Would You Wear Video Glasses? 239
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to EE Times, an Israeli company has developed a personal video display device that looks like a simple pair of glasses. You can use these glasses with various sources, such as a portable media player or your cell phone. This technology promises to eliminate the dizziness phenomenon usually associated with this kind of display. And with these glasses weighing only about 40 grams, you'll feel that you're viewing a 40-inch screen from a distance of 7 feet." Video screens embedded into eyewear isn't that new, but the footprint of these is smaller than what I've seen before, making them cooler to wear on the subway.
Wear them on the subway? (Score:5, Funny)
The /. Version (Score:2)
Think of the possibilities! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure the military would be interested in some applications too.
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:2)
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:2)
If this were really JUST like a pair of sunglasses (Score:3, Insightful)
Sadly, with these [primidi.com] that will never happen.
Re:If this were really JUST like a pair of sunglas (Score:2)
And .... (Score:2)
And while you're at it, go ahead and change your first and last name to "Borg".
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:2)
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:2)
And
I'd use them (Score:3, Interesting)
Certainly never on a subway or any other public place where you should be alert to your surroundings. They'd be ideal for taking on a trip to use on a plane or in a hotel room.
Re:I'd use them (Score:4, Funny)
FTFA:
Mirage claims its NanoPrism technology will alter the rice/performance of personal displays while solving the problems plaguing traditional personal displays, which include unacceptably large weight and form factor.
Re:I'd use them (Score:2)
Smaller? How about improved resolution. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Smaller? How about improved resolution. (Score:2)
These are just the optics - resolution is SEP (Score:2)
According to the article, "[Mirage Innovations Ltd.'s] technology is based on the principle of transforming a thin transparent plate into a complete wearable personal
Skip the spam (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.mirageinnovations.com/ [mirageinnovations.com]
Skip the Flash (Score:2)
Reading into it (Score:2)
And yes, I suffer from migraines so that might have something to do with it.
Strangely appropriate dyslexia moment (Score:2)
Maybe it's because I haven't had my coffee yet, but when I first looked at it - I could have sworn the website you linked was http://www.migraneinnovations.com/ [migraneinnovations.com]
Only if it has games and porn... (Score:5, Funny)
There's yet another unanswered question... (Score:2)
Re:Only if it has games and porn... (Score:2)
And now the Dutch military has very recently banned the showing of porn this is the ideal tool for lonely soldiers and sailors.
Mind the Gap (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's cool to wear shades underground.
Re:Mind the Gap (Score:2)
Yes, this is a joke.
Re:Mind the Gap (Score:2)
Re:Mind the Gap (Score:2)
Re:Mind the Gap (Score:2)
I will only do it until I need glasses... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I will only do it until I need glasses... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I will only do it until I need glasses... (Score:2, Troll)
Don't feel bad - when I was an undergrad I walked out on a physics recitation because the TA fucked up the difference between real and virtual images too, and I was so disgusted I left
Re:I will only do it until I need glasses... (Score:2)
Re:I will only do it until I need glasses... (Score:2)
On the "as bad as television" sense of safe. But not worse.
Seeing is believing... (Score:2)
If it does work as advertised, its potential is huge e.g. for hands-free PDAs in all sorts of repair and construction jobs as well as military applications.
Re:Seeing is believing... (Score:2)
Re:Seeing is believing... (Score:2)
Re:Seeing is believing... (Score:2)
Subways, seats, & stalls (Score:2)
Look, there are times & place video is appropriate & useful and times it is not. I'd love to be able to lean back in a comfortable seat and watch something, put my body in a position that is not looking-at-the-screen-on-the-wall/desk/stand. Heck give me a small wireless keyboard and I'll geek from the backyard hammock on a nice day. Airline seat? ANYTHING to avoid the salesdr
Re:Subways, seats, & stalls (Score:2)
Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
Reason not to wear them - Muggings! (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Expensie tech (As in a couple of hundred)
2) Not physically large
3) Highly visible to everyone else that you are using it
4) Blocks out significant part of your own visual field (and also audio)
5) Designed to be used outside of your own home (as otherwise why use it)
In a private situation (or on a plane) these glasses would be OK, but wear them on the subway, or sit in the park and you might as well put up a banner that says "Mug me!!"
But a solution would be to put a web cam on top of the glasses, and feed it back into the system as a "picture in picture" so you can keep track of the outside world while you gasp at the unblelievable plot quality of m:i:III
No (Score:2)
Also, they look incredibly dorky.
HD version of this would be nice. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've used the Sony version that you plugged into a TV, and that version was very low res, about 400px in height. I'm not sure you can make "affordable" wearable displays with any good resolution. Even though Mirage, the makers of this device, are using a single OLED/LCD it still going to cost a lot to produce enough pixels to satisfy the eye.
And I can't figure out how my glasses are going to fit in there.
Re:HD version of this would be nice. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah.
I saw a couple manufacturers of video glasses at CES. One set wouldn't fit over my glasses at all. The other set was supposed to fit, but didn't. I seem to have a head on the larger end of the spectrum, but still.
And the kicker... IIRC both devices had QVGA resolution. Rather useless for hacking, and not really that good for TV anymore either.
If any manufacturers are listening... I want a set that has large image size, and high resolution. 1280x1024 is barely acceptable, and 1920x1280 wou
Re:HD version of this would be nice. (Score:3, Funny)
Don't you think that, if it was technologically possible, it would have been done already, and tiny school children in Korea wo
Re:HD version of this would be nice. (Score:2)
Don't you think that, if it was technologically possible, it would have been done already, and tiny school children in Korea would be mailing in cereal box UPCs for them as a prize?
Unfortunately, there is a lot more to product viability than technology. Price is usually the biggest issue. If the business/marketing types don't think product X will sell at price point Y, then it won't get made. And though I curse them occasionally, they are correct more often than not.
It doesn't matter how cool the
How long til.. (Score:2)
Yet another step towards... (Score:2)
I Can Hardly Wait ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can hardly wait to enjoy dodging the guy who's using these to watch, say, the fighter chase inside the Death Star from Star Wars.
Re:I Can Hardly Wait ... (Score:2)
The other day I was riding home from work along a narrow road, going past a parked car on the other side so there wasn't room for anything coming the other way. I can hear really loud music coming from around the corner and sure enough here comes this hairdresser (I assume from the outfit) in a range rover with the stereo up full blast singing at about the same volume as the sound system along with the music into the mobile phone in his right hand and pumping the brakes in time with the catchy beat.
He gets
Re:I Can Hardly Wait ... (Score:2)
I'm a pedicab driver in downtown Denver (those bikes with the rear wheel lopped off and replaced with and axle, with a carriage mounted on top), I get requests for noname bars and restaurants that opened up a week ago. I have no idea where these places are and rolling around looking for them with 400+ pounds of people in a 300 pound bike is not only tiring but costs me money. Most pda's are too impractical, either too big, not weather proof, or too hard to o
Re:I Can Hardly Wait ... (Score:2)
Re:I Can Hardly Wait ... (Score:2)
Maybe ... (Score:2, Interesting)
First of all - they're hideous. Few types of (sun)glasses look good on people (depends on the facial shape amongst other things), so a one design fits all is out the window if you expect people to use them in public.
If I can get some that fit outside my own glasses, that'd be nice. Even better if you could adjust each screen to somehow present an image that apears sharp to whatever's wrong with your eyes. Not sure you can do that though
Re:Maybe ... (Score:2)
You won't find me wearing them in public to pass the time though...they're still quite ugly. Then again, so are those huge bluetooth headsets that seem to be growing out of the ear of every real estate agent I know, but th
Re:Maybe ... (Score:2)
Re:Maybe ... (Score:2)
Re:Maybe ... (Score:2)
Re:Maybe ... (Score:2)
The primary advantage they're touting besides weight seems to be that you get a perfectly aligned image to both eyes by splitting a single video source. What I want is the exact opposite - I want two independent video sources being presented so that true 3D can be done. Combine with good virtual 3D sound and you'd really have an "immersive" gaming environment.
A display like this also needs to have HD resolution - everyone doing displays like this talk about "40 inch screen at 7 feet", but conveniently fa
Re:Maybe ... (Score:2)
Re:Maybe ... (Score:2)
A 40" 720x480 image at 7 feet will look about the same as about an 11.5 inch (9.6x6.4) image on a 75dpi monitor at 2 feet. It isn't really that impressive, it's about the same as those portable DVD players. In addition, they didn't even say it is that high a resolution, it may be a 360x240 resolution image!
You're right that they aren't aiming this at people who want a virtual computer monitor, and that's why I'm not interested in it. You also missed that what I'd like most about a heads-up display is th
Would I wear them? (Score:2)
More desktop space or a 20 inch tube monitor that takes up so much space I glued a shelf ontop of it.
The ability to wear glasses... lean back with my wireless keyboard and trackball, and get something done.
I gotta say... while I like my old sony 20se, it won't last forever... and LCD is pretty attractive, glasses are even more so.
Re:Would I wear them? (Score:2)
I can touch type just fine, I can even touch drink coffee. I should have probally said I could replace my 20 incher with a smaller model... anything graphics I can pop o
they tried too hard.. (Score:4, Interesting)
They got the something light right, but until they can actually make these look like fashion wear, they shouldn't even try. It's like trying to make the ipod look like an earing. It would be big clunky, and ugly, but just trying to make the ipod look like an ipod has created a fashion trend in and of itself.
So far the only piece of wearable technology that can actually add cool points is something that's centuries old - The Wrist Watch [wikipedia.org]
Re:they tried too hard.. (Score:2)
However, and maybe someone can find the link for me....I remember the MIT Wearable guys had developed a laser that was tiny, clipped onto some existing glasses and projected a laser directly onto the retina that showed the screen. The laser was low powered enough wh
Nah (Score:2)
Perhaps they could sell them only in "white".
40 Inches at Seven Feet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Forty inches at seven feet is equivalent to approximately one inch (.81 inches, to be precise) at one foot, which isn't that big. It'll fill most of field of vision, though (hold a ruler one inch from your eye and compare).
Not inverse square. (Score:4, Informative)
Oh my god, I'm losing pixels! (Score:2)
Is it permanent? Will my TV always have fewer pixels? Or can I move the couch closer and reverse the process? Do they come back slowly over time, or will it be a sudden increase in resolution? Will the new pixels all show up on one side in a clump, or do they reappear evenly spaced among the existing pixels?
Re:40 Inches at Seven Feet? (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
The new cheating (Score:2, Funny)
Only at home... (Score:3, Insightful)
And even then, what would be the point? For the same money, I can buy a decent TV that 1) won't hurt my eyes, 2) friends can also enjoy, 3) doesn't requirement me to hide from the world because of how moronic I look.
Yes please (Score:5, Insightful)
And to those of you who wouldn't dare using it in public because of the fear being mugged: I hope the mass production of these devices would make them as common as the earplugs everyone is using with their MP3-players nowadays.
Re:Yes please (Score:2)
No thanks. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No thanks. (Score:2)
But I am a dork.
What's more my wife is a dork. My children are dorks. All my friends and most of my coworkers are dorks.
It used to bother me that some peoplei didn't like me becuase I was a dork. Then I figured out I didn't like them becuase they weren't dorks, so it's fair enough.
Sometimes it's not apparent whether somebody is a dork or not by looking at them. You have to interact wi
Re:No thanks. (Score:2)
The MP3 glasses seem to have failed.
If they blend direction sensing, WiFi, (Score:2)
I'd love to have an interpreter and a tour guide to enable me to look at something and be able to also be able to solicit information about what I'm seeing.
That would make a tour into something unique.
yes (Score:2)
Hey, what a great idea to include in a story! Oh, wait...
Re:yes (Score:2)
not yet. (Score:2)
hm (Score:2, Interesting)
Not that I don't like the idea ... I do. (Score:2)
Laptop display (Score:2, Insightful)
Any laptop screen that is backlit is necessarily hugely inefficient. Only a tiny amount of the light that it produces will pass through your pupil into your eyes. A far higher proportion of the light these glasses produce would be likely to reach your eyes, so they could be made very bright yet draw only a few milliwatts of power.
Microprocessors and peripherals could in theory be made to be many times m
Hell yeah! (Score:2)
One is direct interface to the brain. This is the ideal, but a looong way away.
So the other seems a likely intermediate step. Replace the screen with glasses that overlay a CG interface on what you see. Replace the keyboard (partially) with voice recognition. I say partially as I think a folded up keyboard will also be part of this system. Replace the mouse with d
Microvision (Score:2)
Re:Microvision (Score:2)
It has great potential though, e.g. the ability to change the focus of each pixel.
You might also be interested in www.lightblueoptics.co.uk.
They use laser projection, but in a different way. They are not talking about video goggles yet, but the technology is obviously applicable.
Issue in the past with such devices: eye injury (Score:2, Interesting)
Virtual Reality Goggles (Score:2)
However, things seem to be moving a bit more quickly now and I've seen a number of possibilities, of which this is just the latest.
Also relevant is the
Would I?! (Score:2)
Re:space goggles? (Score:3, Insightful)
the man looks like a 5 feet superfly with enormous goggles.
but now imagine, going to bed with your wife when she is 50, then wearing the glasses and looking at some good old german 'romance' movie wouldn't be that bad at all
Edward! (Score:2)
http://www.inetres.com/gp/anime/bebop/09/bebop_09
Give me a Data Dog and a Mac mini and I'm set.
Re:space goggles? (Score:2)
If you're talking about the picture of the guy on the "demo" page, he reminded me of the guy playing "virtual virtual skee-ball" at an amusement park in Futurama.
Re:Odd choice of logo design (Score:2)
Wonder how long until they're sued?
http://www.sony.jp/CorporateCruise/Press/200005/0 0 -0515B/logo1.gif [www.sony.jp]
http://www.tmura.org/images/donor_logos/mirage_log o.jpg [tmura.org]
Thought I'd look it up since I had no idea what the Walkman logo was like. You're not wrong. That is pretty cheeky.
yea yea yea (Score:2)
Re:Can you DIGG it? (Score:2)
Re:Nuts (Score:2)
Re:Next stop wearable computers... (Score:2)
Re:The glassed need two things (Score:2)
Re:More fun than looking directly at a nuke blast (Score:2)