Why do people keep giving Magic Leap money?

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/22/16505430/magic-leap-augmented-reality-temasek-funding-investment-why

by rdoherty • 9 years ago

62 59 9 years ago

mrsmee89• 9 years ago

"It’s producing a regular stream of patent applications for augmented reality glasses technology, which everyone seems to agree is going to be important at some point".

If they own the patents that ar companies must use and ar is "the next big thing", maybe that's why people keep giving them money. They don't really have to produce anything more.

octaveguin• 9 years ago

If true, that's incredibly depressing.

Magic Leap would become the complete rent seeking lead weight to the next platform revolution.

dandare• 9 years ago

Exactly. Let's not forget that "Google bought Motorola for $12.5B, sold it for $2.9B, and called the deal ‘a success’", purely for Motorola's patent portfolio.

karmakaze3• 9 years ago

I haven't been keeping up with Magic Leap (ML) or recent Mixed Reality developments, but skimming the currently available information, my best guess is that Magic Leap is making a completely new system from hardware, to software and even content. Sort of like back in the Apple Lisa days, pre-1984 when the Macintosh was unveiled.

I've only heard of Microsoft and Avegant (that I just googled) working on Mixed Reality. The problem with these two and anyone other than Magic Leap is that they're only working on making the tech. They're not making a complete platform. Of course they could leverage existing platforms (PCs or Consoles) but then the interfaces would mostly be translations of them. Not that ML has shown anything better, but I get the sense that what's in development is that better platform. From history we can see how a platform arises. Imagine planning the iPhone/AppStore and building iOS and starter content for it. It's going to replace current movies, video games, and computer systems.

Oculus is making a complete platform but their bet is on VR not MR. It could likely be adapted to MR if that gets better traction, but without blatent copying of the human interface it would be a sub-par experience.

Anyone know if Microsoft or anyone else is actively developing an MR environment for market?

imron• 9 years ago

Anyone know if Microsoft or anyone else is actively developing an MR environment for market?

You mean like the Hololens?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens

karmakaze3• 9 years ago

Yes, but I was asking specifically about things other than the hardware and individual apps, like is there a flavour of Windows specifically for the HoloLens and how significanly different is that UI?

supermatt2• 9 years ago

I think you are using the word "platform" when you mean "user interface". User interfaces can be changed to suit the task at hand - e.g. MS Word vs Doom. vs Job Simulator vs Star chart

mynewtb• 9 years ago

Same like bitcoin. Even though it has no realworld use in its current form, it might have in the future so people speculate on that.

amrrs• 9 years ago

Not sure if it's a right analogy. Eventually bitcoin could be traded as an instrument but Magic Leap's case could be never be like that since if they're bankrupt no one would come forward to buy their bonds. People bet on bitcoin just like they bet on Gold or any other entity. People bet on Magic Leap with the hope that Magic Leap could be provide some magic - that eventually could be galloped by AR-hungry companies like Snap, Google, Apple - since all of them always want to beat FB - which already got Oculus.

bdcravens• 9 years ago

Bitcoin has limited use, but I wouldn't say no realworld use. There are some very real places you can spend it, and some provide anonymous advantages (like VPN access). It's also seeing uptake in use for remittance and combatting hyperinflated markets.

gehsty• 9 years ago

Bitcoin has a use now, people use to store their wealth away from prying eyes, I think this is why China recently tried to ban it....

Magic leap could be the future, it could be complete vapour ware, though I like to be positive about these things as they could be doing things the Apple way and will only announce finished products, not technologies....

cm21872• 9 years ago

I just can’t convince myself that AR is the next smartphone revolution. Most of the applications I have heard about feel like the iPhone X demo. Kind of cool they can do that but will I use that more than once to try it?

In addition to the challenges mentioned in the article, you have to convince people who are not wearing glasses that they should start to. And people who are that they should swap their super-light glasses for something heavier, that may be painful for their nose or neck. And that they need one more high tech device in their life to budget for, recharge and replace.

Then what are you really going to use it for? Giving you some meta data on people you see? Name would be nice but how many times in a week do I come across someone I sort of know but can’t remember the name and I would need it? Not many. Identities of complete strangers in the street? Outright creepy. Getting their birthday or the name of their dog? I don’t want my life to look like my linkedin feed where I am flooded with useless notifications about my 1000 contacts work anniversaries.

I am sure there will be some applications, mostly industrial / professional. Certainly the sort of thing you will want to hand over to people at a conference or networking event, where this metadata is super useful to make the right contacts. Or for shopkeepers to recognise their customers in real time and having a full history of their previous purchases. But as a mainstream consumer product, I am still waiting to hear about a convincing use case.

karmakaze3• 9 years ago

Google Glass was/is AR (information overlays). Magic Leap, HoloLens do Mixed Reality. The difference being that the synthesized objects behave as if 'attached' or otherwise interact with reality.

cm21872• 9 years ago

But isn’t it even more of a corner case then, basically certain games? Or the ikea “how does that sofa fits in the room” example (which I might use once every 5 years...).

leoc2• 9 years ago

The difference being that the synthesized objects behave as if 'attached' or otherwise interact with reality.

That's also AR. MR is an umbrella term intended to cover both AR and Augmented Virtuality (which is basically injecting real-world objects scanned by a Kinect 2 or whatever into the right place in the world as viewed through a VR headset, that kind of thing). http://etclab.mie.utoronto.ca/people/paul_dir/IEICE94/ieice....

TeMPOraL5• 9 years ago

Are the terms being redefined now? AR used to mean all you described here - mixing synthesized object with reality in a context-dependent manner.

I suppose I could welcome this change, if it keeps people from putting Pokémon Go in the same bucket with Google Glass and HoloLens...

biocomputation• 9 years ago

The most convincing use case that I've seen was the 'Find stuff in Home Depot' example that was maybe shown at Google I/O 2017.

Pretty much everything else about AR seems like hot air.

esrauch• 9 years ago

How much money is that one convincing use case worth?

dagw2• 9 years ago

I work in civil engineering and lots of people here are really interested in the potential of AR. Just something as simple being able to stand in an empty field and look around and 'see' where all the existing pipes are underground and overlay that with where the new water pipes are planned to go makes lots of people here very excited. If you can then 'move' a pipe in real time while in the field and have the CAD drawings back at the office update then that could be a real game-changer.

Basically don't look to Google for the 'hot' applications of AR. Look to companies like Autodesk, ESRI, Tekla, Bently etc.

wildmusings• 9 years ago

Name would be nice but how many times in a week do I come across someone I sort of know but can’t remember the name and I would need it? Not many.

I have a hard time remembering names, so this would be incredibly useful to me.

TeMPOraL5• 9 years ago

Same here.

Not to mention that even a half-assed facial recognition tech would probably be better at the task than my brain is currently.

jawbone3• 9 years ago

I guess there is the possibility of putting porn everywhere...

stesch• 9 years ago

I strongly recommend reading "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge.

It's a science fiction novel about a near future where everybody has AR contact lenses and can see the world the way he/she chooses (among other consequences of this technology).

lmm• 9 years ago

I love the book but I don't think it makes the case for AR at all.

dalbasal3• 9 years ago

IDK much about magic leap. That said, they do no appear to subscribe to the "ship something and let users drive" school of tech companies.

So first, the financing environment is different than than Generation Google's. By this size, Google had (arguably) the proven-best online ad business, the (inarguably) most impoirtant web page, and a big deal IPO. Magic have that kind of money in stealth mode, with no real reason to speak to the public. Regardless of the "how we build things" philosophy, Google's generation simply could not have got to such a scale before interacting with consumers. There just isn't a precedent because this environment is new.

I think what you're asking is questions that Google's generation would have got (based on previous generations' schools of thought): what is AR's "killer app," the lotus notes to it's personal computer. Before those existed in users' hands, home computers were pitched as ways of organizing personal finances and recipes.

Anyway, I think you're right. The hows and whys of AR becoming important are all very vague. I suppose that most of Magic Leap's pitch (to themselves and investors) is centred on the technology itself, not its application.

The article suggests investors think of them as an intel, not an apple.

Whether or not that's a mistake, it does leave the most interesting (to us) questions still open. What is AR for?

keganunderwood• 9 years ago

The article suggests investors think of them as an intel, not an apple.

So like Intel in the sense that they are a chip fabrication/mass manufacturing company that happens to design chips? Or the new Intel that wants to "add more value" with things like face detection in Windows hello?

robotresearcher• 9 years ago

That argument would hold more water if they shipped something.

leoc2• 9 years ago

If (a big 'if', ofc) you handwave all the display, compute and cost issues better, AR is a no-brainer even simply as a better alternative to tablet and smartphone displays. Screen-on-a-handheld-box displays are trapped in inescapable trade-offs—screen too small, device too big, screen too close to the eyes, choose one; screen at a low angle, device hanging from a fastener contraption, auxiliary display in use, gorilla arm, choose one—that HMDs are not trapped in.

Going beyond that to 'real' AR applications, maps applications alone are enough to justify AR. Turn-by-turn on-foot navigation and local points of interest are use-cases which cry out for head-up display instead of forcing the user to divine information from a small handheld map (and audio cues etc.) Alternatively the user could do flatscreen AR by gorilla-arming their phone, but it's obvious why using a sufficiently good AR HMD is preferable to this. The big extra stumbling block here is once again technology—the coverage, accuracy, and speed of tracking with GPS etc.—not inherent uselessness.

pharke2• 9 years ago

UI killer, never take your phone out of your pocket again. Compatible devices in your home are inspectable and controllable. Even dumb objects could have a UI if they can be recognized. Your toothbrush could show usage and expiry info. Houseplants can remind you when to water them. You could have a large marker indicate where your keys are. Being able to annotate anything with dates, reminders, instructions, etc.

There's a lot of information and calculations we carry around in our heads that could be offloaded or supplemented.

acorkery3• 9 years ago

I think these are great examples of technological aids that people really do not want in their lives. Our brains evolved long ago to a point where we can do many simple things concurrently, and there is a power/meaning in interacting directly with your environment - not through some smart aid that tells you that your plant is dying.

amigoingtodie• 9 years ago

AR re-skinnable pets.

I want my chihuahua to have horse hooves.

And a dragon mask.

dplgk• 9 years ago

Nothing stops this stuff from happening now on a different UI e.g. A phone. So if most of that info/control is not important/wanted on a phone, then why AR?

JustSomeNobody• 9 years ago

It’s not the future. Most people just don’t want this on a daily basis.

I imagine this is going to go like VR did. Last year we had a nearly violent vocal minority saying we would be fully immersed by now and anyone who disagreed got pounded on. AR will be hot for a few months and then basically find a niche or two and live there forever.

Zanni• 9 years ago

What are you really going to use it for?

Names, as you suggest. I don't know how old you are, but when I was in my 20s I could easily remember the name of everyone I'd met. Now, in my 50s, I know more people, and meet more people, than I can keep up with. I'd love a popup for not just friends, but friends of friends.

Addresses. I can't tell you how many times I've walked past a poorly labeled building I was looking for. Street addresses, street numbers, and names of buildings.

Construction. This morning I drove past a construction project by my house. The city is doing something to a little park in my neighborhood. What? No idea. Demolishing it? Improving it? Carving out an easement for an extra lane of traffic? It'd be so awesome to point my phone, or goggles, at the construction and get more info.

Metadata of all sorts, much of which is available now but inconvenient--Yelp reviews of the restaurant I'm standing in front of, hours of the government building that's closed at the moment, historical information about a landmark, etc.

Basically, a context menu for the world. I think there's no question that that would be valuable. The pain point, for now, is the interface.

Pica_soO2• 9 years ago

What is still missing is a good interface. Not this sticks with buttons, something that allows comfortable control and feels like a keyboard without requiring constant tension to hold.

It should be like a glove, with the fingertips as selector and the other fingersegments as keys. Thumb to tip is a-e, thumb to indexfinger segments up is systemkeys (sorted by need to avoid difficult to reach segments as being quertyfied. Thumb to third indexfinger segment (with indexfinger pointed) is click at a object.

The Palm could work as a sort of gesture-touchpad, for more complicated (cross-hand) keycombos.

How to implement? Well as a prototype- take a latex glove, glue short range rfid chips to the segments and rfid readers to the fingertips.

The rest is history as they say.

Pica_soO2• 9 years ago

Thought about it- the select (leftclick on the mouse) should be the most natural point to something gesture, so its indexfinger pointing and thumb-tip touching the midfinger-tip. Also RFID is not bad for precise measurements. Problem is haptics, selection safety (visual display in AR, and user-comfort. Any glovelike device (even if its just a fishing net of cables and sensor) will feel uncomfortable after a while)..

The good thing is there are really a lot of comfortable combos possible with just the fingertips touching one another.

gadders• 9 years ago

I previously posted a link to a guy's blog post where he did an examination of the patent filings and what the technology was likely to be able to do:

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13653537

Blog Post: http://www.kguttag.com/2016/12/06/magic-leap-when-reality-hi...

srrge• 9 years ago

Sunk cost fallacy

Why do people keep giving Magic Leap money?

Related Stories