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posted by martyb on Monday December 12 2016, @04:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the magic-look-before-you-magic-leap dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Monday December 12 2016, @02:23PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Monday December 12 2016, @02:23PM (#440363) Journal

    The company is working on an augmented reality product that may prove to be inferior to competing designs such as Microsoft's HoloLens

    Okay, Iv'e used the Hololens and posted about it before. It's pretty disappointing in terms of comfort; heavy, sags on your head and the adjustment never seems to get it where you want it. The view port is small and barely gives you any sense of depth unlike a VR headset such as the Occulus or Vive. You have to stand back a few meters to see anything life-sized and you can't lean in for a closer look as the view port is a 27" window to the VR world at arms length. The only upside is has excellent space tracking.

    It would be pretty hard to suck more than the Hololens.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 12 2016, @04:26PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday December 12 2016, @04:26PM (#440418) Journal

    I've heard about the disappointing FOV of the HoloLens, but I expect them to make changes between the version you used and the finished product.

    Magic Leap can't get out any version to anybody who isn't a venture capitalist.

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    • (Score: 1) by Delwin on Monday December 12 2016, @05:11PM

      by Delwin (4554) on Monday December 12 2016, @05:11PM (#440447)

      That is the finished product - at least the currently shipping finished product.

      I expect version 2 or 3 (or 10) will have a better field of view but on the whole the Hololens is quite disappointing.