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Magic Leap is a Tragic Heap, Says Oculus Cofounder (palmerluckey.com)

Posted by msmash on from the didn't-like-it dept.

Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus, has something to say about the competing Magic Leap gear. He writes: The title of this review was carefully chosen, not glibly. I want what is best for VR and all other technologies on the Reality-Virtuality Continuum, Magic Leap included. Unfortunately, their current offering is a tragedy in the classical sense, even more so when you consider how their massive funding and carefully crafted hype sucked all the air out of the room in the AR space. It is less of a functional developer kit and more of a flashy hype vehicle that almost nobody can actually use in a meaningful way, and many of their design decisions seem to be driven by that reality. It does not deliver on almost any of the promises that allowed them to monopolize funding in the AR investment community.

7 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Translation by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dammit, I wanted that VC money!

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Translation by Junta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Eh, Oculus had plenty of VC money and plenty of money in general. I doubt he has much room to *personally* be jealous of investment in them.

      However, VR has been a very uncertain endeavor, and whatever chances it has had/will have of succeeding can be seriously harmed by a company getting a lot of attention, setting themselves up as a *huge* part of the perception of the industry, and then botching it to turn people off of dealing with that industry.

      For example, little of this sort of thing was said by Oculus folk about SteamVR, Windows Mixed Reality, or Google Daydream because all of those seemed to be doing the right sort of thing and setting the right sort of expectations. Substantive improvements without going crazy overboard with the hype. The general philosophy has been to support the tide to rise all ships rather than to be overly critical of each other..

      If the industry rolled with Magic Leap's claims however, then any blow back Magic Leap receives would carry over to the industry at large. There is very good reason to distance Magic Leap's efforts from the industry at large.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  2. Re:you didn't give me YOUR money by gravewax · · Score: 4, Interesting

    well yeah, kinda understandable given the amount that went to ML for the overhyped crap they have produced. I would be kinda pissed too if I was in that industry and fighting for investment with a real product and watched it all go to them.

  3. Re:you didn't give me YOUR money by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Informative

    IIRC Oculus didn't have that much trouble getting funded, for both their initial product and subsequent developments. The article reads as a fair rundown of what Magic Leap is about and how it stacks up to the hype. Conclusion: it doesn't. Magic Leap had all the hallmarks of a classic Silicon Valley scam: incredibly impressive mock-ups coupled with impenetrable secrecy and no details on their actual product whatsoever, landing a few big fish in VC funding and dropping their names to convince other investors to attend their privileged, exclusive dog&pony shows. They promised a world-shaking game changer in AR technology, and turned out to be a mediocre also-ran with pretty much no new tech to offer. If I were one of the investors, I'd be cranky too.

    So yeah, I'd rather have seen all that funding go to Oculus instead... except that they're now owned by Satan.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  4. Seriously? by Jason1729 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is Palmer Luckey talking about Magic Leap or Oculus Rift rift here?

    The way he blew the Rift launch is one of the most epic failures in tech history. To start with so much hype and so much VC and such a market lead. Then to putter around wasting years, pissing off the fanbase with constant delays and a complete lack of communication, string people along expecting a launch any day a year before the product hit the street. Then to release it at more than double the price he had said it would cost and completely kill the early adoption, handing the market to the competition that was at one point years behind. Only to have repeated price cuts the first year as nobody cared to buy at his insanely high price point. And let's not forget him selling out to facebook in the middle of all this.

    Palmer Lucky has got to be one of the last people anyone should be listening to in the VR industry.

  5. Re:you didn't give me YOUR money by chill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The full quote:

    The product they put out is reasonably solid, but is nowhere close to what they had hyped up, and has several flaws that prevent it from becoming a broadly useful tool for development of AR applications.

    What he's actually saying is it's not bad -- compared to the state of the art three years ago. Given that the company was hyping this as the AR equivalent of Mr. Fusion, what they delivered is woefully disappointing.

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    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  6. Re:you didn't give me YOUR money by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So actually what he says is it's not bad as a first iteration of a hardware/software system.

    Well aside from the fact that you cut off the most relevant parts of the quote (sentences stop with a full stop not a comma), even if they did put out a solid product that wouldn't change anything. They didn't promise a solid product, they promised to change the world and blow minds, sucking up investment capital that could have better spent elsewhere.