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Comment by muglug | Hacker News Reader

I’ll never be able to get over the insanely fake promotional video for the original Magic Leap that demonstrated background occlusion, and not the ghostly overlayed image that the headset actually delivered.

The project was presumably shrouded in such secrecy that the marketing folks had no idea what they were actually selling.

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what a fall from grace from "flying whales!" to "here's google glass for the enterprise"...

Meh this could turn out to be a success story. The original founder had more experience in medical and enterprise sales. He wasn’t a B2C type of CEO and probably was surrounded by yes men and the adoring media who fed into his ego.

They obviously over played their hand and they were given tons of hype and probably felt the pressure. Not an excuse obviously. But we shouldn’t shame people for shooting for the moon and landing on earth.

The fact they got some professionals to eventually run it and have real serious applications is ultimately a net positive for society.

Eventually the price and tech might get practical for consumers, it makes sense to go up market / business before consumer.

> But we shouldn’t shame people for shooting for the moon and landing on earth

Sure, but in this case they were telling the public that they'd reach the moon soon, even though they were just building a new sort of plane.

From what I've heard, their original device was pretty incredible, but large, and they weren't able to keep all the same benefits in the portable version. But that original version is what got everyone so incredibly pumped up.

That doesn't match up with what people who know about optics think is possible: https://kguttag.com/2021/10/28/magic-leap-2-pt-3-soft-edge-o...

This is a comment by Karl Guttag about the prototype I'm referring to: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicleap/comments/9al4lo/magic_lea...

Yeah, and in that comment he only mentions the existence of focus planes, not hard-edge occlusion (which elsewhere Guttag says is essentially physically impossible)

I didn't say anything about hard-edge occlusion? I guess I see that your original comment was about that, I was just responding to the comments further down.

Incredibly unlikely. If sizing was the only constraint, they could've easily showed a real demo of the bigger device.

They were just lying.

You're free not to believe it, but this is based on people who were recruited by the company, and that large device is what convinced them to join.

EDIT: Here's Karl Guttag commenting on Reddit about the version I'm referring to, The Beast: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicleap/comments/9al4lo/magic_lea...

It's fundamentally different from what the ML1 ended up being.

Shrug. I'll believe it when they show it to the public.

> But we shouldn’t shame people for shooting for the moon and landing on earth.

Maybe not, but we should shame them for promising the sun and delivering a rock. It's like if Xerox made a fake ad showing a machine that can clone sheep with a button push, but ended up only delivering a new copier with slightly better performance. It's the kind of outright lie that should be unacceptable from any company.

> But we shouldn’t shame people for shooting for the moon and landing on earth.

We should shame them for lying in their marketing materials.

Which is what I conceded in the sentence before the one you quoted.

You are giving the CEO way too much credit. I followed the story from the beginning, and from the beginning it was clear he was lying through his teeth about what the technology was capable of. With his "my amazing technology is so advanced, I can't even secretly tell you how secretly we are secretly keeping the technology advances secret." Pure bullshit, and I'm glad to see someone like that fail.

Bullshitters erode the trust in the ecosystem that honest entrepreneurs rely on. (Yes, Elizabeth Holmes, I'm looking at you)

I’m sorry to say it but “honest entrepreneurs” are just failed bullshitters. Entrepreneurism is attractive because it’s the closest thing to freedom under capitalism, and the closest thing to dictatorship.

There's this amazing robot you might be interested in.

Does it squeeze juice?

one step at a time. But I agree it's disappointing. It's like if you saw a commercial for an iPhone and then showed up to COMPUSA to find an Apple II.

It's classic aim for the stars and land on the moon. I'm glad to see Magic Leap staid in business and is continuing to move the tech forward.

pet peeve, thats the exact opposite of the saying. It is very easy to aim for the stars and not land on the moon. However if you aim for the moon and miss, you'll still be among the stars, i.e. lost in the void of deep space.

Especially since some decently big names were supporting them at the time, and for some time afterwards too. Their lack of discipline in messaging really damaged their technical credibility.

Same here. Whenever I hear "Magic Leap", that's instantly what I remember. The fake demo. The light projector that somehow can project "dark".

It's also how I view Nikola[4]. Every mention of that name reminds me of a fake electric semi truck rolling downhill.

[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Corporation#Fraud_alleg...

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