Magic Leap Wants Workers To Use Its Headsets While They're Stuck At Home

Mixed reality startup Magic Leap is trying to tempt potential buyers with a package for people stuck working from home. The Verge reports: The "Collaboration Package" is a 45-day trial of four Magic Leap headsets, plus access to Spatial, a virtual collaboration program. It costs $5,000, with the option to extend the license or send the headsets back afterward. Spatial creates avatars of users based on photos, then lets them hold meetings with these avatars and virtual screens. It isn't exclusive to Magic Leap or mixed reality headsets; the software also works across computers and phones. But headsets can (in some ways) more realistically simulate sharing a room with a distant colleague.

Oh this is what they decided on

[ChoGGi]

instead of trying to sell the company to a sucker?
Sold 20K headsets for 2300 each (dev costs of 150K per headset), and now they're selling them for 1250?

Re:

[Provos]

Nah. They're going on the magazine 'forgot to cancel' model. The price point is irrelevant, the vulture behavior is the bigger deal.

Re: Oh this is what they decided on

[Miamicanes]

Your math assumes the expenditure of a huge amount of money, divided by a one-time small manufacturing run... which is a tactic straight out of "How to Lie with Statistics".

Even if ML never manufactured or sold another headset, the development work they've done has value for future AR platforms. AR is a *huge* endeavor, and we're still in the earliest nascent stages of its development Heatsets are a major & fundamental component... but they're still just one of many.

Realtime tracking of adhoc participan

I Thought ...

[RitchCraft]

... I read recently that Magic Leap was pretty much a failure after finally showing their lack-luster technology. Has something changed?

Re:

[bloodhawk]

nothings changed, they are desperately looking for people to use their lackluster product before they collapse, which is exactly what this is more of.

If only Magic Leap had delivered on their promise.

[JackAxe]

I still can't believe people bought into that whale demo and thought it was real.

Re:

[DrXym]

I took the phony baloney demos as a sign that they had NOTHING and were quite happy to mislead people, especially investors into thinking otherwise.

I'm confused

[fahrbot-bot]

Spatial creates avatars of users based on photos, then lets them hold meetings with these avatars and virtual screens.

Seriously? Are people incapable of simply talking on a conference call w/o any video? What a huge waste of money.

Re:

[DrXym]

Or they could just use some kind of team chat software which has video / audio in it. Virtually phone or laptop could be used for this purpose without no special hardware.

Behind the curve on this $1250 headset

[echostorm]

This doesn't look particularly special or innovative. Is there something I am missing where a steelseries arctis 7 paired with a Logitech streamcam is a better option sound and gfx wise at like $260 x4 than this 1250 dollar headset combo with proprietary tech? keep in mind this is down from their $5000 asking price. The combo I suggest , as many others will tell them, is like the Roles Royce of Web based off site meetings. If someone is willing to spend $260 to treat their employees in style, why the hell

Garbage

[CimmerianX]

Magic Leap is garbage tech. WE demo-ed the headset and its was super clunky and of little use. Angry birds was the best thing about it and even that novelty wore off after 5 min.

no colleagues while WFH = feature

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> realistically simulate sharing a room with a distant colleague

Why the fuck would anyone working from home want to do THAT?