[adam_fallon_]

I sort of always knew it was the job of VCs to hype up their portfolio, but i've never seen it as bare faced as when Benedict Evans was shilling Magic Leap saying things along the lines of "Magic Leap was the coolest thing I'd seen since the iPhone. It's now much cooler than that." and "I’ve had the Magic Leap demo. It was worth going to Florida for."

Well that looks a bit silly now doesn't it.

[gonehome]

Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping.

I think they couldn’t get it to a place where it could be small enough to be useful?

Hopefully when Apple ships AR hardware for real it’ll be what it should be. Magic leap will be kind of like General Magic or the creative nomad jukebox - right idea but too early with hardware and not a great product.

Their constant advertising with no details for years really bothered me though so I probably have an unfairly negative perception of them.

Either build what you’re doing in public like Facebook/Oculus or do it in secret like Apple, but don’t loudly advertise in public when you don’t have anything to show for it.

###

(I played with the magic leap hardware that shipped for an hour or so and found it disappointing, a lot less interesting than when I had played with VR hardware for the first time. I think AR as the next computing platform has huge potential, but the hardware isn’t there yet and it needs a strong platform/ecosystem behind it. I think Apple has been preparing this for years.)

[sillysaurusx]

I saw the magic leap demo in person at their Florida office. It was quite something.

Imagine minecraft, but in real life. They had blocks you could put on walls, dinosaurs roaming around on the ground, knights fighting the dinosaurs, and all of it was controllable.

It was in a small-ish room, roughly ... 15x15 feet? a few meters by a few meters.

It had couches in the room, and pictures on the walls. It didn't look special. But in retrospect the room may have been part of the demo in some way.

(I went through their interview process, and one of the benefits was getting to see the ML in action. Supposedly they also had an "AI assistant" demo or something like that – Cortana? – but it wasn't available on that day.)

If I were an investor, I would probably invest based on the strength of that demo. It was enough to make you question the reason we're all staring at laptop screens. The device was comfortable, and I could imagine myself sitting at a desk typing into thin air (because goggles) rather than typing into a computer screen.

Of course, it looks like I would have lost my money if I were an investor. But how could we know it would play out this way? All they had to do was build a strong developer ecosystem. The lame demo-style apps we see are a direct result of inconvenient APIs and SDKs.

In fact, they were actively hostile to developers. I remember getting a C&D just for publishing their SDK's manual on a personal website. No idea how they even found the link.

The premise is real – in the same way the Vive was in many ways superior to Oculus, I think the next "Magic Leap" will be superior and more affordable than what we see here. If you are looking for an investment opportunity, the AR scene is still a strong bet over the next decade or so.

(If that seems unlikely, think about how many major advances worked out after seeming so unlikely: deep learning in AI; consumer-grade VR; voice controlled devices; the list goes on and on.)

[TremendousJudge]

>But how could we know it would play out this way?

For anybody who hadn't seen the demo, the company always looked like typical SV smoke selling pitch. "This is the best thing ever", "It will change the world", "We have great stuff but we can't show them in public because reasons".

The whole "demo in a closed, secret room and then you can't tell anybody about it" reminds me too much of the carnival fair fortuneteller experience. You get shoved in a mystery room, get shown a bunch of smoke and mirrors, and then you're out before you can't think too much about what happened.

[bsanr2]

Not everyone. The potential is absolutely there, and even the devices that are available today would be groundbreaking, if only someone could figure out something to do with them.

As for that, the ecosystem is far too closed. ML and Microsoft seem to be approaching the technology Apple-style, with expensive hardware and by-the-numbers (if that) developer support, which would allow them to control the platform - and profits - once the we reach some sort of inflection point where either a unpredicted killer app emerges or the tech matures enough for the more obvious applications to be viable.

They're not going to get there, though; someone is going to (or perhaps already has) released a cheaper alternative with a low barrier-to-entry creation platform, and that will allow the number of people who have access to both a good-enough device and a good-enough skillset to reach a critical mass. They'll create for that device and platform and everyone else will be playing catch-up. It's the early PC and BASIC all over again.

Do you know what would be really interesting? If Sony's PS5 were to launch with an affordable VR headset and an updated version of Media Molecule's Dreams.

[gibolt]

Actually putting on a headset and getting the experience is not equivalent to smoke and mirrors, even if it is optimized for that one room

[jonplackett]

I think the thing you missed from the 'all they had to do' list, was make a product that a large audience could afford.

I think Zuckerberg said at the last FB conference their aim with the Quest was to get 10,000,000 sold because that's the tipping point to a self sustaining app ecosystem.

Software is worth making, so hardware is worth buying, so software is worth making... etc

They had zero chance of achieving this at their price point.

[Groxx]

It's not just software though, the viewing hardware they eventually shipped is extremely similar to the hololens, but 2 years later and with a slightly larger viewport. And worse hand tracking, from my experience. Cheaper though.

What you and other early-people seem to describe appears to be something else entirely, in which case yea - original plan fell through completely and they pivoted to their current thing. But was it actually different?

[ipsum2]

Interesting experience! Do you know if what you saw was the same as the product that shipped (magic leap one)? If not, what were the differences?

[sambroner]

Could you talk more about what made the demo so great?

[jnsie]

> creative nomad jukebox

Holy crap, the memories. I had the creative nomad jukebox and for years convinced myself if fit in the pockets of my jeans...it did...but it didn't. The folly of youth!?

[firndbxisns]

Actually, back in those days I was wearing Jnco jeans and you could fit a laptop in the pockets if you wanted to. I made a throwaway username for this comment because I don’t want people to know I wore Jnco jeans.

[jonplackett]

I had one of these too. It was so _nearly_ good. So so close. That tiny track pad was just too sensitive, or was in insensitive, or both?

[russh]

In it's defense, mine still works.

[adamcharnock]

Wow! I think mine broke about 4 times. Kept taking it back and getting a replacement, teenage me must have cost them a fortune.

[russdill]

When you can control every element: lighting, view angle, distance, background, etc, you can hide a ton of fatal flaws.

[dtnewman]

I got to demo their consumer product and it really is pretty cool. Perfect? Far from it. But it's good enough that you put it on and say "wow" for the next 15 minutes.

In the demo I saw, you get immersed into a coral reef and walk around. It's very cool, but I'm not gonna buy a unit just for that. So you need lots of content before it makes sense to buy one of these things, and then you have a chicken and egg problem. Who is going to spend massive amounts of money to create content when there isn't already a big audience for it?

[edmundsauto]

Have you tried one of the other VR systems? If so, could you comment on how the experience compared?

[gonehome]

I'm not the person you're asking, but imagine looking through dark sunglasses through a little window at a faded image sitting on the table in front of you.

For me the illusion of it sitting on the table didn't even feel like it was really on the table because of how dark the glasses were and how faded the image was.

VR was like being in a different place with a real sense of perspective and your hands in VR felt like a part of you. Sure it was low resolution, moving was strange, and the sides were letter boxed a bit but it was an impressive thing.

[simonh]

I think Apple are shipping their AR hardware, mostly anyway. The iPhone and iPad are it, modulo enhancements like LIDAR. I really don’t see Apple bringing out a headset. I’m not even sure it’s a technology problem. People just don’t want to walk around with cameras and LIDAR and goofy goggles on their faces, not at Apple scale anyway, possibly ever. It’s a fundamentally flawed concept. Specialist applications sure. Mainstream, one in every home? I don’t see it.

[gonehome]

I think they're definitely working on something: https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-glasses/

No idea when it will be a viable product in a nice enough hardware package, they're working on the ecosystem and platform in the mean time via iOS/iPadOS, but AR via those devices is a lot less compelling.

Doing this in a real way would be big if the hardware is possible, but it may be a ways out.

[simonh]

Interesting link, thanks. It looks like all their acquisitions and hires, at least the ones linked there, are on the capture, interface and authoring tools side. The only actual mention of a headset were of glasses with a camera, presumably for environment scanning, but using a phone as the display. I really could be wrong, but every time I start writing something where I hedge my bets it just doesn’t feel right. My gut persistently says no, VR/AR headsets are niche tech.

[threeseed]

They are absolutely building a headset.

They acquired Akonia Holographics in 2018 who specialise in holographics for an AR headset. And they already have many patents:

https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2019/11/apple-w...

[simonh]

The link up thread shows patents going back 10 years on headset ideas but still no product, they could work on it another 10 years and it still go nowhere. They look at all sorts of things and patented all sorts of crazy ideas for much longer that but also went absolutely nowhere.

The only real indication is Akonia, that is interesting, but they have 200 patents on display technology. Any of that stuff could be useful in other applications. So I’ll stick to my guns.

[leeoniya]

> Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping.

i think that technology was CGI:

https://hothardware.com/news/magic-leap-admits-outrageous-au...

[gonehome]

I'm not talking about their fake demo ads they put everywhere, I think they actually had an impressive in person demo using some different technology they couldn't miniaturize.

[nogabebop23]

WHy wouldn't they push the narative "Look at this - now we'll make it smaller" vs. "it's awesome - trust us and wait"?

Even snake oil salesmen have a demo if they're good; these guys suck at being phonies.

[papa_bear]

They had a few-hundred-pound cart-bound prototype called The Beast that was supposedly mind blowing to use, and that's what convinced a lot of engineers to drop everything and move to Florida to work on it. I agree pushing that technical narrative would have sounded much better.

[gonehome]

I'm not a marketing person, but constantly alluding to something amazing without revealing details is a hack that stirs up a lot of curiosity and people discussing what it could be.

If you reveal the thing then that dies down (or worse knowledgeable people know that what you're dong isn't possible), but if you keep it secret while giving content-free little hints about it you can keep it going longer (and maybe raise more money by letting people in on the secret?).

I have a strong dislike for this kind of thing, but that doesn't mean it's not effective.

[CobrastanJorji]

They got to series E funding and raised over a billion dollars. If they were phonies, they were phenomenal ones.

[TylerE]

Tharanos raised almost a billion, and look how that ended up

[semerda]

As funny as this sounds I must agree. If they had something cool & innovative they could have shown the world and been upfront about the challenges to make it smaller. That could in turn bring new talent to help them. Instead we now see a drowning company.

In some way this reminds me of Theranos.

[moron4hire]

What's really crazy about that video--while it's technically possible to make something mostly like that with current hardware[0]-- is that, if you have any experience with AR at all, you know that most of those UIs would be terrible to use.

[0] The FOV is accurate, given we're looking through a narrow camera lens, but gives the wrong impression that it fills what the user could see because it fills the video frame. The graphics wouldn't be "solid", they'd be transparent, but a pre-setup room can definitely do occlusion effects with foreground furniture. The physical gun controllers could be done, though nobody would fork out the money for it. And all the hand gestures and UI pinning stuff could be done, though the software support on Magic Leap does not help you in the least.

[gonehome]

Yeah - even the fake demo use case isn't that compelling to me.

This is the kind of thing that I think the real AR value will be from: https://twitter.com/st8rmi/status/1249950879807045633?s=21

Basically a meta-layer for the real world that you can interact with outside of a screen. This would let you do things like interact with a lightswitch from across the room by looking at it, get metadata about most object states by looking at it, anchor big displays to white walls, etc.

I think there's huge potential for this kind of interface, but I suspect the hardware isn't possible yet.

[moron4hire]

The hardware can do this, it's just that you can't get any funding for anything interesting. You're basically stuck with hobby apps and marketing demos developed via consultoware. The hobbiests can't afford the tech or the lack of reach and the consultoware shops have exactly zero imagination (I know, I worked at one).

I personally define VR vs AR as "who provides the context in which we are working? The app (VR), or the user (AR)". A lot of extant "AR" apps don't do anything particularly interesting with your surrounding environment.

If your AR app needs me to clear out a space in my livingroom to give you room to drop some 3D models that maybe bounce off my walls, you've not actually made an AR app, you've just made a crappy VR app instead. Facebook could release an update to the Quest any day now that auto-scans your room to set the boundary and then you'd have exactly the same experience in an occluded headset, but with twice the FOV and better input.

[istorical]

FB actually already working on this for their VR/AR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNppUJzsvXQ&ab_channel=Oculu...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbRvARuCoRU&ab_channel=Oculu...

[bsanr2]

This is the thing that gets me. There are plenty of people who would be willing to design around existing constraints, just because they think the tech is cool and they want to see what they can do with it.

But the cost of entry is mid-4-figures, between the hardware itself and the required development equipment. It's obvious that the people making the hardware and platform aren't a wide-enough cross-section of the public to create what business interests or consumers don't know that they want yet. They're shooting themselves in the foot, trying to maintain control over the platform.

[samatman]

My guess at the killer app for AR is airplane maintenance.

Imagine a physical checklist where areas get highlighted, arrows to direct you to the next step, and a little red icon that goes green when you're done.

I think this could shave real time (maybe a third?) off airframe downtime while keeping the very high accuracy requirement. That would save actual money.

[moron4hire]

This already exists

[ForHackernews]

Reminds me of this Magic Leap - Expectations vs Reality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ7-F_vWUVE

[michaelbuckbee]

That was the concept video which was different from the demo, but you are correct and they did a horrible job conveying that that was a concept and not the actual product.

[CerealFounder]

Did they? They raised a billions of dollars to try to basically try to drag reality to this demo. It feels like a bigger version of a regular venture story.

"Gimme a ton of money to run this experiment. If I'm right you'll be rich"

[gonehome]

That would have been fine if they said that, but they pretended the concept videos were real.

Even this post is another example of the continued dishonesty I'd expect from them. This pivot is obviously not about COVID-19.

[CydeWeys]

That's not even a demo of the actual physical product though, that was just a video that was posted online that purported to show what the experience would look like (but actually was not). It's not like you would've seen that had you actually been looking through the glasses.

[bitL]

> than when I had played with VR hardware for the first time

AR is 1-2 orders of magnitude more demanding than VR, so if we get to acceptable screen-door-effect-less VR on 30TFlops hardware, we might need like 1 Petaflop for the same with AR. That won't fit into a pocket anytime soon, but we can build such experiences on beefy demo rigs.

[wpietri]

I don't trust Evans at all, but I'm going to partially defend that here. There's a long history of technology being absolutely amazing the first time you use it and then not mattering at all. E.g., the Segway was going to revolutionize transport.

The 3D space is particularly prone to this. I count at least 5 waves of 3D innovation going back to the Great Exhibition in 1851. 3D movies were going to revolutionize things twice, in the 1950s and a decade ago. Over and over, this stuff is absolutely amazing for a hot minute and then nobody cares.

Of course, Evans is sold as a brilliant pundit and now VC genius, so if anybody should understand that novelty doesn't equal a business model, it's him. But as you suggest, Upton Sinclair's quote applies here: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it."

[ahupp]

To be fair to the Segway, there's a remarkable number of self-balancing one wheel scooters on the street in SF these days (well, a few months ago). And I think you can trace all of those back to Segway. Sometimes v1 doesn't quite do it.

[_jal]

Those are toys. Back in the day, Kamen was going on about redesigning cities around them.

[vikramkr]

They're toys that a lot of people use as their primary methods of transport, along with other micro mobility solutions like electric scooters amd good old fashioned bikes. In a way, the future took the path of least resistance and redesigned micromobility around cities instead. And we might still end up redesigning cities around some of those options

The segways itself doesnt make much sense to me though. I dont remember too much about the hype when it was released, but like, I'm still unclear about what it was supposed to be able to do that an electrified scooter or bike couldn't.

[mikestew]

I'm still unclear about what it was supposed to be able to do that an electrified scooter or bike couldn't.

When the Segway was released? It could do this one cool trick: actually exist. Electric bikes and scooters (at least at any sort of scale) were at least ten years off.

There were other factors. Ungodly expensive for what it was, and poor enough range that I questioned whether it could get the six-ish miles from the house to Microsoft's main campus with that WA-520 hill to contend with. Now my Boosted Rev scooter can almost do the 7.5 mile round trip to work, with that same WA-520 hill, and for 1/3rd the price the original Segway was going for.

EDIT: oh, wait a minute, the max speed on the original Segway was like 20kph/12mph, right? Yeah, the Rev would easily make the 15 mile round trip if I were riding it that slowly.

[kd5bjo]

> I'm still unclear about what it was supposed to be able to do that an electrified scooter or bike couldn't.

Segways have much better low-speed handling characteristics than bicycles, which makes them safer to intermix with pedestrians: Travelling at a slow amble speed in a crowded environment is extremely difficult on a bicycle, but no big deal for a Segway (or similar)

[mumblemumble]

The primary fault that causes bikes to mix poorly with pedestrians occurs between the handlebars and the helmet. Bikes are, in fact, super easy to operate in close proximity to and at the same speed as people who are on foot. The trick is to not have it between your legs.

[intopieces]

I know the market is small but the Segway was a fantastic upgrade for some people with limited mobility. A classmate of mine in college (2007 or so) who has cerebral palsy got one and it totally changed her ability to get between classes. More maneuverable than a wheelchair, faster than walking with crutches.

[closetohome]

I finally got to try one around 2002, and I have to say it completely changed my opinion. The price didn't matter, the wacky overhyped introduction didn't matter, self-balancing was such a revolutionary technology that I immediately saw where it was going.

Now I ride a Onewheel.

[nsxwolf]

It let you stand up, and it wouldn't fall over.

[chris_wot]

Unless your last name is Bush.

[throwawaybbqed]

Your comment raised the hair on back. I was a naive student in those days. Kamen's build up to the announcement and some of the posts of people who had tried "it" - they broke my heart and took away some of my innocence. You reminded me of all the hype pre-announcement. I couldn't sleep because of it.

I still respect Kamen but take every pre-announcement I hear with a strong degree of skepticism.

[_ea1k]

I think tools like this can be much more than toys: https://www.ewheels.com/product/new-gotway-msuper-x-msx-1600...

60 miles of range!

[Fricken]

Urban planners are still all about micrcomobility

[nordsieck]

> Those are toys.

If you're referring to electric unicycles e.g. SoloWheel, they are probably the perfect compliment to mass transit.

[wongarsu]

That may still happen. The trend is very recent and cities aren't redesigned in a day.

[cguess]

Perhaps they're big in SF, but they exist basically nowhere else in numbers that matter in any way (aside from those super weird Segway tours in like D.C.). Sometimes the tech itself just isn't that good, and sometimes it's a bad idea.

[semerda]

Unlike Magic Leap, wasn’t Segway the first personal transporter with self balancing technology? Ie. Setting a new bar. Hence others followed from that new standard. I’m not aware of Magic Leap setting any new bars.

[ericd]

From what I've heard, the Beast did set some new bars.

[wpietri]

Is the number remarkable? I would be very surprised if those were more than 1% of traffic.

[ahupp]

Entirely possible that they are just more memorable than a regular bike. But they are definitely way more popular than a Segway.

[servercobra]

I have a feeling Magic Leap will be to AR what Segway is to Bird/Jump/etc: right idea, wrong implementation (time/form factor/business model/etc).

[jjeaff]

While I agree with your point, did anyone except the inventor and the marketing team think Segway was going to revolutionize anything? I seem to remember all the revolution talk coming from Segway people before they had even unveiled the thing. It was just a big hyped secret that would "revolutionize" the world.

I remember being extremely underwhelmed when they unveiled it. It seemed like one of those things that had never been invented before, because why would you invent that.

[jkestner]

Definitely not Jobs and Bezos. Jobs said what you say from a different angle—if this thing is revolutionary, why does it look so banal? Bezos pointed out the basic flaw that bedevils personal transportation to this day—will you be allowed to ride it? Guess that's what they mean by 'revolutionary'—you'd have to throw a bunch of established systems out the window to take over.

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/steve-jobs-and-jeff-bezos-meet...

[disqard]

That was a neat article. I had no idea those guys weighed in on the Segway (and gave it a hard pass).

[HideousKojima]

I remember the media regurgitated the marketing for the Segway without questioning it. IIRC it was on the cover of Time or Newsweek, for example

[wpietri]

Many people did think it was revolutionary. "Venture capitalist John Doerr predicted it would reach $1 billion in sales faster than any company in history, and that it could be bigger than the Internet." https://www.wired.com/2015/01/well-didnt-work-segway-technol...

And it wasn't totally insane, for the same basic reasons people think scooters, etc, could revolutionize cities.

[jjeaff]

People who think scooters are going to revolutionize cities are equally insane. Reason being, scooters are ubiquitously available at a reasonable price point and have been for a long time.

The fact that you can rent one by the minute is going to make marginal differences to most people. If people wanted to use electric scooters to get around the city, everyone would own one already.

[catalogia]

The segway at least found a niche with cops and tourists.

[blululu]

Yes, and there are also plenty of solid niche applications of 3d displays. The point is that both the Segway and the MagicLeap were pitched as being the next mobile phone or automobile (something everyone has at all times).

Of course personal electric vehicles seem to be having a renaissance at the moment (scooters) but the buzz:use ratio of modern scooters is much-much lower than the original segway era from 20 years back.

[adamc]

Right, but it was a niche, not a revolution.

[jfim]

The first airplanes were a niche, and so were the first cellphones. Facebook was this social network for ivies.

Just because a technology is currently in a niche position doesn't mean that in the long term it won't be a revolution or won't become mainstream.

[catalogia]

As far as I've seen, Magic Leap doesn't even have a niche. I can think of plausible niches for some hypothetical future AR tech, but none for what Magic Leap has managed to create.

[wpietri]

Oh, sure! But those who didn't live through the hype may not know that it was expected to revolutionize transportation. "Venture capitalist John Doerr predicted it would reach $1 billion in sales faster than any company in history, and that it could be bigger than the Internet." [1]

[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/01/well-didnt-work-segway-technol...

[jiofih]

I remember the hype being so strong that people were (seriously) theorizing some kind of gravity-defying device.

[michaelbuckbee]

And in a slightly different form factor / price point presaged the mass usage of Lime, etc.

[wpietri]

Presaged in the sense that there was also a lot of VC-driven hype that didn't work out, sure. I'll admit there's a slightly higher chance that scooter rental still might turn into a real business. But it's definitely not a given.

[rosywoozlechan]

A little bit early to portray Lime and the like as anything other than VC throwing tons of money at an idea

[Nition]

> There's a long history of technology being absolutely amazing the first time you use it and then not mattering at all.

Most of these, certainly including Segway and Magic Leap, fall apart as soon as you ask ten random non-tech people if they'd actually buy one though.

[mbesto]

> I don't trust Evans at all

Anyone that follows him closely on Twitter Should know this. He's the type of person that just throws predictions everywhere so he can say "I told you so", but never owns up the ones that don't crystallize.

[valuearb]

The main reaction to the Segway unveiling was “huh? This is what you were prattling about?”

No one except their PR interns thought it was going to revolutionize anything.

[tozeur]

I’ve had that exact opinion of him for years.

[cmelbye]

Magic Leap is really cool to use. That doesn't mean it's a feasible product for the mainstream.

[mumblemumble]

It seems a bit like the home console version of the Neo Geo to me. Once upon a time, I'd gladly shove large numbers of quarters into Neo Geo arcade cabinets. But when they stuck the hardware into a consumer model, with its huge price tag, my thought was, "If a rich friend bought one, I would enjoy playing with it at their house."

I suspect that the big difference here is, this being 1990, SNK didn't have nearly as much access to investment money from rich people who don't understand the what entertainment budgets look like for the other 99.99% of people. So it was never hyped as anything but a luxury product.

[jkestner]

I had that rich friend with the Neo Geo.

Yeah, I wonder if Magic Leap had started small and luxury, installing that Beast contraption with the undiluted experience to rich people, it could've grown more like Tesla. Of course, the Roadster ran on all the same roads, while whole new experiences have to be created for AR, but make a few great ones and it'll be like having a bowling lane in your house—you don't play with it except to show off to visitors. (Oh, League Bowling was the one game I remember playing on my friend's Neo Geo. He wasn't bowling-lane rich.)

Or Magic Leap could've licensed some Virtual Boy games.

[mumblemumble]

Have you seen pictures of The Beast? The ergonomics and range of motion you get are about the same as what you have when using a phoropter. IIRC, it even has some of the same "positioning your head in the right place" hardware as is used by some piece of optometrist's equipment or other.

[vernie]

Not with its playing-card-sized FOV it isn't

[_bxg1]

I tried out a HoloLens at a rich friend's house and had a similar experience, despite it also having a small FOV. It blew my mind and instantly registered as a really big deal. But as another commenter here pointed out, the hardware isn't there yet, and when it arrives it will require a vibrant software ecosystem. The difference is that Microsoft seems to understand that.

[sqs]

Counterpoint: I thought it was really, really cool when I tried it for a couple hours. I have no affiliation with Magic Leap. The Magic Leap unit I tried was a friend's (so it wasn't as though Magic Leap sent me a free unit to try out and therefore could have biased me).

[cpitman]

I tried it a couple years ago at PAX Unplugged, and that was exactly my reaction. I felt like I was putting a lot of attention into shifting around my direction to frame the AR, and searching for content, because I was looking through a pipe.

[three_seagrass]

It's the segway solution. Cool tech that solves a problem which doesn't really exist.

[iandanforth]

So mall-cops are all going to be using Magic Leap tech in a few years?

[rvnx]

The segway has been technologically superseded by electric scooters

[three_seagrass]

They don't use gyroscopes so I'm not sure I'd say they superseded segweys technologically.

I also would hesitate to say they solve a common problem because the current market glut seems to be trailing a recent hype bubble of electric scooter startups.

[catalogia]

Humans already have two "gyroscopes" in our ears, which for most people work well. It's really no surprise that bicycles are more popular than segways.

[fumar]

Or the Onewheel. I use my Onewheel to get around in LA for short trips.

[adamc]

Kind of like VR for games? Which I have yet to meet anyone who uses...

[Kiro]

I don't recognize that at all. I know too many to count that have an Oculus Quest and quite many had regular VR headsets before that.

Personally I play Beat Saber on a daily basis and pretty often other games as well.

[driverdan]

Have you actually played any VR games? It's not perfect yet but it's good enough. They're quite fun. They're still niche because they require hardware and space.

Many people, like you, don't get it until they try it.

[BillinghamJ]

Apparently HL Alyx is exceptionally good, maybe will Mark a bit of a turning point

[alasdair_]

Half Life Alyx is genuinely incredible. It’s worth getting a VR system just for that one game, assuming you already have a gaming PC.

[three_seagrass]

Maybe. VR is more chicken-egg, like the Windows phone with apps. The more people with VR headsets, the more VR games get developed, but more people won't get VR headsets until there are more games developed.

[wpietri]

I think "vicious circle" might be closer here.

Just to check things out, I rented a Quest over the winter holidays. There was very little content that was a) VR-specific, and b) so much better on VR that it was worth the hassle. After we sent it back, the kids never even mentioned it again; they're happy with their Switches and the PS4.

Game designer Jesse Schell said "If Oculus Quest can’t succeed we should just hang it up" [1] and I think he's right. The obvious technical problems have been fixed. It's technically very impressive, and it has a strong novelty rush at first. But if the current market isn't enough to drive the creation of must-have games, I expect it's a descending spiral from here.

[1] https://uploadvr.com/jesse-schell-oculus-quest/

[andybak]

That's funny. I know about half a dozen VR gamers - and that's people I already knew or met outside of the VR scene.

[benedictevans]

Sometimes frontier technology doesn't turn out as planned. Welcome to the tech industry - you will encounter more of this as your career continues ;)

So:

Magic Leap built a technology demonstrator, on a rig that was bolted to a table (as everyone has said). That demo was great. It was also, yes, bolted to a table. They have not turned that into a shipping mass-market consumer product.

Somehow, a bunch of people on the internets decided that because they, personally, hadn't seen the demo, anyone who had must be lying (or on acid?). This was, well, 'a bit silly', for lots of reasons, and it also missed the real challenges. The question was never 'does the tech demo exist?' Rather: Can they turn the optics on the table into something you can wear (that also has even better optics, with acceptable FOV, occlusion etc)? Can they go from a display technology to an actual platform?

Presume for the sake of argument that they solved all the optics etc questions - then they would be in the position of a company that had invented multitouch. That doesn't give you an iPhone. You still have to make an actual smartphone, work out the software and the UI, build an ecosystem, create an app store, get to scaled mass production, and that's really expensive. Or, someone had to - you could licence it out in some way (which is what Qualcomm did with CDMA - Qualcomm doesn't make phones or build cellular networks)

So: imagine back in 2006, you'd seen Jeff Han's multitouch demo. It was three feet across, came in several packing cases, and it was very very cool. But it wasn't an iPhone.

[Reedx]

I don't know, those could be genuine feelings. Like the first time using VR.

Now their TEDx talk on the other hand... speaking of silly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY

To me that was the moment both Magic Leap and TED (sadly) jumped the shark.

[dbmikus]

It is worth saying that TedX is a collaboration and the actual talks are not as directly tied to the TED organization.

But I do think TED Talks have jumped the shark, probably before that talk.

[BossingAround]

What the hell did I just watch...

[godzillabrennus]

Might turn out to be about as silly as believing in and investing in General Magic.

They may have failed but their impact is felt everywhere.

[tomcam]

Hey, Florida is a pretty interesting place!

[notJim]

Yeah, Florida is nice! Good weather, nice beaches. They even have bioluminescent organisms there!

[baxtr]

His newsletter has “.. 135,000 subscribers, with a wide and senior audience in technology, media and finance.”

[chrisseaton]

> Well that looks a bit silly now doesn't it.

It's not silly to try some promising technology that ultimately doesn't work out for business. It's easy to be nasty in hindsight, from the comfort of your home, isn't it? Not so easy to try making it work in the first place.

[adam_fallon_]

What a vacuous comment. Granted in the early days you could give the benefit of the doubt that sure Magic Leap are trying to build some revolutionary AR - you could construe my comment as ill-natured.

But go to Magic Leaps website now. Look at the promotional video that is being shown there. Now go and look at actual footage of the Magic Leap unit in action.

The company are being entirely misrepresentative of what their product actually is. They are using that amazing video footage to sell a product TODAY that is nothing close to the quality shown there. Look at what the unit is capable of and compare it to that.

Now sure, you can be given creative freedom to express the ideas of things that the Magic Leap lets you do. But then you remember the Whale video. They've been misrepresenting their product and trying to sell it using that misrepresentation for years at this point.

When TechCrunch first released video of the little floating robot game I remember people being astounded at how asinine it was. This is what VCs have been raving about and pouring money into?

So what are they trying to make work? Their promotional videos, ability to dupe VCs and probably their rock solid sales team - how long can should you give that benefit of the doubt for? They are 9 years old at this point!