Magic Leap seems to have mastered the idea of "Look investors, this next thing, it'll be the best trust me."
Meanwhile you can buy a Vive today or in a couple weeks a Windows Mixed Reality set (VR might be 'good enough' for most use cases ML would target). On top of the hololens, which is a closer product. Hololens fov leaves a lot to desire, but it actually works and anyone with the cash or willingness to go to the Kennedy Space Center can try it.
Not sure where Magic Leap is going right now, hopefully they'll release a revolutionary product, but the fact they never release a beta or devkit on the chip and projection system they've been talking up for half a decade is very worrisome.
I'm fairly familiar with the space, and my office picked up a Magic Leap to tinker with it. It feels revolutionary if you haven't tried its predecessors; if you have then it feels like the logical next step. If you've tried the Hololens, it's a nice step up in both the control department (the controller is miles better than the crummy'stare-at-it-and-pinch-fingers' Hololens interaction) and the field-of-view department (It isn't perfect, but its a far step beyond Hololens' "tiny viewport if you look straight ahead". In general it feels more polished, and at a lower price point as well, I can't think of any reason you'd waste your time with Hololens now.
It is, however, over-=hyped. I hear the engineering team at Magic Leap hates the marketing team for hyping it like it's literal magic. The hardware team is supposedly steaming ahead, and compared to the one they are currently working on, the released version is pretty dated, but what are you gonna do when they want to finally release a product after all this hype?
I used to be as skeptical, but conversations I've had through the grapevine with people I personally trust seem to imply that there really is something to Magic Leap's tech, but then again early Hololens demo-ers also raved.
I'm guessing it'll end up a lot like gen 1 consumer VR headsets: you can see a clear demonstration of something really cool and under specific conditions it's genuinely engrossing, but it'll take a lot more before it really becomes widely useful.
When considering whether or not Magic Leap will succeed, I think it's helpful to set aside all the hype and speculation and just look at the Magic Leap One for what it is.
As far as I'm aware, the Magic Leap One is the best AR headset on the market today, at least in terms of the hardware. Compared to its stiffest competition, the Hololens, it's lighter on your head, has a wider field of view, is $700 cheaper, and features eye tracking, a 6-DOF controller, and a dual-focal display.
But is that enough? Even with all those improvements, it's still a $2,295 headset with a fairly small FOV and several significant technical constraints. Clearly it's not ready yet for mass adoption with general consumers, so the question is; what's next? Is Magic Leap planning to release an updated version in a couple years that's less than half the price and technically superior to their existing headset? Can they last that long without any major revenue source? Or do they have other means of becoming profitable (perhaps commercial applications of the tech)? Still lots of unanswered questions here.
I get this feeling that Magic Leap is marginally better than Micrsoft's Hololens. But after seeing the Hololens, they decided that they need more work to beat Microsft. Marginally better isn't going to cut it.
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”.
The most worrisome aspect of the presentation for me was that it's not designed to work outdoors. They said explicitly that the initial product is aimed at indoor use. Which makes me wonder what it has that my Vive doesn't, since the field of view is apparently limited. (One of their presentations in July is titled "FOV mitigation.")
Still, Magic Leap has proven time and again that they have a plan, and mixed reality is coming one way or the other. ML won't be the last player in the space.
Let's assume for the sake of a conversation that this article is right, and Magic Leap (ML) is lackluster. What is it exactly that makes VR tech so difficult, then? ML had all the money in the world, and still (presumably) couldn't hit the mark. What exactly is missing - is it the material sciences for eye-projection systems? Ability to downsize the graphics and processing tech into a small package?
What critical milestones are still missing that, when available, will allow truly immeresive VR? And anyone dare predict when they will be available?
I was, at one time very recently, very deep in the VR/AR space. It seems to me that there will be quite a bit of time before people accept projectors pointed at their eyeballs (or however you want to explain Magic Leap's "digital light field" technology).
$800M on $4.33B post- is a big chunk of a company, particularly one that does not have a working product demo yet. Maybe it'll all shake out positively, but I am of the opinion that this is not real.
Lastly, all of Magic Leap's demos are very clearly not using wearable hardware (and also not being demonstrated using any kind of light-accurate reproduction). For example, metallic effects usually require "black" as a shade and things like the Lumus Optical lenses cannot reproduce such an effect (despite being basically the cutting edge of lightfield reproduction).
In short, I am bearish on Magic Leap.
Also, I am super confused as to why Magic Leap is operating their own silicon fab... That seems crazy to me.
Yeah, it may have taken a billion dollars but a billion dollars doesn't guarantee success. The product is impressive, even if Hololens stole their thunder two years ago. The engineers should be proud.
I don't see a market for it though, so it's hard for me to see how the company can survive until the technology matures enough for the mainstream. I think it will be more than 5 years, possibly 10. Timing is so important for a startup and Magic Leap is too early.
I'm thinking that Hololens rev. 2 will be out before Magic Leap rev. 1 is out and will be cheaper. So unless Magic Leap is an order of magnitude better than Hololens, they have failed.
Say what you will about Microsoft, at least they already have a platform on which this "new era of computing" can be based: Windows. That is to say, it makes tremendous more sense to evolve from what we have now into the "new era of computing", than to write an entire platform from scratch, which is what I assume Magic Leap is trying to do.
The strange thing is that most of the people that are attacking so harshly magic leap in this thread have business link with hololens that has really an abysmal FOV.
Disclosure: I’m not buying a magic leap, I have no financial interest on it, I just want some working environment that I would really really enjoy.
I've tried the Hololens dev version. It's very cool, unlike anything else I've had on my head. Those who let me try it don't seem to be overly worried or impressed with Magic Leap, but there's no way of telling until we see both side-by-side.
Interesting timing for this article and documentary to emerge, while a modern company with so many parallels, Magic Leap, is apparently releasing their device in the coming days. As General Magic was an ambitious and visionary precursor to the iPhone, so it seems Magic Leap may be the ambitious and visionary precursor to a mainstream spatial computing headset of the not-too-distant future.
With recent leaks of the 40 degree FOV and headset footage, it seems that Magic Leap, like General Magic, has not yet been able to deliver the technology necessary for widespread appeal. This time around, at least Magic Leap has raised a war chest so large, perhaps they can move forward with a far improved version 2 and continue operations and development, given only modest sales.
Hopefully Magic Leap can learn a lesson here and avoid becoming a General Magic (although, if it does, it was still a worthwhile effort to push the field forward, as General Magic did).
This is actually really exciting. Still not a lot of details on specs or pricing (which is what will ultimately determine whether this succeeds or not), but from what we've seen so far I think this is the first consumer-focused AR product which has the potential to gain a real substantial level of adoption. The Oculus Rift DK1 of AR, as it were.
Though with recent advances in AR and VR tech, the Magic Leap doesn't seem as magical as it did when they first started teasing it several years back. Looking at the trends over the last year or so, I think it was only a matter of time before _someone_ came out with a product like this. (In fact, what they announced here today almost seems like a cross between a Microsoft Hololens and an Oculus Santa Cruz headset.) The real innovation Magic Leap seems to be bringing to the table is their "lightfield" display; though it's hard for me to judge how big of a deal that will be without trying it for myself.
Hololens is not "flying off the shelves". It would not be viable as a standalone business either.
None of Magic Leap's many problems would have mattered if there was actually a market for the product to sell into. But the market needs a product that's better than any available technology allows today.
Originally I found the Magic Leap extremely exciting, because
in contrast to phones or tablets, whose touchscreens limit what sort of applications are feasible, AR could allow for arbitrary interfaces.
These interfaces could be present alongside the real world, making them both more convenient and maybe less of an attention-vortex.
This is (among other things) what Magic Leap pitched, and comparing the actual product to their press releases is to note a vast discrepancy.
Still, hope springs eternal, so while I wasn't impressed, I know how hard AR is and I wasn't inclined to judge too harshly-- maybe it will get better as technology improves.
After having read the article, I find myself rooting for them to fail.
This is a company that has taken (and arguably squandered) billions of dollars to release a slightly cheaper HoloLens.
Instead of feeling abashed, they continue blithely on, even having the temerity to invite developers to their platform because the rest of the world (and in particular, other platforms) has so much "baggage" and "negativity".
As the article notes, this is a company that is propped up by oligarchs, settles sex discrimination lawsuits, and is pursuing military contracts with repressive regimes.
Although to be fair, improving soldiers' lethality is the only use case they've articulated that justifies the price.
Now that the missed expectations and general shadiness are starting to catch up with them, they're moving to attract developers.
Somehow, despite all the money, they haven't been able to pay for an idea to justify the hype-- what else could you call it but a con?
If we're seeing articles like this I'm guessing they are preparing to do another round of funding?
The only time these guys ever make the news is just before they raise a massive heap of capital, and this news looks just as vacuous as all the other news they release.
Just based on the HoloLens having a product out already (even if only a dev version) it seems to me like Magic Leap is way behind.
Meanwhile you can buy a Vive today or in a couple weeks a Windows Mixed Reality set (VR might be 'good enough' for most use cases ML would target). On top of the hololens, which is a closer product. Hololens fov leaves a lot to desire, but it actually works and anyone with the cash or willingness to go to the Kennedy Space Center can try it.
Not sure where Magic Leap is going right now, hopefully they'll release a revolutionary product, but the fact they never release a beta or devkit on the chip and projection system they've been talking up for half a decade is very worrisome.
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