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Magic Leap is a Tragic Heap, Says Oculus Cofounder (palmerluckey.com) 151

Posted by msmash 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.
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Magic Leap is a Tragic Heap, Says Oculus Cofounder More

Magic Leap is a Tragic Heap, Says Oculus Cofounder

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  • Translation (Score:5, Funny)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday August 27, 2018 @06:04AM (#57201866)

    Dammit, I wanted that VC money!

    • Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Monday August 27, 2018 @07:52AM (#57202252)

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luthair ( 847766 )
        He doesn't work for Facebook anymore, so maybe he's been looking for VC funding...

      • If it makes people more cautious, maybe that's a good thing? Maybe that's what they should have been doing the entire time?

        If the industry truly has something to offer, then it's really just a matter of time before it comes to fruition. If not, then the caution will save people headache.

    • Yea, here's the thing though. Occulus blew it too. Sure, they had a demonstrably usable product but they also suckered investors, took developers for a huge ride, lied about their intent to support Linux, and ultimately failed to deliver something anyone but Facebook can care about.

  • But I thought we were heading towards a VR (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    revolution just like we are currently in the 3D printer revolution? Witness all the 3D printed cars and houses we currently have.

    https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]

    Mmmmm, shorts!

  • VR != AR (Score:4)

    by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Monday August 27, 2018 @06:36AM (#57201960)

    Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus, has something to say about the competing Magic Leap gear.

    Founder of company bashes competitor. News at 11...

    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.

    That is unfortunately a fair description of most VR technology that has ever been developed in the last 30 years. The hype has always exceeded the reality substantially even as far back as the early 1990s (see the movie Lawnmower Man back in 1992 for an example of the hype train in the form of a terrible movie). Understand that I used to make my living with VR tech and it has a soft spot in my heart. But the market potential of VR has been blown WAY out of proportion to the reality of it. AR is a huge market. VR not so much, particularly the bits requiring an immersive headset. Where VR is useful it's incredibly helpful but literally every application of it is the very definition of a niche market.

    It does not deliver on almost any of the promises that allowed them to monopolize funding in the AR investment community.

    AR != VR so I'm not really sure what he's on about. If investors are confusing the two then they are morons. But frankly most of the AR investment seems quite healthy because it's being done by companies like Google, Apple, and the like. You'll note that aside from Facebook, none of the other big tech companies are worried much about VR but they are spending a LOT of money on AR because there are vast, obvious, and hugely profitable applications for the tech. The closest VR comes to a mass market application is for games but even that is still a pretty small population segment and market compared to AR technology. AR tech includes all sorts of location aware smartphone tech, heads up displays, self driving and driver assisting car tech, warehousing, skilled trades, and so much more. VR is useful for some games and a few niche simulations like flight simulators and other training applications plus a bit of marketing. I'm not saying VR is useless, just that it's a smaller market opportunity than AR. Orders of magnitude smaller.

    • That is unfortunately a fair description of most VR technology that has ever been developed in the last 30 years. The hype has always exceeded the reality substantially even as far back as the early 1990s (see the movie Lawnmower Man back in 1992 for an example of the hype train in the form of a terrible movie).

      In the past I would have agreed with you, but at present the situation is very different. There's a variety of very solid products out there and several very solid SDKs as well. What we are seeing currently is nothing at all like the toys of the past with games, big platforms, and even the bloody porn industry getting in on the action.

      VR is smaller than AR in the same way that desktop home PCs are smaller than workplaces. You're conflating two very different target markets. In the consumer space VR is far l

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by grumbel ( 592662 )

        The issue with the VR products out today is that they missed putting out a good product when people were still hyped about it, they came to late and took to long to get good. Oculus Rift was launched at $600 without controller and focused an seated experiences, not a great deal. Now at $400 ($350 on sale) with controllers and some games included and roomscale it's actually a decent product, but everybody lost interest in VR quite a while before that happened. Similar issue with Oculus Go at $200, it would h

      • VR is a joke. You will never solve the motion sickness problem. AR has potential. VR is dead.

        • You will never solve the motion sickness problem.

          Regarding motion sickness, first not everybody is affected the same. (Just like not everybody is sea sick)
          Some where already happy with the tech 20 years ago (VFX1-era) and since then it's only getting better (better resolution, wider field of view, more responsiveness).

          For the rest, the problem has been studied, is quite well understood (basically, sensory input has to match each other. Thus there should be as little lag as possible between head motion and update of image), and since the recent Occulus wav

        • Having used Oculus for a while, I think everyone who has not is missing something important. One of the best use cases is watching Netflix and other video privately. While these devices are sold for their VR capabilities, they are really head mounted displays.

          Key applications for these head mounted displays have no motion sickness issues.

          VR and AR are very much related. The Oculus Gear VR, that lets me use my Samsung Note Phone for the display, has a Pass Through Mode where you see the real world throug

          • As soon as they get lighter and have higher resolution

            Most importantly they have to be more than an additive display. The problem with Hololens and now Magic Leap ("HoloLens v1.1" according to lucky) is that they don't black out any pixels. So it's like a projector in that if your room isn't black you don't get any black in your image. That's a big problem for a lot of work that is white with black text. It's going to be hard to have high resolution with low contrast.

            MagicLeap implied with their demos that they were somehow blacking out light paths... but

            • That is an interesting point. I wonder if its better to completely see screen only and then show the real world with the image from cameras. This certainly addresses the black issue.

        • You will never solve the motion sickness problem.

          You are absolutely right since I am not actively involved in any VR research or product development. In the meantime the only true joke here is someone on a technology forum making a "You'll never solve..." claim.

          We know what causes motion sickness, through successive iterations it the problem has already been reduced. As hardware is getting better the solution will be in reach. Please don't jump up so quickly to express your ignorance of the technology.

      • There's a variety of very solid products out there and several very solid SDKs as well.

        That's a "build it and they will come" argument. We could have an honest disagreement about how "solid" the products are but there is no argument that they have improved quite a lot. But just because the technology has advanced doesn't mean it will be adopted widely or that there are use cases people care about. Ask yourself what problem is this tech solving for people and then what are its advantages and disadvantages over the alternatives. VR is mostly a solution in search of a problem. Doesn't matte

        • That's a "build it and they will come" argument.

          Yes and no. My argument was they already came. There's a HUGE push from all sorts of players not just from the developers of VR for the technology. Build it an it will come has been the efforts of the past.

          Ask yourself what problem is this tech solving for people and then what are its advantages and disadvantages over the alternatives. VR is mostly a solution in search of a problem.

          Entertainment is created. It was never solving a problem in the first place, much like computer games never solved a problem either.

          "Toys"? I was working with supercomputers costing 6 figures, CAVE [wikipedia.org] systems, and 3D headsets as far back as 20 years ago.

          So now you're holding the niche above all else? The fact is VR pushes of the past in the general market were toys in comparison to what we have now, not the least because the

      • AR is far smaller at the moment as it is far more demanding technology wise and far more complex to do well thus making it unaffordable in the consumer space for now. AR has vastly more applications and potential than VR just we are only on the edge of it being affordable/usable tech and it will be a few years yet before we see real progress in the consumer space for AR.

    • Re:VR != AR (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jbmartin6 ( 1232050 ) on Monday August 27, 2018 @08:09AM (#57202322)
      What are some of the niches where VR is incredibly useful? Not mocking, I'm curious and it sounds interesting. I can't think of any, but I have virtually (ha ha ) no knowledge of the current state of the technology. Surgery maybe?

      • What are some of the niches where VR is incredibly useful?

        I think the poster meant that *AR* is the incredibly useful tech.

        It's basically useful whenever you would need some head-up type display to give extra information.

        But the problem is that these are tons of small specific tasks.
        There are tons of them so the market is very vast (nearly everybody could use some AR tech at some point)
        But each task is vastly different and specific (think getting head-up navigation instructions while driving vs. a surgeon getting useful data hands free while operating. Both are us

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        Another use for VR is for things like modeling and floor planning. My company has a few experimental projects related to this. If you know about Tlit Brush, that's the idea, but targeted at businesses rather than consumers. It also has an undeniable wow factor when showing stuff to potential customers.

      • What are some of the niches where VR is incredibly useful?

        Simulations (think flight simulators or other forms of training), certain games, porn, sales/marketing, architecture (virtual walkthroughs), and education are common market segments. Probably in some cases also remote operation. Most of these are sort of niche segments within a larger industry segment.

        The main limitation of VR is that it's a cool technology but there just aren't a lot of use cases which are economically sensible in the real world. Simulation and virtual walkthroughs are where it historic

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        I have the HTC Vive. I don't do much gaming at all, but the one thing I do use it for, and the reason for which it was purchased, is for architectural modeling. Used it to show me my kitchen remodel long before it was even started. Just a few minutes in VR showed me that the layout chosen would work very well, given the space constraints. When we built and installed the cabinets, everything looked exactly as I expected, because I'd seen it many times in VR. This is one area that I think is perfect for V

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mikael ( 484 )

        When you are in a hotel in a strange town at 2am, want to go out for a bar fight and don't know of anywhere:

        Virtual bar fights:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      • VR is a great literary device for Sci Fi and techno thriller novels, such as Michael Crichton's Disclosure.

    • Being that people were getting assaulted for wearing google glasses. There is still a lot of work for augmented reality that is needed. VR and AR are nearly the same technology, with the exception of a camera showing you the real world, and display overlapping it, vs. replacing it with something else. Technically you can augment reality so much, that it becomes virtual reality.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjbe ( 173966 )

        Being that people were getting assaulted for wearing google glasses. There is still a lot of work for augmented reality that is needed.

        AR does not require stupid looking glasses or headsets. Your smartphone will likely be your primary means of using AR. I already used it for astronomy, flight tracking (try flightradar24), street sign translation (google translate), navigation, and more. It's also likely going to become a big feature in cars in the coming years. Heads up displays, navigation aids, etc all can benefit from AR.

        VR and AR are nearly the same technology, with the exception of a camera showing you the real world, and display overlapping it, vs. replacing it with something else

        They overlap in some ways but no they are not the same technology. VR requires little to no awareness of actual

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      Founder of company bashes competitor. News at 11...

      However, those folk have not been so harsh with Google, Microsoft, or Valve. There is clearly a feeling to treat *this* competitor different. The tone of the industry thus far has been to encourage everyone's success, as trying to snipe each other is seen as too risky in a market that is far from certain to take hold. Magic Leap is considered different in ways that invite people taking more openly bearish stances within the industry. Letting Magic Leap be held up as an example of the VR+AR industry is s

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )

      Founder of company bashes competitor. News at 11...

      VR and AR aren't competitors they do very different things. Further, Palmer was fired/left Facebook

    • But the market potential of VR has been blown WAY out of proportion to the reality of it. AR is a huge market. VR not so much, particularly the bits requiring an immersive headset. ...
      AR != VR so I'm not really sure what he's on about. If investors are confusing the two then they are morons.

      This AR != VR thing is all hogwash. Not substantially different than saying a tablet is different from a laptop because it doesn't have a keyboard.

      Take a VR display add cameras and algorithms and you have AR.

      Take an AR display and project an image to the entire field of view and you have VR.

      The only thing that matters going forward is form factor and capabilities. The idea VR and AR are separate things is a temporary situation reflecting current day technology constraints. By the time HMD technology matu

  • Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Monday August 27, 2018 @06:45AM (#57202006)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by oic0 ( 1864384 )
      To be fair his final product was pretty good and delivered on the hype. There's still a lack of content, but the headset is great.
      • That's fair, I have a Rift, the hardware is great but I don't use it much because there's not much fun to do with it after several hours of demos. I am optimistic it will change so I don't mean to beat up on the product itself.

        I was hyped to buy it, literally with credit card in hand when it went live. I dropped the credit card when I saw the price. I picked it up last summer during the "summer of rift" promo for $400 with oculus touch. I'd have to say it was worth it at that price, thought a day la

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

      The people who got properly burned are the most important to listen to, however you're also being very unfair. He not only delivered a working product (eventually) that did exactly what it says on the box, but in the process basically single handedly kickstarted a now quite competitive industry.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )

      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.

      I mean... they sold Occulus for 3 billion seems successful.

  • Is this that hard to grasp?

    There's a billion dollar industry in contacts and laser surgery to get rid of glasses, which are comparatively unobtrusive. For AR to hit the mainstream, it needs to offer at least the same experience - and there has to be a SUBSTANTIAL benefit to doing so.

    VR doesn't require interaction with the outside world (by definition) so you don't care you've got stupid shit on your head. The tech is capable of providing that experience.

    AR requires a SUBSTANTIAL advance in laser projection,

    • ...anyone using this technology knows it's at least 5+ years out....

      I think you mistakenly dropped a zero at the end of that number.

    • Glasses are in fashion now. They wern't so 20 years ago.

      Glasses use to be for old folks or nerds. If you needed your vision corrected, most people would choose contact lenses or laser surgery just to avoid the stigma.

      As someone who was wearing glasses from a time there was a stigma, it has became second nature, and they are so much obtrusive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      Apart from Magic Leap, the general focus of the industry has moved away from HMD AR to handheld AR. You use the phone as a viewfinder to do things.

      I will say that if HMD based AR becomes as unobtrusive as sunglasses, I'd see a large market for folks. The market for glasses approximately 10x the market for contact lenses and corrective surgery. Though the 'always wear your bluetooth earpiece' fad has largely subsided, I still occasionally see someone doing that and appreciating the value. Of course we ha

  • First, Palmer Luckey is a douche.

    Second, Magic Leap's tech is much different than existing AR/VR fare. They are having to build their entire graphics stack from scratch. No existing libraries will handle light field calculations. Hardware requirements are probably insane. They probably have bitten off more than they can chew and their first product reflects that.

    Oh, and Palmer Luckey is a douche.

  • Recently, in a related press release: (Score:3)

    by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Monday August 27, 2018 @08:33AM (#57202454)
    Pappa John's founder quoted as saying: "Pizza hut sucks". Also of note: AT&T thinks Verizon sucks, Ford doesn't like GM, Bing has nothing nice to say about Google, and Bud would like to see Miller in the pit of misery (dilly dilly)

  • whole thing off. /s

    I would like to coin a new term:

    Hype-Wear

    Please feel free to use it for all this crap.

  • I mean. Its just as bad.
    Big killer of mine in any VR when they did that.
    Besides not having the rig.
  • Magic Leap sold itself to investors using bullshit videos - whales splashing in gym halls and that kind of crap. It was absolutely obvious to anyone versed in the technology that there was no possible way it would come anywhere close to that.

    At best it would just be another HoloLens which is damning it with faint praise. Nothing that has been seen of the project (very little) suggests it even reaches even that far. The recent SDK demo was pretty lamentable.

  • Makes mental note to avoid Oculus products from now on...

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