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Displays Hardware

Laser Powered Virtual Display 278

Posted by michael from the dry-eyes dept.
Tedger writes "The Feature has an article discussing an interesting portable display system developed by the University of Washington. Unlike your traditional mini displays mounted in glasses this system has no display, it is a 'virtual' display created by lasers and microscopic fast moving mirrors. The image is in fact printed onto the retina and has feasibly a infinite resolution. Can anyone say true VR?"
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Laser Powered Virtual Display More

Laser Powered Virtual Display

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  • VR again (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 29, 2004 @07:54AM (#10662102)
    I for one welcome our retinal destroying overlords.
    First post?

  • safety (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wed128 ( 722152 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @07:55AM (#10662106)
    Laser images printed on the retina? what are the safety concerns with this? i would think "burn in" would once again be a serious issue.

    • Re:safety (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gunpowda ( 825571 )
      Truly trippy screensavers would help there ;)

    • Re:safety (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      remember to use that screen (retina?) saver!

    • Re:safety (Score:4, Funny)

      by PoopJuggler ( 688445 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @07:58AM (#10662140)
      It is safe, unless hackers get into your computer and set it to "Evil".

    • Re:safety (Score:5, Funny)

      by worthb ( 523248 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @07:59AM (#10662149)
      That's why it has a built in screensaver. Just imagine, you're driving, and the virtual monitor is displaying a Heads Up Display, and the screensaver kicks in. Suddenly you're flying through space at warp-speed.

    • Re:safety (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Vo0k ( 760020 )
      1) power 2) speed. A CD-ROM laser could hardly hurt your eye. And if I take a laser pointer and quickly "sweep" it over your eyes, you won't feel a thing too. That's how "disco lasers" that are projected into crowd work - the beam power would be enough to damage retina of someone whose eye would accidentially enter it, but it sweeps displaying "shapes" so quickly that even if it hits someone's retina, it won't be harmful - the flash lasts too short to cause any damage.
      (think photo camera flash, your eyes su

      • Re:safety (Score:5, Informative)

        by lachlan76 ( 770870 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:07AM (#10662202)
        A CD-ROM laser could hardly hurt your eye

        Not instantly, but because it is IR, by the time you notice anything, the damage has already been done.
        Just because you can't see the laser doesn't mean it sn't dangerous.

        • Re:safety (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Alrescha ( 50745 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:31AM (#10662366)
          "Just because you can't see the laser doesn't mean it isn't dangerous."

          Just because it's a laser doesn't mean it's dangerous.

          A.

          • Re:safety (Score:3, Informative)

            by lachlan76 ( 770870 )
            A _COLLIMATED_ IR laser pointed at your retina for extended periods of time is dangerous. IIRC, a laser pointer puts out as much light as a 60W light bulb, but coming from an area the size of a baterium.

            Focussed, you don't want it pointed at your eyes.
            • and you think they are going to use a laser that powerful? that would be either insane or stupid.

              why can't they use a laser that only outputs a few microwatts of power?

              • Re:safety (Score:4, Funny)

                by robertjw ( 728654 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @10:35AM (#10663368) Homepage
                why can't they use a laser that only outputs a few microwatts of power?

                They can, but what happens when the power supply is hit by lightning and those microvolts turn to 10,000 volts. It might burn a hole right through your head.

                • Re:safety (Score:5, Funny)

                  by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @10:56AM (#10663601) Homepage
                  They can, but what happens when the power supply is hit by lightning and those microvolts turn to 10,000 volts.


                  Given that the power supply will be located either in your pocket or attached to your sunglasses, I think that if lightning hits it you will have other concerns to worry about.

                • Re:safety (Score:3, Informative)

                  by Martin Blank ( 154261 )
                  That much energy isn't likely to make it through as an increase in laser intensity. The circuitry would burn out too fast for significant damage.

                  Now, the lightning bolt hitting your head might be a different story.

          • Re:safety (Score:4, Funny)

            by rjelks ( 635588 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:55AM (#10663039) Homepage
            I'd be more concerned about the lasers that are attatched to freak'n sharks. Those are the kind you need to watch out for.

      • Re:safety (Score:2, Interesting)

        by worthb ( 523248 )
        Yes, and that's how crt's work too, by constantly sweeping electrons across your screen. When they repeatedly sweep across the same area, ie. when your screen is displaying the same image all the time, you get burn in. This display would be much different than a stray laser sweeping across your eye one time, this would be constant. If the disco laser heats up your receptors for a fraction of a second, they will cool right back down, but if they are being constantly heated, even by a low power laser, could

        • Re:safety (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Vo0k ( 760020 )
          Not really. This laser "sweeps" too, true it points at your eye all the time, but the beam hits only a small fraction of your retina a time, different groups of receptors get "heated" and despite the ray returning to the same point over and over while displaying sequence of frames of a still image, the delay between "frames" should be quie enough for receptors to "cool down". Also note laser is mostly about coherent, very narrow beam of light, not about power - you can make the beam as weak as you want, to

      • Re:safety (Score:3, Informative)

        by HawkingMattress ( 588824 )
        Erm, it has been reported that those laser pointer DO cause harm, but it may take 10 years to appear.
        So just because you don't feel a thing if you quickly sweep over the eye doesn't mean that you won't end up semi blind in ten years (or maybe just with "a problem with your eyes")

    • Re:safety (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Enigma_Man ( 756516 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:00AM (#10662157) Homepage
      Gee, maybe it's not high powered lasers? I'm sure you're being sarcastic / playing dumb, but just because it's a laser doesn't mean it's going to harm your eyes.

      -Jesse

      • Re:safety (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It's not that simple. You kids probably haven't seen this, with TFTs being so common these days, but CRTs move a high intensity electron beam across the screen to stimulate the phosphorous which then emits visible light. When you turn off an old television, you can sometimes see that the part that moves the beam across the screen is turned off before the beam ebbs off. This produces a bright white spot in the middle of the screen because all the energy which would previously be distributed across the surfac

    • Re:safety (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      blue retina of death?

    • Re:safety (Score:3, Informative)

      by Have Blue ( 616 )
      Not all lasers have to be strong enough to cause damage to the retina. This laser only has to travel a few inches, and the human eye is very sensitive, so it can be far weaker than even a CD player laser. Plus, the laser's output is being spread across the entire retina, not focusing on a single spot.

      And, obviously there would be further investigation by whatever regulatory agency applies before these are allowed to be sold.

      • Re:safety (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gr8_phk ( 621180 )
        "Plus, the laser's output is being spread across the entire retina, not focusing on a single spot."

        So when the scanning mechanism (moving mirrors) stop functioning you get a burnt spot on your retina. Remember, if you're doing a Megapixel display, the laser is 1,000,000 times as much power as a single pixel requires. When the scanner breaks, how long do they have to detect the fault and shut off the laser before damage is done? Perhaps it can be done, but determining failure modes and implementing fast and

        • Re:safety (Score:4, Interesting)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday October 29, 2004 @10:19AM (#10663242) Homepage Journal

          First of all, you'd have to stare into a CD laser for some time before there was damage. These lasers will be even lower-power than that. Second, you can use a simple timed driver circuit to control the scanning mirror, so that as long as the laser unit has power, the system is scanning, with a safety interlock circuit which disables the laser if it detects that it has stopped moving. This can all be done at a low level and frankly it doesn't sound very hard to me; it might be hard to make a system that doesn't detect false positives but I'm betting you can build the laser, the scanning circuit, and the safety circuit into a single chip using MEMS and have the cost be basically nothing (in terms of what the device will cost) - the chip will just return pulses for synchronization so the video solution can tell the RAMDAC what to do, and it will have a system to synchronize two of the devices together.

          Now, I'm no EE so maybe there's problems with this, but it seems simple enough to implement. There's just not a lot going on; the laser scans across, and each time it hits the end, it jumps down a line. If you don't get the pulses occurring within a certain time, which can be based on filling a capacitor as I'm sure you well know, then you just shut it off. It's easiest to do with fixed-resolution displays, but all you have to do is use a different cap (or multiple caps) for different resolutions, or just accept that the laser might stay put for five or six lines' worth of scanning at some resolutions, which is highly unlikely to damage anyone's eyes.

          I don't think that non-laser light is really any safer. With a laser, you can use a lower intensity of light because your results will be more accurate with less light. Either way you need to get the same amount of light to the user's eye; this is, quite simply, how you will be controlling intensity.

    • Re:safety (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RPI Geek ( 640282 )
      Yeah, especially wtih one of these [wickedlasers.com]...

      I ordered mine yesterday along with a co-worker, and we'll hopefully see them by early next week.
    • I'm not too worried about safety: if you limit the maximum power output of the laser, even in case of short-circuit, it shouldn't be a problem.
      This is a technical problem, engineers have been good at solving those.

      The human limitations may be much more difficult to overcome: show a 'static image' to a moving man and you have a problem: eye say static, inner ear say 'you're moving' --> conflict --> sea-sickness!
      • When light falls on the retina, the vitamin A molecule absorbs the photon and changes its energy state. This leads to the molecule slipping out of the rod cell protein (rhodopsin) in which it is lodged. The conformational change triggers an electrical response that is registered as an image.

        With this background, I can think of a laser that has just enough power to absorb into the vitamin A molecule without having the power to heat up any other molecules around it - like the rhodopsin protein.

        The collim

    • Re:safety (Score:3, Informative)

      by alexo ( 9335 )
      > Laser images printed on the retina? what are the safety concerns with this?
      > i would think "burn in" would once again be a serious issue.

      The problem with a laser of a sufficient power (say, 5mW or higher) would be vaporizing the retina.

      However, Class I [repairfaq.org] lasers (under 0.4mW) are safe even for continuous viewing. For example, Sony has been using a laser for AutoFocus assist [sony.co.za] in its camcorders and digital cameras for quite a while.
    • There are ways to make it safe by design, something like hooking up the power source to the movement of the mirrors, so you can't have power near a stopped mirror.

    • Re:safety (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ShipiboConibo ( 808524 )
      I think everyone is just getting worked up because of the word 'laser'... I'm no physicist, but isn't this the same way vision works anyways? Whether from a laser or just an object in daylight, it's just photons going in to our retina. As long as the amplitude of the laser is comparable to that of normal every day lighting I don't see why this would be dangerous. Probably safer than daylight since the laser would be an even 'cleaner' source of the light in only the needed spectrum. Just beware of those 'sup

  • Snowcrash (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tetsugaku-San ( 717792 )
    Puts hiro protagonist's display to shame (his required glasses I think) Wonder how long before someone tried to snowcrash a person through it :D
    • Could someone explain?

      • Re:Snowcrash (Score:2, Informative)

        by strictfoo ( 805322 )
        No. This should need no explanation.

        Read Snowcrash [amazon.com]. It's a Neal Stephenson book.

        That is all.
      • As somebody already said, it's from Snow Crash, a NS book.

        He is wearing shiny goggles that wrap halfway around his head the
        bows of the goggles have little earphones that are plugged into his outer ears.

        ...
        The goggles throw a light, smoky haze across his eyes and reflect a distorted
        wide-angle view of a brilliantly lit boulevard that stretches off into an
        infinite blackness. This boulevard does not really exist, it is a computerrendered
        view of an imaginary place.

        ...
        The top surface of the computer is smooth

  • Let's be real about this... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drlake ( 733308 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @07:58AM (#10662124)
    Even if they do work out all the bugs in the system, it's still only a step toward true VR at best. Without ways to also stimulate all our other senses, this will be more akin to TV than VR.
    • Audio we're coming close to. A really good home theatre system with proper placement can be quite realistic.

      Smell... well they're working on smell-generating devices but there's not really a "virtual" way to do this. You can't exactly plug into your olfactory to stimulate the nerves there.

      Touch, again... too much to cover and no proper way to stimulate, and taste may go along with smell.

      Right now, we're doing a lot better at covering vision and sound. The only way we'd go too far beyond that would lik

  • Lasers... (Score:4, Funny)

    by bcmm ( 768152 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @07:58AM (#10662125)
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.

  • led projections (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Lenale ( 792831 )
    Weren't there glasses with LEDs projecting on your retina already? Those certainly sound safer than lasers.

  • Really old news (Score:3, Informative)

    by Inigo Soto ( 776501 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @07:58AM (#10662137) Homepage
    Back in 1999... [slashdot.org]. I haven't RTFA, much less compared the two. Somebody has?

  • Been around for a long time . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by taylor ( 11728 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @07:58AM (#10662139) Journal
    I recall researching such "direct imaging" devices back in 1995; they were going to be the next great thing in VR, back when virtual reality was still a meme. What is neat is the idea of wide integration, though safety issues even with low power lasers would, I imagine, remain a problem.

    As an analogy, consider headphone use vs. speakers. In the headphone case, you can easily damage your ears without even noticing you're doing it by having it a tinsy bit loud, while the speaker output makes it much harder (I imagine due to all that feedback to the rest of your body!) Similarly here, you are probably imaging on a limited part of your retina, which may make your eyes dilate open too much, and develop small damage over time, etc.

  • Laser + Display = ??? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @07:58AM (#10662141) Homepage
    Either something incredibly dangerous (Do Not Look Into New Monitor With Remaining Eye) or amazingly trippy (with Pink Floyd playing in the background).

  • True VR (Score:3, Funny)

    by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson&psg,com> on Friday October 29, 2004 @07:58AM (#10662142)
    True VR True VR!

    What do I win?

    can anyone say "can anyone say?" yes, anyone can, and its losing its punch.

  • This is old stuff... (Score:4, Informative)

    by smoon ( 16873 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:00AM (#10662154) Homepage
    I recently read a book "The Visionary Position" which detailed the university of washingtons virtual reality lab and all of the various spin-off companies.

    It wasn't a bad book, but they've had these things since the mid-90's -- just hard to find an appropriate market I guess.

  • I've been waiting for something like this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by goneutt ( 694223 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:01AM (#10662165) Journal
    After all the obstructive heads up type units we finall have one with the potential to co-exist with our normal field of vision. The "augmented reality" could give us new ways of seeing the world, with a 3-d overlay on reality. In the article they mention and automotvie expert system which will give the user a visual overlay of the system their looking at.

    Also it should give you the ability to use PDA's in a private fashion while still having a large view. In fact, this could redefine the PDA format, instead of the little notepad style device. Just gotta get the production levels up, cost down, so it's more affordable than the $4000 price tag.
  • Cell phones with frikkin laser beams mounted on them.

    Nintendo came out with a video game system based on a similar technology, but it failed miserably. Read more about it here:

    http://db.gamefaqs.com/portable/vboy/file/virtua l_ boy.txt

    Here's another, similar product:

    http://www.mvis.com/nomadexpert/index.html

    I would think the fact that lasers only emit one color of light at a time might be a problem, will they somehow combine them on the mirror?
    • Nintendo came out with a video game system based on a similar technology, ...except it wasn't really similar at all. It worked with a display mounted in a big ol' plastic thing that looked similar to the sensor thingy that Spock used to peer into on Star Trek. The image wasn't projected onto your retinas. I'd say the closest analog is a really tiny TV that you sit really, really close to.
    • Actually, those are just displays you look at. The system in the article actually rasters the image using the back of your eye (retina) as the screen. As opposed to rastering on an external screen that you are looking at.

  • yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:01AM (#10662168) Homepage
    where do the friggin sharks come in the picture?

  • Didn't we... (Score:5, Informative)

    by totoanihilation ( 782326 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:02AM (#10662172)
    Didn't we see this already [slashdot.org]?

  • What would be really cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by marktaw.com ( 816752 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:03AM (#10662180) Homepage
    Would be if, since they're already sticking us with a laser beam in the eye, was if they could track eye movements.

    This way we coul play tetris (or by that time Grand Theft Auto on a cell phone) just by tiny eye movements.

    It's all fun and games until someone burns an eye out.
  • Verizon is offering these phone for free, if you sign up for their 16,000-month LaseyPay Plan. It's only $195/month, but you get a Lasik procedure tossed in no extra cost.

  • Mirrors (Score:2, Informative)

    by dune73 ( 130598 )
    The resolution depends on the ability to steer the mirror in a very exact manner.

    Mounting it on glasses makes it a nontrivial task.
  • Are they really taling about resolution, or about scaling of a vectorized image ? of course you can scale vector graphics as you want, but this ain't new... If they can display bitmap graphics at any resolution without pixelisation, that's impressive. But i doubt it...
    • There is a resolution, but not the one we are used to - there are no preset areas like pixels, just places to quickly sweep across.

      I think the image's detail will be limited by how fast the mirror can move and with what accuracy.
  • As a lawyer, I applaud such products!

  • But how does it work? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by famebait ( 450028 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:12AM (#10662243)
    I mean, if I remember my optics correctly, the way the cornea/lens assembly works is that all incoming light originating at the same point out there ends up in the same spot on the retina, regardless of which path they take through the lens. This is what enables us to see a clear image.

    Although it has certain other intersting proerties, laser light obeys normal refraction.

    Yet they talk about suåperimosing the image on the normal view. How can you project to any other part of the visual field than the area where you see the projector?

    Anyone know what the trick is?
    • the mirror moves very fast, reflecting the lazer to different points on the eye
      • I know that, the article says so. The question is how can you get a light beam entering the eye to end up anywhere else on the retina than all the other rays coming from the same place, i.e. the place on the retina where you see the actual projector.

        Normally it shouldn't matter from which direction a ray leaves the projector. As long as it hits anywhere on the cornea at all the optics should still make sure it ends up the same place on the retina as all other rays coming from the same point in space (or r

  • Vector or Raster? (Score:4, Informative)

    by alanw ( 1822 ) * <alan@wylie.me.uk> on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:18AM (#10662281) Homepage
    The article mentions a single mirror. This implies that the display is a vector, rather than a raster display. Vector [wikipedia.org] displays (e.g. the Textronix 4010 [columbia.edu]) required storage tubes, i.e. tubes with a very long persistance phospor.

    I used to work for a company that produced a High Resolution Display that used mirrors to steer a red or blue laser beam onto a sheet of photochromic film - the blue laser would permanently write on the film - the red laser could be used for drawing small amounts of vector graphics - a cursor, or a few characters of text. Doing complex graphics in vector mode when the persistence of the human eye is less than 40ms will require the mirror to be scanned at very high frequencies

  • Infinite resolution (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jolyonr ( 560227 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:20AM (#10662290) Homepage
    Well, it obviously can't have an infinite resolution, the best it could get is 1:1 mapping with the rods and cones in the back of your eye.

    And of course this is old fashioned analog technology, just like in a CRT firing beams of electrons in the rough direction of dots in the phosphor, it's not accurate. What you need is a direct digital plug in the back of your optic nerve!

    Jolyon
  • a whole new importance

    anyone has seen those old screens with the burned init screen of an ms-dos app readable even when turn off? don't want a "water-mark" on my eyes, thank you.

  • VR? (Score:2)

    by xThinkx ( 680615 )

    "Can anyone say true VR?"

    Can anyone say who the hell still cares about VR?

    I mean, really, even if there are still applications for such systems, is "VR" still the term to describe them? Until my "virtual" world can look at least as realistic as FF, I don't want to enter the "virtual world". I can see shitty slightly unrealistic renditions of the real world if I don't sleep for a few days or drink rather heavily, and that's cheaper and more fun.

  • Its made by,
    "Redmond, Washington-based Microvision"

    What the fuck. Does everybody in Redmont have a small.... And some have soft. too.

  • I used one once (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chilles ( 79797 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:32AM (#10662377)
    6 years ago or so they where working on this type of system here at the university. I had the pleasure of trying it out (after signing a disclaimer of course :). At the time is was red only, but very very cool. They couldn't focus the beam depending on what distance you were focussing on. So the images they projected where sharp only at one fixed "focus distance" for your eyes.

    They could produce a low resolution overlay image over what you were actually looking at. They could only produce very simple line drawings floating in the air. But still.. you had your own private (head ache inducing) lasershow.
  • I would think that this design would require the user to always look directly forward. Otherwise the laser wouldn't hit the same spot when the user looked slightly to the side. The visual distortion that this would cause would probably make you pass out. In order to really make it work you would probably need to track eye movement as well. Although this is possible, it seems like it would be error prone and would make the system too expensive for consumer use. The bottom line is that unless they place the
  • I have serious concerns about anything shooting lasers into my eyes. I know, all screens are already projecting light into my eyes, but that is slightly different.

    But, that instinctive fear aside, this could be really cool. I mean, small HUDs of high quality have been wanted for near-onto forever. Now, some of those Sci-Fi stories where nobody has monitors because they are useless might start to come true.
  • This system is guaranteed to be dangerous if the micromirrors stop moving. Consider a system that paints 1000x1000 array of dots on the retina with a normal brightness. If one axis locks up, the system will paint a line of line 1000 times brightness than normal. And if Both X and Y axes lock up, then the laser will paint a spot 1,000,000 times brighter than normal.

    Even if this is functioning normally, it could still cause damage due to the intensity of the scanning spot, regardless of the ultra-short d
  • Can any one say true VR?
    I'm sure they can and will, but until this thing gets green and blue lasers, or reality turns everything red, we'll still be waiting for it.
  • Can anyone say true VR?

    Wait, wait, wait... REAL VIRTUAL REALITY, I think that Merriam Webster would say that this is a very confuzzling sentence.
  • Am i the only one that's bugged by that expression?

    If reality is virtual, it isn't reality; hence not true. It's like saying true three-legged bipeds.

  • a few details and oopsies (Score:4, Informative)

    by kris_lang ( 466170 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:25AM (#10662784)
    Okay, just a few things about this and some problems.

    Microvision [microvision.com] is the company doing this.

    What about saccades? When the eye moves rapidly over a long angular direction (which it does in tracking objects or changing your view) or a short angular direction (a.k.a. microsaccades, which happen multiple times a second), you get blurring which is normally suppressed by the visual attention system.

    When you do saccades across long persistence displays like LCDs, you will not see any major aberration as the light source effectively stays on. When you saccade across medium to short persistence displays (P21 phosphors for short, your regular TV or CRT for medium), it is possible to notice that there is either a shearing or tearing artifact.

    TV/CRT displays are scanned left-to-right at (say for 640x480 VGA at 80 Hz) 480*80=38400 times per second and scanned slow...ly up-to-down 80 times per second followed by that quick scan back up. Well you can try this at home (TV's at ~60 Hz show this a little more easily than most of our CRTs which are set at a less-likely-to-appear to flicker refresh of >80Hz):

    look at an object to the left of the TV screen. Then rapidly switch what you're looking at to the right side of the TV screen. The image of the TV will no longer look rectangular but like a shortened-horizontally and sheared (top to the leftish, bottom to the rightish) parallelogram. If you do a right-to-left saccade, the image will appear longer horizontally and top to the rightish of the bottom.

    Now the interesting thing happens with up-to-down saccades: if you go up-to-down at slower than or close to the same angular velocity as the scan line (depends on how close you're sitting to the screen) goes down the screen, the projected image will appear SHORTER-UP-TO-DOWN and if you actually match the scan-line's downward angular velocity, the TV image will seem to just be a poorly set up XF86 display of one pixel in height.

    If you have an effectively ZERO-PERSISTENCE direct write display, since the laser is being used to draw directly on the retina (or to project on a screen) rather than an electron-train hitting chemicals causing them to phosphoresce with a certain limited time before they stop glowing (PERSISTENCE...), then fixation has to be maintained or the illusion of motion based on the projection's position is destroyed. Laser projection systems try do multiple lines scanned at once or other fancy projection scan patterns rather than the usual cathode-ray-gun approach, but the saccade problem continues to be an issue.

    The saccade errors are the big to-do with projective laser displays for visible wavelengths, regardless of whether they are projected onto a screen or direct write onto the retina.

    The other problem is ... bah, it's enough already.
    • This entire problem is solved the same way the real-world saccade problem is solved.

      Your visual processing system (more specifically, the transferral of visual cortex information into your internal "world-map" representation) is for the most part shut down during a saccade. Whatever comes in is assumed "irrelevant" by your attention system.

      This is why you have to play focus games like the ones you describe in order to notice the effects of artifacts during saccades. You don't notice this stuff much unle

  • Old News! (Score:2, Informative)

    by carn1fex ( 613593 )
    These [microvision.com] guys have been at it for quite awhile with some nice results.
  • No, it's definatly not VR, it's realisitically no different to wearing red-green glasses and watching a 3d movie.

    True VR can only be achieved in a handfull of ways, shooting lasers into your eyes is not one of them.

    Some examples of real VR possibilities...

    1. Holodeck. And I mean, a Holodeck like in Star Trek, nothing less than a fully immersive system, capable of *physically manifesting* (even if it's just "photons and forcefields") an entire environment that you can travel around in and interact with -

  • Regulatory Issues (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CommieLib ( 468883 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @09:42AM (#10662925) Homepage
    One of the problems with these devices is that they tend to end up classified as medical devices due to the tight integration with the retina.

    This stuff is cool, but I don't see it becoming available in the U.S. any time soon. I would worry about a bad capacitor or something that suddenly released an hour's worth of exposure in a microsecond and fried my retina. Somebody with more engineering knowledge of these systems may know whether that's impossible or not, but it will always represent a consumer concern, I imagine.

  • Unless there is an separately calculated image for both eyes, and a head tracking unit, it will not appear like an object is "virtually in front of you". Without these two things, you simply have a 2D overlay on your regular vision. The separate images are required to make your eyes focus at a particular distance, the head tracking so that when you walk rightward, the object goes leftward, etc.. Perhaps the technology is there, but not described in the article...

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