The Secretive $4.5 Billion Startup 'Magic Leap' Is Gearing Up To Release A Consumer Version of Its Tech (forbes.com) 130
Magic Leap is an incredibly secretive company based in Florida that develops "mixed reality" technology. While the company was valued at $4.5 billion in its latest round of financing, Magic Leap has never released a product. "It has never given a public demonstration of a product, never announced a product, and never explained the proprietary 'lightfield' technology that powers its products," writes David M. Ewalt for Forbes. That may be about to change, however, as the CEO Rony Abovitz said in a rare interview that the company has spent a billion dollars perfecting a prototype and has begun constructing manufacturing lines in Florida (Editor's note: may be paywalled, alternate source), gearing up for a release of a consumer version of its technology. "We are building a new kind of contextual computer," Abovitz says. "We're doing something really, really different." The final product of theirs is expected to fit into a pair of glasses when everything is said and done. "When you're wearing the device, it doesn't block your view of the world; the hardware projects an image directly onto your retina through an optics system built into a piece of semitransparent glass (the product won't fry your eyeballs; it's replicating the way we naturally observe the world instead of forcing you to stare at a screen)." Forbes adds: The hardware also constantly gathers information, scanning the room for obstacles, listening for voices, tracking eye movements and watching hands. As a result, mixed-reality objects are aware of their environment and have the ability to interact with the real world. On Magic Leap's hardware a Pokemon might escape capture by ducking behind your couch or, assuming you live in a "smart" home, turning off your lights and hiding in the dark. In one of its demos the Magic Leap team shows off a computer-generated "virtual interactive human," life-size and surprisingly realistic. Abovitz and his team imagine virtual people (or animals or anything else) as digital assistants -- think Siri on steroids, except with a physical presence that makes her easier to work with and harder to ignore. Ask your virtual assistant to deliver a message to a coworker and it might walk out of your office, reappear beside your colleague's desk via his or her own MR headset and deliver the message in person. Ewalt goes on to write about Abovitz's life growing up and the past companies he has founded, which have ultimately helped lead him to Magic Leap.
ok..it's the Matrix (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If they do it right, it'll more likely be a fapping machine. :)
A giant sucking sound (Score:2)
And it's not Ross perot. No that's the sound the 4.5billion dollars of magical wealth transfer makes when the investors discover they have just fleeced.
Re: A giant sucking sound (Score:1)
A $4.5B valuation more likely means they have 4.5B shares and got $1 for one.
Re: (Score:2)
or the USA Presidential Election.
It's being produced in Florida, so I'd go with the latter.
Didn't Google try this before (Score:1, Insightful)
And it failed because no one wanted to spend $999 on a pair of glasses that spy on you constantly and could be easily hacked and reveal all kinds of sensitive data (credit card numbers, etc.)
Re: Didn't Google try this before (Score:2)
Sounds more like Microvision. I lost a ton on their stock. :/
Ginger Segway again (Score:3)
The hype machine on this reminds me of Dean Kaman's hype for the project Ginger that turned out to be the segway. It was a remarkable achievement that fell flat like a thud. One could see how they might have imagined greatness for it.
Re: (Score:2)
I was so disappointed with the Segway. Before we even knew what it was they were saying new cities would be built with this new technology in mind. I was very curious and anxious to know what this was. Then comes the rolling pogo stick......you're joking right. :-(
Re: (Score:2)
Then comes the rolling pogo stick......you're joking right. :-(
Exactly. If you go back and read some of the PR hype you'd suspect that they'd invented time travel or teleportation or mind transference.
But then it's unveiled, and it's just as you said: a fucking pogo stick with wheels. Seriously?
Re: (Score:1)
Beer does the same and its cheaper.
Re: (Score:2)
UPDATE | More like Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazingly, Magic Leap is actually listed on his site under "Other Works" ... Apparently, Neal is their Chief Futurist
http://www.nealstephenson.com/magic-leap.html
mrt
Re: (Score:2)
Curious that you'd think of Snow Crash ahead of Virtual Light. Although I guess the VL tech skipped the photons and went straight for the optic nerve.
Interaction with Smart House? (Score:5, Funny)
On Magic Leap's hardware a Pokemon might escape capture by ducking behind your couch or, assuming you live in a "smart" home, turning off your lights and hiding in the dark.
It's all fun and games until someone dies from falling down the stairs in the dark because a pokemon switched off their internet-vulnerable lights.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you have stairs in your house? We are here to protect you.
Re: (Score:2)
I keep the lights on in my house at all times because I fear the pusher robots who want to push me down the stairs!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Some florid remarks (Score:2)
"Silicon swamp" (soon to be "Silicon Reef", courtesy of your friendly neighborhood CO2 emitters...)
Re: (Score:2)
In Germany, a third of the population [brillen-sehhilfen.de] wears correction glasses (or contact lenses) permanently. More than 60% wear correction glasses or lenses at least part of the time. More than 60% wear sunglasses. And that is just the consumer market.
I could not find numbers on the actual use of protective eyewear in the workplace, but just looking at the most obvious industries, ie. anyone dealing with chemicals, sparks, dusts, body fluids and excrements and so on, there definitely is a market for such a thing. Aircra
Windowshades on the Soul (Score:2)
William Shakespeare said “the eyes are the window to your soul.” I agree. I adore the eyes of the opposite sex.
From that standpoint, I see sunglasses as "windowshades that hide the soul."
Don't like 'em. At all. When I shoot portraits, I make sure any glasses are off. Indoors or out. Nothing nice or sexy about them.
For those times when the sun is hurting your eyes or compromising your vision, yeah, ok. Just like raincoats in the rain. You shouldn't wear them with a
Re: (Score:2)
But I do wear them because they do something for me: polarise and block out that nasty Aussie sunlight.
I don't think the HTC Vive is remotely sexy. It's also not terribly comfortable. The image quality has plenty of room for improvement. You're tethered by an invisible cable to an invisible computer, it's a pain in the arse, but I wear that too, when I want to lose myself in tilt brush, or shoot some zombies
Re: (Score:2)
It's not that simple. Weight of glasses is a big problem...enough so that it's the reason my optometrist always recommends plastic lenses over glass.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Glasses are the most accepted method of modifying your vision, be it sun, near/far sighted or night vision.
To people posting comments like the above, feel free to complete your assertion by letting us know what vision products should be if not worn over your
Re: (Score:2)
Deja Vu (Score:2)
Re:Deja Vu (Score:4, Funny)
"We're doing something really, really different."
Translation: We're doing something slightly different than what someone else has already done, but not really groundbreaking in any meaningful way, and it will still have the same problems that the previous technology had.
Re:Deja Vu (Score:5, Interesting)
Last time a heard a story like this we got the Segway.
Exactly what I was thinking. The vulture capitalists valued the company at $500 million before any product was released.
They believed their own hype, and came out with an overly complicated electric scooter.
$100 million R&D so they could put the wheels left & right instead of front & back.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I remember newspaper articles saying "what is IT?" - picture of Steve Jobs, quote from him saying something like "city infrastructure worldwide will need to be adjusted for this".
Laughed my ass off when I saw the Segway. Such a ridiculous thing. We were expecting a fucking hover car or something.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The needles that get inserted into the irises are nearly pain free!
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe, except NOW Clippy would look like he's walking back and forth along the top of your monitor. With some appropriate haptics, you could probably even give him a satisfying punch, send him flying, and watch him splatter onto the wall.
Re: (Score:2)
The hype meter is turned up to 11 on this one (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Forture Magazine is more and more running articles originally authored by PR agencies under the guise of an "original" "investigative" article signed off by one of their own writers/editors. This whole article looks and smells a lot to me like the hype buildup for the Segway device - and how well did that all go?
lol. fortune editors. Pretty sure all those are extinct.
Re: (Score:2)
and how well did that all go?
Off a figurative and literal cliff.
Re: (Score:3)
There are only two reasons to keep a product secret while still talking about it:
1 can't be tru
Re: (Score:1)
There are only two reasons to keep a product secret while still talking about it:
1 can't be true since they explained what to expect from the product in this very article. Thus, it must be 2.
You left out number 3:
You are about to go live, and need to hype up the potential customer base.
It seems they have all the cash they need, are starting up production lines, and probably determined it was time to start generating general interest.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Wired covered this a few months ago (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yeah... except that the product has the word "magic" in it... which totally inspires confidence in a technological breakthrough.
Magic = smoke + mirrors
1. How does this device work sir?
2. Well, you see, it's magic.
1. You have given up at life haven't you?
Re: (Score:2)
There could potentially be "long term use damage" but this kind of damage is a temporary type that heals over time (though can take over a year for bad cases) And this is most likely something the user would notice as it occurred, with plenty of time to rectify.
Bullshit? (Score:2)
If they can really pull of what their fake-videos have shown, I will gladly buy their product. But until they show something( anything ) that's not just another produced-video, this stinks of a scam.
Re:Bullshit? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's a scam, then it's an unusually clever one. Their demonstrations and patents [google.com.au] convinced Google, Qualcomm & others to invest hundreds of millions in them (twice). Maybe soon we'll find out for sure.
Re: (Score:2)
Apart from the device, I am curious about their software. Proper AR will need to do some fairly clever thi
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, they've given no public demos.
They have given demos however, to very reputable people in the industry.
It's a different approach to other companies that are trying to get funding, but certainly seems to be working well for them.
Of course, we won't know for sure till we actually try it ourselves, but that's true of just about any product.
It seems to me that any further information they provided wouldn't mean much to their target consumers, and would both shorten their lead in whatever tech the
Re: (Score:2)
Er yeah, that got screwed up. I blame the thought influencer. Try this link [google.com.au] instead.
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine the best they could have possibly done is they've shrunk Hololens to the size of chunky regular glasses. Technologically that would be a great achievement but I'm not sure that would be all that important.
They are Hiding Device Limitations (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike the composited lies of the initial video, all their subsequent videos are shot through their device and it is abundantly clear that they are using an additive light technology (much like you would get from bouncing an image off a piece of glass at 45 degrees). The first thing you notice is that all of the videos shot through the device are in rather dark rooms, some very dark indeed. If you look at this shopping demo [youtu.be] you will see that the eyes of the weird yellow lamp creature are meant to be black, but the grey background shows through them. This is a limitation of additive light.
Now people who have used the device say they were blown away and I'm quite sure that if I saw their Star Wars demo [youtube.com] in a conveniently darked room, I would also be amazed. The problem is that people who have experienced the device in darkened rooms might come away with the impression that it can show dark objects, or rather, realistically lit objects, in a normal well-lit environment. In an outdoor environment, or even a well-lit room, the objects could look very washed-out, or at the very least, very bright, glowy and unnatural. If you just want to shoot glowing space aliens or read some glowy text, that isn't an issue. However, if people are expecting to see realistic naturally lit objects that actually look like they belong in your current environment, I think they may be sorely disappointed. The additive light limitations could also be a big problem for shopping applications. After all, it's a bit difficult to see how that dark green couch is going to look in your lounge if the wall behind it just shows through. Google's project tango has the advantage there since it can just composite naturally lit objects over the video feed.
I'm not saying their device couldn't be really useful, or even pretty amazing in certain situations and environments, but I think the limitations will cause issues and may put a lot of people off buying one. I could also be wrong, and for some reason they have been refusing to show their amazing light-blocking technology in their demo videos, but that seems unlikely.
P.S. Although they have been more honest in their videos recently, I should point out that their website still shows concept images that misleadingly give the impression that they are able to show objects darker than the background. I should also point out that Magic Leap have been far more honest than Microsoft who seem to exclusively composite their videos to hide their crappy field of view and similar additive light limitations.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, it's almost certainly just adding light, and unless their final product includes an LCD blocking layer then bright background objects will indeed show through. But while this would limit its use in daylight, I suspect it would still be perfectly usable in a lot of scenarios. Yeah, their marketing material isn't entirely representative, but then it can't show its biggest strengths either; the comfortable 3D and natural-ness of a lightfield display.
But then they're not selling it to consumers yet. On
Re: (Score:2)
I'm 50/50 split on this point. Their patent actually cites light cancelling as one of the features of the lightfield display chip that they use. *But* I can't tell if it's bullshit or not since as you say all of the demos appear to be purely additive. It's theoretically possible that they're able to build a lightfield that shunts incoming vectors if they do have a true lightfield manipulation device but... I've got my doubts.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I know what it is! (Score:4, Insightful)
"an incredibly secretive company based in Florida" (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a scam. They always are.
Re: (Score:1)
This is actually not a scam. You should read up on Rony and his buddies from Washington. And all their patents.
I'll nutshell it for you. Rony is a weird guy that made a fortune in the medical field. His friends hold a bunch of imaging patents on how to generate visual data by vibrating a fiber optic cable, this is how they will create the light field display. It's an absolutely ingenious setup.
Rony has been obsessed with VR/AR for decades, before it was cool the first time. This is a passion project that wa
Re: (Score:2)
Lots of people on this thread who are just scanning the article and reacting, without doing their own research, so those of us who have are happy to share some of it here.
This is slashdot though, so we'll still get the uneducated making authoritative statements and assumptions, and the rest of slashdot trying to push what real discussion that can be had.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm sitting in South Florida right now and you're absolutely right. There's no "secretive" tech being developed here. There's some tech, yes, but nothing on the cutting-edge at all. However, there is a constant stream of scam-bait coming from a bunch of old men who moved here from Jersey. They're always pitching some BS and I'm sure that's what this is.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a scam. They always are.
It could also be a prelude to another "Florida man" story.
Re: (Score:2)
You might even say: "I'll believe it when I see it"
Re: (Score:2)
Predictions for magic leap (Score:2)
1. It will be a really nice display technology.
2. It will be ruined by plays to create a new "platform" owned by magic leap.
3. It will be filled to the hilt with malware/spyware.
4. It won't work with GPUs powerful enough to take advantage of the new display.
Sun glasses? (Score:2)
Let me make a wild guess: we are talking about a pair of glasses with more or less transparent displays for lenses and some sort of eye tracking tech? Hard to imagine how this has cost billions to develop. Thousands, I can believe, or even millions, but billions? Let's see the goods, that all I can say.
Skeuomorphisms in Augumented Reality (Score:1)
Wow, that citation FTA is awfull. The examples it gives are just for selling the future to people stuck in the past..
Clippy Strikes Back (Score:3)
Abovitz and his team imagine virtual people (or animals or anything else) as digital assistants -- think Siri on steroids, except with a physical presence that makes her easier to work with and harder to ignore. Ask your virtual assistant to deliver a message to a coworker and it might walk out of your office, reappear beside your colleague's desk via his or her own MR headset and deliver the message in person.
I'll buy them for my entire department if it means I can inflict Clippy on other people.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmmm..... Siri on steroids....
Roid-rage...hilarity ensues...
The question from nerds is... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I remember Project Ginger (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
IT (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
In my mind's eye (Score:5, Funny)
I imagine this thing to be the device that Riker brought back from Risa in "The Game"
Come on Wesley, try it! Everyone is doing it!
Sounds dreadful (Score:1)
Abovitz and his team imagine virtual people (or animals or anything else) as digital assistants -- think Siri on steroids, except with a physical presence that makes her easier to work with and harder to ignore. Ask your virtual assistant to deliver a message to a coworker and it might walk out of your office, reappear beside your colleague's desk via his or her own MR headset and deliver the message in person.
So ... instant messaging, with a more-intrusive and less-efficient user experience, crossed with a feeble simulacrum of actual in-person interaction.
If that's the typical use case for their additive-light augmented-reality tech, then no thanks.
AR proponents have always been keen on pointing out potential applications, in entertainment (who needs more entertainment options?), and education (where I feel it's hugely overrated), and in industry (where there are certainly valid ones, but they're too obvious to
Re: (Score:3)
What the fuck systemd? You just decided you needed to clean up my /tmp file system for me? Well fuck you. /tmp
stuoid systemd deleting my files from
fuck you
It deleted your porn, too. Only the furry stuff.
Re: (Score:3)
I was right. How did I guess?
Truly amazing. Now fuck off.
Re: (Score:2)