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Hardware

DVD in your Glasses 55

Posted by CmdrTaco from the toys-to-lust-after dept.
Nachtjäger writes "They've got a DVD player that will display on lightweight glasses. It's 2 little screens, so 3D would be simple, and the expensive part is the DVD player. Oh, and the battery will go for 3.5 hours." Still a tad on the clunky side, but getting there.
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DVD in your Glasses More

DVD in your Glasses

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  • Yawn (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sony has had this type of immersion headset for years. The newest iteration of their product is the magnesium Glasstron PLM-A55 (I have a set) and is much more lightweight than this bulky thing. The headphones on the Glasstron are a much more desirable earbud than a big puffball of foam, and I'd be willing to bet they even sound better.

    For those of you wishing to use the Sony set (ot this one) for 3D work, be careful. The video-in circuitry is a bit hard to bypass because the signal is split and moved for each eye. The two LCD screens are perfectly able to operate independently, though.

    And yes, using the unit while in motion will make you sick sick sick. The Sony unit even comes with 7 "warning screens" you have to bypass before using the unit itself. They warn about potential damage due to eyestrain, and about use by those under age 15. Apparently, the eyes are still developing under that age, and use of the headset for extended periods can permanently damage a young person's eyesight.

    The quality of the screen is okay, but because you're sitting eye-to-eye with LCD panels, you _will_ see pixelation. The Sony unit is even capable of a non-immersion mode (a flipup shade which allows you to overlay video on your surroundings).

    I've used this unit with a Toshiba Libretto running Linux and a heavily modified FVWM to experiment with head-mounted consoles. It works, but 1) make the icons big, and 2) don't go less than 30 point text. :>


  • Why is everyone so hung up on ray tracing? It's
    great for mirror spheres above checkered planes.
    Kudos, however, for pointing out that stereo is
    less important than head-tracking. Now think about
    eye-tracking and foveation.

    Read JJ Gibson.

  • io glasses! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey! what the?! I thought for sure out of all the slashdotians there would be more io-glassers.

    While building my first wearable just over two years ago, I decided that the io-glasses were the least dorky, and with a few mods they could be passed off in normal society as weird sunglasses. I still haven't quite finished but I certainly improved them. First thing you do is saw off all the useless plastic and install velcro straps that wrap around your head. That way you can put a baseball hat on, which somewhat mutes their perceived dorkiness. Then you grab some thick, rollup mylar (or whatever it is, I just found it at a fleamarket.. it looks like oakley sunglasses material but flexible) and you cut out a shape to replace the dark opaque front-cover that comes with...

    BTW don't bother buying the head-tracker if they still sell that: its useless. Answers to questions above:

    1. 3D effect: just fine... perfect I would say. there aren't many pixels (~256x256) so that could produce artifacts, ie lack of "levels" of depth, but I've never noticed any.

    2. Transulcent lenses: yep, they're see-through. Make sure your apps'/desktop background is black and you should be fine, esp. outdoors in the sun. That can be a problem, however, because so many applications paint text in whatever color they feel like, ignoring user preferences... of course thats usually black and black on black text is not very user friendly. (the black background also uses alot less power!)

    3. Image quality: Ghosting is a problem, but not a big one. For $500, 256x256 is not bad right now. (although it appears not to have come down at ALL in 2 years)

    4. laptops without lcd panels: drop the keyboard too and guess what you have?

    www.media.mit.edu/wearables [mit.edu]

    Take a look at those winners though and you'll see that most of them don't quite get it yet. The grey eminence of wearables actually used to walk around with a giant antenna coming off his head. One guy _is_ wearing the virtual io glasses, bottom right, but without any significant mods.

    5. DVD: basically they're just trying to create a market for these things... They already tried video-games and reg'lar folks two years ago and went out of business once already. I think this new company is just a shell who bought out the remaining stock.. who knows if they actually manufacture them anymore.

    virtual io: www.vio.com

    l8r
    professor frink.

  • Hey! I don't think so. IO-Glasses are immersive enough to cause transition sickness...

    ttyl
    Farrell
  • These things used to be sold by Virtual IO systems, and we used them at Reality Bytes, a Virtual Reality Gaming Cafe in Ottawa. These things have a decent position tracker, and were wonderful under Doom II for immersive VR, and for true 3-d spaces, Descent was wonderful. Look for my posts in the sci-virtual.worlds newsgroup for more comments on VR and the Virtual IO glasses.

    ttyl
    Farrell
  • One reason to pay attention is when it's coming *at* you.

    I saw a clip on the big screen from the Hitchcock movie The Birds, in 3D (polarized lenses, not the red-blue stuff) and it was really scary. Almost as bad as when movies first came out, and people were running out of the theaters because they thought the (grainy, mute, grayscale) train was going to hit them.

    Personally I'd love to see any space opera in 3D. I don't care how bad it is, I'd drool. If they ever remastered Star Wars in 3D, you couldn't pry me away from it.

    I would also just love to have something like this, so I could have a really big virtual monitor. But it sounds like I'll have to wait for the resolution to go up and the price to go down.
  • Sounds like a recipe for a headache to me. And like I'm not detached enough from the real world as it is...

    -Eric

  • I've never experienced stereooptic vision (and never will), so any of you who have tried setups like this: How realistic is the 3D effect?

    Stereo imaging is nothing to write home about. Recently I had the pleasure of seeing Monsters of Grace [extremetaste.com], a Philip Glass opera computer-rendered in 3D. Though the three-dimensional effect was excellent, done far better than anything I've seen before, I could have lived without it, and would have gotten just as much out of it in 2D. (It's an amazing show, don't miss it if it comes near you.)

    Generally speaking, depth of field is something you don't even notice unless there's some reason to pay attention to it - like the fact that you've got one-size-fits-all glasses sitting on your nose.

    Jamie McCarthy

  • Gibson would never use it, dude.. He writes all his work on a typewriter!

    Neal Stephenson on the other hand.. (and IMO Snow Crash was a better read than Neuromancer, but I tend to prefer my fiction with a sense of humor..)

    Cheers,
  • ...now if they'd add some feedback for head movement and orientation (accelerometers & attitude sensors), imagine what this could do for flight sims, Doom, Quake, Descent et al.

    BTW, I'm legally blind in one eye. I've never experienced stereooptic vision (& never will), so any of you who have tried setups like this: How realistic is the 3D effect?
  • And the next step... Quake. Civ III. RoR.
    Games games games games games games.....

    Sad that all I can think about is gaming.
  • Man, I was playing with these things about a year and a half/two years ago. They were a nifty toy, but thats about it. For a computer screen, they sucked... not enough resolution. For games, they were neat, but the 3d effect was minimal. The head tracker wasnt accurate enough... you would look 90 degrees in one direction, but it would register less of a movement...like 60 degrees or so. That got REALLY annoying. Plus you really look like a dork wearing these things.

    But I must say... playing descent in 3d (sorta) on a virtual 50" tv with a space-orb is pretty damn cool. I was standing in the middle of my dorm room wired up to my computer with the orb and the headset. Drew a pretty decent crowd too :) (I whooped anyones ass who wanted to play me... with that orb and the ability to look around I was unstoppable :)

    just my 2 bits

    ---------------------------------------
    The art of flying is throwing yourself at the ground...
    ... and missing.
  • I picked up a pair of iGlasses about a year ago at a flea market of all places. The person selling them had no clue what they were, so I picked them up cheep. I was supprised to see them being remarketed as "new." The resolution is good for TV and such, and passable for Quake and Duke3D (on low rez). I have had lots of fun with them (hampsterdance in your FACE!), but I wouldn't pay $200 or whatever for them new. My advice: Find them used.
  • So when can we start buying laptops without LCD panels? Anyone know how much of the actual laptop cost goes into the LCD, especially for the higher end TFT ones?
    I for one would be really interested in a laptop with a high-quality headset instead of the LCD panel... does ne1 at Toshiba read slashdot?
  • Now all we need is 100+MB cellular thruput, translucent lenses, and embedded or motion generated power to drive the things...

    Oh what a great b-day present for William Gibson that would make.
  • Seeing people with headphones totally immersed in their music is already funny enough. Now we get to watch the person next to us wince, smile, frown, drool, and jump all with no real reason other than the little "remove me from reality" glasses on their head.

    Sign me up for the seat next to this guy (and let me try the player when he's done! ;)
  • the best part about the glasses though, is that the screens are transparent to a degree, so you can see the "real world" through them while you are watching a video

    That's good. That way I'll be able to wear them while I drive.

  • Would be pretty funny if some guy pops in a porno on a long flight, forgets where he is and gets carried away... :-)
    Anyway...
    I tried a couple pairs of these a few weeks ago in Tokyo. One was a Sony and I don't remember the other brand. I was ready to buy until I tried them. They were OK, but not fantastic. I didn't buy either. Probably wasn't this model, but the whole effect was probably similar.
  • I really don't see a real need for something like this. It would be cool in the gadget sorta way, but do we really need a wearable portable DVD player? Wouldn't a handheld be just as good, and much easier..

    Sometimes we just go a little too far with things...

  • I like Stephenson too.. but you must consider that Gibsons work was very original, and written quite a bit earlier. (mid 80's?)
  • For me personally, I'd rather get a big screen TV and watch the movies at home. The best news I got out of the article is that there is going to be a new muppet movie!

    Ahhhh, childhood memories...
  • You know, I have the same sort of situation with the SIRD images. I can do it really easily, but now my eyes can lose focus sometimes. I havn't had to have glasses though. It could also be that we are just showing our age. That and the fact that the human eyes and mind were not designed to read small print.
  • The nice thing about ray tracing is that it is sub-linear in time complexity. The bad thing about raytracing is that it has a large constant factor associated with it. This means that as scenes get more and more complex raytracing will be more and more feasible. I do agree though that its not the end all be all for rendering, right now polygon based systems are far more responsive. I dont agree that depth of field is not important however. There was a study that showed that without depth of field VR can mess up the link between focal length and paralax depth information in your brain. I forget who found this out but they found it out because they messed some poor kids vision.
  • "need"? Of course not. I also don't "need" to sit in front of two computers harnessed to the Internet in my spare time. You can TRY to pry 'em out of my grip, if you're feeling lucky. I don't "need" a pretty white convertible, or a portable CD player, or cool Gundam models decorating my room. I'm higher than that on Maslow's pyramid. What were the three steps?

    1. What am I going to eat?
    2. Why do I eat?
    3. Where shall we do lunch?
  • "Wasted"? I can't fit a VHS player in my pocket. Yeah, the resolution isn't ideal, but it's a start. : )

    I'm HOPING that I've bought my last monitor. I'd LOVE to go with goggles instead. I might make an exception for the $199 21" flatscreen digital LCD that I keep dreaming about. : )
  • They do. Those I-glasses have been around for at least 5 years and there has been a model that allows head tracking for most of that time. The only new idea in this article is hooking up to a DVD player for movies. Only downside with the I-glasses is their comparitively low resolution...IIRC they're limited to 640x480, though they've probably jumped to 800x600 by now.

    Can't help you with your second question though. I've never actually used a pair. I've been waiting for them to increase resolution and decrease price before giving 'em a go.
  • Wow, let's give this guy a grant. I like the way he thinks. Now, just get the system to highlight police cars in bright yellow and I'll shell out the big bucks. Not that I ever break the law, mind you. :)

  • i had a chance to use this dvd walkman/glasses combination at this art installation piece here in new york, and i have to say it works extremely well, and the glasses are quite comfortable. the best part about the glasses though, is that the screens are transparent to a degree, so you can see the "real world" through them while you are watching a video, if you want. alot of neat potential for video overlay, entertainment integreting live action and prerecorded/rendered images, etc.
  • Until stuff like this gets to the sub-$200 range (for some reason prices don't really bother me until they are above $200), I'll stick with my box, my TV, and my Virtual Boy. For all those who say the Virtual Boy is crap, what other video game system can you pick up at WalMart for $19 and buy the games at Electronics Boutique for $1?
  • I have owned a pair of iGlasses for a while now,
    (i bought them orignally for a wearable i was building, but found their transparent mode still had me bumping into walls...), so they have mainly been used for movie watching... I've found that their plain of focus is a little to close for me, and after a couple hours i get some eyestrain (although this may have been corrected in the newer version, i don't know), For instance, watching a normal movie on them is okay, but say, The Godfather, is too much.
    Also: A question for any more Quake2 savvy readers; Do any of you know how to get Quake2 to display alternating frame stereo? Then i could play it on my glasses, and i'd _never_ leave the house =:-)
  • They used to be made by Virtual i-O, and when they went out of business, were bought out by this company from Menlo Park.

    I picked up a pair at Incredible Universe's going-out-of-business sale for $250, including the motion tracker and VGA adapter. Pretty decent deal.

    They're roughly 360x240(x2 screens for 172k pixels), as I recall.

    And Quake doesn't support them. :(
  • Well, don't hold your breath for 1600x1200.

    I worked for Virtual i-O (the company that made the original product) a couple of years ago, and the LCD displays they use just are not going to get to that resolution anytime soon. (Those that do hit that resolution will be bigger, making for clunkier displays, and probably REALLY expensive)

    I don't expect costs to drop much in the near future, either--I expect we will see minor drops in the cost of small LCD's over the next few years, but to get really cheap will require a new "breakthrough" in display technology--something different from the active-matrix LCD display--which I don't see in the next 2~3 years.
  • Er? Those were all English words, but that sentence didn't make any sense.

  • At that res it might as well be VHS.... DVD is totally wasted. Though if they ever get these up to 1600x1200 I'll be pitching my monitor out the window.... j jason.bright@softimage.com #23: the nuns made me dress this way
  • I don't even want the portable DVD player... I would be happy to just have the glasses and get the same effect as a 6 foot wide TV (big or bigger than those projection systems, and clearer to boot) for only $499!

    Sounds pretty good if the quality is up to par
  • like i don't waste enough time watching movies already.
  • Computers... Phones.. I know I would be perfecrly happy in a cave wrapped up in an animal skin and shivering by a fire.... The point is that we don't really need very much, but we create it becasues its cool!

  • Muppets! (Score:2)

    by Maryck ( 84 )
    The trailer for the movie is located at www.muppetsfromspace.com in case your interested. It looks like its gonna rock.
  • Imagine what you could do if you had a jack in your car for glasses like these. You could use them for the display of night vision images, or heads-up instruments (no short drivers having to deal with images that float in the wrong areas). Maybe even feedback from proximity sensors when you're backing up. Not to mention you could have warning lights unconstrained by the size allotted on the instrument cluster.

    And your passengers could all watch movies on those long trips...
  • simulator [vnh.org] [1] [army.mil] [2], [cmu.edu] and motion [atevo.com] sickness all tend to be caused by differences between what is seen and what is felt (inner ear and sense of body). Make sure the first time you try this you give your movie-viewing passengers some waterproof containers.

    (Many poisons cause hallucinations, so getting rid of stomach contents when vision does not match other senses does have evolutionary advantage) [iupui.edu]

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