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Hardware

19" Monitor Goes Portable 112

Posted by timothy from the where-and-how-much? dept.
Reader redial writes: "You've seen them before, the glasses that give you the impression of a 19" monitor several feet in front of your face. InViso's eShades have a nice twist. The lightweight glasses use a standard PC-Card or Flash interface. Plug these bad boys into your YOPY and attract all the babes." Actually, the site says that PDA support is still in the future, and needing a Flash or PC Card interface seems a bit of a turn-off, though in fairness that is also the power source. But these look like a cool combination of a) acceptable size and b) the magic acceptable threshold of SVGA resolution. Yes, please!
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19" Monitor Goes Portable More

19" Monitor Goes Portable

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  • seems like the PC card interface would make it hard to use with a desktop.

  • Just what the world needs... (Score:4)

    by OakLEE ( 91103 ) on Saturday September 16, 2000 @10:43PM (#773802)
    Now all I'll do is bring my laptop to school and play games in class.

    Teacher: Johnson, what are doing with those sun glasses.

    Me: Sir these, aren't sunglasses, it's a computer monitor

    Teacher: Let me see... Well I'll be damned, by the way you have detention afterschool.

    Me: Why?

    Teacher: We don't play Unreal-Tournament in the middle of a lecture.

    Me: Note to self, next time alt-tab out of game before handing over glasses.

  • I would love one of these.
    But it would be better with a few enhancements.

    how bout splitting the images apart a few milimetres to give realistic 3d images.
    Making the viewing larger that 800x600. Come on who uses that on 19" these days?

    Other than those two, how bout adding some style to the way they look.

    On another note I wonder if tempest [thecodex.com] would work on these.

    These could be the future of computing displays. WIth these why not add a greater viewing angle and have a virtual keyboard. Chuck in a few vr gloves too.
    Might reduce RSI and OOS.




    Noviota.
    De Novo. Iota.
    Starting Afresh. Very Small.

  • Uh...what babes? (Score:3)

    by K8Fan ( 37875 ) on Saturday September 16, 2000 @10:45PM (#773804) Journal
    "You've seen them before, the glasses that give you the impression of a 19" monitor several feet in front of your face. InViso's eShades have a nice twist, the lightweight glasses use a standard PC-Card or Flash interface. Plug these bad boys into your YOPY and attract all the babes."

    Not to be a cynic, but surely you jest. Maybe it's different out there on the west coast, but here in America's Heartland (read: flyover states) wearing something as geeky as a head-mounted display is a sure method to repel female attention, rather than attract it. Sure, I wish it were different, and maybe it is in some locations. Maybe having enough disposible income to buy things like head-mounted displays is it's own attractor. Ah well...married for 17 years, I'm not in the babe market anyway, so what the hell do I know?

  • Never make it to market (Score:3)

    by cei ( 107343 ) on Saturday September 16, 2000 @10:51PM (#773805) Homepage Journal
    I'm tired of hearing about all these great heads-up displays and then never being able to buy them. The Sony Glasstron is the only one that's really been mass produced and readily available. I've been to sites for a dozen others and they're all looking for OEM partners and selling eval kits only if they think they're going to sell hundreds of units.

    When are some of these designs going to make it into the hands of J. Random Enduser? I'm ready to put together a wearable, but all of the news on the display front is rather disheartening. People pay $800 or more for a 19" or 21" display -- hell, Apple's asking $4000 for their Cinema Display. Someone needs to get on the ball and start producing head mounted displays in some sort of quantity and I know there would be a market in the $1000 - $1200 range.
    ------
    WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
  • "wearing something as geeky as a head-mounted display is a sure method to repel female attention, rather than attract it."

    Ah yes. But with the proper image alterations to the proper images, the turn down and superimposed girl walking away from you would be less painful. :)

    "Oh bummer, I was turned down _again_ by naked Natalie Portman. Oh well, I'll enjoy watching her walk away again"

    I think they look cool. I want one.

    --------------
  • Just wait until I show off these babies to the hotties at the beach. They'll be all over my sexy geekness in seconds....right?

    My only question is, "Do they provide 100% UV protection?"

  • Vapor (Score:5)

    by Daniel Ashbrook ( 202485 ) on Saturday September 16, 2000 @10:56PM (#773808)
    Sadly, these are at least partially vapor. The compact flash and/or PCMCIA interface would be very attractive because it could potentially cut down on power. One obstacle to high battery life with portable computing is the many conversions that have to happen to get an image on your screen. Your processor sends a digital image to your video card, which then converts it to analog and ships it out on the video cable. The box for your HUD then takes the analog and converts it back into digital so the LCD can display it. If even one of these steps could be efficiently bypassed, it would cut power consumption dramatically.

    Unfortunately, someone from my company called these guys up to see if they wanted to work with us, and they admitted that most of it was basically wishful thinking.

  • I was listening to the song when reading your comment and there are five kill not four...

    Mikael Jacobson
  • True, but you can usually count on more from first and second wave people, before it hits mass market (with matching mass market pricing). Look at what audiophiles spent on CD players or DVD decks when they first came out. $1200 isn't too much for the geeks who want to stay cutting edge, and it will gain enough of a foothold that the rest of the market will follow about 18 months later.
    ------
    WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
  • Great. Notebook high-resolution action that's easy on the eyes. Now if the damn, freaking web page that shows them off lucked decent at that high-resolution. :p

    Of course, for about the same amount of money I could hire some body builder to lug around a 19" monitor in front of me all the time. :) Hire another to carry its power supply.

  • Take this a step further. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16, 2000 @11:02PM (#773812)
    What we need is the following combination of technologies:

    • SVGA glasses
    • laser range scanner to build a 3D model of the environment
    • portable PC-camera to add color information
    • fast rendering engine
    Imagine walking on the street with this, we would be able to see where we're going in the real world just like in Quake! Right now, I just can't stand walking around without knowing the frame rate and polygon rate.
  • HMD (head mounted displays) are getting smaller, higher-res, etc... I hope that someday they will be mostly inconspicuous. This shouldn't (at least in my view) be about vanity. MicroOptical makes an HMD that basically are bulky glasses with a small patch of coloration on one end. Likely they'll become very much like normal glasses, the only difference being the small spot of coloration.

    Wearable computing has many interesting applications... the stopgap has mostly been the displays. Monocular, small, inobtrusive displays do exist though, usually for 1-2k if you want high-res and color. But a low-res grayscale display is only 500. Everything else is getting smaller, too. IBM's recent 1gig harddrive is about the size of a match book, and is 500 bucks.
  • You should have painted fake eyes on the outside :)
  • I seem to recall a similar set of goggles coming out a couple years ago with promotional literature stating that it gave the impression of a 54" screen at a 6 foot distance.

    I don't recall who was supposed to make it, though, and I guess it never caught on because I've not heard of it in the past couple years. Anyone else know what I'm talking about?

    Anyway, it seems like 19" is kinda dinky compared to what one could conceivably do with judicious use of the image projection.

  • I don't get who would buy such things. Who has complaints about traditional monitors and laptop screens? "eShades" would quickly become an annoyance, as your eyes tire from the constant, radical focus shifts needed to glance back and forth between the screen, a book, the keyboard, et cetera. Not to mention the fact that they'd make it impossible to enjoy a cup of coffee. Or a soda; you tilt your head back to get the last few drops of Dew, and the glasses either fall off or make you dizzy.

    About the only market segment who would find them useful are gamers, and gamers have no need for the slim, chic design that the eShades boast [inviso.com].

    Let's get a few good laughs by reading their marketing BS:

    eShades consume less than 1/4 of the power of a typical laptop display, so plugging eShades into your laptop and turning the laptop screen off can increase its battery-life by over 25%.

    Because these glasses apparently make it difficult or impossible to read, write, or drink a beverage while using the computer (which I often do all at once while using a laptop), I really don't think a 25% power savings is worthwhile. Not to mention the fact that the only place I'd feel comfortable using such freaky glasses is in my home or office... where I have AC power anyway.

    A large, colorful SVGA (800x600 pixels) display, featuring Inviso's unique OptiScape technology.

    Holy shit, that must be some pretty hot tech to give me 800x600. I run 1024x768 on 15" monitors, for God's sake. On the "visual equivalent of a 19-inch desktop monitor", I expect a maximum resolution of no less than 1600x1200.

    . . .their stylish, low-profile, ergonomic design make eShades look similar to popular sunglasses.

    I guess I don't get out too much. I had no idea that today's popular sunglasses made people look like Geordi Laforge (sp?) with a hearing aid. [inviso.com]

    They'll probably sell a pair to this guy [somethingawful.com]. And to a half dozen major corporations to make Powerpoint presentations "come alive". And they'll probably be bought in bulk by the Federal government for some obscure research project they want to waste taxpayer money on, and then pretty much fade away into LinuxOne [linuxone.com]-esque obscurity.

    Timothy, that was a misleading story title. It sounds like the link has to do with 19" laptop screens, which would actually be useful.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • If only they added asilicon micro-ring gyros [microsensors.com] for motion-tracking!

    The inViso eShades [inviso.com] looks to be a lot less bulky than earlier personal-display devices [thevrsource.com].

    I used to own a pair of Virtual Reality i-glasses [i-glasses.com], but they were too bulky and low-res to bother with after the novelty wore off. Still, it was fun playing FPS's with the head motion-tracker.

    Alas, even in this era of disposable technology, VR-gears [thevrsource.com] are still way too expensive for the average Joe!

  • I thought most audiophiles loathed CDs, instead opting for 1970's cutting edge in wax. And the ones that don't, believe that colouring the edge of a CD with a magical green marker improves the sound quality. This proves they know nothing about technology. :-)

    You're right, of course, about the prices gradually dropping on products which sell consistently. If the $5000 laptops of three years ago hadn't sold fairly well, there wouldn't be $1000 laptops here today. But HUDs are such a niche (read: useless to >99% of the human population) technology that the "trickle-down" theory doesn't apply so easily.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • so now I guess I am one step closer to playing a real game of doom on my palm... right?

    Jaeger
    www.JohnQHacker.com
    GodHatesCalvinists.com
  • Yeah, I guess you're right.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • I take it your talking about CRT's... 19" or 21" LCD's are well over two or three grand. But 3 months ago I bought a darn near top of the line ViewSonice FD Trinitron 19" monitor (PF790) for $480 at Best Buy... (yes best buy...saw it and deemed I needed it that day or would surely be struck by lightning... no time for mail order) $800 for a 21" makes sense though. My apologies for nit-picking, but I'm no good at grammar so I figured I troll about your facts :)
  • Who has complaints about traditional monitors and laptop screens?

    Me, for one. The monitor takes up a lot of space (well, the old ones do, that's why the 'new wave' is flat-screen, and portable, and so forth). I want that space. The monitor is bulky and the main thing tying your computer to your desk (the keyboard can be put on one's lap, the mouse is not always needed or can be in the keyboard, and the case with all the real stuff can be anywhere that cables reach. But the monitor always has to be close to you. And it's heavy and bulky. Thus, the need for a desk. You can put a computer on the floor, but not a monitor.

    "eShades" would quickly become an annoyance, as your eyes tire from the constant, radical focus shifts needed to glance back and forth between the screen, a book, the keyboard, et cetera

    Well, actually, I've been told by professional ergonomics people (snicker) that shifting your eyes to distant objects ever so often reduces monitor-related eyestrain -- it's not good to stare at the same thing for a really long time.

    Not to mention the fact that they'd make it impossible to enjoy a cup of coffee. Or a soda; you tilt your head back to get the last few drops of Dew, and the glasses either fall off or make you dizzy

    Do you wear glasses? Have you seen other people who wear them? Are they able to drink Dew? Or do their glasses fall off? And as far as getting dizzy ... close your eyes if it affects you! But I highly doubt it would.

    On the "visual equivalent of a 19-inch desktop monitor", I expect a maximum resolution of no less than 1600x1200.

    Here, I agree. 800x600 is HARDLY a 19 inch monitor. I'm running 1280x960 on this 19 inch monitor, and the text is nice and big.

    then pretty much fade away into LinuxOne-esque obscurity.

    The strange thing is, I saw an ad for LinuxOne in the latest Linux Journal... I wonder if it's the same company.
  • I seem to recall a similar set of goggles coming out a couple years ago with promotional literature stating that it gave the impression of a 54" screen at a 6 foot distance.

    It's late, so someone correct me if my math is off... but I believe the 19" display is equivalent to a 46" display at 6'. So it's not far off those other goggles you mention.

    Putting field of vision coverage aside though, their 800x600 resolution sucks for data use. That res might be okay for movies and games, but it's fairly standard now to get 1400x1050 on a little 15" notebook screen and it's very usable.
  • I'm tired of hearing promises of SVGA + head mounted displays. Several microdisplay semiconductor companys (Colorado Microdisplay / Kopin / IBM / Planar) created working prototypes of this, but left it up to OEMs to build and market the thing, which not one has done so far. Someone has to take the initiative, like Diamond with their Rio. I can't believe how saturated the market has become with these expensive, poorly constructed, geek toys. But its proof that the market is there. If you build it they will come. Any geek willing to justify the insane cost of solid state music players with their severly limited storage/runtime, can easily be counted as a future customer. Please InViso...take the initiative and bring these eShades to market, just like Diamond with their Rio, you'll be glad you did.
  • Features
    • A large, colorful SVGA (800x600 pixels) display, featuring Inviso's unique OptiScape technology

      • What? doesn't everyone use 640x480 on their 19" monitors? I don't usually put 800x600 on anything over a 23".

  • 19" at 30" at 800x600 (Score:3)

    by kevin805 ( 84623 ) on Saturday September 16, 2000 @11:50PM (#773826) Homepage
    Saying 19" at 30" away sounds a lot more impressive than the equivalent "crappy 14" that will only do 800x600 at 22" away". Maybe they should have gone with claiming a 60" monitor just under 8 feet away.

  • Why all the criticism? (Score:3)

    by r-jae ( 138803 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @12:16AM (#773827)
    For God's sake it's just been released. This is new technology and like everything, sure, it has it's drawbacks but isn't this exactly what we need?

    I mean, if the world is going to "go wireless" then this seems like a great product. One of the only drawbacks of making devices smaller and smaller is that the screen obviously gets smaller and smaller. To me, this seems like the answer to this problem.

    And the glasses could be slimmed down and could eventually look pretty stylish.

    There no such thing as a bad product, just an oppurtunity to make a better one.

    --

    Daniel Zeaiter
    daniel@academytiles.com.au
    http://www.academytiles.com.au
    ICQ: 16889511

  • Saying 19" at 30" away sounds a lot more impressive than the equivalent "crappy 14" that will only do 800x600 at 22" away". Maybe they should have gone with claiming a 60" monitor just under 8 feet away.

    Almost. My eyes would be a lot happier with the 19" monitor at 30" away....

    Actually, it is. (Though running 1024x768, not 800x600.)

    It's not just the angle-of-view. The focal distance makes a big difference in eye comfort. Farsighted that I am, I get headaches if the monitor is less than 18" away.

  • what you say:
    "What's the res, what's the weight, what's the..."

    what you think:
    "Yeah, but do I look like I kick ass?"

    Don't front.

    My .02
    Quux26

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The REAL marketing niche (Score:3)

    by Elvis Maximus ( 193433 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @12:22AM (#773831) Homepage

    Only you can see what is on your display, so sensitive documents stay confidential. Working on or viewing such material in public places is no longer a concern.

    You don't suppose they're talking about porn, do you?

    -

  • Re:Take this a step further. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yeah, ever watch the anime series Lain? Some net-junkie-wannabe-Knights-member sets up a rig like that for himself. The anime shows the guy walking the streets of Japan, while hacking through tons of net protocols. Just to ruin it for you, the guy dies.
  • ...unless you had one of these [winmag.com].
  • Can i wear these with my prescription glasses, or should i start a class action suit for all of the glasses wearing audience that will be dicriminated against?
  • have you ever looked at a 19" moniter placed 2.5 feet from you (from the article). 1600x1200 is a stretch at that distance, 800x600 may be a bit low, but 1024x768 would be the highest i would be willing to look at at that distance on a 19" monitor.

  • These things are complete vapor (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17, 2000 @12:44AM (#773836)
    I know of a company which was exteremely interested in this product. They had their people talk to these people, so to speak, and it turns out that this product is no where near production. It's more or less a mock-up, and a "let's see if anyone wants to put some VC into it." Unfortunately, for an actual working product to be made they'd first need to figure out how to fill in the bubbles marked "a miracle occurs," and "perpetual motion machine here" on the diagrams.
    Very disappointing.

  • Re:Why all the criticism? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Your sig.:
    Email address need not be there - put it so mail is done by clicking your name.
    Web-address - you are telling us twice. remove it from our sig.
    Your real name isn't important, especially is you chose not to use it as a logon.
    No need to give us the translation for 'Carpe Diem'.

    Save the electrons. Wasteful people like you are destroying this planet.
  • we have been promised this type of equipment for years, but it has never managed to enter the mainstream consumer marketplace. Everything shown either seems to never make it into real production, or be so exotic/expensive as to be out of range for 95% of the people out there. This should be a news story when someone can go out and buy it at a local store, and give a review of it.... not when some developers are saying, 'gee, i bet we could do....'
  • Bah! 800x600 on an apparent 19 inch display? Man, that's just not the thing you want to say when you get into a dick-size war. That's like bragging about the bigass new twenty-huge-something inch display you just lifted from work -- er, i mean, purchased legally -- and driving it with an old Western Digital VL Bus card. Yeah, great color if you want to stay at 640x480, but it's about as quick as Parliament is at repealing tax laws -- or Congress if you prefer. (And if you can show me a system with a VL Bus in it, I'll show you a pissed off consumer who got hosed by 486 hype. Again and again and again.)

  • Available Q1 2001. (Score:4)

    by zniper ( 117838 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @01:53AM (#773840)
    According to this article [zdnet.com] over at ZDNet, they'll be available Q1 2001.

    Doesn't sound all that much like vapor to me.

  • "Sure boss I can work late, just let me go home and pick up my glasses first."
  • Is this just a HUD? Or can we view 3D with them? THAT would be so cool , to the point of our balls freezing. I can live with the 800x600. But i need 3D. Just imagine...
  • If the interface will be trough an PC[mcia] or flash card and not using the VGA out connector, this means that the pcmcia/flash card will be a video card so here come the problems:
    - PC/FLASH bus is slow and 16bit - so no high fps rates. Extremelly low ones maybe. I don't think that the PC/Flash buses were ever designed for that.
    - Driver problems (Second video card -ok- but how you disable the first one TO HAVE 25% POWER SAVE) (Hot pluggable video cards ? if i connect two sets of glasses (trough 2 pc cards) what do i get ? )
    - See if they can fit 4 3D processors and 128mb of texture ram on a PC card to make a competing video card. (and where will they fit the coolers ? :-)

    Let's just wait until the industry creates an unified digital video-out connector/standard. (FireWire ?)

    --
  • Well, at my work, we use (kick-ass cool) digital cameras with compact flash upwards to 128 MB. The readers for the CF are PCMCIA only, so we have a PCMCIA reader hooked up to the USB of the image processing computers. Surely, there's a similar solution to this little problem?

  • ....attract a female Zebra?

  • good eyesight. I wear glasses, infact I wear trifocals, yep pretty bad. Can I use one of these products?
  • Hmmm.. I just took a tape measure from my Monitor to my Eye, and measured out 26", ok that's 4" short of 2.5 feet, but you guys must have been sitting too close all your lives and damaged your eyesight... I can read everything on the Slashdot page at 1600x1200... Even the little fine print at the bottom:

    "All trademarks and copyrights ".... etc etc..

    And my Monitor is 19". 2.5' is a pretty nice distance. Especially since it's "only" 800x600. That'll make everything comfortably big.

    PS. I generally keep it at 1024x768 because even though I CAN read it at 1600, it's a little bit of a strain to do it all the time. Plus I got the value 19" monitor so the refresh at that res is a little abusive.
  • I went to college in Missouri. Even a laptop repelled female attention. Only the true geeks were at all interested. Most guys were insecure enough to try to side with the gals on the technology issue.. (thinking they'd score points with them by being repelled.)
  • What happens when you move your head, even slightly? Basically your inner ear is detecting motion but your eyes are viewing a virtual 19" screen that appears static. When your brain receives these conflicting signals the result is often acute motion sickness. I've heard this from several people who've used similar devices. One said he simply could not use one for more then 30 minutes without feeling nauseous. I suspect it's like zero-g sickness, some people will be susceptible, others will have no problems.
  • Good spot, but I suspect he ran up against the max .sig length.

    Rick

  • I havetried them in person. The Sony glasstron and the Olympus one, they are nothing like 19" monitor. It felt exactly like holding a small piece of active display really close in person, the gaps and holes between in pixels are hugh and aannoying as hell.

    CY

    -
  • I think it was in the late 80's that I read about a company working on virtual displays you wore as glasses which projected the image right onto your retina. They had at least one prototype and it was monochrome at the time. I remember they were sure that it was safe, but as a reader I had my reservations. (What if there is a power surge? etc) Its big advantage over other technologies was that it could very cheaply produce virtual displays several feet wide.

    The eShades don't seem to apply that technology. Does anyone know if anyone else is still developing that approach?
  • until they can do 1024 X 768. Their claim about 19" monitor resolution is just marketing hype at this point. C'mon, 800 x 600 SVGA is old stuff! They should match our normal 19" monitor screen dimensions, or not claim parity with big screens....

  • Re:Uh...what babes? (Score:3)

    by SurfsUp ( 11523 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @03:54AM (#773854)
    No babe wants to bother you by breaking up the greak conversation you're having with your laptop. This is not the same as being repelled. Just don't ask anyone to join in, I mean, is that different from inviting them to read your book with you?

    But I have personal experience that tech toys attract attention, what's more, from the kind of girl I'm interested in. Go sit in a cafe with a laptop, or what the heck, with cyber glasses. Be completely into yourself for a while, have fun. *Everbody* will notice. Nobody will think 'what a geek'. Then put the damm thing down. After a while somebody will start a conversation about the tech toy, guaranteed, either that or you didn't brush your teeth.
    --

  • Re:Take this a step further. (Score:3)

    by w00ly_mammoth ( 205173 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @04:15AM (#773855)
    Imagine walking on the street with this, we would be able to see where we're going in the
    real world just like in Quake!

    There's an even better way - take off that fancy equipment and just use your eyes. The resolution is much better, and miraculously, it's in sync with your other senses.

    It's an incredible i/o engine. Works every time for me. Changing the fov is a bitch though - you have to get pretty drunk to do that, or use your "configuration" method of choice. YMMV.

    w/m
  • Not really - all laptops now have 32 bit - Carbus PCMCIA connector. I don't know how fast those are, certainly nothing close to 4x AGP, but it should be at least fast enough to make MAME emulate a Neo Geo in all its glory :)
  • so: build in the opposite of steadi-cam. small movements of the head result in large movements of the virtual display.
  • Sony already has a pair of these, called the PC Glasstron. [sony.com] It sells for a whopping $2599.00 and offers a virtual 30" display and built-in earbuds. However, the resolution is low (832x624) and it is not for all users: "Note: This product should not be used by children age 15 or younger. Individuals with eye or heart disease or injury or high blood pressure should consult a doctor prior to use." Uh oh, that looks like all computer users over 40 and under 15. Once again, Sony caters to the super-rich. [cmdrtaco.net]

  • Re:Uh...what babes? (Score:3)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @04:49AM (#773860)
    Go sit in a cafe with a laptop, or what the heck, with cyber glasses. Be completely into yourself for a while, have fun. *Everbody* will notice. Nobody will think 'what a geek'.

    You're right. Generally they'll think, "What a pretentious ass." That and, "If I have to endure the clicking while he types one more email, I'm going over there to strangle him." Playing with technotoys in cafes and the like tend to make me think the person just craves attention. And just wait for voice recognition in these devices. Then I will have to start strangling people.
  • Well, if you had a desktop, wouldn't you just plug in a 19" monitor?
  • good eyesight. I wear glasses, infact I wear trifocals, yep pretty bad. Can I use one of these products?

    It will probably depend on whether you can focus your eyes on something that's only an inch or so away. If not, perhaps you'd need to get a corrective lens added to the thing. I have to think that the makers won't want to exclude a significant portion of the population (particularly a segment that has the most disposable icome), and so will have made some accomodation.
  • Looks like it was developed with their eCase [inviso.com] product in mind. That tiny display on the ecase doesn't even look comfortable viewing in their ad (look at that squinty guy!).

    A pcmcia interface was probably a natural step to broaden the product's market if it was already being designed for an ecase flashcard interface.
    ---
    Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.

  • Re:Uh...what babes? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Obviously you're not his type of girl.
  • Laser surgery is only for those who are near sighted and bifocal contact lenses still arn't the greatest( I don't even know if there is such a thing as trifocal contacts )
  • Uhh, what the heck are you doing running a 19" monitor at 1024x768?! :) Mine does 1600x1200 very nicely.
  • Yes. In fact, it says so on the webpage that there are provisions for the insertion of corrective lenses (into the product).
    ---
  • Okay, now I can watch my ASF and AVI porn in coach while flying without eliciting gasps from fellow passengers. Does this company have any advice on how to reach into my pants without attracting attention?
  • How much does this cost? Because Sony has something like this but its expensive.

  • I think you are referring to the Virtual Retinal Displays (VRDs) [washington.edu] that were being developed at the Univ of Washington's Human Interface Technology Lab [washington.edu].

    A company called Microvision [mvis.com] has been making these sorts of displays for military applications, but they are now trying to bring the technology to more "mainstream" applications.

  • It will probably depend on whether you can focus your eyes on something that's only an inch or so away. If not, perhaps you'd need to get a corrective lens added to the thing.

    Almost nobody can focus on something an inch away from the cornea. Goggles with displays use corrective optics so that the image resolves at a certain virtual distance. Hench, the description "19 inch monitor at 30 inches distance".

    Some goggles may have diopter adjustments. Your left and right eyes may focus slightly differently, and a diopter adjustment allows each side of the goggle display to have a different correction to compensate. Otherwise, one eye will be fine, the other eye will give you a terrible headache for not being able to focus at the same virtual distance.

  • Good info. Maybe I'm unusual, but I can focus on objects that close. It probably helps that I'm pretty nearsighted. Given what you say, it sounds like you'd just need a different lens in the goggles to accomodate people with differing focal abilities.
  • Theres no mention of 3D stereoscopy in this "a monitor on your eyeglasses" idea.

    Isn't that a logical step?

    You have to have two screens (one for the left eye and one for the right eye).

    Then all they need is a micro sized free floating "gyro/gymbal" that can resolve the rotation of the head and you've got an inexpensive VR device... but for real.

    The technology is not new, its almost as old at THE INVENTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY
  • "eShades" would quickly become an annoyance, as your eyes tire from the constant, radical focus shifts needed to glance back and forth between the screen, a book, the keyboard, et cetera. Not to mention the fact that they'd make it impossible to enjoy a cup of coffee. Or a soda; you tilt your head back to get the last few drops of Dew, and the glasses either fall off or make you dizzy

    Okay... let's correct a few misconceptions here. I've only used the Sony Glasstron, but it looks like this is set up the same way by looking at the picture of the woman wearing one.

    First off, there is a significant gap between your eyes and the glasses. Not enought to look wierd to other people, but enough so that you can sit at a desk and keep looking down to your keyboard and papers there without any difficulty. The space also allows you to wear prescription eyeglasses underneath the units.

    As to falling off, the Glasstron won't. And it's a rather front heavy unit. I've even walked away (intentionally once, accidently forgetting that I was using a shorter cord than normal twice), and had the cord yank hard on the side of the unit, and it stayed on. My nose and ear hurt, but it stayed on. Swigging a soda is not going to make it fall off.

    As for your worries for nausea, I has very big misgivings before I got my Glasstron. You see, I get motion sick at the drop of a hat. I can't ride in the back of cars, Quake and other FPSes make me nearly vomit (ROTT never did. Odd, that), I couldn't watch the beginning of Saving Private Ryan or Blair Witch without going to the back of the theater, and I had to leave the theater and/or close my eyes and look down several times (I did toss for SPR).

    But I've watched movies and gone through most of FF7 and the Ghost in the Shell video game, and played around with computing with my Glasstron, and never gotten sick. Sometimes I'd read Slashdot while watching a movie on my Glasstron, lifting my head to look at the monitor, flicking my eyes forward to look at the movie.

    Now, having said all this, the biggest problem I had with the Glasstron is: simply too many wires. The concept, as I say, is sound, but you wind up being the center of a tangle of wires. One single wire I would not mind, and if it went to a PDA, I'd be esctatic.

    --
    Evan

  • Looks to me like the display on the eCase and the displays in the eShades are the same thing. That would make the eShades and the eCase two different, stand-alone applications of the same technology.
  • The cynical, jaded outlook is there for a reason.


    - Mike Hughes
  • Three words: Retina Scanning Display [mvis.com]. Also (formerly?) known as Virtual Retina Display.
  • two words:

    Virtual Boy

  • And one step back (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Sunday September 17, 2000 @08:34AM (#773879) Homepage Journal
    Keep the laser range scanner, lose the SVGA monitor and add 3D audio and you could potentially have a cool echolocation device for the blind. Just put out a low volume note that changes location as the scanner scans from left to right and which chances tone when something is nearer or farther away.
  • The really funny thing here is that this would duplicate the joke in the original post for blind people. That is, it takes the existing 3D sensory cues they have about the world and masks it with an inferior synthesised version.

    Possibly you could come up with a useful echolocation device, but you'd want to do it without interfering with the detailed auditory sense of the world a blind person already receives (or a sighted person, we just tend to ignore it, especially those of us who use computers too much...).


  • Now, having said all this, the biggest problem I had with the Glasstron is: simply too many wires. The concept, as I say, is sound, but you wind up being the center of a tangle of wires. One single wire I would not mind, and if it went to a PDA, I'd be esctatic.



    got to make that baby wireless.



    Catch me on AIM: SigningiS
  • Heh i'd get them, i really would, they look beautiful, but still they are only 800x600, i'm looking for the bare minimum of 1024x768... i don't have these beautifully perfect eyes for nothing =) -xell
  • That was my first concern too... Unfortunately they seem not be usable for us glass users. Having -8 glasses myself, I can't see much anything if I don't wear these constantly...

    Sorry, but these designers have lost a lot potential clients here. Sure they look kind kewl but they are useless to me (and many others).
  • There is a format called Minidisc thats been around for over 7 years with no-skipping, far superior fidelity, far better battery life, similar size and $1 to $2 for 74 min media. Look up the specs for a Sony RZ90 or visit minidisc.org and you'll know what I mean.
  • Why not remove a few devices in there? Nice little boxes (Sandisk and MicroTech [microtechint.com] make 'em) that plug into USB and have slots for SmartMedia and CompactFlash cards (including IBM Microdrives); they run from $40 to $70; got mine from MicroWarehouse [microwarehouse.com].
    BRTB
  • How much it costs makes a major impact in usefulness. $100 - easy win. $500 - marginal. $2000 - specialized uses only. The Sony glasses are about $500, but the resolution's not high enough; I think it was something like 600x225.

  • "how bout splitting the images apart a few milimetres to give realistic 3d images"

    You need to do a bit more than just "split the images apart" to get the 3d effect you're referring to. Firstly the hardware needs to support this. There are a few ways you can do this. One is to have two seperate VGA signals, one for each eye. This makes the hardware more expensive bulky and complicated. Another common way is to interlace the two signals into one, and split it again at the eyepiece, but this drops your effective resolution for each eye from 800x600 to 800x300. Another way is to have each alternate frame on the signal go to each eye, alternately. This halves the effective refresh rate of each eye's display.

    Note that all of the above options make all the electronics notably more expensive, complicated and unwieldy, and in general this is not worth it, since the "3d effect" is fairly minimal.

    That's only the hardware problems. The software you're using has to support it too. Windows most certainly has no such features, and extremely few games do. Even if a game were to do this, then the game programmers would be responsible for providing the signal in the way the particular hardware wanted the signal (i.e. interlaced or frame-interleave.) This is a reasonable effort, considering that less than 0.01% of a games market has the hardware to handle this.

    Also a game has to render twice as quickly to get the same frame rate as without the 3d effect. If your QuakeIIIarena is rendering in "mono" mode at 60Hz, it will drop to 30Hz update rate, if frame-interleave mode is used.

    Also for this effect to work properly there must be a means to calibrate the display piece or the software for an individual's IPP (inter-pupillary distance, the distance between your eyes.)

    The "3d effect" is anyway fairly minimal. It means nothing in non-3d apps like windows, web-surfing etc, and it doesn't mean very much in 3d simulation apps (e.g. games) unless the objects you're looking at are fairly close. So in general I don't think the added costs to the device would be worth it. The market is too small anyway for that. If the technology was cheap and common, sure, but not yet. Give it maybe another 5 or 15 years.

    Another problem is that while it might be nice to have a bit of 3d effect, it won't really be worth too much if you can't "look around" in your 3d world. So you would probably want to have some sort of 3dof/6dof tracking device to track the orientation of your head so you could look around. Once again the software has to support this, and once again it makes the whole setup more bulky and expensive.

  • Now all I need to do is learn how to touch type..
  • And if you can get it so you can focus on the glasses, then you can get rid of your other glasses by connecting a camera to the laptop (stereo, even) and the only thing you have to focus on is the glasses - let the camera do the rest.

  • Hmm .. this could be potentially interesting, as you could render some extra stuff onto the image before it was displayed. You could be surrounded by scantily clad females wherever you went :)

    We could just wait a few years though; the government will start implanting devices like this into each newborn child. Then if they don't like what you're seeing/hearing they could just override it with something more benign. Very useful in wartime, for propaganda. Or for keeping citizens docile. Of course they would sell the 'space' to advertisers so that ads can be beamed directly to your eyes all day long. Loads of fun.

    I'm just talking crap now .. so relax, this isn't "Yet Another /. Conspiracy Theory Post" ..

  • . . . the keyboard can be put on one's lap, the mouse is not always needed or can be in the keyboard, and the case with all the real stuff can be anywhere that cables reach. But the monitor always has to be close to you. And it's heavy and bulky. Thus, the need for a desk. You can put a computer on the floor, but not a monitor.
    I've never seen this as a problem. I switch the keyboard between my lap and the desk, and the desk provides a convenient palce for books, drinks, et cetera. I don't put my PC on the floor because I'm often messing with various things in it, and because I don't want my 8 fans sucking crap from the floor into the PC. I don't get it... Are you complaining about monitors, or desks? :-)

    Also, note that these are being marketed for use with laptops, to save power.

    Well, actually, I've been told by professional ergonomics people (snicker) that shifting your eyes to distant objects ever so often reduces monitor-related eyestrain -- it's not good to stare at the same thing for a really long time.

    This brings up another point... when I'm using a PC (whether desktop or laptop), I've noticed that my eyes often flit away to other things in the room, on my desk, et cetera. I imagine this helps reduce eyestrain considerably. But when using the eShades, you don't have much else to look at but the screen. And if you do, it's a significantly shift in focus from something that's an inch in front of your eyes to a several feet, and back and forth, and back and forth. Imagine trying to read a technical manual with the eShades.

    Do you wear glasses? Have you seen other people who wear them? Are they able to drink Dew? Or do their glasses fall off?
    Take a look at the eShades, and note that they don't quite fit like normal eyeglasses and sunglasses. I can also guarantee that they weigh quite a bit more.

    I think overall my impression is that eShades are being marketed as making your PC experience light, simple, and carefree, while in reality they'd get in the way and be a serious nuisance. I can't think of one advantage these offer over a decent 12"+ TFT screen. If they made a pair that simulate a 19" monitor with a high resolution, I'd be interested. But as the eShades stand, they are YACBUT. (Yet another cool but useless technology.)

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • "Kill the Poor" by the Dead Kennedies, I believe. A classic.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • It's already been done.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • Yeah. Comparing it to a 19" monitor is stupid. Who'd buy a 19" monitor that only does 800x600 these days?

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • If you check out the "dock" for the matchbox PC that makes it a cigarette pack PC, it has a PC Card jack..... Just food for thought.
  • So what does this mean for folks who only have vision in one eye? Would this be usable for them? What shows up in each lens, the same image as the other?

  • Well.. those sorts of problems are user interface problems. I'd really like to see a true 3D user interface where you could put windows off to the left or right (maybe something like 3D|WM [3dwm.org])and "turn" to look at them... These sorts of HMD's are the first step in getting the idea and the hardware into mainstream use..
  • When voice recognition shows up, use the technique Wally did when Dilbert showed up with his voice-recog stuff.

    "Yes, Dilbert, but what if you accidentally DELETE a FILE?"

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