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."

Comments

Imagine the possibilities...

[craenor]

I can surf pr0n while driving!

Cause just talking on my cellphone, drinking coffee and eating a donut weren't distracting enough...

Re:Imagine the possibilities...

[DarkBlackFox]

Porn while driving eh? You sure the guy in front of you won't catch a glimpse in his rear view mirror and cause a hazardous traffic condition ;)

Could lead to a big mess on multiple fronts.

Re:Imagine the possibilities...

[stratjakt]

Actually, HUDs are about the most practical use I can think for these things.

Not surfing pron, but having your speedometer, tach, oil pressure blah blah in front of you so you dont have to look away from the road to make sure you didnt speed past that cop.

Re:Imagine the possibilities...

[vsprintf]

If your peripheral vision is so bad that you have to look down to see your speedometer, you shouldn't really be driving anyway.

Hmm. If you can focus a mile ahead in full sunlight, and still read a shaded speedometer with two scales (MPH and KPH) and all the other gauges, YOU 'DA MAN!! Keep eating those carrots, 'cause they're evidently working.

I can see right through that story

[dmachine]

Another useful application would be the cool reverse camera shot of zion bay door operators =D

Re:I can see right through that story

[Cyno01]

Heh, first thing that came to mind in that scene was, "Hey, Zion runs on Macs".

Transparent screens...

[milkmandan9]

...on the horizon? I'll definitely need to invest in some binoculars.

I've got enough trouble seeing the opaque monitor on my desk.

Damned CRTs

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally I will be able to get rid of that CRT taped to my windshield.

Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Transparent screens are nothing new. Liquid crystal displays are transparent. As for glowing transparent screens-- well that's something entirely different.

HUD displays

[gtrotsky]

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.

Augmented Reality

[jeroen94704]

Transparent displays would also be a significant advance for the field of Augmented Reality.

I don't know about you

[CptChipJew]

But I can see right through this little transparent scheme.

Do all of you need glasses?

[teamhasnoi]

Can't you see through this story? Clearly, it's an advertisement.

I would hope the editors would try and be a little less transparent.

I swear, sometimes I feel invisible around here.

Blue screen -- death

[Anonymous Coward]

So a blue screen of death while driving would block your vision while you careen into a wall, and really die. Cool!

Transparent screens...

[jd]

But how would you set the alpha channel?

Stacks

[JohnFluxx]

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.

transparent screens???

[bilbobuggins]

how in the hell am i supposed to pick my nose at work?

Re:transparent screens???

[fputs(shit, slashdot]

Try your finger. Hey it works for me.

Transparent screens already availible

[adzoox]

To me a better type of transparent screen, more like the one used in Minority Report already exists (by conventional means)

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.

Re:Transparent screens already availible

[hype7]

To me a better type of transparent screen, more like the one used in Minority Report already exists (by conventional means)

I love this "relate /. tech to movie" kind of thing. Whilst the movie itself sucked, Red Planet was full of cool future stuff; including some cool future uses for "transparent screens"; they folded one out and as it progressed across the body it overlaid bodily injuries. Another use was as a map; the screen overlaid directions and bearings, whilst still letting you see the terrain behind it. Very cool.

Nothing beats the mechanical dog out of that movie, though. That's what an AIBO should be like! :)

-- james

Videoconferencing

[justfred]

One application that could use this technology is videoconferencing - put the camera behind the monitor.

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.

Re:Videoconferencing

[GlassHeart]

I believe that this is a big factor in why videoconferencing always "feels strange" and perhaps part of why it hasn't caught on.

I doubt it.

In the good days, managers don't like videoconferencing because they don't earn airline miles that way. A lot of people like to travel on company expense, and pick up free tickets or upgrades for themselves along the way. Videoconferencing also tend to be troublesome to set up, so less technical people would probably rather use the phone if they can't just fly there.

For technical types, it's nearly impossible to conduct a meeting with the jerky motion and poor resolution. I frequently need to draw complex diagrams (which is why you needed a meeting in the first place, not just an email), and videoconferencing systems today fail miserably here.

Why hasn't it caught on? The question is what you're trying to replace. Most business or technical problems can be solved over the phone, instant messaging, and email. The ones that can't be solved that way can't be solved using videoconferencing either.

For daily use

[LlamaDragon]

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...

it's all about the wallpaper

[abes]

Now I don't have to waste valuable CPU cycles on creating a wallpaper.. I can just put real wall paper behind my display.

A major step forward for Linux!

[Cid Highwind]

We could stack several transparent monitors and *finally* have alpha-blending in xfree86!

obsession

[xv4n]

okay... first the japanese develop the invisible coat, and now this see-through screens, is that a pattern or what?

Already exists!

[green pizza]

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.

Hitachi already makes these

[deanj]

Hitachi makes these already:

Look through this

There's a show going in Baltimore this week that has other vendors of this sort of technology too.

Re:Can't Wait!!!

[wfmcwalter]

The light and mirrors solution is, from a safety perspective, greatly superior to a transparent screen. Existing projection-reflected-from-windshield systems use lenses to project the image focussed at infinity. That way a driver (whose eyes are already focussed at infinity when looking at the road ahead) doesn't have to pull focus in to 1m to read the HUD and then push focus back out to infinity to safely read the road ahead. Most of the time spent looking at your speedo on a normal car is the focus shift time, rather than the eye-movement time, so a projected HUD like the GM one you describe is the best solution. The HUD reticles used by military pilots also use projectors, and similarly project the pitch-ladder and other indicators at infinity, so they appear to float spectrally "out there" in front of the aircraft.

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:

• Advertising displays (bus shelters, hoardings, etc.)
• Programmable windows (push a button for tinted, another for clear, etc.)
• Perhaps active military camouflage
• Layer a bunch of these in a big sandwich and you've got a decent 2.5D display

Re:Can't Wait!!!

[Mr_Icon]

Most of the time spent looking at your speedo on a normal car

Sheesh. Remind me to never carpool with you.

Has existed for a LONG time

[moosesocks]

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.

HUDs, I think not.

[mohaine]

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.