Looking through their most recently filed patents, it looks like their main innovation is a HMD device that uses a combination of a high speed digital zone plate, a masking device, and a traditional imaging device.
For each eye, there is an imaging device (720p/1080p resolution for example) that displays an image. In front of the imaging devices there are high speed mask device (LCD?) that blocks off portions of the image that are not at the current focal depth. The focal depth cycles quickly between 12 different values and easily driven by the z-buffer values from the renders. The light not blocked by the mask is partially collimated and guided towards the eye via optics and then a high resolution high speed digital zone plate is used to refocus the light at different depth levels using diffraction. The mask and zone plate update together at 12X (360Hz-720Hz) the rate of the image device (30-60Hz). The result is that pixels that should be at different depths are actually focused near that depth and the eye blends the 12 partial frames together to form one image that has a range of depth in it.
I expect they are using off the shelf parts for the imaging device (and maybe mask LCD) but manufacturing their own digital zone plates since they need super high resolution and high speed for those (at least 360hz) but only on-off values not color or grayscale. This is probably where a bit of their money is going.
If it works, you could get high resolution images per eye, and also see 12 buckets of depth so your eye would refocus to see things close up versus far away. This could potentially create a pretty good impression of something existing close to you, compared to existing AR where all objects are focused at a single fixed depth and there is a conflict between accommodation and stereopis cues.
Of course this is one of the patents filed, it could be just an idea they decided to file on, not what they are actually building.
> In front of the imaging devices there are high speed mask device (LCD?) that blocks off portions of the image that are not at the current focal depth.
It would be interesting to see how this works in practice. The eye can't focus on something that close. For an example, imagine a speck of dirt on your glasses - it shows up as a blob in your vision, not as a dot.
Fascinating. I've been pondering this problem for quite a while and this is an entirely unexpected solution. Such a system can potentially be very small because there's no refractive optics.
For me, the biggest headline out of this not being mentioned is that half a billion in VC was just raised in Hollywood, FL.
I'm building a startup community in Myrtle Beach, SC and Paul Reynolds is one of the founders of Startup.SC with me. Paul is involved in Magic Leap as a director, and after working remotely, just moved there last month. It's very exciting to see unfold!
It drives home the fact that a startup can make such headlines not only outside Silicon Valley, but even outside other well known northeast tech metros. It's the sort of news I feed on to explain scalable startup growth potential: Magic Leap has done a spectacular job attracting talent from all over the country. There are worse places to be than the Fort Lauderdale, FL area.
I watched the revival of the Boston startup scene while involved with TechStars, DogPatch labs, etc. from 2009-2012 and although we certainly don't have the same resources, I'm doing my best to apply those principles to the Myrtle Beach market.
I hope to one day have a startup come through Startup.SC which can also demonstrate the ability to attract talent and investment dollars to a coastal city not known for tech, and demonstrate that a company can thrive!
Yep, Magic Leap is headquartered in Florida, but they didn't get the investment until they opened an office in Palo Alto:
http://recode.net/2014/10/20/look-who-else-is-joining-google...
"People familiar with the company say Magic Leap was having trouble convincing Silicon Valley types to drop everything and move to Hollywood, Fla., where it is based... So it recently opened a Palo Alto, Calif., engineering office..."
The primary bottleneck among most top-tier VCs is partner time and travelling is a huge time-sink. Hence why most VCs tend to focus over a relatively small areas.
If a VC is looking at investing in a startup in a location where they have no activity then they're going to have to do trips out just for that specific startup (for due diligence, board meetings, etc.) and they're also going to have a harder time providing value-add (lack of local contacts, etc.)
Hence for a startup outside of a cluster to be worthwhile it has to be significantly better than the local dealflow and the deal has to be of a significant size. So such deals are always likely to be a rarity.
(Having a founder who's already built and sold a billion dollar company also helps immensely; if you're in that small category of people you can probably raise money regardless of where you're based)
For me, the main story is that there is still money thanks to people like Google and AH to go after the big bold crazy technology dream. Kudos to all Rony, Google and AH for the courage and vision.
Startup.SC is really exciting -- I live in the Charleston area (but work for SV companies remotely) and hadn't heard of them before.
The quality of developers and ideas coming out of this town hasn't been that great, or (as I hope) I am having a terrible time finding the right community.
I too am in a secondary market so I want to believe ;) But it'll take more than this to really prove anything. It seems like every 18 - 36 months there's this sort of "exception" to the rule vs indicating any type of sustainable change in where the majority of dollars and interest flows. This feels very much like that.
I live in the area and we have a lot of difficulty finding talent. I see they are hiring for a lot of very specialized positions and I wonder how difficult it will be to fill them in this area.
@logicX would love tot alk to your friend Paul. I run RefreshMiami, the largest startup community in South Florida, we'd love to get someone from MagicLeap to give a talk.
> It’s rare that a company can stay relatively secretive while raising a huge amount of funding, but Florida’s Magic Leap has managed that.
Only rare because journalists are extremely lazy by default, and need their stories pre-drafted and handed to them on a silver platter, which companies tend to do. Avoiding press is very easy, just don't do the journalists' job for them. :)
"journalists are extremely lazy by default, and need their stories pre-drafted and handed to them"
This seems to be a consensus opinion on HN. I have no idea if it's a majority opinion, but it's fairly typical. The "journalists are lazy/stupid/inept" argument generally misunderstands what journalists do, how they work, and how they pick (or, as is more often the case, how they're assigned) their coverage. If anything, it gives some journalists too much credit, and for the wrong things.
I'm not a professional journalist, though I've written frequently for some major and minor publications. My typical process looks like this:
1. Pitch a bunch of story ideas to my editor.
2. Have 99% of those ideas rejected for various reasons: too narrow; too wonky; not enough meat on the bone [1]; not timely enough [2].
3. Settle on a topic that is somehow deemed acceptably timely, broad, approachable to general audiences, and well substantiated by some degree of data or prior coverage.
The astute reader will start to see how objections [1] and [2] come into direct conflict. By definition, breaking something new means covering ground that hasn't been covered before (or at least not often, or not in depth). But having prior substantiation often means being able to point to pre-existing coverage, as proof that your topic is of some interest to the public. [3] Also, you have to sort this all out on a deadline: anything from the end of the day to the end of the week, per story. (As an exercise: try investigating, substantiating, and beautifully composing an in-depth story in a single working day).
[3] The public, as typically defined, is a very broad swath of readers. Even major tech sites, like TechCrunch, now have a very broad readership -- with highly varying degrees of technical sophistication, subject-matter expertise, and topical interests.
On the flip side, look at any of the blogs or publications that HN readers respect. Chances are, they write in greater depth. They are not afraid to get into the wonky, technical details of their coverage. They don't just give you charts and infographics; they give you their statistical reasoning. Niche publications can do this.
Broad publications theoretically can, but often choose not to, out of the belief that the effort/payoff ratio just isn't there. It's a lot of effort that will appeal to only a sliver of their readerships. Deep coverage, or investigative coverage, or breaking new ground, requires a shitload of hard work. It is extremely tough on a standard deadline. It often requires a dedicated budget, and a broadly extended deadline, just to ensure that the writer(s) can afford to develop it.
Bottom line: I don't disagree with you. Most tech journalism sucks. That said, I don't blame the writers per se. They are the proximate end of a very long chain. Maybe some of them are capable of writing the stories we'd want to read. Maybe not. But they don't get the chance in the first place.
Before we impugn the entire field of journalism, let's be clear which publications, and which branches of journalism, we're impugning. It's silly to paint the whole field with one brush. I'm not saying the ratio of wheat to chaff is a good one, in the aggregate. But there is definitely wheat to be found. For every two dozen tossed-out, deadline-harried stories you find, I can point you to one or two amazing pieces of long-form writing. Sometimes the former and the latter are produced by the same writer. It all depends on the publication, its business objectives, and its beliefs about the demands of its average audience. The stuff you read in TechCrunch, for example, is meant to be consumed and immediately understood by almost everyone: you, your non-technical friend, and even your Baby Boomer parents. There's a certain type of material that fits that broad audience's tastes. Chances are, it's not the type of material that moves readers like us.
> Only rare because journalists are extremely lazy by default, and need their stories pre-drafted and handed to them on a silver platter
That doesn't follow. If that is true, then it would be very easy for a company to be able to stay relatively secretive while raising a huge amount of funding; with lazy journalists as you describe, a company could raise funding by networking and so long as no one involved issued press releases, they would succeed in being secretive.
:) Funny thing I noticed, going through the job descriptions - Physical Requirements for HR Generalist[1]:
> While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit;use hands to finger, handle, or feel and talk or hear. The employee is frequently required to reach with hands and arms. The employee is occasionally required to stand;walk;climb or balance;stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl and taste or smell.
> The employee must regularly lift and/or move up to 10 pounds, frequently lift and/or move up to 25 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 50 pounds.
> Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus.
I did a web search on those sentences and they appear thousands of times in job descriptions, e.g. 133,000 results for the "Specific vision...focus" sentence. The "taste and smell" seems to appear mostly in food service jobs, where it makes sense.
These seem to be some sort of standard conditions that many jobs cut-and-paste from somewhere. I wonder what the original source is. But they seem very out of place for an HR position.
I guess I just haven't seen one of these (such specific or probably any Physical Requirements for a job) before and imaging all of it together, there was this comic vision, in my mind, of what will that person actually do on such a job. :)
I definitely didn't want to offend anyone and I hope I didn't.
It's a bit strange how the CEO claims it's not AR while it looks completely like it.
> since it goes well beyond that and provides truly integrated, 3D digital objects that looks as though they were physical objects, alongside the real world
The consensus seems to be that the "cinematic reality not augmented reality" message probably refers to the realistic accommodation - virtual objects being in focus at the correct focal depth - which Magic Leap is apparently aiming for and which other 3D display systems don't offer. If that message seems confusing, especially in light of the fact that neither 2D nor (standard) 3D cinema offer realistic accommodation, let's just say that Magic Leap's PR operation has not always been the tightest ship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY .
The language used, including the brand name, make it sound like it's a leap ahead of the competition. It has our attention especially now with this large raise. Hoping it's truly a decent improvement.
As I said when there was speculation into an investment this size by Google, etc into Magic Leap:
An investment this size isn't designed to get "VC-size" (10x) returns. It is designed to block competitors getting access to the technology before Google.
The 10x factor generally only applies to early stage investments, VCs making later stage investments tend to need smaller returns because there's less risk involved.
"Magic Leap and Weta Workshop are collaborating on a truly next-generation Dr. Grordbort’s first person shooter on a world-changing new platform in an effort to defend Earth from robotic overthrow"
I hope they're OK with remote work, and that they're open to paying more than the typical IT wage in Florida, because I can't imagine their talent pool will be substantial otherwise, being in Hollywood, and all.
Their technology trademark is 'Dynamic Digitized Lightfield Signal'. A lightfield camera has multiple lenses to record multiple focal points simultaneously. Have they found a way to reverse this concept, 'project' to a wearable an eye refocusable image? Their list of job openings leads to a lot of possibilities.
Very interesting, I looked up the CEO to see if he had a Disney/Imagineering background, and was surprised to see I was familiar with his previous work, which was founding former public company MAKO Surgical (which ended up being acquired by Stryker). MAKO's product used a robot/surgeon hybrid + software for visualizing/planning surgeries for implanting joint replacements. Interesting career twist (edit: but one that makes a lot of sense)
edit: @glxc, completely agree, I just didn't know a lot about his background prior to seeing this news. Interesting guy.
"artificial, but extremely realistic images .. projected directly onto a user’s retina" launching without predecessors as a commercial product "fairly soon" would be quite a surprise.
They have an app on the App Store called Hour Blue, which they had run as a demo at Comic Con a few years back, in conjunction with string labs. It doesn't seem to work for me in the iPhone 6 though. You watch a video of the demo if you search on YouTube however. The demo was a basic augmented reality example. I'm assuming, with an investment of this size, they have achieved something far more substantial.
AR is okay, but it will probably be gimmicky for a long time before it's useful. VR is the closest thing we have to the Holodeck, and it's almost here. I thought Google loved Star Trek. It shouldn't be ignoring VR.
Did anybody notice the typo on the company page? "It is biomimetic, meaning it respects how we are function naturally as humans (we are humans after all, not machines)."
[+] [-] jclarkcom|11 years ago|reply
For each eye, there is an imaging device (720p/1080p resolution for example) that displays an image. In front of the imaging devices there are high speed mask device (LCD?) that blocks off portions of the image that are not at the current focal depth. The focal depth cycles quickly between 12 different values and easily driven by the z-buffer values from the renders. The light not blocked by the mask is partially collimated and guided towards the eye via optics and then a high resolution high speed digital zone plate is used to refocus the light at different depth levels using diffraction. The mask and zone plate update together at 12X (360Hz-720Hz) the rate of the image device (30-60Hz). The result is that pixels that should be at different depths are actually focused near that depth and the eye blends the 12 partial frames together to form one image that has a range of depth in it.
I expect they are using off the shelf parts for the imaging device (and maybe mask LCD) but manufacturing their own digital zone plates since they need super high resolution and high speed for those (at least 360hz) but only on-off values not color or grayscale. This is probably where a bit of their money is going.
If it works, you could get high resolution images per eye, and also see 12 buckets of depth so your eye would refocus to see things close up versus far away. This could potentially create a pretty good impression of something existing close to you, compared to existing AR where all objects are focused at a single fixed depth and there is a conflict between accommodation and stereopis cues.
Of course this is one of the patents filed, it could be just an idea they decided to file on, not what they are actually building.
[+] [-] leoc|11 years ago|reply
http://www.roadtovr.com/what-we-know-about-magic-leap-rumore...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/science/taking-real-life-s...
[+] [-] bentcorner|11 years ago|reply
It would be interesting to see how this works in practice. The eye can't focus on something that close. For an example, imagine a speck of dirt on your glasses - it shows up as a blob in your vision, not as a dot.
[+] [-] _Adam|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Davidivad|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LogicX|11 years ago|reply
I'm building a startup community in Myrtle Beach, SC and Paul Reynolds is one of the founders of Startup.SC with me. Paul is involved in Magic Leap as a director, and after working remotely, just moved there last month. It's very exciting to see unfold!
It drives home the fact that a startup can make such headlines not only outside Silicon Valley, but even outside other well known northeast tech metros. It's the sort of news I feed on to explain scalable startup growth potential: Magic Leap has done a spectacular job attracting talent from all over the country. There are worse places to be than the Fort Lauderdale, FL area.
I watched the revival of the Boston startup scene while involved with TechStars, DogPatch labs, etc. from 2009-2012 and although we certainly don't have the same resources, I'm doing my best to apply those principles to the Myrtle Beach market. I hope to one day have a startup come through Startup.SC which can also demonstrate the ability to attract talent and investment dollars to a coastal city not known for tech, and demonstrate that a company can thrive!
Edit: And not going unnoticed in Miami: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article2942814.html
[+] [-] declan|11 years ago|reply
http://recode.net/2014/10/20/look-who-else-is-joining-google... "People familiar with the company say Magic Leap was having trouble convincing Silicon Valley types to drop everything and move to Hollywood, Fla., where it is based... So it recently opened a Palo Alto, Calif., engineering office..."
They're currently hiring engineers in Palo Alto: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/14797737
And their engineering VP for "perception and core software" is based in Palo Alto: http://www.linkedin.com/in/garybradski
[+] [-] ig1|11 years ago|reply
If a VC is looking at investing in a startup in a location where they have no activity then they're going to have to do trips out just for that specific startup (for due diligence, board meetings, etc.) and they're also going to have a harder time providing value-add (lack of local contacts, etc.)
Hence for a startup outside of a cluster to be worthwhile it has to be significantly better than the local dealflow and the deal has to be of a significant size. So such deals are always likely to be a rarity.
(Having a founder who's already built and sold a billion dollar company also helps immensely; if you're in that small category of people you can probably raise money regardless of where you're based)
[+] [-] boynamedsue|11 years ago|reply
Here's how I would read this if you're not located in a major tech hub where VCs readily fund companies and have offices:
1. Attracting a $500mm investment from Google or any other institutional investor is an outlier case regardless of where you're located.
2. You need to have groundbreaking, path forging technology and an amazing team to get on the radar when you're far outside of a major tech hub.
[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/10/17/interactive-m...
[+] [-] not_that_noob|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sc_startup_work|11 years ago|reply
The quality of developers and ideas coming out of this town hasn't been that great, or (as I hope) I am having a terrible time finding the right community.
[+] [-] jusben1369|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giulianob|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianbreslin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reduce|11 years ago|reply
Only rare because journalists are extremely lazy by default, and need their stories pre-drafted and handed to them on a silver platter, which companies tend to do. Avoiding press is very easy, just don't do the journalists' job for them. :)
[+] [-] jonnathanson|11 years ago|reply
This seems to be a consensus opinion on HN. I have no idea if it's a majority opinion, but it's fairly typical. The "journalists are lazy/stupid/inept" argument generally misunderstands what journalists do, how they work, and how they pick (or, as is more often the case, how they're assigned) their coverage. If anything, it gives some journalists too much credit, and for the wrong things.
I'm not a professional journalist, though I've written frequently for some major and minor publications. My typical process looks like this:
1. Pitch a bunch of story ideas to my editor.
2. Have 99% of those ideas rejected for various reasons: too narrow; too wonky; not enough meat on the bone [1]; not timely enough [2].
3. Settle on a topic that is somehow deemed acceptably timely, broad, approachable to general audiences, and well substantiated by some degree of data or prior coverage.
The astute reader will start to see how objections [1] and [2] come into direct conflict. By definition, breaking something new means covering ground that hasn't been covered before (or at least not often, or not in depth). But having prior substantiation often means being able to point to pre-existing coverage, as proof that your topic is of some interest to the public. [3] Also, you have to sort this all out on a deadline: anything from the end of the day to the end of the week, per story. (As an exercise: try investigating, substantiating, and beautifully composing an in-depth story in a single working day).
[3] The public, as typically defined, is a very broad swath of readers. Even major tech sites, like TechCrunch, now have a very broad readership -- with highly varying degrees of technical sophistication, subject-matter expertise, and topical interests.
On the flip side, look at any of the blogs or publications that HN readers respect. Chances are, they write in greater depth. They are not afraid to get into the wonky, technical details of their coverage. They don't just give you charts and infographics; they give you their statistical reasoning. Niche publications can do this.
Broad publications theoretically can, but often choose not to, out of the belief that the effort/payoff ratio just isn't there. It's a lot of effort that will appeal to only a sliver of their readerships. Deep coverage, or investigative coverage, or breaking new ground, requires a shitload of hard work. It is extremely tough on a standard deadline. It often requires a dedicated budget, and a broadly extended deadline, just to ensure that the writer(s) can afford to develop it.
Bottom line: I don't disagree with you. Most tech journalism sucks. That said, I don't blame the writers per se. They are the proximate end of a very long chain. Maybe some of them are capable of writing the stories we'd want to read. Maybe not. But they don't get the chance in the first place.
Before we impugn the entire field of journalism, let's be clear which publications, and which branches of journalism, we're impugning. It's silly to paint the whole field with one brush. I'm not saying the ratio of wheat to chaff is a good one, in the aggregate. But there is definitely wheat to be found. For every two dozen tossed-out, deadline-harried stories you find, I can point you to one or two amazing pieces of long-form writing. Sometimes the former and the latter are produced by the same writer. It all depends on the publication, its business objectives, and its beliefs about the demands of its average audience. The stuff you read in TechCrunch, for example, is meant to be consumed and immediately understood by almost everyone: you, your non-technical friend, and even your Baby Boomer parents. There's a certain type of material that fits that broad audience's tastes. Chances are, it's not the type of material that moves readers like us.
[+] [-] chayesfss|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsunamifury|11 years ago|reply
Of course in reality, its mostly pre-established relationships that would raise this money, not buzz.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|11 years ago|reply
That doesn't follow. If that is true, then it would be very easy for a company to be able to stay relatively secretive while raising a huge amount of funding; with lazy journalists as you describe, a company could raise funding by networking and so long as no one involved issued press releases, they would succeed in being secretive.
[+] [-] hackuser|11 years ago|reply
The same might be said for most people in any job, including developers. There are good devs and good journalists too.
[+] [-] tsenkov|11 years ago|reply
:) Funny thing I noticed, going through the job descriptions - Physical Requirements for HR Generalist[1]:
> While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit;use hands to finger, handle, or feel and talk or hear. The employee is frequently required to reach with hands and arms. The employee is occasionally required to stand;walk;climb or balance;stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl and taste or smell.
> The employee must regularly lift and/or move up to 10 pounds, frequently lift and/or move up to 25 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 50 pounds.
> Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus.
[1] http://www.magicleap.com/#/jobDescription/administration/l7&...
[+] [-] kens|11 years ago|reply
These seem to be some sort of standard conditions that many jobs cut-and-paste from somewhere. I wonder what the original source is. But they seem very out of place for an HR position.
[+] [-] GFK_of_xmaspast|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsenkov|11 years ago|reply
I definitely didn't want to offend anyone and I hope I didn't.
[+] [-] sgustard|11 years ago|reply
"All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to ... disability ..."
I have concluded that much of the 500 million is going to employment lawyers.
[+] [-] Ragnarork|11 years ago|reply
> since it goes well beyond that and provides truly integrated, 3D digital objects that looks as though they were physical objects, alongside the real world
That's exactly the goal of augmented reality IMO.
[+] [-] JoachimSchipper|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leoc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loceng|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bentcorner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nl|11 years ago|reply
An investment this size isn't designed to get "VC-size" (10x) returns. It is designed to block competitors getting access to the technology before Google.
[+] [-] ig1|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joelrunyon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brotchie|11 years ago|reply
Looks like they're heavily recruiting across the board.
I guess they have a super compelling prototype that needs a bunch of polishing before commercial release?Exciting stuff.
[+] [-] dharma1|11 years ago|reply
"Magic Leap and Weta Workshop are collaborating on a truly next-generation Dr. Grordbort’s first person shooter on a world-changing new platform in an effort to defend Earth from robotic overthrow"
[+] [-] Iftheshoefits|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] achr2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway5752|11 years ago|reply
edit: @glxc, completely agree, I just didn't know a lot about his background prior to seeing this news. Interesting guy.
[+] [-] m52go|11 years ago|reply
It's absurd that a company is raising a half-billion dollars in venture capital.
So much opportunistic capital tied up in one place makes zero sense, regardless of how good this venture may be.
[+] [-] serg_chernata|11 years ago|reply
https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1...
[+] [-] netcan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spyder|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilaksh|11 years ago|reply
This is the one I found from a few years ago for Magic Leap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOW3b7YmeKk Maybe they have googles now or improved it somehow.
[+] [-] dr_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] higherpurpose|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hauschi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codydabest|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philippnagel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmix|11 years ago|reply