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Magic Leap Used Fake Tech Demos and Is 'Years' Behind Schedule (ibtimes.co.uk) 114

New submitter drunkdrone writes: Magic Leap's coveted mixed reality technology has been the subject of intense speculation since it broke ground in 2014. Having secured billions of dollars in funding from some of the world's biggest tech giants, the secretive start-up has managed to stay at the centre of the VR/AR conversation despite showing little of the so-called revolutionary technology it has in the works. Now, the Magic Leap hype bubble may be about to burst in spectacularly disappointing fashion. According to reports, the Florida-based start-up is years behind on its plans and may have used deceptive product demos in order to keep interest in its tech alive. The Verge, which quotes an exclusive article from The Information, reports that Magic Leap's mixed reality technology has long since been overtaken by other products already on the market such as Microsoft's HoloLens, which Magic Leap's technology is said to most closely resemble. Allegedly, Magic Leap has struggled to scale-down a bulky piece of laser projection equipment used within the headset's display. "The crux of the problem appears to be Magic Leap's gamble on a so-called fibre scanning display, which shines a laser through a fibre optic cable that moves rapidly back and forth to draw images out of light," reports the Verge.
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Magic Leap Used Fake Tech Demos and Is 'Years' Behind Schedule

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  • by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @11:02AM (#53452525)
    "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo".
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Florida-based start-up

    Wait, a scam in Florida? That's unpossible!

    • Florida-based start-up

      Wait, a scam in Florida? That's unpossible!

      Yes, it turns out all the breathtakingly rendered 3D augmented-reality monsters in the demos were just the native fauna of Florida.

      • by Anonymous Coward
        Well, I'm sure nobody will get the reference - but they were really the fauna of Xanth.
      • by necro81 ( 917438 )

        Yes, it turns out all the breathtakingly rendered 3D augmented-reality monsters in the demos were just the native fauna of Florida.

        come on, now. Uncle Billy ain't all that bad.

  • Theranos II ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09, 2016 @11:12AM (#53452607)

    Note to VCs and other money-types.

    When a candidate talks about 'revolutionary technology' make sure you see it actually working before you give them mountains of bucks. Oh, and make sure you get it independently tested, too.

    Tech has already changed the meaning of 'innovative' to 'same as last year's model minus an interface port' now they're turning revolutionary into some ironic hipster term.

    • Re:Theranos II ? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09, 2016 @11:38AM (#53452787)

      I agree but these guys typically just say something like "this is proprietary and integral to the success of the company so we can't let people outside the company see how it actually works, you can just look at the results".

      Then greedy investors, not wanting to miss out on the next Apple, Microsoft , Google or Facebook let their emotions get the best of them. The urge to not miss out mixed with the plausible narrative of high tech secrets along with other idiot investors plowing in millions in at the same time (can all of these people be dumb? is the thought).

      The reality is that even professional investors get taken for a ride by their emotions and let all sorts of biases into the decision making process. Hardly anyone anymore is analytical and fact based, despite claims to that they are. It is all about the narrative, the "who" is involved and who else has supposedly done due diligence and it becomes a self fulfilling circle jerk of supposedly competent people all investing in the same thing mostly because they all think the other person has done more research and more diligence than them.

      Oftentimes this can actually work and the billions of dollars can produce the currently non-existent technology. Other times it doesn't work.

      At the end of the day though the real problem is with greedy INVESTORS who are more than willing to let people get away with not sharing information because they think they will miss out on the opportunity.

      • Then arrange a double-blind black-box analysis. That doesn't need to reveal HOW things work, it just proves that they DO work. If your target company balks at proving their device works, it's bunk.
    • Isn't it the goal to get in early, to get a good ROI, and if it fails, just write it off?
      Maybe I'm missing something here, but other than the opportunity to invest in another venture, what did the investors lose?

    • by dj245 ( 732906 )

      Note to VCs and other money-types.

      When a candidate talks about 'revolutionary technology' make sure you see it actually working before you give them mountains of bucks. Oh, and make sure you get it independently tested, too.

      Tech has already changed the meaning of 'innovative' to 'same as last year's model minus an interface port' now they're turning revolutionary into some ironic hipster term.

      My experience (in a totally unrelated industry) is that there seems to be a large amount of money out there in private equity looking for something to do. Many of the people doing such work do their due diligence (since they will immediately gut and then flip the company), but suckers are born every minute. In other cases, it seems that the investor/investee relationship is protracted battle between con artists.

      But I'm just an engineer, some big shot will probably just jump in here and tell me that I w

  • "Years" (Score:5, Funny)

    by utahjazz ( 177190 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @11:30AM (#53452735)

    Pretty impressive to be "years" behind schedule, 2 years after you founded the company. They should declare "time bankruptcy" and start from scratch.

    • Re:"Years" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by slew ( 2918 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @01:03PM (#53453417)

      Pretty impressive to be "years" behind schedule, 2 years after you founded the company. They should declare "time bankruptcy" and start from scratch.

      Not that I'm defending them, but Magic leap gave their first technology demo in 2011, so it wasn't just 2 years ago the started...

      It was 2 years ago they closed their "A" round of financing ($50M) which was technically when they started their "clock"
      Google lead their "B" round of financing ($542M)
      And earlier this year, Alibaba lead their "C" round of financing (~$800M at a $4.5B valuation),

      So they've raised ~$1.4B to date, but I'm guessing the"C" round financiers are shortly about to take a bath...

      FWIW, Magic Leap doesn't seem to be organized like a tech venture, but more like a entertainment studio. From all reports, the tech that they seem like they are developing is adapted from medical tech: a single fiber scanning endoscope technology worked on at University of Washington by Eric Seibel. The chief technical officer of Magic Leap is Brian Schowengerdt who was Mr. Seibel's research partner. Apparently, the idea is to reverse the endoscope from being a camera to being a projector. Of course there are issues involved in adapting any technology, so it's not unexpected that they have run into a boat load of trouble and are years behind. Such is the nature of high tech.

  • It sounds like those investors had a very mixed reality already.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09, 2016 @11:41AM (#53452813)

    People will over-believe what they see. I learned this many years ago, preparing animations on a SGI workstation for use in courtrooms. If a lawyer showed up with an animation of an accident, the jury took it as real and would rule for his client.

    It's a two edged sword for tech. Can't get any money unless I show a mockup or prototype. However, once a customer sees a mockup or prototype, they think it's mere inches away from production even though I tell them it's miles. I've even been told I just wanted extra money to "do science projects" instead of heading straight for production when I've tried to warn people how immature the tech was.

    • by tungstencoil ( 1016227 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @12:06PM (#53452977)
      There's a lot of truth in this, and in visuals anyway. Case from my own experience:

      Early in my career, I led a small team to create a product to monitor operations of a physical system. This system was geographically situated in a such a way that different locations were located on a map. The top-level view of the system might refer to different geographic locations (e.g. "First St node" and "Highway 3 node").

      This was during the time that Google Earth was New! Exciting! AJAX?! For a prototype, we lifted *the customer's own marketing map graphic* and overlaid a colored disk at each location representing current status.

      Two side effects of the prototype demo: first, the sheer wonderment of "how did you get that?! Is it a satellite?! IS IT GOOGLE EARTH?!" Second: "How does it know the status?" "Holy crap! Maple Ave node IS RED ZOMG CALL SOMEONE WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!"

      The best part: explaining it was (1) a simple .jpg we lifted directly from their marketing swag, and (2) it was just a prototype and didn't mean anything *did not do a damned thing*. They still believed we had satellites monitoring the systems (why satellites? How would satellites know the status?)

      Seeing is, indeed, believing.
      • For a prototype, we lifted *the customer's own marketing map graphic* and overlaid a colored disk at each location representing current status.

        I had similar experiences years ago. This is because most people don't understand the difference between a model and "the real thing" if they can't "see" an obvious difference. Example: A canal lock system. You can build a fully functional model and (almost) no one will mistake that for the finished canal with locks. But a screen on a computer monitor showing a map with blinking dots (and whatever else) looks the same as what the finished application will. All the code "behind" the screen is invisible to th

  • Sounds as bad as Coleco Chameleon [vice.com]

  • by caseih ( 160668 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @12:58PM (#53453369)

    Years ago my boss worked for a software company that sold layout and design software (desktop publishing essentially) to newspapers. They were quite successful and had a lot of clients across the world. They had a few ideas of some cool new features that they would like to build into their next release, and the boss thought it would be neat to demonstrate these future features at a major trade show, to get the clients excited. So they mocked up a convincing demo of how the product *would* work, complete with scripted mistakes (undo) and everything. They did this all live with a guy pretending to interact with the software. But it was all faked.

    Well, they were right about the clients and potential clients. They were pretty excited. Very excited as a matter of fact. So excited that all of the companies that had signed on to buy their current version of the software immediately canceled their orders in anticipation of this new version. The problem was of course that it didn't exist and wouldn't for years if ever. Unfortunately that little demo completely killed the company. Their real product just couldn't compete with the hype of their imaginary product. Had they been honest about it up front, they would probably done fine and eventually implement many of those cool features.

  • by Zaphoddd ( 804886 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @01:55PM (#53453923) Homepage
    Both Articles - IB Times - super short on details. Which is a nice way to say no details. And then the "The Information" Article - adds 1 more detail before you hit the $400/year paywall - "former employee's say".
    --sigh ----

    So reporter Kevin Kelly - went to magic leap, put on the prototype and says:
    Magic Leap’s solution is an optical system that creates the illusion of depth in such a way that your eyes focus far for far things, and near for near, and will converge or diverge at the correct distances. In trying out Magic Leap’s prototype, I found that it worked amazingly well close up, within arm’s reach, which was not true of many of the other mixed- and virtual-reality systems I used. I also found that the transition back to the real world while removing the Magic Leap’s optics was effortless, as comfortable as slipping off sunglasses, which I also did not experience in other systems. It felt natural.

    Is he a shill? Like folks have said here. . it's really hard to deliver. . if it wasn't, every nerd with an idea would be making a billion bucks selling us our dream come true. But this article is painfully missing facts, and sloppy with f, u, and d.

  • Here's an interesting rebuttal [linkedin.com] to the idea that it is "another Theranos".

    Some key points:

    - the product that was the source of this report "was not the Magic Leap's latest prototype"
    - the investors that bought into Theranos were "rich individuals whose life sciences experience began and ended with high school biology", but the Magic Leap ones were âoesending their brilliant professors from all the top schools to try and shoot us down.â

    I want Magic Leap to be real because it sounds cool. I'm disappo

  • Magic Leap's mixed reality technology has long since been overtaken by other products already on the market such as Microsoft's HoloLens

    HoloLens has almost exclusively used fake demos from the very beginning. People who have actually used HoloLens report poor field of view and semi-transparent graphics, yet the demos all show perfect wide-angle non-transparent graphics that have clearly just been composited over the video signal. Magic leap tried a similar trick for their first demo (with the steam punk ray guns) but all the subsequent videos did appear to be shot directly through their device. Of course, we never actually saw the device,

  • Adblocker (Score:5, Informative)

    by ProzacPatient ( 915544 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @03:30PM (#53454909)
    The site blurs the text and says you need to disable your adblocker to read articles. To get around it just remove the "color: transparent;" property from the style attribute of the "v_main" div.
    • Entirely disabling javascript from ibtimes.co.uk works nicely as well. That's always step-1 when a site is complaining about your ad blocker. Meta redirects may need to be disabled on other sites, as well. Only rarely does it help to disable style sheets on a site.

  • MS bought their tech, and did the ol' embrace, extend, rig their demo, extinguish.

    Hmmm, there should be a Profit! in there, somewhere...

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