Magic Leap Finally Unveils Mixed-Reality Goggles (rollingstone.com)

Joosy writes: After raising $1.9 billion dollars, Magic Leap finally shows off it's "mixed-reality" goggles. Was the wait worth it? Rolling Stone gets a look: "The revelation, the first real look at what the secretive, multi-billion dollar company has been working on all these years is the first step toward the 2018 release of the company's first consumer product. It also adds some insight into why major companies like Google and Alibaba have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Magic Leap, and why some researchers believe the creation could be as significant as the birth of the Internet."

Brian Crecente recalls his first experience with Magic Leap's technology: "This first, oversized demo dropped me into a science-fiction world, playing out an entire scene that was, in this one case, augmented with powerful, hidden fans, building-shaking speakers and an array of computer-controlled, colorful lighting. It was a powerful experience, demonstrating how a theme park could potentially craft rides with no walls or waits. Most importantly, it took place among the set-dressing of the stage -- the real world props that cluttered the ground and walls around me -- and while it didn't look indistinguishable from reality, it was close. To see those creations appearing not on the physical world around me, as if it were some sort of animated sticker, but in it, was startling..."

Comments

Show me the videos

[Anonymous Coward]

because a slideshow with some still images is nothing more than vaporware.

Re: Show me the videos

[thomst]

Tomahawk demanded:

Point a camera through the lens and show us what it looks like through the glasses, not a rendered-image slideshow.

So I both looked at the Magic Leap web page - which features the "slideshow" you're complaining about - and read the rather long Rolling Stone article to which TFS points.

Yes, I know. Very un-slashdotty of me. I am obviously "not of the Body".

Reading the article first (including the bit where the author, obviously parroting a recorded statement from the interviews he conducted during his tour, talks about "a ray" of photonic computing structures, which makes it plain that he has no fucking clue about chip design and fabrication) greatly helped me to visualize what ML was trying to present on their home page. The page alone was certainly not at all impressive, but the Rolling Stone reporter's description of his experience with the beta ML1 - and especially the interactive quad sound that tracks virtual objects in the headset wearer's field of view - makes it pretty clear that a video "shot through the goggles" wouldn't necessarily convey that experience a whole lot better than the "slideshow" does. It would, however, put a huge demand on their servers, and probably be laggy as all hell the day they announced their forthcoming product, neither of which would be positives from the perspective of a company that's gone from stealth mode to full visibility on the web in a single announcement.

I do recommend the article, despite its shortcomings (some of which are a consequence of the NDA provisions under which the author labored). The product itself, and the technology ML has created to make it possible, are, in fact, potentially game-changing for interactive computing - albeit probably not in the short term. It's pretty clear that the ML1 will be strictly for developers and rich fucks who can afford to drop the price of a collectable guitar on what will essentially be a toy. The second and third generations are where the real effect on general computing will occur (if at all), after the initial capabilities of the device are seriously enhanced and the price drops from nosebleed territory to something at least marginally affordable to the masses.

That said, it seems like a reasonable bet to wager they'll make it that far. The founder put up a huge amount of his own money to get the company to the point where they had the tech taped down well enough to present it to Google, et al., and they've apparently been pouring cash into ML ever since. It's clearly not a scam, because you don't build a production-level chip fab just to hoodwink the rubes. And ML has constructed such a fab in the basement of their headquarters.

Rainbow's End might not be that far away, after all ...

AR is very different

[SuperKendall]

We have VR its not hot people dont care about it much.

A) That's not really a true, there is a pretty good subset of people that like VR. However...

B) AR is much different than VR, simply because you can really see your surroundings with a computer overlay. That makes it far more practical to use for most people as they don't have to clear out a giant empty space for it in order to move, and potentially movement could be unlimited. The best AR systems can "see" your environment so they can skin anything around you to complete the illusion you are somewhere else, so for instance your entire house could become a zombie-hunting scenario with zombies behind random doors... much cooler than a VR scenario where you are just exploring without touch a pre-baked environment.

Or imagine sitting at a table and having virtual people sitting all around you, talking with you as if they were there.

The hololens is already really good at this, but has currently a limited field of view and is very expensive. It seems like the tech in Magic Leap has a much better FOV, and also much better effective resolution.

There's really room in the world for both things, VR and AR are kind of for different things. But like I said AR is really much more practical for most people and I think will thus be wildly more popular than VR has been.

Re:AR is very different

[jezwel]

.the people who could afford it would just hire a repairman.

The repairmen are a target audience - much easier to have repair manuals aligned with the work you are doing, in your field of view, showing you what to do, than having to either remember it or look away at a book.
There are many jobs where not needing to use your hands to see a reference would be very useful.

I can see there being several dozen or more of these in our business already, for bridge inspectors - and that's my first thought, we have a lot of others where it could be useful.

Re:AR is very different

[vix86]

This will for the very same reasons no one wants to walk around wearing anything on their faces to live their lives

Weird, I and millions of other people do that every day. They're called glasses, we use them to see the world. You have entire families that buy them for themselves and their kids as well.

Think for a minute why would people want to be tied to a piece of glass to watch tv, read the news, browse the internet, and talk to friends???????

Your counter argument could have just as easily been used in the early days of smartphones and look where we are now. The ML style AR will replace smartphones when its as compact as regular glasses.

Re:Meh, let Trump stare at the sun in em.

[EETech1]

You could watch yourself climb mount Bitcoin, dragging your virtual riches with you!