[Alain-lf]

A whole lot of money for a whole lot of buzzword but no information in sight... Magic Leap's own website has even less information.

"On Oculus Rift and pretty much every other virtual and augmented reality experience, what the viewer sees is flat and floating in space at a set distance."

I was under the impression that the Oculus Rift had full stereoscopic 3d? Either I'm wrong or this article is wrong.

[Stratoscope]

In a way, stereoscopic 3D is seeing something "flat and floating in space at a set distance". The focus distance is the same for both your eyes, and the same for anything you look at.

In the real world, your eyes refocus for objects at different distances. It's not just a "stereoscopic effect". The actual focus distance - what's blurry and what's not blurry - changes.

This doesn't happen with devices like the Rift or a 3D movie screen. Your eyes may have to swivel in and out to align the images, but they don't have to refocus.

Very different from the real world!

[danielbln]

I think John Carmack on one of the Oculus panels was pondering, if infinite focus isn't actually an improvement over having to converge all the times. From any other mouth I'd take that as trying to rationalize a flaw of the display tech that Oculus is currently using, but Carmack isn't really known to do that. I'd like to compare regular infinite focus tech with something like light fields, and see if it improves presence. If it doesn't improve on presence or immersion significantly, then I'd rather have relaxing infinite focus I think.

[nyolfen]

"Your eyes may have to swivel in and out to align the images, but they don't have to refocus."

how is this different from refocusing?

[afro88]

When your eyes look at an object in 3D space, they not only swivel so both are looking at it at the same time (convergence), but your eye muscles manipulate the lenses so the object is clear and not blurry (focus). Think of how a camera focusses it's lens to bring an object into clear sharp view.

So in the case of the Oculus, the lenses in your eyes remain focussed on the images on the screens right in front of you, rather than changing depending on how far away the object is in the virtual scene. So there's a disparity there that causes your brain to go wtf and stops it from fully accepting what it's seeing as real.

[Stratoscope]

One way to think of it: When you take a picture with a camera, different objects in the photo may be in or out of focus, depending on how far away from the camera they are.

Closer objects may be sharp and distant objects blurry, or vice versa. Or somewhere in between.

Of course you can aim the camera one direction or another to choose its field of view - which objects appear in the frame and where - but that's completely separate from which of those objects in focus.

Focusing is one thing, aiming the camera is another.

And that doesn't change at all when you have two cameras. You can aim them both at the same thing, you can aim them off into the distance, but you still have to focus them both.

[cheepin]

When I look at something far away, close things are out of focus. When I look at close things, distance is out of focus. When I watch a 3D movie, I just align the glasses and things are focused according to the camera that shot it.

[VikingCoder]

Watch this video at the 4 minute mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwCwtBxZM7g

It explains what they're talking about. Your eyes can focus on different parts of the view - it's not just an infinite depth-of-field display like we're used to. It's like the display version of a Lytro camera.

[mmoss]

The Oculus Rift has full stereoscopic 3D. I think he may have misspoken. Just speculating, but maybe Magic Leap has some sort of eye tracking.

[mwilcox]

Light field displays literally show a different image to one part of your retina than another. It is not incorrect to explain that technologies like the rift are 'flat', as, while they may show two images, they are simply flat images on a display. Light field tech combines an array of images that recreates the way light works in reality.

Light field displays are to the Rift like the Rift is to a 3DTV.

[deckar01]

The Rift and 3D TVs are fundamentally the same. Light field adds 2 dimensions of information (2 axis that control the angle light travels). To me it is the difference between (2D+2D) and (2D×2D), or <x,y,z> and <x,y,z,∆x,∆y,∆z>.

[psykotic]

The article is wrong. What they're clumsily describing there sounds like Google Glass style AR.

[epistasis]

No, the article is right, "set distance" means that the eye focuses on a distance that is fixed, namely the distance to screens. It can have full stereoscopic 3D and still force the human eye to focus at a given distance. This is a big change from real life, where the eye is continuously changing the focus based on the depth of objects of interest.

Other, non-screen based technologies, such as DLP [1] would allow the rendered field of depth to adjust based on the eye's focus, allowing the scene to be more realistic, and reducing mental fatigue. I think there was a different company using someting like this. [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Light_Processing

[2] http://kotaku.com/people-really-want-that-other-scary-cool-v...

[psykotic]

Yeah, I work on VR and know of alternatives to stereoscopic displays. I still maintain that the writer is wrong and doesn't understand what they're describing:

"On Oculus Rift and pretty much every other virtual and augmented reality experience, what the viewer sees is flat and floating in space at a set distance. What Magic Leap purports to do is make you think you’re seeing a real 3-D object on top of the real world."

Good stereoscopic 3D does not give a sensation of seeing something flat and floating in space at a set distance.

[jblow]

The article isn't wrong, it's just ambiguously written. When you are viewing stereoscopic 3D, you are indeed looking at a surface that is flat and at a fixed distance from your eyes. This has consequences in terms of how your eyes are used to working versus how they have to work in a situation like this.

So you might have fun wondering how to build something that doesn't work like that.

[psykotic]

You're not wrong, but I still think the article is wrong. They are probably paraphrasing a statement from Magic Leap and miscomprehending it in the process.

> So you might have fun wondering how to build something that doesn't work like that.

For head-mounted use, there are light-field glasses like those of Doug Lanman. Who knows if that is anything like what Magic Leap is actually working on. They are so absurdly secretive that all I've heard so far are contradictory rumors.