance dramatically over the next handful of year.

Magic Leap, meanwhile, 4+ years later, still feels like we are several breakthroughs away from getting the kind of device quality one would need for a mass market device.

Have you seen the breakthroughs that Magic Leap 2 has achieved? Still not at the price point for consumers but it pretty much solves all the annoyances of the first device or HoloLens for that matter. No longer looking through a tiny FOV, holograms no longer transparent, usable outdoors, first device able to display black. It is quite an achievement.

Interesting. I have only tried the Magic Leap 1, not the Magic Leap 2. Glad to see they are making progress. I am still skeptical that it's not 5-10 years or more away before being something consumers might want, but I won't judge without trying it first.

Price needs to come down and it needs to be wireless. I would wager 3-5 years just for wireless. Could be a decade for price to come down under a thousand. But I also think by then the separate processor wont be necessary anymore, either using your phone or cloud.

I think it was obvious the Vive was "not far away" to you because the Oculus was good enough for you. The Oculus was still on the wrong side of that for me, so I had no belief that incremental change would make it a "have to buy".

The MagicLeap, on the other hand seemed like it needed a higher FOV and resolution. Ideally black pixels behind/instead as well. Those seem like incremental pieces. I would have taken and played with a free MagicLeap/HoloLens (although not purchased one).

As for a "mass market", I think that's more a function of price point. The MagicLeap (and HoloLens) are really expensive. Which means there's not just a technical issue but also a disposable income issue and killer app issue.

Quest 2 is vastly different from the Rift and even Quest 1. You should try it. I moved from the Vive Pro to Quest 2 and I haven’t looked back.

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