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19" Monitor Goes Portable
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!
seems like the PC card interface would make it hard to use with a desktop.
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.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
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 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.
Noviota.
De Novo. Iota.
Starting Afresh. Very Small.
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?
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
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.
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WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
This sig intentionally left justified.
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.
- 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.
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.
Let's get a few good laughs by reading their marketing BS:
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.
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.
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.
They'll probably sell a pair to this guy. 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-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.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
If only they added asilicon micro-ring gyros for motion-tracking!
The inViso eShades looks to be a lot less bulky than earlier personal-display devices.
I used to own a pair of Virtual Reality i-glasses, 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 are still way too expensive for the average Joe!
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.
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.
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.
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Daniel Zeaiter
daniel@academytiles.com.au
http://www.academytiles.com.au
ICQ: 16889511
"What's the res, what's the weight, what's the..."
what you think:
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Don't front.
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You don't suppose they're talking about porn, do you?
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
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.
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.
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....'
mmmmmmm Shiner Bock
Doesn't sound all that much like vapor to me.
-- Einar
so: build in the opposite of steadi-cam. small movements of the head result in large movements of the virtual display.
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.
Yes. In fact, it says so on the webpage that there are provisions for the insertion of corrective lenses (into the product).
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I think you are referring to the Virtual Retinal Displays (VRDs) that were being developed at the Univ of Washington's Human Interface Technology Lab.
A company called Microvision 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.
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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.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
two words:
Virtual Boy
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.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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