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Comment by IHLayman | Hacker News Reader

You are looking for the price like I was, and many pages are trying to snare you onto “speak to a specialist” links. Let me spare you the trouble, as you are looking for this page: https://www.insight.com/en_US/shop/partner/magic-leap/store....

If you’d rather not click (and I totally understand) let me tell you that the Leap 2 costs between $3200 for the base model and up to $5000 for the enterprise model, which gives you a better viewpoint.

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At $3200 you can just get a Simula One VR[1], which will do everything and more, with less bullshit, and an eye to real usability. I can't understand getting a Magic Leap anything for any amount of money, let alone thousands. They've outed themselves as absolute grifters lol.

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3uN7d51Cco for the kinda cringe show video. But the tech is real and there.

I have been really looking forward to this. It’s a shame that the video is so awful! Why would anybody go to a coffee shop or public park to put on a VR headset? What were they thinking???

Also watching him try to put that cup of coffee to his face was painful. You’d look like such a tool trying to press that cup against your headset. No wonder they cut that scene so quickly.

According to the expressions on the other peoples’ faces, it seems like there was actually some awareness of how ridiculous it was. Those aren’t expressions of amazement. They’re more like “look at that guy trying to drink coffee with a VR headset on his face. What a tool!”

Are the other customers with laptops supposed to look creeped out and angry at him? I imagine the direction they were aiming for is envy, but it looks like they want the weirdo to leave.

It worked in making me interested in the product at least. A standalone headset with Linux and not by Facebook? Those details are all I needed to know regardless of any marketing video.

Yeah, I think everyone agrees that the product is interesting, but the marketing is terrible. It’s like the opposite of Magic Leap

I would and do. It’s a great conversation starter. I got projects and co founders out of it.

I agree 100%. They burst into the tech scene with claims that were clearly fraudulent. They have demonstrated that they have no problem lying, so why would anyone support them? https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2016/12/09/magic_leap_neithe...

It’s a completely different group of people now. Nearly no one from the original management remained in Magic Leap, so I don’t think it’s fair to judge them by the actions of their predecessors.

They kept the name, no? I don't begrudge new people wanting to make a new product out of the husk of a defunct company, like Ophiocordyceps. I'm skeptical of people who think the branding and marketing of V1 was A-ok though.

Management? What about engineers?!

Many left, others were laid off. Some remain. But they had some world class engineering talent (like in their optics - real domain experts they brought from other places and industries). The goals were unrealistic, the product was out of touch with the market (lots of money raised is going to do that 9/10 times), the top management were professional corporate creatures (not in a good sense). But some of the engineers were very good - just sent on the wrong mission.

Some of the worst engineers I've known wound up there (and are still there). Not necessarily bad people, just borderline frauds. I don't trust their organization to do much credible work as a result.

Wow it has HN in the video! Anybody else notice that?

If you think a Simula One VR is a substitute for a Magic Leap you probably should be reading more and commenting less about this market.

Magic Leap is vaporware.

Got anything ‘real’ to compare it to?

It’s not vaporware, I’ve used it myself. Would I buy it? No. But it’s not vaporware.

Portable VR is not the same as AR though right? All notes on quality aside

It has a passthrough and - I think - augment mode.

> you can just get a Simula One VR

except they aren't shipping yet .... I'm a big fan but you really can't count it as a comparison until its really in production. They have barely assembled prototype units yet let alone got the tech fully working.

And even then, its a completely different thing. The magic leap is true AR with real world pass through and full hand tracking. Whether its any good or not I don't know but the use cases they are targeting - surgeons etc are not going to strap a SimlarVR to their head.

Puts the price point in direct competition with Hololens.

If both companies are successful (a big "If"), this means in some years, we'll be hitting another sci-fi milestone for what the future looks like. Thousands of dollars today, but in ~10 years, smartphone prices and hopefully smartphone battery life.

It took a bit longer than we'd have liked, but like... Our present is starting to look like the future imagined back when I was a kid. It's very exciting.

With a lot less Yakuza.

> With a lot less Yakuza.

Hey, we’re talking about the future - there’s still time.

It's interesting, the Cyberpunk style worlds were made in the 80s when Japan was still dominant, so people thought Japan would continue dominating. But that didn't quite turn out how we expected. So it's funny to see Japan still so prominently depicted in future settings, kanji on buildings and people with katana running around, but it's nowhere near like that in the real world.

They are still the 3rd largest economy in the world. Katanas would still be weird. Unless it's a mall ninja.

Does a mall ninja ride a Segway?

Sure, as long as they have a bunch of knives and guns and swords and shit.

The original "Mall Ninja" story unironically talked about wheeling around in a golf cart. It's a short stone's throw to a segway from there.

https://lonelymachines.org/mall-ninjas/

Does the ninja need to be dressed in traditional ninja attire or can they cosplay as a mall cop?

TLDR. Some of the Mall Ninja's comments seem to have been prophetic though:

> What good are the cops going to be if a shooter shows up at your > workplace??? How about your kid’s school, remember Columbine? I’ll > tell you what the cops will do, call the SWAT team and screw > around trying to locate the front door for 30 minutes, ...

;)

This was hilarious, thanks for sharing!

It’s not exactly like that but not nowhere near[1] ;)

1: Hatsune Miku on a Kabuki-cho billboard over news headline reporting US-Russia tensions over Ukraine(2014) https://twitter.com/kno2502/status/440101207596494850

This is the same thing people said about the HoloLens 1 at the same price point 6 years ago. I’m skeptical since neither of these are a consumer product and the price hasn’t moved much.

Maybe I'm out of the loop but is there any additional use case or function compared with such devices in say 1995?

More lightweight, sure, higher pixel density, sure, but that's not a context that changes the offer.

In actual human computer relationship and function, it just feels like Myron Krueger's Videoplace from the 1980s is being perennially reinvented.

Please tell me how stupid and out of touch I am. I probably just don't get it

I think we are all working toward the same goal of making this our reality:

http://milweesci.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/4/13247648/mannapd...

I just honestly don't think the average person wants VR.

I suspect headsets will become a thing when they're cheaper than TVs - just because the the display will be much better. Combined with ear buds - I think it'll just be a way better budget TV experience for some.

Other than that - I don't ever see it going anywhere near mainstream like cell phones or even smart buds.

Magic Leap is just a zombie at this point. NReal has a better and more realistic strategy.

Historically, Microsoft doesn’t know how to make revolutionary product lines profitable and sustainable long term. Kinect was an amazing concept with consecutive poor execution. My memory might be off but they also had 1st crack at iPod, and their current foray into both VR and AR are both underwhelming so far. MS does best when they wait and copy a proven concept. Even then success isn’t always guaranteed

We still will be hitting sci-fi soon. Just not with those companies. I have more faith in Apple, Sony, and Meta. Google will try again and I would be surprised if Amazon didn’t try as well

> We still will be hitting sci-fi soon. Just not with those companies. I have more faith in Apple, Sony, and Meta. Google will try again and I would be surprised if Amazon didn’t try as well

I just had a really weird realization when reading through your list of potential successors. ("Apple, Sony, and Meta"). There's only one name on that list I root for.

Meta? Fuck no. Obviously not them. Nothing else to say here.

Apple? Eh. Sure. I have no ill will against Apple. I have many reasons to continue admiring what they do, and I have some reasons to oppose them (the walls on the garden seem a little too high). On balance they've dominated consumer tech for the best reason: their shit is solid and innovative.

SONY. It's been too long since they last lead technology and design trends. Sony was the Walkman, the CD, the Trinitron. There's never been a remote control as good as a Sony. They have a sleek-but-utilitarian design aesthetic. In the 80s and 90s, you just couldn't go wrong if you picked a Sony for your TV, stereo, or whatever.

For some reason I really want them to be ascendant again. To have a resurgence the same way Apple did starting with the iMac in 1997.

I think the PS5 shows that they're doing a huge amount of things right. But they don't seem to have the same kind of _vision_ apple does (even if you dislike that vision). They still seem to value hardware over software while I think Apple sees them as inseparable parts of a whole.

I don’t feel that Sony will be the market leader in this round because they are exclusively focusing on games only.

They might've had Windows Media stuff to license before the iPod, but the Zune came later. (and the right parody phrase didn't exist then... "Welcome to the social... distancing.")

Are we really going to end up in VR worlds outside of gaming though? It seems a horribly inefficient way to do most non-physical tasks compared to just text or voice. Why walk somewhere when I can click a link? The attraction of headsets for me is the potential for an effectively infinite resolution, no-distraction desktop. But that desktop is still largely going to be single planes of text and widgets. And even then, I’m not wearing the thing on a bus so all the other interfaces still need to exist.

Everyone seems desperate for anime Microsoft Bob and I just don’t see it.

Aren't we talking about AR not VR?

Hololens is AR too.

So this is for things like projecting onto surfaces or creating 3d models for presentation. Hololens's big example is elevator repair where it projects datasheets onto walls so you can see them without needing a spare hand to hold a phone/document.

Yeah and I think those sorts of use cases are valid. I just thought the comment above was more about the SF depictions of VR (i.e. the metaverse) being close, which I think is fanciful.

Yeah, when you think about it, this is only 2-4 times the price of a high end laptop. If the tech is cool that’s not outrageous

Smartphone took off thanks to the capacitive touchscreen. Before that people were like "look at that weirdo with his/her bulky phone and stylus, he/she'd be better off with a notepad". VR headsets need a similar technological leap to become mainstream. It is not just price. The key issue is being able to see the wearer's eyes. This is the only thing that can solve the weirdness issue.

This history is a contraction of more than a two decades of continuous development. Watch the matrix (1998) and you will see small, stylish cell phones everywhere. The capacitative touch screen is important, but pretty much everyone who bought a gen1/2 iPhone already used a feature phone that they used chronically.

I'm not sure it's exciting.

The cancer called advertising has already consumed consumer tech, the vast majority of people are complacent with the situation, and the only escape is real-life where cost, technological and physical limitations prevent the same level of advertising (yes there are billboards, but that's nothing compared to what digital advertising has become).

VR would essentially remove all those limitations, and since people are complacent and clearly don't mind it, we'd end up in a world like this video depicts: https://vimeo.com/166807261. Hell, Facebook or "Meta" is going all-in on VR for a reason.

The dream of consumer AR is dying slowly. It's a disruptive tech that's gone into sleepyland.

Look at stable diffusion as a comparison, blows everyone's mind every day for 30 days, moving at an incredible pace, and for free...

Sure hardware, vs. software but still, we're in different leagues.

>Sure hardware, vs. software but still, we're in different leagues.

Interesting choice in the use of the comma. I know this comment leaves nothing towards the furtherment of the discussion, but it was just odd enough to make me have to stop. I know I typo/myspell, grammatically f'up, there/they're/their typo, all the time, so I'm not grammar pro myself, but just trying to see, if maybe, I can use the, comma, too.

It's a Shatner-Comma, in the, wild.

Are you saying the enterprise model gives a better viewpoint than the base model, or that the pricing alone gives a better viewpoint into the viability of Magic Leap product(s)?

PS: that was rhetorical

When I was a kid, a really good pc(like an Alienware) was 3200. Now my phone is more powerful than most of those PCs from back then. I think you'll see continue to see prices fall over time until adoption takes off

To this day, you can't have the price of that PC subsidized or allowed for the price to be paid in installments with a 24 month contract like a phone.

What would happen to the desktop market if they offered up an infinite payment plan that allowed for annual trade-ins/upgrades like phones? We used to do that with leasing companies for data room equipment, but I never saw it for normal user computers (not that I'm well versed in all manners computer leasing).

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