Magic Leap Raises $794 Million To Accelerate Adoption of Secretive AR Tech (roadtovr.com) 51
An anonymous reader writes: A massive new $794 million Series C investment in secretive AR startup Magic Leap puts the company among the world's most valuable startups, now reportedly valued at $4.5 billion. The company has aggressively teased what they believe to be revolutionary augmented reality display technology, allowing a mixture of the real and virtual dimensions in a way previously not achieved. Although they've played coy to the public, offering little more than bold claims, investors like Alibaba, Google Ventures, and Qualcomm Ventures have bought into the company's vision to the tune of $1.39 billion in total raised by Magic Leap thus far. Also at Network World, which notes that their demo must be amazing.
well, it is a Leap year (Score:3)
Nothing new (Score:2)
Magic Leap projects a digital light field into the observer's eyes,
The japanese have been there, done that [wikipedia.org]
Nostradamus time (Score:1, Insightful)
There's another financial crisis coming soon, and it's going to make 2008 (and the dot-com bubble burst) look like a small hiccup in comparison. Senseless transfers of billions of fiat dollars around companies like this and various shitty social networks that have never made a single cent in profit are a sign of that.
Re:Nostradamus time (Score:4, Funny)
Well - give them some more money. . I want one or more of these. I don't care if they go broke or the economy collapse. Just imagine the porn - err I mean possibilities.
Re:Nostradamus time (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it will be that bad, but yeah I think there will likely be a simultaneous collapse of both real estate bubble 2.0 AND tech bubble 2.0. Neither of these bubbles are as big as the ones that preceded them though, so we'll probably see a simple recession.
And because people like to blame the president for recessions (even though it's never actually been the president that caused it,) whoever wins the next election will be a recession president, and unless there's a significant turnaround in that time, they'll be a one term wonder.
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That's incredibly optimistic of you to think we'll only have to deal with said president one term. We had to deal with bush and obama 8 years a peice, when neither was all that great in the first place.
Well I recall about early 2003 when the Democrats were on the campaign trail prior to the party elections, they kept throwing around "3 million jobs lost" seemingly every other minute, and said it was all Bush's fault. That made no sense to me though because of two things: The first tech bubble was during Clinton, and was in the middle of crashing just as Bush took office. Then shortly after that, 9/11 happened, which made things worse.
However the economy turned around by 2004, and those 3 million jobs AND
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What "shitty social networks" are you referring too?
It is normal for money to be invested in VR and AR companies, no one knows what company will be at the forefront of the tech when it completely matures, but everyone knows that some company will be leader and that company will be seeing a ton of growth.
AR has a ton of potential for many different uses, but I think beyond the optics we are still years away at being able to create the software needed to merge our surroundings with software that can really un
Secret sauce patent application (Score:4, Interesting)
Vaporware and a guess about the secret. (Score:3)
This think is varporware connected to a highthroughput press-release ink jet.
Even apple can't keep it's secret sauce secret. Why? because at some point they have to make the thing and tell developers how to work with it. So it leaks out the supply channels. the Magic-vape folks ought to have that problem if this existed. and they also ought to have the problem from investor briefings. but not a peep. So one suspects it's non-existent investor bait similar to the rigged demos of cold fusiion.
Now judg
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You want stereo vision but you also need the focal plane to change as the eye changes focus.
Fortunately, there's a cheap and easy solution to this: age. By the time you're 50, it's extremely unlikely that you'll have enough focal accommodation to matter.
This means I'd be totally ready for VR, if not for my extreme susceptibility to lag-induced motion sickness.
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the ten people running Magic Leap
So, pretty much you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You can just come right out and say it, if it will make you feel better.
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is there any real info?
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is there any real info?
If you're paying attention to the industry and the hires, you know that there are a LOT more than "ten people running Magic Leap." That notion doesn't even pass the smell test.
So your answer is no, you don't know anything different.
Your condescending response that is the equivalent of "educate yourself" is less than worthless, seeing as that is exactly what he/she was trying to do by asking you this question.
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Demo... (Score:5, Informative)
They have released this demo : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw0-JRa9n94 [youtube.com] which looks pretty decent. You can find some artifacts (mainly the occlusion of the little robot which could be better). The depth of field looks pretty cool in the second part and the resolution seems decent (at least for the 1080p camera and for the few frame it is actually in focus, might not be perfect for the eye though).
I have no idea on the volume/weight of the device though.
They are all missing a trick (Score:1)
Billions in vr. Where is feedback loop? Touch, smell, pressure. Without that just a bunch of folk staring out of spacecraft and waving arms in nothing.
Amazing? (Score:1)
Absolutely nothing amazes me.
Unless their VR defies physics, it's just another piece of tech that no one has made, but surely someone has imagined at some point.
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Rainbows End, by Vernon Vinge
Doubt it is the first but it's certainly well fleshed-out with what this tech would be capable of when it works.
Hint: You think furries and bronies are annoying now...
What I've been suggesting (Score:1)
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Combine a mass spectrometer and a projector that can bounce an image off objects in the room that puts the focal point of the light in front of or possibly behind the object
What's the mass spectrometer for?
I don't see how you can change where the focal point of the light is if you're just bouncing it off whatever happens to be in the room. You're just lightning an object.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Read a few of the links on the Wikipedia entry and
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AR = Augmented Reality (Score:3)
the summary and/or editor's blurb should have made it clear that in this context AR = Augmented Reality.
Might as well spend it (Score:2)
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The future is not all flowers and rainbows.
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I think AR will have a lot of uses, but in a marginal sort of way. Consider the rise of 3D CAD/CAM. We now have very complex organically shaped cars of exceptional build quality and safety, but fundamentally they don't make it any faster/easier to get around a city compared with their 1980s boxy counterparts. I can see AR being very useful for some professions, but it is not going to suddenly make people 50% more productive.
The real quality of life improvements for the 99% would come from investing in the l
Holodeck (Score:1)
The Game (Score:3)
They just have to create a tech demo that emulates "The Game" from STNG.
Phase manipulation? (Score:3)
I checked their patent but they simply threw everything possible against a wall, hoping something will stick - like doing multiple layers with lenses between them, directly stimulating retina cells, using phased MEMS and so on. No clue how it can really work.
Hope they make it very secure (Score:1)