Magic Leap 2 AR Headset Arrives Sept 30, Starting at $3,299 (cnet.com) 26
Magic Leap's next AR headset is coming this fall, and it's not cheap. The self-contained Magic Leap 2 glasses, which CNET tried earlier this year, will cost at least $3,299, and be available Sept. 30. From a report: Unlike the first Magic Leap headset, which launched back in 2018 and aspired to be for creative consumers, the Magic Leap 2 is entirely business-focused. The smaller glasses have their own dedicated AMD hip-worn processor puck. They offer a wider field of view than any other AR headset we've tried recently, and a unique feature that dims parts of the real world to make virtual objects seem less ghostly. The headset will come in three variations: the $3,299 Magic Leap 2 Base is the hardware plus a one-year warranty; while the Magic Leap 2 Developer Pro comes with extra developer-focused software and sample projects for $4,099. A Magic Leap 2 Enterprise version, with two-year support for enterprise-ready software, costs $4,999. Magic Leap's website will indicate where headsets will be available to buy: in the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Saudi Arabia on Sept. 30, and Japan and Singapore by the end of the year.
$3,299 (Score:2)
a bargain! I'm sure every parent will be rushing out to get this for little Timmy at Christmas.
Re:$3,299 (Score:4, Funny)
"Magic Leap" makes me think of the LeapFrog and LeapPad products which are educational consoles/tablets aimed towards young children.
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"the Magic Leap 2 is entirely business-focused."
It's in TFS.
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Little Timmy threw up all over the carpet when we got him the Magic Leap 1. Why would Magic Leap 2 be any better?
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Little Timmy threw up all over the carpet when we got him the Magic Leap 1. Why would Magic Leap 2 be any better?
The AR could reproduce a video of little Timmy vomiting for anyone wearing the ML2. Fun for all the family - at least for 4 * 3299 dollars.
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> a bargain! I'm sure every parent will be rushing out to get this for little Timmy at Christmas.
If the hype is true, it's worth double that.
IF.
Which is in serious doubt and good luck to the investors ever hoping to make a return.
Painful! (Score:2)
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"You mean you have to use your hands? That's like a baby's toy". - Back to the Future II [youtube.com].
Buy now ! Bitcoin cost 3,299 once ! (Score:3, Funny)
These things will sell for $64,000 in just a few years (*)
You'd have to be stupid not to get in now.
(*) I am not a financial analyst, nor do I play one on AR TV.
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I mean they will. Just like Theranos's lab equipment this scam pretending to be a company will have it's products turn into instant collectors items.
Resolution is sucky (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on their spec, I calculated that the resolution is less than 25 pixels per degree. While that beats Meta Quest 2, it is still nowhere near good.
Re: Resolution is sucky (Score:5, Informative)
The really depressing thing about AR & VR is realizing just how far we *are* from having the hardware necessary to make it tolerable for more than a few minutes at a time... resolution, framerate, latency... literally *everything* available today (or even on the horizon for 2-5 years from now) falls *so* far short of what we need for full immersion (without vr-sickness), it almost feels hopeless.
Is present-day hardware good enough to "annotate" the world around us, Google-Glass style? For the most part, yeah. But the moment you try turning it into a "reality filter" (transforming the world around you in realtime), the whole facade comes crashing down before going up in flames a moment later.
Latency & framerate are cruel bitches. It only takes ~24fps for static images (with analog motion-blur) to appear as motion, but if you want to use cameras & displays in front of your eyes (ie, "passthrough VR"), you need upwards of 400fs (with 1-frame cam-to-screen latency) to approach anything that doesn't make the world look like "wiggly Jello", and some unknown framerate upwards of 1,000-2,000fps to stamp out all sense (and induced stress) that "something isn't right" in your peripheral vision. That's why everyone views passthrough-AR as a dead end for the foreseeable future, and why everyone is doing it the "smoke & mirrors" (overlaying reflected light on the directly-viewed world) way ML does it... it's the only approach that's even slightly viable until the day cameras & displays capable of 1000+ fps arrive as anything besides engineering prototypes.
Vergence-accommodation conflict is another cruel bitch. Basically, focusing & accommodation aren't quite "automatic"... your brain learns during childhood that a certain amount of focusing effort is associated with distances correlating to certain amounts of convergence rotation. Focusing WITHOUT visual distance cues is a LOT harder & slower. The catch with today's VR/AR is, you're PRESENTED with images that say, "this object is 24 inches away", but the images are ACTUALLY (optically) 5-8 feet away. That's why it's so hard to focus on "near" & "far" objects in VR & AR... your vergence conflicts with optical distance, and one result is... VR sickness.
This is also why VR/AR use by kids is discouraged. Kids aren't as susceptible to VR sickness as adults, but too much time in VR can teach kids the wrong lesson when it comes to vergence vs focus/accommodation... and those lessons can be really hard to un-learn.
The truth is, vergence-accommodation conflict fucks up adults, too... but with adults, vr sickness tends to kick in fast enough to force you to stop... and probably makes you not WANT to use it much, going forward.
There IS hope for V-A conflict... a few companies have come up with ways to add small amounts of electronically-modulated magnification power, so a headset can nudge the optical distance a bit & partially neutralize V-A conflict. I'm not sure whether ML2 does it, but I know Meta & others are actively looking for affordable ways to incorporate the technology.
Technically, ML1 could render content at TWO optical distances (~0.5m and 1.5m), but it ended up being a feature that sounded a lot better than it ended up working in practice. I don't think ML's API *ever* really achieved non-jarring dynamictransitions between near & far (ie, when something "far" moved and became "near").
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Eventually light field displays will eliminate the vergence accommodation conflict, like these guys are doing
https://www.roadtovr.com/creal... [roadtovr.com]
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Vr sickness is overrated, users of even the meta quest 2 tend to have a lot less issue with it than prior headsets.
You won't ever get rid of it for everyone though. There are people out there that can't even watch fps games on a 2d screen without wanting to throw up or being sick for hours after.
They aren't the target market. You don't have to be 'perfect' on every dimension to make it worthwhile, only good enough. What constitutes 'good enough' it varies but with each generation of hardware more boxes are
Re: Resolution is sucky (Score:2)
The big problem I have with the Quest 2 is its extremely small & finicky "keyhole" for clear binocular vision. If I adjust it on my face *perfectly* it's "kind of ok"... except, it never stays that way for long.
Admittedly, I have latent heterophoria (one eye is slightly higher than the other), but really... I don't have *much* (enough to correct with custom freeform lenses since it's no extra cost for up to 1-2 diopters of prism correction, but not enough to bother correcting if it's an expensive extra
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I did prefer the quest 1 being more flexible with this rather then the quest 2 which has a few presets and that's it.
I get the motion sickness thing too when playing first person shooters on it. Bit only on those types of games
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from having the hardware necessary to make it tolerable for more than a few minutes at a time... resolution, framerate, latency... literally *everything* available today
You must be specially sensitive to the issues. Even my Rift S which pales in comparison to a Quest 2 or Index is easily and comfortably used by me (and many other people) for many hours at a time. My first proper experience in VR was the Oculus CV1 which I also played for 2 hours straight without issue. The CV1 had horrendous resolution and the RiftS also has quite a bad screen door effect (which really is only an issue when you're reading text, not when actually moving or playing a game).
There are people f
Re: Resolution is sucky (Score:3)
Truth be told, Quest2 would be *enormously* more comfortable for me if it just had an 'accessibility' setting that displayed something like a small red square to one eye, a small green square to the other, and let me nudge the left & right images until they converged.
I don't remember the name of the app I used with Cardboard, but it basically displayed 2 images like I described while you nudged them until they converged, then it generated a fake 2-D barcode to configure the rest of Cardboard's framework
Resolution is not everything (Score:1)
While that beats Meta Quest 2, it is still nowhere near good.
I would try one before you say anything about how good it looks. Resolution is not everything,
It has a 120Hz refresh rate to start with, and look at all the camera sensors you get:
â 3 Wider FoV World Cameras
â Depth Camera
â RGB Camera
â Ambient Light Sensor
â 4x Eye Tracking Cameras
(from the specs [magicleap.com] page)
Having something that adjusts the displayed image to your eyes moving is something that may feel a lot better than mere reso
They set the bar, where will Apple land? (Score:2)
I was originally thinking the Apple headset would be $2k, now I am not so sure... will be interesting to see if it lands above or below this Magic Leap 2.
The reason I think it might be more is that I have to think Magic Leap has some inkling of upcoming Apple prices and would want to undercut.
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Magic Leap didn't decide this was for businesses only because they would rather not sell millions of devices to the unwashed masses. They're banking on the idea that businesses will want premium, pro quality gear, none of that consumer crap.
I expect it will go about as well as other Magic Leap strategies have.
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I expect it will go about as well as other Magic Leap strategies have.
TBH I was actually pretty surprised Magic Leap is still around...
Life imitates anime? (Score:2)
What business would want Magic Leap 2 glasses (Score:2)