I'm happy to see the website stressing something I've thought VR would do well: Act as a display for my computer desktop. I would love to just take my laptop and these glasses with me and be able to have N screens all around me anywhere I want. Imagine working at a cafe with various large displays all around you showing all the windows you have open.
If this is cheaper than my three displays (and the resolution isn't too terrible), it's already saving me money.
This would be great. Though, I don't think I'd use it in a café - I might be looking at a huge dump of data, but the person sitting behind where my "display" is might think I'm staring at them.
Eh. People got over others using laptops in public places, which used to be a big annoyance. People got over other using smartphones in public, which used to be a big annoyance (man the backlash against Blackberry was huge). People will get over AR/VR once it becomes widespread.
That's my intent as well: use MR to replace monitors, then progressively switch to monitor-less apps.
There may be a limitation, though: resolution. If we are have 9 virtual monitors, each displaying content at 2500x1200 (random pick), performances may not follow.
But then I guess, we only need to focus on one at a time. Maybe those additional monitors could work if we lower resolution of those not directly where our eyes are looking at, and just blur them for good rendering.
To say nothing of whether magic leap is real - when vr/ar technology catches up there's a trick to get around this. It should be possible to track gaze precisely and only render the high resolution 'fovea' at high detail. The rest can be very low res and nobody would know. This will probably be important in graphics and gaming first though, where they can focus all of the gigaflops on sampling illumination raycasts in the most sensitive area of vision. It's actually pretty wasteful to render an entire UHD monitor at full resolution when the eye can't even discern a word at one end of a sentence when the fovea is focused on the other.
I'm a skeptic. For a preview of this, try using a retina MacBook at full resolution with a pair of $10 jewelers glasses.
Personally I found it super slow and frustrating to have to turn my head instead of my eyes to see different parts of the screen - it's nothing like using multiple physical monitors. And jewelers glasses are better than virtual screens will be - they have zero lag and don't suffer from the double-aliasing of projecting one pixel grid onto another pixel grid.
I can imagine this working, but it would take way more resolution and field of view to simulate multiple monitors than anything we know how to build today.
Good lord they really needed a decent industrial design team on hand, though I guess no one's wearing this out in public, so good looks probably aren't as necessary. I'm just afraid of the image of people using this causing it to go the way of the Segway -- we all remember how Dean Kamen and team envisioned it revolutionizing intraurban transport, yeah?
Anyway, I'm glad to see something came of Magic Leap.
I think the worse they look, the better, that way they can be developed to be useful in private and professional spaces, without anyone being tempted to take them out in public.
The thing will need some serious tech in it, there's really no way to make it not look ugly. I think aesthetics are somewhat overrated: If a device is useful, people (including the "cool kids") will use it regardless.
You're just wrong. Aesthetics are crazy important on consumer devices. I'd argue it is THE most important aspect on something you WEAR. People put an awful lot of thought into their clothes, and accessories. Some people don't care, but they're rare. If aesthetics didn't matter there wouldn't be 100 different clothing stores in the mall. When we choose what to wear, we're annoucing to the world who we are. When you wear a suit, you're sending a message to anyone who looks at you. When you wear a flannel shirt, and dirty boots, you're sending another message.
What is the message being projected if someone looks at you wearing these glasses? Probably not one a "normal" person would want to project.
Function matters, but don't overrate fashion. People deeply care about it, and will skip the function (no matter how great it is) if it makes them look like a dork.
Imagine a hundred years ago if you came up with a fashion that involved having strings dangle out of your ears- It looks completely stupid and ridiculous.
Yet everybody does this every day in 2017 because headphones are super useful- Now we even think they'er fashionable!
No, it's you who has said something wrong. You're talking as if this device has no "aesthetics". As if skilled industrial designers didn't produce a design. The way you're talking raises doubts about your qualifications. But I'm going to put that aside for now.
Plenty of people thought the Walkman was futuristic because they were blown away by what it could do in that package. Maybe some of the more insecure people didn't start using them until it became sufficiently safe to be seen with one. But we're very lucky that in mankind there will be those one or two people who don't care what you think because you obviously can't see what they can see.
Yeah this is why the SCUBA diving industry failed. Sure, everybody wants to breathe underwater, but if you have to look like a dork while doing it, then it isn't marketable.
I'm still amazed at some people's reaction to AirPods. They are small and sexy, but at the same time very weird to a large part of the population that isn't used to new things.
An insightful comment from Reddit: “Looks like they've limited your real world fov with the frames so it maybe matches the virtual fov you get. I guess shrinking your real world fov to match might be more immersive than a virtual viewport in the middle of it like the HoloLens.”
I agree they could do it in a much less ugly manner though.
I am sorry but the scrolling on website is a bit annoying. For one, it wouldn't move until the images loaded and then mouse is constantly confused between zooming and scrolling up and down.
Whoa magic leap finally hatched. Buddhist philosophy and an obsession with the cgi computers from iron man - I've been mentally imagining how ar labels and menus looked over my real life for years! This is a dream come true
Whoa! Hopefully they deliver after almost five (?) years of promises. I wonder if this has anything with the leak of the initial prototype (a huge backpack you have to wear). Maybe they were forced to release something substantial.
This is going to sound super dumb and I haven't been following AR / VR at all...but I thought Magic Leap were creating AR technology that worked _without Goggles_? As in projected visible light that I could see with my naked eye? Am I mad?
My impression was that it was a device for entertainment in auditoriums/stadiums, maybe placed behind the chair's back, launching light rays to the person seated behind.
More than 'seem', that is what their videos are. Those children screaming about that whale flipping around in their auditorium? They don't have any goggles on.
Their promo videos specifically promise that you could have a crowd of 100 people without the goggles on watching the Magic Leap effects.
I soon realized you'd have to be looking through something for this. You wouldn't be looking at something a la VR (pair of 2D displays with shortened focal length), it would add something to existing light but do so close to your eye. Early demo videos (actual product, not just faked-up CGI) tried to downplay the "through something" but still indicated it was.
We're not going to have tables projecting images into the air above & being seen from the side, any time soon. (Though I do have a crazy idea about making that work...)
"Augmented virtuality (AV), is a subcategory of mixed reality which refers to the merging of real world objects into virtual worlds.[15]
As an intermediate case in the virtuality continuum, it refers to predominantly virtual spaces, where physical elements, e.g. physical objects or people, are dynamically integrated into, and can interact with, the virtual world in real time. This integration is achieved with the use of various techniques. Often streaming video from physical spaces (e.g., via webcam)[16] or using 3-dimensional digitalisation of physical objects.[17]"
When I heard the word "mixed reality" for the first time two years ago, the idea was that AR was a 2d layer on top of reality (like google glasses) and that MR was actual 3d objects merged in the reality.
But then, mobile apps started doing the later and called it AR. Also, Hololens did what we were calling MR and called it AR as well. So at this point, I guess you can use whatever word you prefer.
You may forget what 2015 was like. The Oculus Kickstarter was in 2012. By 2015 there were a lot of people questioning whether or not the CV1 was actually going to happen. Yes, we had the DK1 and DK2 at that point, but we're not actually talking about a very long period of time here. Magic Leap first formed in 2010. It's said that the iPhone took 7 years to develop, basically in secret, for an established company with consumer electronics experience, with other products to live off of.
I've been pretty critical of Magic Leap and their teasing in the past, and while we haven't seen any real evidence that the product is real, we also haven't seen any real evidence that it isn't.
I remember, and I don't recall anyone seriously doubting whether or not CV1 would happen. Plus, as you say they had publicly available prototypes. The original Kickstarter had real videos of prototypes and John Carmack saying it was great. Totally different situation.
That was my first reaction as well, but there is one article online by someone who's used the device. It sounds more mature than I assumed it'd be viewing this landing page [0]
"I noticed that when I moved or looked around, her eyes tracked mine. The cameras inside the Lightwear was feeding her data so she could maintain eye contact."
IKEA's products as listed in the catalogue can be ordered (and, if required, build). Magic Leap cannot be build and has yet to deliver.
Even if Magic Leap will ship, their secrecy is unwarranted because they don't have any credit as a company. Compare to Apple's secrecy: they do have credit.
So, we can sign up now, but they still haven't shown the tech to anyone without an extremely heavy NDA? I'll wait for Anandtech or similar outfit to put out at least a tweet about the viability of the technology.
They've been very secretive in the past in showing actual results, only releasing simulations and videos that look real but aren't (fooling people into thinking they actually had something), and that makes me doubt anything they say they'll release until they show actual specs and actual videos of people using it, opinions on their experience, etc.
At least now they have release dates and supposedly that means they actually have something, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they have.
This unveiling doesn’t commit to the shape of the product. It doesn’t describe technical details, like the processing power, number or spectrum of cameras, radios, anything. It doesn’t commit to a price range, like “under $1200”.
They need more money. Magicleap looks like a typical dot com era borderline scam of the nineties: something is always right around the corner, if only there was more money...
At least it’s something. But a few renders of dodgy looking goggles and some fake Weta demos don’t instill much confidence until we see hardware in our hands.
Hard to fathom why everyone is optimistic about this. Hasn't recent history overwhelmingly demonstrated that adding AR tech to out current culture will result in exactly the situation from the video?
Maybe you're not very familiar with the Hololens. It looks very different to me. The "goggles" look seems to indicate the rendering will cover the full field of view. The computer pack seems to indicate they are either going for greater visual fidelity or longer battery life (or both). And the controller is more akin to the desktop VR systems than Hololens' janky hand gestures (though I would honestly prefer someone just solve hand gestures already).
This is a lot more different from the Hololens than the Vive and Rift are from each other.
"The viewing space is about the size of a VHS tape held in front of you with your arms half extended. It’s much larger than the HoloLens, but it’s still there.
“I can say that our future gen hardware tech significantly expands the field of view,” Miller says. “So the field of view that you are looking at on these devices is the field of view this will ship with.
It seems to have a larger field of view. Hololens (I have one) is about the size of a credit card held out with your arm half extended. This one is the size of a VHS tape. Also, the unit appears to be lighter as processing is done by a pocket computer that comes with it. Hololens is completely self-contained and thus heavier and less comfortable. I wonder if they'll use the same Unity/C# dev tools.
VHS tape with arm half extended is actually the exact size I calculate for hololens, given the field of view of the hololens is 30°x17°, and an outstretched arm's distance is 35cm:
My south Floridian side really wants them to be successful, but my techie side despises their secrecy and "demos" aka photoshopped graphics and cgi videos.
I live here too. We unfortunately have built a reputation of our value only being skin deep and superficial – from our real estate to our transit to our restaurants and nightlife to our startup community. This reputation is not entirely without merit; we need to do better.
Knowing all that – I want this to be amazing, but I am keeping my expectations in check. To me, this all seems too familiar. Lots of flash and shine, but I don't see anything concrete.
Most people there have always been from somewhere else, I didn't always fit in as well being born in Florida.
from above:
>>I don't understand why this entire field seems so focused on gaming, and not productivity
>Because they think that gamers will pay. Unfortunately, I see that they got a wrong idea. It has a vibe of a semibotched Kickstarter project, except backers here are not private individuals, but gigacompanies.
>A type of a gamer who spends 15k usd on a gaming rig to crush opponents in Quake 3 in ultracompetitive environment, will not care a bit about this toy.
>The founder of the company comes from a socioeconomic strata whose people have that characteristic. A Boston "old money family (R)" born man may see that selling gaming stuff to quite a lot of relatively rich people dumping 15k on a gaming rig is a good business idea, proceeds to build a company built around that idea with all audicious bold claims being received with accolades from other people like him, but never actually bothers to figure out what things matter in a gaming gear.
>If you have read his personal blog from naughties before he deleted it, you will get that his ways can be said to be well beyond "nebulous". He wrote stuff like "solving global problems" while maintaining that tone you usually see from people who flood the internet with something very insubstantial like "saving African children with Agile, innovation, and seven sigma framework..."
>Ok, back to the botches kickstarter line. As happens often with such projects, original claims performance get scaled down, company barely manages to deliver a downrated product after missing the delivery deadlines multiple times, product works so so, and in the end it ends in your drawer for good. A year down the line the company simply shuts down the cloud service for the widget and you are left with an expensive paperweight. I expect magic leap to follow this route.
then there's this:
>Given what is known about the mechanisms of high end confidence tricks, what is different about the operation of Magic Leap that indicates that it is not a confidence trick
Similar to the way that SV is decades ahead in software engineering, Hollywoood (Calif.) almost a full century ahead in moving picture entertainment, and Houston with its petro/chemicals, Ft. Lauderdale leads the pack in confidence leverage, selling to investors their very own dreams in the most "creative" ways like no place else. Lots of locations are desirable for different reasons and give rise to extreme leadership in regional specialties like these, where most outsiders are completely out of their element. Magic leap is already successful on its own terms without needing actual paying customers yet or even a shippable product, what's the hurry to put icing on the cake, even if it becomes possible? I wouldn't expect them to be as competitive at selling to customers compared to the pitches they have already delivered and won.
Vapor ware has existed much longer and more traditionally in hardwares than in softwares to begin with.
The most well-honed So. Fla. ventures always have a very realistic possibility of truly making money, the persuasive confidence being focused on distorting the probablity rather than on complete fraud. After all, fraud would be illegal, even in So. Fla. where you traditionally did not ask people what they do for a living, that would be rude since there's so little opportunity to earn a legitimate income compared to parts north. You're supposed to have money before you go there.
When I was a youngster Ft. Lauderdale was a much smaller yachting community, but more so than ever it looks like "hook, line, and sinker" will always be some of the most prominent pastimes enjoyed by those who specialize in this type of activity. All the yachtsmen I knew were only looking for the biggest fish, not interested in the small fr...
Magic Leap has a track record of outright lying [1]. Everything in this "unveiling" looks like CGI. There is no store and nothing is shipping until "2018".
A company I work with did a product demo presentation (for a completely unrelated product to Magic Leap) and showed a ton of extremely ambitious features in the demo and zero development work had even been started on that project. In fact, they haven't even hired the development team yet. The end of their demo showed a "Launching in 2018" message.
Marketing's job is to make promises. Whether the company keeps them is another matter.
Marketer promising unrealistic and undeliverable things is just a liar, and should be fired and marked accordingly for rest of the industry to know. You don't build a great product that sells by destroying reputation even before the release.
Common concerns, like FOV (not very big), are addressed in this article:
> The viewing space is about the size of a VHS tape held in front of you with your arms half extended. It’s much larger than the HoloLens, but it’s still there.
Hololens is about the size of a smartphone at that half-arm-length distance. It's pretty significant. The question remains, what are the resolution and tracking like? The Meta 2 similarly has a wider FOV, but the visuals are fuzzy and the tracking is the worst of any device I've ever used.
Our family had one of the early consumer VCR/camcorders around 1980. I still had to go grab one out of an old box to see how good my memory of its dimension is. Answer: meh, kinda close, but not an accurate unit of measurement even for a guy that used them from the beginning. And that’s because even old people haven’t touched one in a good ten years.
But, hey, Stranger Things, amirite? We’re all 80s-ophiles or something.
The thing is the FOV on the original Hololens prototype was massive, but the FOV had to be constrained down for the actual product because the FOV needed a full backpack computer (instead of the headset).
So it's all well and good that the demo units have a slightly bigger FOV than Hololens but I'm not going to hold my breath until we see the released product have a higher FOV than Hololens.
The medium brings new opportunities sure, but also its own challenges. For example, capturing convincing 3D representations of live people is really difficult. Even just motion capture in specially designed studios isn’t easy.
Besides 2D overlays, I suspect that most AR applications will use avatars instead of trying to digitize real people. An unrealistic or cartoonish avatar would also avoid any uncanny valleyness and quite likely would even be part of the appeal
Microsoft has 2 Mixed Reality studios now that do 3D capture, one in SF and the other in Seattle, which they rent out for VR game creation and other purposes.
NVidia also has a 3D video capture tech called Virtual Eye. Rumor has it modern compression brings the video within 20% of 2D video size.
While it's not yet feasible for an AR headset to do such dense capture, the tech is not far off.
This is actually really exciting. Still not a lot of details on specs or pricing (which is what will ultimately determine whether this succeeds or not), but from what we've seen so far I think this is the first consumer-focused AR product which has the potential to gain a real substantial level of adoption. The Oculus Rift DK1 of AR, as it were.
Though with recent advances in AR and VR tech, the Magic Leap doesn't seem as magical as it did when they first started teasing it several years back. Looking at the trends over the last year or so, I think it was only a matter of time before _someone_ came out with a product like this. (In fact, what they announced here today almost seems like a cross between a Microsoft Hololens and an Oculus Santa Cruz headset.) The real innovation Magic Leap seems to be bringing to the table is their "lightfield" display; though it's hard for me to judge how big of a deal that will be without trying it for myself.
> Abovitz' view that this first release of hardware is workable and good, could explain why they’re calling it the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition. To Magic Leap, creators are developers, brands, agencies, but also early adopter consumers. “The consumers who bought the first Mac, or the first PCs,” he says. “Everyone who would have bought the first iPod. It’s that kind of group. But it’s definitely not just a development kit. If you’re a consumer-creator you are going to be happy.”
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 290 ms ] threadIf this is cheaper than my three displays (and the resolution isn't too terrible), it's already saving me money.
There may be a limitation, though: resolution. If we are have 9 virtual monitors, each displaying content at 2500x1200 (random pick), performances may not follow.
But then I guess, we only need to focus on one at a time. Maybe those additional monitors could work if we lower resolution of those not directly where our eyes are looking at, and just blur them for good rendering.
Personally I found it super slow and frustrating to have to turn my head instead of my eyes to see different parts of the screen - it's nothing like using multiple physical monitors. And jewelers glasses are better than virtual screens will be - they have zero lag and don't suffer from the double-aliasing of projecting one pixel grid onto another pixel grid.
I can imagine this working, but it would take way more resolution and field of view to simulate multiple monitors than anything we know how to build today.
Anyway, I'm glad to see something came of Magic Leap.
Also, there's disclaimer text at the bottom of the second photo: "Product is continually advancing and may be different at time of shipment."
What is the message being projected if someone looks at you wearing these glasses? Probably not one a "normal" person would want to project.
Function matters, but don't overrate fashion. People deeply care about it, and will skip the function (no matter how great it is) if it makes them look like a dork.
Yet everybody does this every day in 2017 because headphones are super useful- Now we even think they'er fashionable!
Plenty of people thought the Walkman was futuristic because they were blown away by what it could do in that package. Maybe some of the more insecure people didn't start using them until it became sufficiently safe to be seen with one. But we're very lucky that in mankind there will be those one or two people who don't care what you think because you obviously can't see what they can see.
Literally, in this case.
Yes. Currently it is birth control for your face.
I agree they could do it in a much less ugly manner though.
Can't wait to see this in person!
Their promo videos specifically promise that you could have a crowd of 100 people without the goggles on watching the Magic Leap effects.
They are liars.
Magic leap has always been about wearing something - the've just deliberately never shown any of their devices in their videos.
> but I thought Magic Leap were creating AR technology that worked _without Goggles_
Yes, that's because they lied to you and deliberately told you that the product would work without goggles. That is all over their early marketing.
But good, great. I'm not mad.
We're not going to have tables projecting images into the air above & being seen from the side, any time soon. (Though I do have a crazy idea about making that work...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_reality
"Augmented virtuality (AV), is a subcategory of mixed reality which refers to the merging of real world objects into virtual worlds.[15] As an intermediate case in the virtuality continuum, it refers to predominantly virtual spaces, where physical elements, e.g. physical objects or people, are dynamically integrated into, and can interact with, the virtual world in real time. This integration is achieved with the use of various techniques. Often streaming video from physical spaces (e.g., via webcam)[16] or using 3-dimensional digitalisation of physical objects.[17]"
But then, mobile apps started doing the later and called it AR. Also, Hololens did what we were calling MR and called it AR as well. So at this point, I guess you can use whatever word you prefer.
I've been pretty critical of Magic Leap and their teasing in the past, and while we haven't seen any real evidence that the product is real, we also haven't seen any real evidence that it isn't.
[0]https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-intro...
"My first experience with Magic Leap’s technology in action occurred in a sort of sound stage"
Note he uses the generalized word, 'technology', and does not say 'Magic Leap One'. Then later in the visit:
"My first close look at the full Magic Leap hardware comes in a secluded space upstairs that resembles a fashion showroom."
Even if Magic Leap will ship, their secrecy is unwarranted because they don't have any credit as a company. Compare to Apple's secrecy: they do have credit.
At least now they have release dates and supposedly that means they actually have something, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they have.
What’s unveiled?
https://vimeo.com/8569187
My job involves lots of windows-only proprietary junk so my work machine is very windows-y. I wouldn't normally do this to myself.
This is a lot more different from the Hololens than the Vive and Rift are from each other.
“I can say that our future gen hardware tech significantly expands the field of view,” Miller says. “So the field of view that you are looking at on these devices is the field of view this will ship with.
From https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-intro...
2 * tan(30 degrees / 2) * 35cm = 188mm
2 * tan(17 degrees / 2) * 35cm = 105mm
A VHS tape is 187mm x 103mm.
Knowing all that – I want this to be amazing, but I am keeping my expectations in check. To me, this all seems too familiar. Lots of flash and shine, but I don't see anything concrete.
Most people there have always been from somewhere else, I didn't always fit in as well being born in Florida.
from above:
>>I don't understand why this entire field seems so focused on gaming, and not productivity
>Because they think that gamers will pay. Unfortunately, I see that they got a wrong idea. It has a vibe of a semibotched Kickstarter project, except backers here are not private individuals, but gigacompanies.
>A type of a gamer who spends 15k usd on a gaming rig to crush opponents in Quake 3 in ultracompetitive environment, will not care a bit about this toy.
>The founder of the company comes from a socioeconomic strata whose people have that characteristic. A Boston "old money family (R)" born man may see that selling gaming stuff to quite a lot of relatively rich people dumping 15k on a gaming rig is a good business idea, proceeds to build a company built around that idea with all audicious bold claims being received with accolades from other people like him, but never actually bothers to figure out what things matter in a gaming gear.
>If you have read his personal blog from naughties before he deleted it, you will get that his ways can be said to be well beyond "nebulous". He wrote stuff like "solving global problems" while maintaining that tone you usually see from people who flood the internet with something very insubstantial like "saving African children with Agile, innovation, and seven sigma framework..."
>Ok, back to the botches kickstarter line. As happens often with such projects, original claims performance get scaled down, company barely manages to deliver a downrated product after missing the delivery deadlines multiple times, product works so so, and in the end it ends in your drawer for good. A year down the line the company simply shuts down the cloud service for the widget and you are left with an expensive paperweight. I expect magic leap to follow this route.
then there's this:
>Given what is known about the mechanisms of high end confidence tricks, what is different about the operation of Magic Leap that indicates that it is not a confidence trick
Similar to the way that SV is decades ahead in software engineering, Hollywoood (Calif.) almost a full century ahead in moving picture entertainment, and Houston with its petro/chemicals, Ft. Lauderdale leads the pack in confidence leverage, selling to investors their very own dreams in the most "creative" ways like no place else. Lots of locations are desirable for different reasons and give rise to extreme leadership in regional specialties like these, where most outsiders are completely out of their element. Magic leap is already successful on its own terms without needing actual paying customers yet or even a shippable product, what's the hurry to put icing on the cake, even if it becomes possible? I wouldn't expect them to be as competitive at selling to customers compared to the pitches they have already delivered and won.
Vapor ware has existed much longer and more traditionally in hardwares than in softwares to begin with.
The most well-honed So. Fla. ventures always have a very realistic possibility of truly making money, the persuasive confidence being focused on distorting the probablity rather than on complete fraud. After all, fraud would be illegal, even in So. Fla. where you traditionally did not ask people what they do for a living, that would be rude since there's so little opportunity to earn a legitimate income compared to parts north. You're supposed to have money before you go there.
When I was a youngster Ft. Lauderdale was a much smaller yachting community, but more so than ever it looks like "hook, line, and sinker" will always be some of the most prominent pastimes enjoyed by those who specialize in this type of activity. All the yachtsmen I knew were only looking for the biggest fish, not interested in the small fr...
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/8/13894000/magic-leap-ar-mi...
Marketing's job is to make promises. Whether the company keeps them is another matter.
https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-intro...
Common concerns, like FOV (not very big), are addressed in this article:
> The viewing space is about the size of a VHS tape held in front of you with your arms half extended. It’s much larger than the HoloLens, but it’s still there.
For a company with this much funding and hype I expected more than just “a slightly better hololens”.
VHS at half-arms length does sound only a bit bigger than the hololens.
But, hey, Stranger Things, amirite? We’re all 80s-ophiles or something.
Honestly it sounds really small. Not sure how you could have a viable product that only works in a small rectangle in the center of your vision.
So it's all well and good that the demo units have a slightly bigger FOV than Hololens but I'm not going to hold my breath until we see the released product have a higher FOV than Hololens.
Besides 2D overlays, I suspect that most AR applications will use avatars instead of trying to digitize real people. An unrealistic or cartoonish avatar would also avoid any uncanny valleyness and quite likely would even be part of the appeal
NVidia also has a 3D video capture tech called Virtual Eye. Rumor has it modern compression brings the video within 20% of 2D video size.
While it's not yet feasible for an AR headset to do such dense capture, the tech is not far off.
Though with recent advances in AR and VR tech, the Magic Leap doesn't seem as magical as it did when they first started teasing it several years back. Looking at the trends over the last year or so, I think it was only a matter of time before _someone_ came out with a product like this. (In fact, what they announced here today almost seems like a cross between a Microsoft Hololens and an Oculus Santa Cruz headset.) The real innovation Magic Leap seems to be bringing to the table is their "lightfield" display; though it's hard for me to judge how big of a deal that will be without trying it for myself.
Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/lightwear-intro...