ozancakmakci writes "We have all seen science fiction ideals of computer displays concealed in eyeglasses. One of the earlier spectacle-based designs was created by David Bettinger and disclosed in US Patent 4,806,011. Advances in fabrication technologies are now allowing complicated surface profiles to be manufactured. Exploitation of a complicated surface profile leads to low element count designs. Researchers at the University of Central Florida, CREOL/College of Optics & Photonics have designed and fabricated a computer monitor in eyeglasses that uses sophisticated surface profiles to achieve a compact design. The current specifications include an 8mm exit pupil, 20-degree field of view, 15mm eye clearance, and a resolution of 1.5 arcminutes. Follow the link for two pictures of this latest prototype." Read on for some of the challenges in designing a workable eyeglasses-based display.
Regardless of market potential, there are several optical engineering challenges that need to be overcome before displays in eyeglasses become pervasive. From an optical engineering point of view, the design space is large enough and designers have to make choices. A good example of such a choice is choosing just the right field of view while maintaining high image quality and a large exit pupil. Exit pupil of an optical system is analogous to the windows at your home, the larger the windows, the easier it is to see the outside world. It has been challenging to design and fabricate a large field of view and a large exit pupil for an eyeglass based display.
seeing how reading books for extended periods of time will deteriorate your eye sight, since you are putting too much straign on your eyes by focusing so close, would using these things as your computer monitor be really feasable for more than a few minutes? I mean focusing your eyes so close seems like a big streign, is this thing even practical?
I have bad eyesight as well, but I can actually use my Icuiti M920 head mounted display without them because it has a diopter adjustment. Looking at the pictures in the article, I can see the creator used an Icuiti DV920 to build off of, which also has this ability.
Of course he may have hacked that part off, or the amount it can be adjusted to may be insufficient for you.
I don't think "utility" is the right word. The utility is clear, if the challenges can be surmounted. Of course, eye strain is a concern for any display technology.
I can even live with 640x480 resolution - just use a motion detector to scroll the view across a virtual desktop when I move my head.
I don't think "utility" is the right word. The utility is clear, if the challenges can be surmounted. Of course, eye strain is a concern for any display technology.
I can even live with 640x480 resolution - just use a motion detector to scroll the view across a virtual desktop when I move my head.
An even better idea: how about one that scrolls along with the motion of the eye? It'd be even less necessary motion, and possibly far more natural than moving one's head around.
Except your eye naturally "shifts" position every few milliseconds I believe. It's a way for you to continually see since your eyes tend to "disappear" anything that is completely motionless.
I have always wondered about that. I wonder if they could calibrate the image to where they trick your eyes into focusing on the image which would only come into focus if your eyes attempted to focus on something a few feet away.
What WILL deteriorate your eyesight is always looking at something at a fixed distance, be it a book, monitor, etc. all day long without taking breaks, day after day, for many months. So, whether you're a software geek, an accountant, an attorney, or ($FOO) just look away from your work every little while. What I do a few times a day to exercise my eyes is look through the blinds by my desk, focus on the blinds, then focus on objects behind the blinds, and repeat a bunch of times.
You can avoid weakening the muscles in your eyes by shifting focus to something distant. Look out the window across the street for example. Ever hear of the 'see clearly method?' I imagine they take this simple exercise (focus on something really, really close, then focus on something really distant. Repeat, rinse, wipe hands on pants) and turn it into an expensive "self help" video, but really, all that method is (probably) about is forcing your eyes to focus at the extremes to give the muscles a workout.
Also, don't forget that light play an important part in deterioration. Well lit environment preserves the eyesight. Light using a good bright white light source when reading a book.
In contrast, badly lit environment will favorise eyesight deterioration. Like a dimly lighted environment near the computer in a geek's basement. The geek tend to prefer low light (so the display is more visible), but this deteriorate his eyes faster.
If the head-mounted display has a correct brightness and, as mentionned by other
In contrast, badly lit environment will favorise eyesight deterioration. Like a dimly lighted environment near the computer in a geek's basement. The geek tend to prefer low light (so the display is more visible), but this deteriorate his eyes faster.
Oh come on, hasn't this been proven false as well? I'm pretty sure it has. . . what DOES deteriorate your eyes is eyestrain. Just exercise your eyes (see my other post in this thread) and don't sit in front of the monitor for hours on end day after day without
IANAO (I am not an optician) but as far as I know, the proper exercises can fortify your eyes and even ameliorate your vision.
The biggest problem with reading (and computers, also) is CONTRAST.
Black on white is awful on your eyes. A yellowish or brownish page with blue ink would do marvels for your extenuated sight. Black on White will just strain it more and more.
I'll be happy if they could make a it so I could have glasses (even though I have 20/10 vision), that would allow me to see normally, and had a light opaque computer screen which would serve as a monitor. HUDs displays won't be good until that feature happens seamlessly I think.
Since the submitter is the author of the article, I find it a bit upsetting that he does not show more links to information on his 'invention' or background written by others. Now it looks a bit like a bad egotrip.
Yes I overlooked that one. There is more on his 'links' page, but that is a bit of a hodgepodge to me. If you submit your own article, at least you could acknowledge others work on the same subject. Citing your own paper again is just, well, egocentric. I wonder how many papers by himslef he cited in that paper? Also, is it just me or is there not much invention in his device?
Agreed on the background. A good start on the history and the major players in this field can be found on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. In includes a nice timeline with pictures of the various forms the technology has evolved into over the years.
One thing I didn't see on there and maybe a Slashdotter can help me...is the wearable unit created by one of the folks at the MIT Media Lab I believe. It was a tiny little laser that looked about the size of two watch batteries stacked together and it clipped to the top of a regula
Maybe he can fix the pictures on the page. I was wondering why Firefox was pausing for 1-2 seconds and my CPU meter pegged at 100% when trying to scroll past the pictures. It turns out they're 3264x2176 full-sized JPEGs apparently straight from the camera, which the page dynamically resizes using the img width and height tags to fit your browser.
Either Firefox's implementation of dynamic resizing needs to be tightened up, or (if resizing 3264x2176 images is not how these tags were supposed to be used) t
And I certainly don't care that much if he is mentally wrecked from designing his display. mental instability is something you can claim for the judge and if granted gets you undefunite loonie-bin time instead of jailtime. The rest of us try to judge anything by its merits, not the mental state of the creator. If you are a student you may make some mistakes in your time management, but if completing your studies makes it certain your mental state will suffer a lot, you and your uni are making some very serio
If there were more pictures, simulations, descriptions of applications already working on it. The amount of possible applications once the kinks are worked out is amazing, but the technology still seems far off.
I've often wondered (with essentially no knowledge of optics) whether or not a monitor reflection could be projected onto the end of a fiber optic strand, sent some distance, then re-expanded on the other end through a lens to form a HUD. You could put the heavy-lifting portions of image generation remote from the headset. Of course, the bandwidth of the fiber would have to be sufficient to transmit the stream, but that doesn't seem unreasonable.
Won't work. Each pixel would have to travel in a different mode along the fiber or they'd all be blurred together, and you control so many modes.
I disagree, but only in practice. You are right in your interpretation, that the grandparent post suggests imaging onto a single fiber. Imaging using a fiber bundle [polymicro.com] instead. This actually works and a two dimensional scene, imaged on to the front facet of a fiber bundle will have an additional image plane on the back facet of the bundle. The complication and im
While watching a movie or something seems to be the most obvious use of this type of system, I think the most interesting uses would be those that involve leaving most of the screen clear at any given time.
A HUD for a soldier, sure... or a little digital clock and mini forcast (like forcast fox) whenever you look up and to the right or something for a civilian. You could even use it to add a 3D picture of something to every day life, if you added a camera or a motion sensor...
I just can't wait until someone makes a popup virus for one of these... hijack wireless or bluetooth connected to the device and an ad appears 10 feet in front of you every 5 minutes... that would be interesting, especially if such a device were required for some tracking system:P
These glasses would be quite useful for sky divers, they could see their altitude and current speed in their glasses as opposed to asking a mathematician after they land. Every time I've been sky diving the mathematician in the booth at the landing site charged nearly $100 just to tell me how fast I was going. Then once I brought along a calculator and started calculating my velocity right there. Then the mathematician got really pissed off and tried to take the calculator away from me. Then the other sky divers grabbed him and wrapped him up in a chute and rolled him into a near by river. I did all the calculations for the other sky divers for free.
The trouble was after that the mathematician went and told the National Mathematicians Union about what I did. So the Union went to the Sky Divers Collective and told them if they kept up this 'bastard math' as they called it, they'd completely blacklist the entire skydiving community. This was a tough call on the part of the Collective, since they had something of a symbiotic relationship with the Mathematicians Union. Instead of trying to call the Union's bluff the Sky Divers Collective just blacklisted ME from ever sky diving again. I think that was a real kick in the teeth, since the conditions of the blacklist meant I wasn't even allowed to use a chute to save my own life.
These computer monitor glasses would be a well deserved kick in the teeth for the National Mathematicians Union which I think has gotten a little too big for its britches. I imagine they'll probably be the biggest opponants of the computer glasses.
All jokes aside, I really don't want to know how fast I'm going while I'm flying; I can happily wait until I'm on the ground to check my neptune and protrack for that info.
How high I am would be nice, but even then I've got an alti on each wrist and an audible screaming in my ear at designated altitudes.
Head mounted displays have *not* been fiction. Steve Mann [wikipedia.org] has been building these things for decades. A number of commercial solutions, based on several generations of products exist. I count a total of 17 basic wearable display product lines at Tekgear, a distributor who focuses on wearable computing hardware [tekgear.ca]. This sort of thing is so common [soton.ac.uk] that an Open Source toolkit has been developed to deal with the real problems with these displays -- not the graphics display, but the user input. The ArToolkit [washington.edu] is an object-recognition system which allows easy, keyboard-less interaction with a computer mediated augmented reality display. It's rather far along.
Thad Starner and his team that was researching Wearable computing at MIT had them a LOOOONG time ago. Thad is currently sporing some today that are near impossible to detect.
Nothing new here but someone patenting something that has so much prior art that taking the patent down will be incredibly easy.
Thad started his work at MIT before he went there. Him and Prof Steve Mann are the fathers of Wearable computing and have had glasses monitor displays for years now.. Prof Mann had a sunglasses unit that was undetectable that you were wearing one over 10 years ago.
Imax 3D does not work by blocking one eye for alternate frames. It works through polarization. One frame is polarized vertically, the other at 90 degrees. The polarization in the glasses is 90 degrees apart for each eye. Next time you are watching an Imax 3D movie, try tilting your head and you will see the images diverge. This is also nice when watching the movie without glasses. The slight blur you see from the images being at two different locations (much more noticeable for objects that are suppo
Definitely not impossible. Mounting a few solid-state accelerometers on these glasses could create some interesting visualization and gaming possibilities. Not exactly CREOL's area, but he could probably talk to one of the simulation guys. Drs. Workman and Hughes come to mind, and maybe Lobo with the addition of a camera for robot-vision applications (like vision enhancement). Could be some interesting applications of this, and nice to see my school on the front page.
utility? (Score:1)
Re:utility? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:utility? (Score:4, Funny)
duh.
Parent
Re:utility? (Score:4, Informative)
Of course he may have hacked that part off, or the amount it can be adjusted to may be insufficient for you.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think "utility" is the right word. The utility is clear, if the challenges can be surmounted. Of course, eye strain is a concern for any display technology.
I can even live with 640x480 resolution - just use a motion detector to scroll the view across a virtual desktop when I move my head.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think "utility" is the right word. The utility is clear, if the challenges can be surmounted. Of course, eye strain is a concern for any display technology.
I can even live with 640x480 resolution - just use a motion detector to scroll the view across a virtual desktop when I move my head.
An even better idea: how about one that scrolls along with the motion of the eye? It'd be even less necessary motion, and possibly far more natural than moving one's head around.
Re:utility? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:utility? (Score:4, Informative)
What WILL deteriorate your eyesight is always looking at something at a fixed distance, be it a book, monitor, etc. all day long without taking breaks, day after day, for many months. So, whether you're a software geek, an accountant, an attorney, or ($FOO) just look away from your work every little while. What I do a few times a day to exercise my eyes is look through the blinds by my desk, focus on the blinds, then focus on objects behind the blinds, and repeat a bunch of times.
You can avoid weakening the muscles in your eyes by shifting focus to something distant. Look out the window across the street for example. Ever hear of the 'see clearly method?' I imagine they take this simple exercise (focus on something really, really close, then focus on something really distant. Repeat, rinse, wipe hands on pants) and turn it into an expensive "self help" video, but really, all that method is (probably) about is forcing your eyes to focus at the extremes to give the muscles a workout.
Parent
so on this screen (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Lights play a role (Score:2)
Well lit environment preserves the eyesight. Light using a good bright white light source when reading a book.
In contrast, badly lit environment will favorise eyesight deterioration. Like a dimly lighted environment near the computer in a geek's basement. The geek tend to prefer low light (so the display is more visible), but this deteriorate his eyes faster.
If the head-mounted display has a correct brightness and, as mentionned by other
Re: (Score:2)
Oh come on, hasn't this been proven false as well? I'm pretty sure it has. . . what DOES deteriorate your eyes is eyestrain. Just exercise your eyes (see my other post in this thread) and don't sit in front of the monitor for hours on end day after day without
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But do you still have your red swingline [thinkgeek.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
by focusing so close... (Score:2)
The biggest problem with reading (and computers, also) is CONTRAST.
Black on white is awful on your eyes. A yellowish or brownish page with blue ink would do marvels for your extenuated sight. Black on White will just strain it more and more.
What I would like to see... (Score:2)
submitter is the author? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed, it's not a peer-reviewed journal publication, but the publication suggests that this idea is probably not vapourware.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, is it just me or is there not much invention in his device?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing I didn't see on there and maybe a Slashdotter can help me...is the wearable unit created by one of the folks at the MIT Media Lab I believe. It was a tiny little laser that looked about the size of two watch batteries stacked together and it clipped to the top of a regula
Since the submitter is the author (Score:2)
Either Firefox's implementation of dynamic resizing needs to be tightened up, or (if resizing 3264x2176 images is not how these tags were supposed to be used) t
No I don't know (Score:2)
If you are a student you may make some mistakes in your time management, but if completing your studies makes it certain your mental state will suffer a lot, you and your uni are making some very serio
It sure would be nice (Score:1)
How will I see where I'm going? (Score:1)
haven't these been around for a while (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I disagree, but only in practice. You are right in your interpretation, that the grandparent post suggests imaging onto a single fiber. Imaging using a fiber bundle [polymicro.com] instead. This actually works and a two dimensional scene, imaged on to the front facet of a fiber bundle will have an additional image plane on the back facet of the bundle. The complication and im
I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
A hayday for sky divers! (Score:5, Funny)
The trouble was after that the mathematician went and told the National Mathematicians Union about what I did. So the Union went to the Sky Divers Collective and told them if they kept up this 'bastard math' as they called it, they'd completely blacklist the entire skydiving community. This was a tough call on the part of the Collective, since they had something of a symbiotic relationship with the Mathematicians Union. Instead of trying to call the Union's bluff the Sky Divers Collective just blacklisted ME from ever sky diving again. I think that was a real kick in the teeth, since the conditions of the blacklist meant I wasn't even allowed to use a chute to save my own life.
These computer monitor glasses would be a well deserved kick in the teeth for the National Mathematicians Union which I think has gotten a little too big for its britches. I imagine they'll probably be the biggest opponants of the computer glasses.
Re: (Score:2)
How high I am would be nice, but even then I've got an alti on each wrist and an audible screaming in my ear at designated altitudes.
What's old is new, Yawn. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What's old is new, Yawn. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
This said, I am happy this technology is leaving the dark basements of university labs and, even if painfully slowly, heading into the mainstream use.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not actually true. A transparent, in-glasses display [aeinnovations.com] was featured on Slashdot in 2001 [slashdot.org]. Five Years Ago.
Port 500 probe? (Score:2)
Cool! (Score:2)
Sounds like a esay way to cheat on a test (Score:2)
Appearance? (Score:3, Funny)
Patents Strike Again (Score:3, Insightful)
too bad MIT had it first (Score:3, Informative)
Nothing new here but someone patenting something that has so much prior art that taking the patent down will be incredibly easy.
Re: (Score:2)
Really cool stuff.
Re:hud (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Sure - but only the ones that look like this [yimg.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Imax 3D does not work by blocking one eye for alternate frames. It works through polarization. One frame is polarized vertically, the other at 90 degrees. The polarization in the glasses is 90 degrees apart for each eye. Next time you are watching an Imax 3D movie, try tilting your head and you will see the images diverge. This is also nice when watching the movie without glasses. The slight blur you see from the images being at two different locations (much more noticeable for objects that are suppo
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)