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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.
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.
Well - give them some more money. . I want one or more of these. I don't care if they go broke or the economy collapse. Just imagine the porn - err I mean possibilities.
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.
I don't think it will be that bad, but yeah I think there will likely be a simultaneous collapse of both real estate bubble 2.0 AND tech bubble 2.0. Neither of these bubbles are as big as the ones that preceded them though, so we'll probably see a simple recession.
And because people like to blame the president for recessions (even though it's never actually been the president that caused it,) whoever wins the next election will be a recession president, and unless there's a significant turnaround in that time, they'll be a one term wonder.
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.
the summary and/or editor's blurb should have made it clear that in this context AR = Augmented Reality.
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.
I think AR will have a lot of uses, but in a marginal sort of way. Consider the rise of 3D CAD/CAM. We now have very complex organically shaped cars of exceptional build quality and safety, but fundamentally they don't make it any faster/easier to get around a city compared with their 1980s boxy counterparts. I can see AR being very useful for some professions, but it is not going to suddenly make people 50% more productive.
The real quality of life improvements for the 99% would come from investing in the last 20% of automation for things like food production, construction, plumbing etc. The sorts of things that 99%ers still toil away to produce or get a slice of. But while we have our current economic model, there is little incentive for the wealth holders to invest in that sort of productive tech vs shiny consumerist gimmick, because eliminating jobs just forces down the cost of labour to compete with your new robot, which reduces the marginal return on further automation. That is the problem with having an economy where the goal is full employment, and where you pitch capital against labour. It is essentially why we aren't all working 3 day weeks at the moment.