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Transparent Screens on the Horizon?
mhesseltine writes "According to United Press, researchers in Japan are developing transparent transistors. This could bring about see-through screens like those in Minority Report. Also, I imagine would be better heads-up displays (HUDs) for vehicles, layered flat panel displays, and new methods of interfacing with information screens."
I can surf pr0n while driving!
Cause just talking on my cellphone, drinking coffee and eating a donut weren't distracting enough...
Another useful application would be the cool reverse camera shot of zion bay door operators =D
You've got a lot to learn before you can beat me. Try again, kiddo! (ha ha ha!)
...on the horizon? I'll definitely need to invest in some binoculars.
I've got enough trouble seeing the opaque monitor on my desk.
Finally I will be able to get rid of that CRT taped to my windshield.
Transparent screens are nothing new. Liquid crystal displays are transparent. As for glowing transparent screens-- well that's something entirely different.
I actually think it'd be hard to see a full colour image behind a HUD type display. The colours in the background would blend with the colours in the HUD display. That's why HUDs always use monocrome green.
Transparent displays would also be a significant advance for the field of Augmented Reality.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
I went to the newly renovated Ocean World exhibit at the Museum of Natural History a few nights ago. Their information kiosks feature a two-layered display. It is quite striking.
The top layer shows information about the selected creature, while the bottom layer shows the "tree of life". Elements on both layers are selectable via touchscreen. The bottom screen is visible through the top screen - both through a window and more faintly through the content of the top screen.
But I can see right through this little transparent scheme.
Vonal Declosion
I would hope the editors would try and be a little less transparent.
I swear, sometimes I feel invisible around here.
So a blue screen of death while driving would block your vision while you careen into a wall, and really die. Cool!
But how would you set the alpha channel?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You could have several behind each other - build up a 3D display ;)
I don't know how close you could get one behind another, but even if there is say 1cm gap between each layer, you could still have cool effects.
how in the hell am i supposed to pick my nose at work?
Wonder if you could layer these screens to provide depth of vision as well...
There would be some interesting applications for a screen that could allow information to be displayed in three dimensions.
By embedding reflective but transprent phosphors and other chemicals/compounds into plexiglass or glass one can project images onto that glass with a normal projector.
I did this as an experiment just after Minority Report using a tiny xb31 HP projector and plexiglass. Gives a really neat effect - just need low light / dark room (also as in Minority report)
Although the layered screens i suppose couldn't be done this way.
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This is already possible with one-way mirrors reflecting the screen, but one-way transparent screens would make it easier.
Instead of having the camera at the top of the screen and looking back and forth, put it directly behind the middle of the screen, about 2/3 of the way up. Or have smart software that would track where the other person's eyes are and put the camera between their eyes so you could look directly at them.
I believe that this is a big factor in why videoconferencing always "feels strange" and perhaps part of why it hasn't caught on.
Well the military uses are profound. HUD's (Heads Up Display) are still fairly primitive and this will allow for very advanced ones.
For personal use, having your windshield as a display hooked up to infrared camera's would increase nightime driving safety. (i think cadillac already has a primitive system)
Also, the article state's that the technology can make LCD's a lot brighter.
This would also allow a user to have multiple screens overlapping one another, kind of like transparencies but much more powerfull.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Extremely convince illusions created by layering multiple levels of transparent screens. True 3D, though only so much parallax can be created.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
...I imagine that these will not be low $$$ items. Therefore, if the internals are transparent how will any repairs be made to prevent against handing out a lot of money to replace a broken/malfunctioing one.
Am I the only one who would put something solid behind the transparent screen so I wasn't distracted by the stuff behind it? People walking around back there, maybe the dog running through my documents...it'd tick me off pretty quick.
That may just be me though...
That is a pretty amazing observation. Your attention to detail has no equal. However, next time I suggest you post your findings to the correct discussion. :)
--
mcp.kaaos
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Check out the sci-fi flik 'Mission To Mars'. There are at least two examples in M2M where see-through screens are in use...one is in the mars orbiter, where a screen about a meter wide extends down from the ceiling, and the other are the hand-held screens in use on the surface of Mars, where they are not only transparent, but they roll up when not in use. The actors make interesting use of the see-through screens in both cases. Shame the trailers don't show either screen.
Driving while reading the news or doing other stuff? Oh, I think it'll be the next killer application...
Now I don't have to waste valuable CPU cycles on creating a wallpaper.. I can just put real wall paper behind my display.
That already exists, its called smart glass, or electric glass.
If you're well-to-do you can have windows in your house that you can set anywhere from completely transparent to opaque by turning a dial.
It's basically just LCD tech. It's really expensive stuff, too.
I think everyone missed the point of the article.
This is different, actually having transparent transistors, so you could have an invisible CPU.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
We could stack several transparent monitors and *finally* have alpha-blending in xfree86!
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okay... first the japanese develop the invisible coat, and now this see-through screens, is that a pattern or what?
They'll need to choose a material for the transistors that has the index of refraction as everything else in the display, otherwise it will be tough to see through (like frosted glass).
It's the whole reason the Predator (in the movie with the same name) wasn't completely invisible. Those pesky physics always spoil a good time!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The display you're thinking of is a MultiLayerDisplay made by Deep Video Imaging.
The top layer is a mostly transparent LCD (not perfectly transparent, but close enough) and the bottom layer is a standard LCD with a powerful backlight. The effect is amazing!
I saw this display and a few others at SGI's developer conference last week -- gobs of really cool stereo 3D and psuedo-stereo 3D monitors. The coolest was one by SeeReal, a display that tracks the position of the user's eyes to provide a true stereo image without needing any special eyewear. The downside of most of the displays is that they're designed for one user only.
This would make it possible to stack the RGB pixels on top of each other making it possible to display any color with a single pixel. Would that make the resolution of my laptop three times greater?
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I'm a Tasty-vore. If it's Tasty, I'll eat it.
I got to play with a few such monitors at the Silicon Graphics Inc (SGI) developer conference last week. Deep Video Imaging has a multilayer display, exactly as you described. Also, SeeReal has a truely stereo (one image per eye) monitor that works by tracking the user's eye position. The downside of the SeeReal monitor is the lack of support for more than one user at a time.
Look through this
There's a show going in Baltimore this week that has other vendors of this sort of technology too.
To each their own, but I for one don't especially want this. I *like* my flat-panel where I can seeit (and not behind it). :-)
For regular computer display purposes, a transparent screen doesn't seem terribly useful, due to contrast and "visual noise" interference from whatever is behind the screen (mitigated a bit if the screen is frosted).
Still, there's plenty of possible applications for this:
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Sheesh. Remind me to never carpool with you.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
LCD screens aren't completely transparent and they have to be extra bright to make up for it.
Here is a link to more information about lcd displays
lcd transistor
Imagine the size of the video card and its heat sink and fans on that 3D monitor! A video card for a single array of pixels can be pretty impressive these days - now we're rendering a matrix of pixels.
:-)
Seems like resolution would have to be low for this to be introduced. If you take 1024x768 and make it, say 256 layers thick (since it seems that there would have to be spacing between each later) - that's 200 million pixels to manage! And the memory required for color depth! My goodness!
Seems like a good thing for the entertainment business to prototype, though. Shall we get the Futurliners going again, GM?
So, a couple of thoughts...
What about the angle of the 3D monitor? A modern LCD is pretty good, but you still lose some color and/or clarity at an angle. Now you're adding depth and possibly a gap between layers. Seems like you'll have to be perfectly straight on in order to see things right. And when you are, you are looking down at some pixels (when you look at the bottom of the screen). How will the depth/gap be handled there?
For the car application... what about sun light? My LCD monitor on my notebook is useless in the sun. Now we make them transparent and put them on a windshield?
Can we handle some color depth issues with "overprinting"? If our color depth were only two, for the sake of the example, maybe yellow and blue, could we get green by displaying yellow on one layer and blue on the next layer?
I guess we won't see these for a while! I want to see a demo/prototype on a Futurliner, though.
Transparent LCD screens have existed for many, many years. They first appeared in the devices which were used to convert overhead projectors into a sort of ''poor man's projecter" (this was at the time when the only alternatives were 3-gun CRT projectors which were big, heavy, and expensive).
How do you think LCD projectors work? Basically, they shine a bright light through a very small, transparent LCD.
Desktop and Laptop LCDs are also transparent. Most simply have a piece of white plastic on the back of them (to reflect and evenly distribute light from the backlight. Of course, the big problem with LCDs are that they need to be backlit to increase contrast and brightness.
I believe OLEDs were intended to eliminate the need for a backlight, and I'd presume that they'd be transparent like an LCD. Whichever way you look at, we've got some amazing technology headed our way in the next few years.
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I imagine would be better heads-up displays (HUDs) for vehicles
Normally HUDs have the requirement of 'Focus as Infinity'. This allows you to read them without refocusing your eyes. A flat LCD wouldn't achive this.
As a side effect of of the infitity focus, the size of a displayed image on a HUD doesn't descrease as you get farther away, only the viewable area gets smaller. It is pretty neat to be able to read the small letters on a HUD from across a room, even if you have to read them one at a time.
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I already have a completely transparent screen today, now if I could just remember where I put the darn thing...
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Years ago I heard of a laptop where the backlight could be removed from the screen, and the hinge folded flat, so the whole unit could be set on top of an overhead projector.
A little Googling turns up an educational review of projector options where it's briefly mentioned, but I was unable to find any specific reviews of the machines mentioned.
Personally I want a display like that, with an optional diffuser to slip in back so I can use ambient light instead of the backlight, to save power.