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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.
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.
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.