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Magic Leap Raises $794 Million To Accelerate Adoption of Secretive AR Tech (roadtovr.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A massive new $794 million Series C investment in secretive AR startup Magic Leap puts the company among the world's most valuable startups, now reportedly valued at $4.5 billion. The company has aggressively teased what they believe to be revolutionary augmented reality display technology, allowing a mixture of the real and virtual dimensions in a way previously not achieved. Although they've played coy to the public, offering little more than bold claims, investors like Alibaba, Google Ventures, and Qualcomm Ventures have bought into the company's vision to the tune of $1.39 billion in total raised by Magic Leap thus far. Also at Network World, which notes that their demo must be amazing.
might as well be Magic, too.
Magic Leap projects a digital light field into the observer's eyes,
The japanese have been there, done that
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
There's another financial crisis coming soon, and it's going to make 2008 (and the dot-com bubble burst) look like a small hiccup in comparison. Senseless transfers of billions of fiat dollars around companies like this and various shitty social networks that have never made a single cent in profit are a sign of that.
I think funding numbers can be deceptive about the engineering accomplishments of a tech because I'm sure that money gets returned if the ten people running Magic Leap blow through $1-2m without results. Here's the patent (490 pages...): http://pimg-faiw.uspto.gov/fdd... For $4.5b, I'd pirate the heck out of that patent.
I'm not entirely sure I want my advertising to be both virtual, and beamed directly onto my retina.
This is the future, sadly. I can easily visualize a world where most of my interactions are with completely artificial virtual entities that only exist in my head, thanks to tech that beams shit effortlessly onto my retina, just as easily as your ear buds do the same for your ears.
Signs that are otherwise blank, showing personalized virtual adds as you direct your gaze at them. Cars that have huds, phones with true 3d holograms etc etc.
I'm not sure I'm going to enjoy the transition or not, but I won't be able to prevent it, and I'm sure there's both good and bad that can come from it.
Hopefully the good will outweigh the bad.
They have released this demo : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw0-JRa9n94 which looks pretty decent. You can find some artifacts (mainly the occlusion of the little robot which could be better). The depth of field looks pretty cool in the second part and the resolution seems decent (at least for the 1080p camera and for the few frame it is actually in focus, might not be perfect for the eye though).
I have no idea on the volume/weight of the device though.
This think is varporware connected to a highthroughput press-release ink jet.
Even apple can't keep it's secret sauce secret. Why? because at some point they have to make the thing and tell developers how to work with it. So it leaks out the supply channels. the Magic-vape folks ought to have that problem if this existed. and they also ought to have the problem from investor briefings. but not a peep. So one suspects it's non-existent investor bait similar to the rigged demos of cold fusiion.
Now judging from the words like enhanced sensors my guess is they are tackling the tough problem of 3D vision. most of these things go after a single method of 3D cueing and drop the others. But real human perception requires multiple cues to work. You want stereo vision but you also need the focal plane to change as the eye changes focus. If you look at their demo it looks like that might be happening. You also need to have it align correctly with shifting head angles, pupilary distance, glance angle. 3D doesn't look right if your point of focus is different than the distance to the object or it doesn' change as you glance. this why you get a headache. additionally you want to barf if there's too much lag as you move your eyes or head. you can't tell if that's there from the mono-vision you tube but they definitiely had some defocusing out of the focal plane going on it looked like.
hence I think what they are pedaling is what you would get if you had an infinite budget for sensors, refresh rate and processing power. Which means this may not be affordable and by the time it is Occulus will not only get there too but already have a cash flow revenue system in place built on the cheapo art of the possible.
or so I'm guessing.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Billions in vr. Where is feedback loop? Touch, smell, pressure. Without that just a bunch of folk staring out of spacecraft and waving arms in nothing.
An updated Segway!
That was the last time I remember some (non-Apple) super secret tech project getting this much attention.
Absolutely nothing amazes me.
Unless their VR defies physics, it's just another piece of tech that no one has made, but surely someone has imagined at some point.
"If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet"
Combine a mass spectrometer and a projector that can bounce an image off objects in the room that puts the focal point of the light in front of or possibly behind the object, (my math isn't all that good, but I think I know enough that indicates part of what I'm saying is possible) and you may have something better than what we have now, without glasses and more than one person at a time can see it.
Am I the only person who doesn't know WTF "AR tech" is? Arkansas Tech?
the summary and/or editor's blurb should have made it clear that in this context AR = Augmented Reality.
these crazy market caps are a symptom of income inequality. There's only so much for the 1% to spend their money on, so we're seeing some pretty big boondogles. Not sure yet if this is one or not but it looks like it. Not because the tech isn't real but because I don't think Joe & Jane average care about AR any more than they did about 3D TVs.
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Vaporware. . . no, holoware. . . er, realiware?
At $4.5 billion and what seems to be a continuing insanity of investing in this company the only way this bubble does not burst and those companies that have foolishly invested to this point don't feel a bit of a sting is if this company has invented the holodeck.
They just have to create a tech demo that emulates "The Game" from STNG.
How are they going to do phase manipulation? It's needed to achieve a true depth field - essentially you need to create a hologram to fool eyes. Google Glass doesn't need it since it shows everything in one plane and Microsoft's AR technology simply makes this plane moveable. That's why this movie shot through a camera is extremely misleading - they should have shown what happens when camera drastically changes focus.
I checked their patent but they simply threw everything possible against a wall, hoping something will stick - like doing multiple layers with lenses between them, directly stimulating retina cells, using phased MEMS and so on. No clue how it can really work.
If it's a device beaming coherent light i.e. from a laser diode, I hope they make it EXTREMELY secure. How much fun would it be to be wearing these and suddenly have it hacked by someone perhaps overriding safety limits and blinding you, or creating a permanent spot in the corner of your vision advertising penis pills, similar to burn in on a CRT or AMOLED?