After years of hype, Magic Leap starts selling $2,300 AR headset
After years of behind-closed-doors demos and over-the-top hype, Magic Leap's augmented reality glasses took one more step towards reality today. The company has opened up orders for the $2,295 "Creator Edition" of its first headset, the Magic Leap One.
That price includes in-person delivery and setup of the developer-focused hardware, though that delivery is only available in select US cities for the time being—Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle will be covered on day one. Those in other locations have to reserve a spot and wait for wider availability.
The hand-delivery is in part to determine which of two adjustable sizes for the headset is most appropriate for you—Magic Leap says "you'll be measured upon delivery to ensure the perfect fit." Magic Leap also says "limited quantities" are being made available now and that delivery of current orders will take place within "120 days and typically much sooner."
Compare the price to the $3,000-$5,000 developer versions of Microsoft's HoloLens, or the $1,500 Google Glass.
It requires a connected "lightpack" computer that clips onto a pocket or shoulder strap. The device has an Nvidia Tegra X2 chipset (2 Denver 2.0 cores, 4 ARM Cortex A57 cores, with one Denver core and two of the A57 cores accessible to developers), 8GB of memory, 128GB of storage, and a battery supposedly offering 3 hours of use. It also comes with a wireless handheld controller similar to ones offered by Oculus, Samsung, etc., although it is fully tracked by the headset's cameras, offering "a full range of motion" according to The Verge.
The field of view of the device is 40° horizontal, 30° vertical. This is larger than HoloLens's 30° horizontal, 17.5° vertical field of view, but is far less than that of VR headsets (typically 100-110° horizontal, and 200-210° horizontal for the Pimax and StarVR headsets) and human vision (around 220° horizontal when including peripheral vision).
Detailed review at The Verge.
Previously: Magic Leap Bashed for Being Vaporware
Magic Leap Finally Announces a Product, But is It Still Vaporware?
Related Stories
A paywalled story by The Information — The Reality Behind Magic Leap — criticized Magic Leap for the company's $4.5 billion valuation and lack of shipping products. The company is working on an augmented reality product that may prove to be inferior to competing designs such as Microsoft's HoloLens:
In The Information article, Magic Leap is said to use cumbersome equipment in its demonstrations that is at odds with the elegant design of the sunglasses-like product the company said it intends to build. Instead of a sleek pair of shades and low-impact tethering to a small battery pack, the demonstration required a helmet-sized device called "WD3," or "wearable device three," leashed to a desktop computer that the reviewer described as displaying "jittery and blurry" imagery.
This is apparently the same gear that Magic Leap execs showed investors, such as Alibaba and Google, in the lead-up to its $793 million Series C round of funding earlier this year. Previously, the company had used a refrigerator-sized device known internally as "the Beast" in demonstrations, a piece of hardware offering visuals that may prove unattainable in smaller appliances, at least anytime soon.
The headset that The Information previewed, the WD3, is not the latest prototype, which is dubbed PEQ, or "product equivalent," as The Information notes. Though former employees told the tech news site that the PEQ spectacles use similar technology to Microsoft's HoloLens, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz disputed the claim in the article and said it "already produced images with more depth that look better" than the $3,000 competitor.
The article also claims that a promotional video implied to be demonstrating the company's technologies was produced by a special effects studio instead.
Not to be confused with Leap Motion. Also at The Verge, CNBC, PC Magazine , and MIT.
Magic Leap has announced an augmented reality/mixed reality display. The price is unknown, but Magic Leap says it will ship in 2018:
After more than three years, Magic Leap has unveiled what it describes as a "creator edition" of its augmented reality system. The Magic Leap One consists of a pair of oversized cyberpunk-y goggles, a puck-shaped external computer called a Lightpack, and a handheld controller. It's supposed to accept "multiple input modes including voice, gesture, head pose and eye tracking," and maps persistent objects onto the environment — "place a virtual TV on the wall over your fireplace and when you return later, the TV will be right where you left it," the site promises. An SDK is supposedly coming in early 2018, and the hardware is supposed to ship at some point next year.
Magic Leap invited Rolling Stone to try out some demos, which include virtual characters that can react to eye contact, a floating virtual comic book, and a virtual live performance using volumetric camera capture. The piece seems to refute rumors that Magic Leap was having difficulty shrinking its technology to goggle size while keeping performance up, saying that "there was no stuttering or slowdowns, even when I walked around the performance, up close and far away."
The "puck-sized" tethered computer is an interesting compromise. It doesn't look like it would hinder mobility that much (you could compare it to a Walkman plus headphones), and it's much smaller than "VR backpack" concepts. However, it could be a good sign that you should not be an early adopter of Magic Leap One (which is actually the ninth generation of their hardware internally, according to Rolling Stone).
Some still call it vaporware. There is no video footage of the device being worn, and images have been retouched to "edit out some sensitive IP".
Will it take privacy seriously?
Again, not to be confused with Leap Motion.
Also at BBC, Tom's Hardware, Road to VR, Engadget, BGR, 9to5Google.
Previously: Developers Race to Develop VR Headsets that Won't Make Users Nauseous
Magic Leap Bashed for Being Vaporware
In 2020, smart glasses may start looking totally normal
It doesn't pay to be an early adopter. Smart glasses maker North, which developed a pair of glasses called Focals earlier this year, has just announced an updated version for 2020. That means the first Focals, which displayed notifications via a retinal-projection technology that looked like a tiny pop-up window in one eye, are being discontinued, the company says.
The improved glasses promise to be 40% lighter and have 10 times the display resolution of the first version. "We spent the last year in the market learning how to build, sell and support smart glasses with our first-gen product, that we now will combine with over five years of research working on the technology upgrades in Focals 2.0," Steven Lake, North CEO, said in a press release.
Meanwhile, Magic Leap has struggled to move its Magic Leap One Creator Edition headsets despite over $2.6 billion in funding:
The Information today published an in-depth report about Magic Leap's state of affairs. Most notable is how it apparently only sold 6,000 Magic Leap One Creator Edition headsets in the first six months.
Priced at $2,295, buyers get a "Lightwear" headset that connects to a puck-shaped "Lightpack" computer worn around their waist. CEO Rony Abovitz reportedly had an initial goal of 1 million devices in the first year before settling with 100,000.
Magic Leap's $2.6 billion bait and switch – TechCrunch:
Two years ago I attended an "Innovation in Immersive Storytelling" event at Industrial Light & Magic, featuring the Chief Game Wizard of Magic Leap. I should have known then, from all the strained corporate sorcery in that sentence, that their demise was inevitable. But in fact I went into that talk a Magic Leap skeptic, and came out ... less so.
Magic Leap drew in a lot of true believers over the years; $2.6 billion worth. Investors included Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Google (not Google Ventures — Google itself) and many many more. Sundar Pichai joined Magic Leap's board. And did they rave. I mean, it's a VC's job to rave about their portfolio companies, but this was different:
Now there is something new. Not just an order-of-magnitude more pixels or a faster frame rate, but – thanks to sensors and optics and mobile phone volumes and breakthroughs in computer vision – something I always dreamed of ... The product is amazing ... this is different
— Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins.
It was incredibly natural and almost jarring — you're in the room, and there's a dragon flying around, it's jaw-dropping and I couldn't get the smile off of my face
— Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull
Legendary and a16z had previously invested in Oculus Rift. Tull even told TechCrunch "Magic Leap takes a completely different approach." This is especially interesting because when Magic Leap finally — finally, after 5 years and $1.6 billion — released a product, Oculus's Palmer Luckey wrote a truly scathing teardown of the Magic Leap One. Again, yes he would do so ... but the details are quite striking ...
They call it the "Lightwear". This is the part that has gotten the most hype over the years, with endless talk of "Photonic Lightfield Chips", "Fiber Scanning Laser Displays", "projecting a digital light field into the user's eye", and the holy-grail promise of solving vergence-accommodation conflict, an issue that has plagued HMDs for decades ... TL;DR: The supposed "Photonic Lightfield Chips" are just waveguides paired with reflective sequential-color LCOS displays and LED illumination, the same technology everyone else has been using for years, including Microsoft in their last-gen HoloLens. The ML1 is a not a "lightfield projector" or display by any broadly accepted definition
What happened to that "completely different approach?"
See also:
Magic Leap press release: "Charting a New Course"
Magic Leap's consumer retreat is good news for the AR/XR industry
Instead Of Being Acquired For Billions, Magic Leap Lays Off Over 50% Of Workforce
What happens if Magic Leap shuts down?
Augmented Reality Startup Magic Leap Cuts Half of Staff Across Company (Report)
As Once-Hyped Magic Leap Flounders, [Ad] Agencies Say the AR Market Has Passed It By
Magic Leap Slashes Workforce, Causing 80–120 Animation Job Losses (EXCLUSIVE)
Augmented reality hits economic reality in the case of Magic Leap
Previously:
Magic Leap Bashed for Being Vaporware
Magic Leap Finally Announces a Product, But is It Still Vaporware?
Magic Leap Opens Up Orders for $2,295 "Creator Edition" Augmented Reality Headset
Magic Leap Accuses Chinese Company of Copying Trade Secrets
2020: The Year of AR? "$2.6 Billion Flop" Magic Leap Pivots to Enterprise
Seven years after raising $542M at a $2B valuation, Magic Leap raises $500M at a $2B valuation
Magic Leap has had one hell of a journey, and to their credit, it seems investors are still addicted to giving them money.
The augmented reality startup announced today that they have raised $500 million at a $2 billion valuation from existing investors. The round echoes the terms of an October 2014 raise where Magic Leap raised $542 million at a reported $2 billion valuation. Quite a bit has happened in the meantime.
Curiously, Magic Leap decided not to actually disclose any of the specific investors participating in this latest fundraise. At this point, the company has raised $3.5 billion in total funding according to Crunchbase, meaning that most of the investors they've brought in haven't fared too well thus far.
Magic Leap 2 Teased For 2022 With Taller Field Of View
A blog post by Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson features an image, pictured below, comparing the field of view of the first and second generation AR headsets. While Magic Leap 2 seems to have small gains in horizontal field of view, vertically the augmentation of your vision should be far more significant with the new device. The company is said to have raised another $500 million to roll-out the second generation product focused toward business markets in 2022. "Select customers" are "already leveraging its capabilities through an early access program," according to the company.
Also at The Verge.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 10 2018, @06:42PM (8 children)
Hololens really captured my attention, but with the price tag I couldn't justify getting it without one o dem "good reasons".
I really think AR could be a huge improvement on productivity for me, but I don't know that, so I'm really hesitant to jump in.
Shaving $700 off the price sounds really good, but it's impossible to hear any sort of impartial reviews of the utility of these things, it's all super-hyped enthusiasts, obviously-part-of-the-press-release puff pieces, and pure technical specs. None of which tells me if I sat down and tried to do some task I already do: coding, web browsing, watching videos, ugh spreadsheets, whether I'd get any benefit.
I just want to get a realistic assessment of whether the tool could help me. If it would, i'd buy it.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 10 2018, @06:45PM (4 children)
To clarify why I feel that way, after it came out it became apparent that Google Glass wouldn't solve any sort of real world problem that a cell phone won't. I don't know if the better tech does any better.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 10 2018, @07:34PM (2 children)
It's a product for developers, who could make their money back by writing software for it, and early adopters, who have money to blow on an inferior Gen. 1 product.
There could be plenty of use cases for it, but it probably has to exist for a while before we see any killer apps. I'd point to stuff already done by smartphones but with less finesse. Such as automatic translation of text by holding up your smartphone and using the camera. Or identifying objects, plants, etc. using the camera. Or augmented reality Street View [theverge.com]. All of these would be pretty good if they were hands-free (it would also be funny and potentially useful to have multiple of them happening at the same time, such as Street View + sign translations in a foreign country).
Google and Microsoft have come up with some business, engineering, and medical use cases for their AR devices. There will be people seriously evaluating these and potentially coming up with some great time-saving or even life-saving measures. For example, the endless amount of checklists that doctors and nurses need to juggle could be put in an AR interface. Have the checklist to the side, and have it slide into the field of view when it is glanced at. When drugs are administered, require the AR device to see a label or bar code before administering the drug, and throw up an alert if that is not done or if it is the wrong drug. This isn't even something cool like AR-assisted surgery, just a way to cut down on medical mistakes [newyorker.com]:
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(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 10 2018, @07:39PM (1 child)
On the one hand, yeah.
On the other hand, there's something Orwellian there that makes me feel like I'd go mad if I were a nurse. Being micromanaged by an algorithm all the time sounds exhausting.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 10 2018, @07:52PM
I was just in a hospital. They already do it, but with a computer that they have to go back to repeatedly. And they have to scan the patient's armband and ask them their name and DOB every time they give drugs. They can call other personnel with a voice-activated device. They also had a low-tech whiteboard for writing down some stuff.
And they still got things wrong, i.e. important requirements for the patient weren't addressed until brought up.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @10:39PM
Google Glass is currently being used in places like warehouses, production lines, autism therapies, and surgical theatres. It's doing just fine solving many real-world problems that a cell-phone won't, it's just not solving your kinds of problems.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @07:31PM
I don't think your use cases:
are going to see a lot of improvement. These all already involve a computer screen, putting another one over it doesn't do a lot. AR is really for augmenting "reality" not another screen. IOW, I'd think it would be more useful/compelling in other environments: finding something (which the computer knows exactly where it is) in a giant warehouse, finding a route through town/a convention center. those are easy and obvious, if its optics/computational power are up to it: help you mow the lawn / trim the hedges perfectly evenly, count the number of jelly beans in the jar for you, etc.
Hmm, how many jelly-bean counting contest wins would pay off the the $2400 price tag?...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @10:36PM
What's your use case? I can only think of a select few that would benefit...
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday August 11 2018, @12:08AM
I want to see, overlaid over the picture of some guy I should probably know, but don't, doesn't even ring a bell:
SOLD. Shut up and take my money.
Just handy stuff my phone already does isn't that helpful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @06:49PM (9 children)
CREATOR edition! That makes me feel important! I must dump $2k+ into this RIGHT NOW!
Of course there are going to be use cases, but mostly this is just a toy. When you can have a seemingly regular pair of glasses, or close enough, powered by your mobile then this is going nowhere. Hololens was bulky and your view of the world was darkened and lame.
Like night vision goggles there will be reasons to use these, but I highly doubt they will gain widespread appeal until they give you augmented reality without inconvenience.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 10 2018, @07:19PM (8 children)
Nobody wants a puck-computer they have to wear unless they are already wearing a lot of equipment (e.g. military). So more computing power needs to be miniaturized with lower power consumption, which may be possible on upcoming 7nm, 5, 3, 2.5, 1.5 [semiengineering.com], etc. nodes.
Connecting to a pocketed smartphone for some tasks may be acceptable, but maybe not for real-time graphics processing. For example, the smartglasses could have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, but no cellular connection, and use a smartphone to connect to the Internet.
AR needs to be inconspicuous to make it easy to use outside and avoid the Glasshole effect (AR needs cameras to be of any significant use). They say you shouldn't use this version of Magic Leap outdoors. Definitely a toy.
I think there is room in the market for some "bulk" and stuff meant to be used indoors almost exclusively, like VR headsets. But ideally, VR and AR headsets will converge (think very flat lenses, and a shutter or cap to block light for pure VR mode).
HoloLens had a lame field of view, although Google Glass had it worse by putting a tiny display in the corner for "safety reasons", forcing you to use your peripheral vision a lot and causing eye strain. Magic Leap's FOV is also lame although they try to paint it in the best possible light [roadtovr.com] by outlining what kinds of objects can be overlaid at certain distances. Ideally, the FOV should be equivalent to what is provided by ordinary sunglasses. Not a tiny rectangle in the center or to the side.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @07:28PM (7 children)
Easier than some mixed lens stuff, just use a camera on a VR headset to display "reality" on the screen.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 10 2018, @08:00PM (5 children)
I'm aware of that, but I'm not convinced it's the best long-term solution (10+ years from now). You don't have to deal with the latency added by the camera if you can just let in light from outside. And it's possible that we could come up with something that looks pretty much like normal glasses in AR mode, but can be turned into a VR headset by simply covering up the lenses or docking it.
In the short term, that's fine. Cameras on the VR headset could indicate "reality" only when needed [soylentnews.org], i.e., when you are at risk of experiencing a hilarious death [soylentnews.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @10:47PM (4 children)
Negligible compared to human reaction speeds or visual perception if done right, which is technologically possible even today.
This has its own problems, like being out of the eye's dynamic range. Look into the sun and you won't see any AR display - a camera on the other hand can normalize external and internal signal to a comfortable level
So you're one of those glassholes that want to record everything they see surreptitiously? I'd take ten gargoyles [marksarney.com] over one of you any day. Seeing people with clunky VR gear will become normal if enough start doing it, just like people wearing glasses became acceptable.
I'm not convinced it's phyically possible to miniaturize the commonly used fresnel lenses and optics to provide the same level of visual fidelity in a "looks-like-eyeglasses" apparatus.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 10 2018, @11:10PM (3 children)
Yes, you should have the freedom to record everything you see out in public, without letting anyone know you are doing so. If making the camera invisible is what it takes to not get [businessinsider.com] attacked [techcrunch.com], so be it. If private businesses face an epidemic of people making unauthorized recordings, tough shit.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 11 2018, @12:44AM
I strongly disagree. Humans have bad hair days. Or bad face days. Humans make mistakes. Humans tell white lies they know will be forgotten soon but have a positive impact. Humans can look ridiculous in freeze frames of recordings while looking fine in face-to-face interaction or even just normal 25fps video (source: looked at freeze frames of TV presenters who should have had enough acting lessons to iron out their kinks).
All of this is human interaction that works face to face because our perception and memory gives the person in question some dignity. Recordings on camera open up the door to eternal analysis of ephemeral situations and eternal judgement for even the most ephemeral mistakes.
Recording someone's every move in possibly 120 or 240fps (which is the sort of speed you'll want for an AR camera to sync up with the display anyway) is way past natural face to face capabilities. Not everyone is born with the stone-faced properties of a news anchor. And now you can analyse people's microexpressions, retroactively. The /very real/ possibility of being recorded at any time will force people to act out a persona in order to try to disguise their real feelings - out of respect for others, shame, general privacy reasons or because they just hate being judged. It will certainly change behaviour and not for the best.
Recording people all the time makes them act differently than they would, were they relaxed. In your future, just having someone with glasses turn into Jane Doe's general direction might make her lock up and feel in a range between uncomfortable and terrified.
Are you OK with with all this and if yes, why? Do you think it's so important that you're able to prove that dude really ran the red light, your asshole neighbour really called you a pompous douchebag or your GF secretly grinned evilly while telling you wide-eyed that no, she "didn't cheat on you, honest"?
If anything, I want less cameras in my life and if I weren't visually standing out as much from the crowd as I do due to reasons, I'd destroy or paint all the public ones in my reach. Sometimes, the old ways really were the better ones. I prefer some human courtesy and privacy that humans in public will, but cameras won't offer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 11 2018, @12:34PM (1 child)
Are you prepared for everyone with glasses to barred from bars, restaurants, movie theaters, concerts, etc? Besides just the basic respect for others as AC points out above, these things will happen, and glasses will become unfashionable very quickly.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday August 11 2018, @05:35PM
Sure I'm ready. It will happen whether you like it or not.
Can we embed a camera into a contact lens? Or a wristband? Let's see them ban those.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @09:18PM
So true. And you can tweak reality before presenting it to the user. As a bonus, it bypasses the inevitable patents and licensing fees this new magic thingie has.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 11 2018, @03:32AM (1 child)
bfd. this is as interesting as video games, and watching paint dry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 11 2018, @05:37AM
What is interesting about your life?