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!

Comments

Just what the world needs...

[OakLEE]

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.

Uh...what babes?

[K8Fan]

"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?

Re:Uh...what babes?

[SurfsUp]

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.
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Re:Uh...what babes?

[John Jorsett]

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.

Never make it to market

[cei]

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??

Vapor

[Daniel Ashbrook]

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.

Take this a step further.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Take this a step further.

[w00ly_mammoth]

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

19" at 30" at 800x600

[kevin805]

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?

[r-jae]

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

The REAL marketing niche

[Elvis Maximus]

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?

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These things are complete vapor

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Available Q1 2001.

[zniper]

According to this article over at ZDNet, they'll be available Q1 2001.

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

And one step back

[Greyfox]

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.