[tootie]

This is both really impressive and really disappointing. The technology has been refined to an incredible degree but it sounds it's still nowhere near the fidelity that would make it useful. It may the biggest VC money pit in SV.

[kguttag]

They seems to have done some good things. Sadly in AR as well as many high tech markets, it is possible to have a great technical achievement but miss the market requirements. The dimming feature caused them to lose at least 70% of the real-world light off the top. Nothing else they could do would made up for that mistake. It looks like they were focused on novel features over utility.

I think a large part of this is that they were building the ML2 for the high end consumer video game market when one day they they were told it was too expensive and it would now be an enterprise product. I hate the display quality of the HL2, but at least they improved ergonomic and interface issues over the HL1, whereas the ML2 repeats the mistakes of the ML1.

[sroussey]

In Florida, not SV

[brownkonas]

Funded by SV, vision alignment with SV which is probably more important than where it’s made. However it is certainly impressive that they’re making a lot of progress in a tropical latitude, a feat that hasn’t been replicated by many successful tech companies.

[gumby]

> Funded by SV, vision alignment with SV

Actually apart from Google, their investors are nontraditional: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magic-leap/company_f...

The “usual suspects” all passed. Even google’s venture fund passed but Sergei decided to do it.

I think ML is an example where not being from the valley was kind of an advantage for them on the fundraising side.

[fuzzfactor]

Not just any part of Florida.

Although today things are culturally much more homogenous, this particular town 50 years ago already had a long tradition of starting companies with the express intention of becoming comfortable to begin with bringing in money from investors only. The dream is that the venture could actually pay off someday and then everybody involved will really profit phenomenally when the company is sold.

Not so much pursuing product sales where value needs to be added. You're selling a dream that naturally appeals to investors more so than retail customers who would want something tangible sooner. Who has more money anyway?

"Real estate" was usually the financial vehicle but you had to be able to sell "false estate" (Everglades) as if it was really a good investment. Well it truly had no place to go but up ;)

Quite unlike nearby Miami or Palm Beach even, and nothing like Tampa or Orlando and the other places.

Much more prominent dream-selling element in company founders (among the smaller number) by far than SV at the time. You've got to really be persuasive. SV sure has come a long way in this regard now.

This time it's not real estate but technology, crafted to appeal to SV investors.

A number of years before Magic Leap got attention, there had been a very embarassing "Digital "Dream" up the coast in Martin or St. Lucie where they were going to make it like a little SV. The idea was to create a ground-up "ecosystem" where young people can have the kind of opportunities in software & game development they could only dream about.

There was a real estate component in that one so they broke ground, started developing a campus and everything, but once the investments quit coming in they were done. Plus real estate had become uncertian in ways that had never occurred there. Some respected investors did lose a lot plus I think even some quasi-government development agency went down. After the details came out the general consensus was they were taken for a ride the whole time.

[snowgrove]

Magic Leap has offices all over. They had one in Mountain View just a few blocks from where Rengstorff crosses Highway 101, over by Google. That was a few years ago, dunno if it’s still there.