Coming Soon, Super Vision

lil_nohreaga writes "Wired is reporting that several companies are developing electronically controlled lenses to provide enhanced vision. From the article: Thanks to technologies created for astronomical telescopes and spy satellites, aberrometers can map a person's eye with extreme accuracy. Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball, and structures in the eye scatter the resulting beam of light."

Comments

Other applications

[BWJones]

Other potential applications of this technology include the ability to help people with retinal degenerative diseases prolong their useful vision by dynamically mapping projections of images to other areas of the retina that are not affected by degeneration. Of course this will do nothing for the degenerative process, but it could buy some folks a bit more time until we can perfect retinal interventions (biological and/or bionic) to rescue vision loss.

As an aside, this technology to measure the optics of the eye is currently used in many procedure to correct vision such as in LASIK. You can read a little bit about LASIK and see a movie of the procedure here.

Re:Other applications

[MindStalker]

If these lenses can change optics on the fly, wouldn't it be possible with some extra controll mechanisms to be able to optically zoom as well, that would really rock.

Re:Other applications

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you sound knowledgeable about the eye... Will this help w/ macular degeneration? But my grandfathers had it, and I am wondering about my prospects, should it affect me... Posting as an AC because asking a question here gets you modded down...

Re:Other applications

[BWJones]

The implant *may* help those with macular degeneration. You should know that there are two major forms of macular degeneration, a wet form and a dry form and both are surprisingly common. Both forms have different primary causes, and can also be genetically mediated. So, I would encourage you to be careful with your eyes, wear your sunglasses, eat fruits and veggies and exercise to minimize the chance of both forms. We are actively working on solutions for vision rescue that are biological and bionic approaches, but they will be years away and there are no current cures for vision loss.

Re:Other applications

[marco.antonio.costa]

Yeah, just use an off-the-shelf cortical interface to control the desired zoom level. That would be MODERN. :p

Re:Other applications

[master_p]

And then Bill Gates is the first person to afford such a device, thus making the Slashdot Gates-borg icon a reality!

Re:Other applications

[MindStalker]

Simple blink codes could work, but I'd hate to be driving and accidently blink a code..

Re:Other applications

[HexDoll]

Maybe now they can make nipples that work too.

"Kryten: It's indescribable, Spare Head Two. True, I'm having a few problems coping with the human emotions, and there's no zoom, the nipples don't work and I could show you a snapshot of something that would make your eyes spin like fruit machines! But that apart, it's all going well."

Re:Other applications

[Ironsides]

Nah, just having something else that we control specifically. Such as you open your eyes wide to have them zoom in, and squint to zoom out (or vice versa). It only works when you hold them past a certain threshold for a bit, so blinking won't activate it.

Re:Other applications

[Anonymous Coward]

When are you guys gonna come up with a cure for floaters? I think if I got rid of my floaters, the resulting improvement in my vision would far outweigh anything some lens could provide!

Re:Other applications

[Firehed]

It'd be nice, but I think just being able to see clearly would be a welcome first step. My dad is legally blind without his glasses/contacts I'm pretty sure (probably about 20/4000 vision) and apparently his eyes are too bad for laser surgery, as most places won't do it at all if they can't fully correct it, so he's stuck with some rediculously strong perscription.

But in-eye optical zoom would certainly be nice. I'll tell you, creating a custom ipod theme is a biatch to do... anyone who's tried to count pixels with such a rediculously small pixel pitch would agree.

Of course, the real question is whether they'll help you find your perpetually lost car keys.

Re:Other applications

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, zoom, so that way when you're watching your hi def tivo'd "wardrobe malfunctions" ....

Re:Other applications

[jheath314]

The concept you describe is good, but your suggested implementation (open wide to zoom in, squint to zoom out) is the reverse of what one does naturally. When I squint, it is usually an attempt to see something better.

On a related tangent, there's a guy at the University of Toronto (Steve Mann) who's been working on wearable computers for decades. If what he claims is true*, he controls the computer in part through a sensor which picks up his eye movements, allowing him to manipulate menues projected onto (or perhaps through?) his glasses.

* I had the opportunity to try on his computer-enhanced glasses once. I didn't see any menues... just some fuzzy green numbers off to one side, with no really evident UI. He claimed before lending the glasses to me that he was watching a movie. Who knows... the guy does have a reputation for being a little nutty.

Re:Other applications

[Anonymous Coward]

Squinting to zoom in is fine... except for the fact that it's also what you do naturally when confronted with a bright light. I don't know about you, but if something's blinding me, the last thing I want to do is increase my magnification of it.

Re:Other applications

[JonathanR]

What about a scroll wheel on the end of your "vertical mouse". Male only option though.

Re:Other applications

[xenn]

that's something to do with the amount of fibre in your diet. If it's really that bad, you could install some ventilation in your bathroom :)

Re:Other applications

[MindStalker]

Obviously safty systems could exist, infact these could dim bright lights and reduce glare if properly programed.

Re:Other applications

[Grab]

I'd forgotten that one. :-) That's the double-Polaroid episode, right?

"Is this normal?"
"..."
"It wouldn't all fit on one."

"How's Kryten doing?"
"If he asks you to look at his photo album, just say no."

Re:Other applications

[Anonymous Coward]

No mod points today, so..
Hahahahahahahahaha!
+1 Funny!

Re:Other applications

[Ironsides]

Increasing magnification will reduce the brightness of the light by reducing the amount of light picked up. This is why zoom lenses need a wider aperture to pick up enough light to see by. It's also why if you put enough zoom and multiplying lenses on a camera, and point it straight at the sun, you won't see anything.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess it's time to throw away those X-ray glasses I got by saving a bazillion bazooka chewing gum comics.

Re:Great

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Who needs X-ray glasses when we have HD vision? Twice the resolution!

Old tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Johnson Smith Co have been advertising similar specs these for years in the back of comic books.

A crutch?

[op12]

Would your eyes (or brain) adapt to that making your vision much worse when you're not wearing these "enhanced" glasses? (In much the same way as increasing eyeglass prescriptions cause your eyesight to deteriorate further and increase your prescription again.)

I suppose it's only a matter of time before they make it so the thing is in your eye all the time (in contacts or implant form - I wonder if it could emit a red light to those looking at you? :)

Re:A crutch?

[omeomi]

(In much the same way as increasing eyeglass prescriptions cause your eyesight to deteriorate further and increase your prescription again.)

I don't know this for sure, but I have to think that this thought is nothing more than a marketing gimmick from the Lasik community. I wear glasses, and have had roughly the same prescription for the last 15 years. When my prescription has changed, it hasn't been by enough to make any noticeable difference, and the only reason I've changed it has been because I've gotten new glasses because my old glasses have gone out of style (or, once, because I sat on them). Most other people I know with glasses are in approximately the same situation--their vision got a bit blurry in childhood for some reason, but hasn't changed much since then. So the thought that glasses will actually make your eyes worse over time is ridiculous, the opposite seems more logical. If I don't wear glasses, my eyes will be under more strain, and will get worse. Wearing glasses should preserve my vision...

Re:A crutch?

[Dr. Eggman]

All part of the natural evolution from a creation of technologies to a dependency on said technology.

I for one welcome our new techno-overlords and would like to remind them that as a /.er I could be useful for shooting down people who argue against our benefactors with an impenetrable wall of nonsensical reasoning, pseudo-sensical reasoning, and circular statements.

Re:A crutch?

[op12]

From here:

"Usually, eye doctors will prescribe distance glasses for correcting blurred distance vision. Unfortunately, distance glasses actually make nearsightedness worse and irreversible. This is because they force the focusing muscles to stay locked up. This in turn forces the eyes to further elongate, resulting in the need for stronger distance glasses as time goes by. The child is thus doomed to a lifetime of total reliance on distance glasses to see distant objects clearly and progressively worsening nearsightedness. Distance glasses are a false friend.

There is an alternative - reading glasses. If a child starts wearing reading glasses for prolonged periods of reading and other close work at the first sign of any difficulty with distance vision, the focusing muscles will relax and cannot lock up. Reading glasses relax the eyes. There should be no further elongation of the eye. Distant objects can be seen without the need for any glasses. It is important to note that the child will not be reliant on reading glasses. They are simply a protective tool that should be used during long periods of close work. If strong enough reading glasses are used, nearsightedness should be prevented."

Re:A crutch?

[Fallingcow]

All part of the natural evolution from a creation of technologies to a dependency on said technology.

Which is why we need to take control of evolution.

Genetic engineering isn't just good for making humans better, but will be necessary if we want maintain the same physical abilities that we have now.

Re:A crutch?

[vodkamattvt]

The parent is definately correct. This is cutting edge .. many doctors still refuse to acknowledge this. If you ask your eye doctor about it and he/she dismisses it, go and get another eye doctor that at least tries to keep up with modern science.

Original parents assertion that no one he knows eyes have gotten worse .. all of my friends (in their 20s, as well as my sister) have had their eyes deteriorate terribly and seen their diagnosis go from -1 down to -7 or more. This does not occur if you need reading glasses, or if you have a stigmatism. This is for myopia (nearsightedness).

My eyes had started to blur after years of computer work and reading and I went to get contacts. I use reading glasses as well (although Im only at -.5) to prevent more vision loss. My sister had her vision down to -7 at age 21. She was just told to get reading glasses for close work to prevent more vision loss. So the good news is that the medical establishment is finally catching on (albeit slowly probably because the worse your eyes get the more $$ they get).

Re:A crutch?

[Anonymous Coward]

The child is thus doomed to a lifetime of total reliance on distance glasses to see distant objects clearly and progressively worsening nearsightedness.

Huh. To start with, I was pretty much legally fucking blind at age 7. I wore glasses for about 5 years before starting to wear contacts at age 12. My eyesight had pretty much settled into the state it's in now by the time I was 18 or so. I'm now 36.

I've worn contacts for most of my life, broken by about a 9 year period of wearing glasses. During that time my eyesight did get worse -- because I had also contracted Type II diabetes. Once I brought my blood sugar under control, my prescription returned to exactly what it had been before the onset of diabetes. I confirmed this when I pulled an old pair out of the glovebox and found they worked perfectly (except for the nosepiece). So I'm somewhat skeptical of this, especially the gradually worsening part. I expect presbyopia to start to affect me in the next decade or so -- maybe by then they'll have these surgeries perfected and I can have autofocusing lenses installed or something cool.

I see a sibling post claiming something similar -- one thing I would like to note is that I do not use reading glasses and I read a lot. So aside from my vision being really bad (and I do have astigmatism in one eye), why am I not seeing my vision deteriorate even further. For 18 years it has been about the same. What gives?

Re:A crutch?

[king-manic]

Original parents assertion that no one he knows eyes have gotten worse .. all of my friends (in their 20s, as well as my sister) have had their eyes deteriorate terribly and seen their diagnosis go from -1 down to -7 or more. This does not occur if you need reading glasses, or if you have a stigmatism. This is for myopia (nearsightedness).

And I am the freakish counter example. My eyes have been stedily gettign better as I wear glasses. Going from -3.9 to my current -3.1 in the last 3 years. (both my eyes are the same prescription.)

Re:A crutch?

[jafac]

I guess the real question is:

If this theory is saying that myopia is caused by malconditioning of cilial muscles - why not propose a regimen of physical therapy to condition these muscles counter to what causes the condition?

About 5 years ago, I started having severe back pain, muscle spasms, pinched sciatic, disk degeneration, the works.

Various treatments, drugs, etc. failed to reverse the course of the problem. Until I saw a physical therapist. The therapy did not immediately work. In fact, the first therapy I tried, the McKenzie method, didn't do jack squat. But Then my therapist decided to have me do some stretching. Not yoga (I had tried yoga earlier on, and it just increased the inflammation, spasms, and pain). Just some ordinary hamstring and gluteal stretches. They didn't even begin to work for about 6 weeks, but after that period, I started to improve. In fact, it even improved the pain I was feeling in my knees. And I've very gradually improved over the past 6 months or so. I still have a lot of pain and stiffness, I still have badly damaged cartilege, and I still have a patch of numbness the size of a tea saucer on my right leg from a pinched sciatic nerve. But I'm much more mobile now, and in a lot less pain. When I've not done my stretches for about a week, the spasms come back. My therapist says that my job, which had me sitting down for 8 hours a day, and lack of physical activity and excercise, coupled with an overall tendency for inflexibility and muscle stiffness, probably caused the disk degeneration, which itself is irreversible. (In addition, I'm also using a sit-stand tray for my workstation, I stand about 4 hours and sit for the other 4 hours, depending on my comfort level - this seems to have less of an impact on my back pain than the stretching).

But it sounds like this theory of myopia is the same; muscles get conditioned by too much near-focussing, to be in cronic spasm. Maybe excercises, like alternate focussing on near/far objects for some time could forstall the process that causes the eyeball elongation?

Re:A crutch?

[dfghjk]

I guess since all of your friends have a particular problem then everyone in the world does. My eyesight deteriorated through my teenage years then leveled off before I was 20. My prescription stayed the same from that point for 25 years. A year ago I had custom lasik and now have 20/15 in each eye. Curiously, my prescription all those years was too strong by nearly a full power according to my lasik doctor. You would think that having that would have accelerated my so-called deteriorating vision. It did not.

I was told to expect exactly my experience when I was a teenager. I would suggest that there are many like me, perhaps more than are like all your friends.

Re:A crutch?

[Jesus_666]

But it sounds like this theory of myopia is the same; muscles get conditioned by too much near-focussing, to be in cronic spasm. Maybe excercises, like alternate focussing on near/far objects for some time could forstall the process that causes the eyeball elongation?

Why do you think video game manuals have been recommending exactly that for the last ten years? (At least they recommend to make a pause every half to full hour, giving the eyes some rest by focusing on distant objects.)

Re:A crutch?

[Original Replica]

Which is why we need to take control of evolution.

Do you mean like selective breeding? We could do that now and the long term benefits to the human race might be wonderful, if the angry mobs don't kill us first.

Re:A crutch?

[Tarantulus]

Curiously, my prescription all those years was too strong by nearly a full power according to my lasik doctor. your lasik doctor lied, speaking as a former opticians assistant myself, if your spectacles were that far from your necessary prescription you would have been very unwell, suffering nausea and extreme migraines. as for distance spectacles "locking up" your muscles, this is an urban myth and frankly it scares me that people believe this. The reason i left the profession was due to the large amount of people who view the optician as a sales person and not a medical practitioner..

Re:A crutch?

[op12]

Yes, this is further described in the page I linked (I was avoiding pasting a huge block of text).

"Whenever close work is done without the protection of reading glasses, it is important to:

1. Hold the work as far away as possible.
2. Use as much light as possible in order to reduce the size of the pupil and, consequently, the accommodation.
3. Look into the distance frequently to relax the accommodation."

Re:A crutch?

[John Whitley]

The parent is definately correct. This is cutting edge .. many doctors still refuse to acknowledge this.

There are times that any profession, physicians included, undergoes the throes of a Khunian revolution. Consider the recent Nobel awarded to the great researchers responsible for correctly characterizing peptic ulcers as a bacterial infection. They had to fight the established dogma that ulcers were stress-related and thereby mystic and incurable.

Both the old myths of ulcers and the new urban legend of eyeglasses causing poor eyesight lacked one big thing: rigorous scientific proof. Are there *any* well-conducted, statistically valid, peer-reviewed studies that show (e.g.) that glasses worsen myopia? That reading glasses prevent or reverse the progress of myopia in children? This keeps coming up as an urban legend, and if there's no science backing it, doctors are right to "refuse to acknowledge it" -- because it's a load of bollocks!

Re:A crutch?

[jafac]

Why do you think video game manuals have been recommending exactly that for the last ten years?

As an entirely selfish prophylactic for product liability lawsuits.
Certainly not as an experiment in halting myopia.

Re:A crutch?

[blincoln]

This sounds pretty sketchy to me.

I was born with perfect eyesight, and it didn't start to worsen until I was 7 or 8. Obviously I wasn't wearing any kind of corrective lenses before that. It got worse until I was in my early twenties, and has been more or less stable since then.

Furthermore, I have doubts about the physical mechanism that this theory describes. It implies that wearing corrective lenses forces your eyes to focus at some "unnatural" position, as if the eye were focusing on the corrective lens, rather than the distant objects it's seeing. Maybe I'm not interpreting it correctly. Certainly focusing on very close objects for long periods is stressful on your eyes, but that's not how corrective lenses work.

Re:A crutch?

[Jesus_666]

I meant: "Why have they been ordering people to specifically look at distant things?" Probably because it was already known that spending hours focusing on small letters twenty centimeters from your face is unhealthy.

Re:A crutch?

[CAIMLAS]

no, it's completely true. I've experienced it first-hand (as well as reversal towards better natural vision through 'therapy') and long before lasik was even remotely common.

Try this 'experiment': if you need glasses to view distances crisply, go to the drug store and pick up a pair of normal reading glasses. Wear them whenever you're doing close work if your perscription is weak enough, or simply get a weaker perscription of your nearsighted glasses.

You will find that your eyes adapt back to a better, less visually stressful perscription by doing this.

Re:A crutch?

[omeomi]

But if that works, then I'll have to go buy new glasses ;-(

Re:A crutch?

[op12]

I suggest reading this validation page, particularly numbers 8 and 9.

http://www.preventmyopia.org/validation.html

Re:A crutch?

[lucas teh geek]

im so near sighted i cant read my monitor, some 30cm away, without my glasses. arent reading glasses just going to make it appear futher away? (assumption based on far sighted people putting stuff they want to read on the floor when they dont have their glasses)

Re:A crutch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very interesting and informative, thanks for the link.

Re:A crutch?

[John Whitley]

Good link, but the references get successively weaker as they shift from the relationship of close work and myopia to the effectiveness of plus lenses in halting and/or reversing the progress of myopia. Esp. number 2 and 5, with phrases such as "This is common knowledge and is covered in all vision textbooks." and "This is self-evident since the ciliary muscle has no opportunity to relax." If something is common knowledge, then provide the early seminal reference on it. Really. And NOTHING is self-evident when it comes to biological systems. (In this context, there's a trivial example: what about sleep? Eye muscles don't relax during sleep?)

The data shown for 8 is appealing, but insufficient. Numbers for the three groups are given, but what ARE those numbers? Average, median, etc? What was the distribution, statistical significance of the changes, etc? Was the study large enough and properly conducted such that the findings were statistically valid? Yes, I can go dig up the original paper, but the reference itself wasn't presented with rigor.

#9 has *no* reference to statistically validated data. Just case studies. Case studies are interesting to get an idea about a phenomenon, but you can pick and choose case studies to show *anything* -- just see the other replies to this thread for examples of that.

Last but not least, the researcher cited in #9 is none other than the creator of the site and the founder of the International Myopia Prevention Association, per their about page: http://www.preventmyopia.org/aboutus.html

Note that none of this is damning, but it takes a lot more rigor (and some chutzpah) to push though a change in the established thinking than this organization seems to be putting forth from their "validation" page.

So the question becomes: is this for real? Or is it the pipe dream of one man who hasn't found a way to conclusively prove (or disprove) his claims?

Note that I'm not trying to cast aspersions on this organization or Dr. Rehm. I'm only pointing out that it is very important to very rigorously evaluate all the random claims that one comes across these days. Conversely, it is extremely challenging to rigorously present an as-yet unaccepted scientific position.

Some people lack vision

[nickname225]

FTA "Nobody has begged us to let them see a road sign two miles earlier." This kind of limited thinking is so rampant that this guy actually uttered this comment without any hesitation. The successful companies create products that enhance people's lives BEFORE they are begged. They create new technologies and then find applications.

Re:Some people lack vision

[Anonymous Custard]

Forest searcher/rescuers might appreciate binocular-vision while scanning a panorama for any signs of a lost hiker.

Sports fans might appreciate HD-quality zoomed images from their upper-deck seats.

No, nobody wants to see road signs two miles earlier (unless those signs warned them of traffic so they could get off at the next exit). But other applications do exist.

Re:Some people lack vision

[CreatureComfort]

Turn in your /. - geek cred immediatly! Shame on you for not including long distance upskirts/voyuerism in your short list of applications. Everyone knows that porn is what drives all new technologies.

Re:Some people lack vision

[tlhIngan]

No, nobody wants to see road signs two miles earlier (unless those signs warned them of traffic so they could get off at the next exit). But other applications do exist.

Seeing road signs far ahead might actually be a benefit - I'm sure practically everyone has had someone cut them off because they were in the wrong lane and needed to turn left/right (or better yet, turn from the middle lane. Double points for seeing someone turning in the middle lane while traffic around them could legally go straight or turn!). Or perhaps avoid the fender-bender caused by people slowing down excessively at an intersection to read the street names. Combine the two for SUPER JACKPOT points.

(I prefer to do the "right" thing and continue with traffic rather than try these stunts, but that's just a minority. Others seem willing to risk an accident by doing stunts like this. And the last thing one needs in the world is a somewhat newish or scared driver nearby when these stunts are attempted).

So seeing street signs 2 miles ahead (especially on busy highways and freeways) is a good idea - gives no excuse for people not having plenty of opportunity and time to get into the lane they need to. Especially somewhat tricky intersections and exits where the right lane isn't the most obvious one. Or heck, just seeing that where you want to stop has "no parking" signs down it, then you can turn into the nearby parking garage rather than overshooting and turning around.

Re:Some people lack vision

[Gulthek]

The problem with seeing signs from two miles away is that while you are looking off into the distance, you are ignoring the cars around you.

Just because the binoculars would be built into your eyes doesn't mean that you'd be able to see both the far distance and your surroundings at the same time.

Re:Some people lack vision

[Anonymous Custard]

I amde an incorrect assumption before reading the article :) THey're not like bionic eyes with binoculars built it, they just make everything ultra-sharp.

For example, a person with better-than-20/20 vision doesn't see distant objects any larger than a person with average vision, he can just make out more details.

To illustrate, if you have bad vision... just take off your glasses and look around. Notice the improvement you get by putting your glasses back on. Now try to imagine that you had yet another pair of glasses to put over those that repeated the degree of improvement.

Now cry in jealousy of all those better-than-20/20 lookers out there :)

Re:Some people lack vision

[DrSkwid]

> Shame on you for not including long distance upskirts/voyuerism in your short list of applications

Some of us don't live down holes !

Re:Some people lack vision

[king-manic]

Turn in your /. - geek cred immediatly! Shame on you for not including long distance upskirts/voyuerism in your short list of applications. Everyone knows that porn is what drives all new technologies.

As soon as they invent long distance bukakke as well I'm in.

Re:Some people lack vision

[Original Replica]

Probably not. Those same people would still be fiddling with the radio/talking on their cell phone/yelling at the kids in the backseat/putting on make-up/whatever, but now when they stop to rubberneck at an accident they would have to stop for a longer time so they could zoom in on all the morbid details.

Re:Some people lack vision

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, get really, really hung over. I've only been there once or twice in my life, but before spending the day throwing up, I could pick out the pixel jaggies on and individual phosphors on my 4 year-old 1600x1200 CRT from a normal viewing distance.

Re:Some people lack vision

[Anonymous Custard]

Maybe you dehydrated your eyes enough to get them to the perfect shape :)

Re:Some people lack vision

[somersault]

Erm, couldnt they just use binoculars then? :p I'm not saying that new technology isnt good, but there have to be better uses than scouring the horizon, or watching sports, which dont really require your hands (unless you count eating while watching sports, in which case I guess you could get the binoculars strapped to your head). I wouldnt spend however much money these things are going to cost just for that. I would get these if they could link up to a mobile computer and have a HUD etc.. maybe I've watched too much GitS recently >_>

oblig. simpsons reference

[kevin.fowler]

The goggles, they do nothing!

Re:oblig. simpsons reference

[Digital Vomit]

What episode was that in? I know the phrase "My eyes! The googles do nothing!" was in episode 2F17 (entitled Radioactive Man ), but in what episode was the phrase "The goggles, they do nothing!" uttered? I'd really like to know because I've seen a lot of people quote that, saying it's from the Simpsons, but I've never been able to find it. I'd like to think all those people weren't being ignorant or just stupidly passing on an incorrect quote that they read/heard elsewhere like some moron. Can you post a link to the episode capsule or transcript?

Re:oblig. simpsons reference

[Jesus_666]

It is exactly that episode. "The goggles, they do nothing" is a misquote.

Re:oblig. simpsons reference

[CableModemSniper]

I didn't know comic book guy actually existed in real life.

Re:oblig. simpsons reference

[Digital Vomit]

Worst. Comeback. Ever.

Re:oblig. simpsons reference

[steveo777]

Are you being too particular, in that, perhaps it is being mis-quoted? I'm not sure what the line is exactly, but the GP poster had it on. It's from the episode you're thinking of.

They're making the movie for Radioactive Man. He's in a big canal tied up for some reason. Their's acid flying down the canal at him and Fallout Boy (Millhouse) was suposed to rescue him... but doesn't. Radioactive Man (Ranier Wulfcastle) quickly dons his saftey googles, and as the green acid washes him away, he says the aforementioned quote. When the acid clears the piller he was tied to is mostly melted away.

It's kind of a classic moment in Simpsons history.

Re:oblig. simpsons reference

[Anonymous Coward]

People think it's "The goggles, they do nothing" because snpp had (has?) it that way for years.

Re:oblig. simpsons reference

[MarkRose]

Look! goggles.jpg

Will these glasses impair your 'normal' vision?

[digitaldc]

Software reads the scattered beam and creates a map of the patient's eye, including tiny abnormalities such as bumps, growths and valleys. The pixelated eyeglass lens is then tuned to refract light in a way that corrects for those high-level aberrations.

This sounds like a great idea, my only concern is what happens to your vision when you take off the glasses?
Will your vision be impaired when they are off due to the effect that the correction glasses have while they are on?
Will they cause headaches? Hallucinations?

Re:Will these glasses impair your 'normal' vision?

[Inverted Intellect]

This sounds like a great idea, my only concern is what happens to your vision when you take off the glasses?
Will your vision be impaired when they are off due to the effect that the correction glasses have while they are on?
Will they cause headaches? Hallucinations?

I dont know about impaired vision (my vision has been degrating slightly, but steadily, in the decade since I first got my glasses, but I have no real knowledge of whether corrective lenses can or do have that effect), but I already get headaches when I take my glasses off.

Hallucinations, though? Not unless they actually coat those things with some hallucinogenic chemical or another. I wouldnt worry about it if I were you.

Re:Will these glasses impair your 'normal' vision?

[belloc]

This sounds like a great idea, my only concern is what happens to your vision when you take off the glasses?

You suddenly and inexplicably become unrecognizable as your alter ego.

Re:Will these glasses impair your 'normal' vision?

[Anonymous Coward]

PLEASE!!! PLEASE!!! let them cause hallucinations!

Re:Will these glasses impair your 'normal' vision?

[Short Circuit]

I suspect they'll only seem to make your vision worse when you're not wearing them. In reality, they'll make your vision better while you're wearing them.

Before I had glasses, I didn't feel like I was missing anything. Then I had my vision tested at one point, and I saw amazing levels of detail. So glasses felt like a good thing.

Now, I wear my glasses almost every day. I consider the level of detail I see with them "normal." Naturally, that makes my vision while not wearing them feel poorer than usual.

So which is it? Is my vision only normal while I'm wearing glasses? Or is my vision better than normal while I'm wearing glasses? What is normal, anyway?

Re:Will these glasses impair your 'normal' vision?

[Prophet of Nixon]

I never knew that stars were visible without binoculars until I got glasses when I was 7 or 8. I had no clue that I was supposed to be able to see reasonably clearly for more than about 15 feet.

Re:Will these glasses impair your 'normal' vision?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is normal, anyway?

20/20

Re:Will these glasses impair your 'normal' vision?

[Short Circuit]

What is normal, anyway?

20/20

Heh...yeah. "You see at 20 feet what others see at 20 feet."

But I was referring to normal in the philosphical sense. Without glasses, I'm 20/20. And my vision's better with them. Yet I feel like my vision is worse than normal when I don't wear glasses. See the conflict?

I'm wracking my mind

[ianscot]

An important aspect of the UI design for something like this might be the inclusion of some sort of aural cue for when the enhanced vision was activated...

But what sound did Steve Austin's eye make, again?

Re:I'm wracking my mind

[Anonymous Coward]

*BROWROWROWRowrowrowrow.....*

Re:I'm wracking my mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it

"Doot oot oot oot oot oot oot"

????

I'll Believe it When I See it

[eno2001]

Reading the article, I find it very "pie in the sky". It stands to reason that if we have the ability to produce this sort of technology, then we're really behind in so many other areas by comparison. If we can make "pixelated lenses", then why don't we have car windows that automatically darken when sunlight gets too bright? If we can determine the abberations of a person's eye in such a small form factor, then why can't a car tell when the driver is squinting and only darken the glass where the light source that is causing the squinting is coming through? If all of this stuff can be done in such a small form factor, then why don't we have a market for "winter helmets" in cold regions that users can wear to warm their faces with heated air, play digital music via a bluetooth link from the music player in their pockets, provide a heads up display with newsticker, external temperature and wind speed, and the current track playing, and track eye movements for interacting with the music player, cellphone or PDA? That sounds technically feasible and would appeal to lots of people in areas where it gets cold in the Winter. Even more to the point, why do we have windsheild wipers when it would be possible to create a grid around a windsheild that blows hot dry air or possibly a laser grid to just melt snow and ice on contact? To me, all the applications I just came up with are in the same league with what this guy proposes. And I think his idea is much more far fetched than my own.

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it

[bigtrike]

To me, all the applications I just came up with are in the same league with what this guy proposes. And I think his idea is much more far fetched than my own.

So just because you can list a bunch of things which you don't think exist but should, this guy's idea is ridiculous? That seems like a very poor argument.

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it

[Anonymous Coward]

I read / heard something related a while back. Someone or another had done research making contacts that corrected for superfine imperfections in vision. They were pretty expensive to make, but people who wore them reported that the difference was amazing, even over 20/20 vision. The only problem being that the shape of your eye changes over time and the contacts were so exact that they would only be useful for a month or so. Using adaptive optics then would be the answer. Users also reported that it was very hard to go back to the world being so blurry with regular 20/20 vision.

Lenses that do all sorts of crazy computer controlled stuff? That may be pretty far out, I'm not really equiped to say. But superfine vision correction? Not so far out.

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it

[Amouth]

To comment on it.. cost.. we can do just about every thing you have listed but the cost is far out of the range that people can afford..

the auto darking glass (welders use them all the time) the tracking of eye movement for an interface.. Apache Longbow.. the piolt uses an eye peice for controling the chain gun.. it aims where he looks in the view finder.. and he can even control fire rate with one eye..

it all exists and it all can be done but the shear cost associated with development and deployment is massive..

mix that with the fact that very vew piolts have the ablity to control each eye indivdualy and therefor very few even have the phyical requirements to use such a device..

It all sounds great and wonderful but i don't see it happening anytime soon..

now this guy just wants to make a semi passive device that helps vision.. sounds like a digtial camera lens that can correct on the back end.. it seems neat and is posiable.. the trick is going to be making it wearable for long periods of time

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it

[alistair]

I think this is a case of demand and supply. We certainly have the technology to darken windows when sunlight gets bright, or to warm faces in the cold, there just isn't the demand to put these into commercial production.

Now look at the market for glasses. 20 years ago there wasn't such a thing as designer glasses and opticians (at least here in the UK) were very limited practices. Now designer glasses are all the rage and there are a huge range of opticians on the high street.

How if people are prepared to pay £500 for a normal pair of glasses which say Armani or DKNY, surely there is a market for glasses which give you genuine 20/20 vision or better. I would easily go up to £1000 for that dream (having been ruled unsuitable for laser correction or contact lenses) and I would bet there are a million people like me worldwide. So there is your billion pound market, gets your attention better than dark glass or face warmers.

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it

[hhawk]

It could be cost.. to do a high strength car window might say be $30,000 USD and the same for a pair of eye glasses by size only say $300 a lens. My guess these glasses if they exist in prototype form are in the many thousands of dollar range.

I'd hate to be driving my car w/ these when the batteries go or the computer reboots and the glasses get all funky!

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it

[Politburo]

why don't we have car windows that automatically darken when sunlight gets too bright?

Because when the windows tint at night due to headlights, it would suck.

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it

[Anonymous Coward]

My car *has* glass that darkens when it gets a glare... the rearview mirror.
It works great at night with bright headlights behind.
It completely fails to dim when the sun is low on the horizon
behind me, and there is no manual override.

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it

[THEbwana]

A friend of mine knew a guy up in DRC (while it was still known as Zaire) who had a Lamborghini with dimmable windows (using liquid crystal technology).
Waaay cool. Unfortunately, he only had about 400 meters of tar road to use it on.
Now thats frustrating. .. although maybe not quite as frustrating as it should be to all the europeans who funded his way-cool car... or would this kind of "investment" qualify as an exercise in "Capacity building" ?

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it

[somersault]

I thought the eye controlled gun sounded a bit stupid (because I remember seeing a TV program about a weapons system in an F14 or something a few years ago), so I looked up what the Apache Longbow uses (page I found this on is http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~carlo/archive/PAPER S/AA/longbow-aa.html): "The weapon was targeted using the very new Martin Marietta AAQ-11 Target Acquisition and Designation System (TADS), a nose mounted and helmet steered turret combining a thermal imager, direct magnification telescope, a television camera and a laser rangefinder/designator. The pilot was provided with a helmet steered thermal imager. Both pilot and gunner were provided with the IHADSS collimated helmet mounted CRT projectors, designed to deliver raster scan camera imagery and calligraphic flight, weapon aiming and systems symbology directly into the right eye." So the aiming actually just tracks which direction the helmet is looking it, which is much simpler than tracking the eye. There is a mini projector projecting directly into the right eye. But yes also I'm sure there is technology to track eye movement, which combined with the helmet tracking, could give some very accurate aiming.. though also with shooting you probably have to track the target properly and aim ahead of them, so you'd be just as well doing the tracking etc with a computer and just use user input to fire, though that's not as fun

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it

[Amouth]

i could have swarn that it was by eye movement.. mabey i am thinking of something else..

i am glad you looked it up.. thanks for letting me know.. good to see someone on /. that listens and reads up on things..

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it

[Anonymous Coward]

> and track eye movements for interacting with the music player, cellphone or PDA

Please never subject humanity to this kind of 'ease of use' feature. The phenomenon of people with mobiles talking loudly at you from behind (you turn round.. "wtf?", they're actually on the phone) is bad enough, without a whole other communication layer, that of non-verbal communication, being muddied and confused by strange eye signals as people skip-forward to their favourite track, or look up and down their appointments for the day..

Lasers? Evolved Sharks Very Interested

[saskboy]

This is a great idea. Lasers in the eyeball? What could go wrong?

Seriously though, this is cool stuff. But also, seriously, it'll go wrong.

Lasers on both ends...

[Rigor Morty]

Specifically, I wanted to bring up an unrelated topic...so mod me offtopic now. I recall some years ago a presentation by a researcher where they had made a hologram of a lens, corrected by some program to delete the flaws in the glass of the original optics. It was perfectly flat, and had a decent magnification power. To that end, I wonder; is this technology the final result of that one? And, if it is, why aren't they using the converse (making better lenses out of holograms) to make optically corrected contact lenses, and replacement corneas?

I'm just wondering...

Re:Lasers on both ends...

[Freexe]

Didn't something similar happen with the Hubble telescope. The original flaw caused by a chip in the testing equipment causes it to be a high resolution for that flaw, so they had to map the flaw and correct it somehow.

Aren't alot of the newer telescopes working by correcting the flaws rather than making them bigger and more prefect?

Re:Lasers on both ends...

[jerpyro]

Because holograms only work at one wavelength.

Re:Lasers on both ends...

[Short Circuit]

So what would happen if you built a hologram matrix for each of red, green and blue?

Re:Lasers on both ends...

[JohnFluxx]

Then at best it would only work for exactly 3 wavelengths which isn't the same as what our eye sees.

Re:Lasers on both ends...

[Short Circuit]

The eye has receptors for three colors, red green and blue. So I take it you're referring to the light source's wavelengths.

My understanding of wave physics is that there aren't many effects that are only applicable to a single frequency of a wave. There's certainly a most efficient frequency of the effect, but it should work to a diminishing degree on frequencies around it. So it's a start.

Want to make it better? Use a tuneable laser (they already exist for some frequency ranges) to cover the entire spectrum.

Re:Lasers on both ends...

[JohnFluxx]

I think we are talking about different applications. My understanding was that the point of this was to create a lens for white light. Using a hologram for this would not work because you could only make it accurate for specific wavelengths. At other wavelengths the lens would have distortions.

Re:Lasers on both ends...

[jerpyro]

My understanding of wave physics is that there aren't many effects that are only applicable to a single frequency of a wave. There's certainly a most efficient frequency of the effect, but it should work to a diminishing degree on frequencies around it. So it's a start.

Actually, holograms are specific to one frequency because a hologram is an interference pattern stored inside a film (it works almost like an XOR). So if you have A (light) and B (image), and you make C (hologram) then when you take A and C together again you get B. The reason this doesn't work on multiple wavelengths is because the interference patterns are different. I'm a little "fuzzy" (ok bad pun) on what the original person was using for a lens (if he was using the hologram film itself to make a molding of a lens or using it as the actual lens), but if he was using the hologram as a lens then it would work only at that frequency.

Another thing to consider is that we can't acutally "see" radiation unless it is headed directly at our eyes. If we designed and implemented hologram lenses that work for the three frequencies that our eyes can detect, what's to say that your eyes are exactly calibrated to the same wavelengths as mine? Biology has a funny way of aberrations, but 10nm in either direction would still make you see "blue" but the holograms wouldn't work for you as they would for me. You'd have to calibrate the holograms for the wavelengths for that specific person. Yet, how would you know what those are? The only way we can "see" colors is on a relative basis. There are no hex codes between our optic nerve and our brain, and modern wavelength filtes aren't precise enough to allow just one frequency to pass. Sorry, this is probably way off topic :p

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting." --Ernest Rutherford

Re:Lasers on both ends...

[Short Circuit]

Writing a comment in spurts of freetime leads to a certain degree of miscommunication.

What I accidentally left out was, continued development of tunable lasers will eventually lead to laser sources tunable over the entire visible spectrum.

The other point was, given a sufficient variety of individual laser frequencies, one could approximate a full spectrum. I don't know the terms for the effects, but consider the efficiency of a band block filter. The filter is effective at its target frequency, less effective a short ways from its target, and not effective at all, farther away.

If you overlap the "less effective" ranges of the different frequencies, you get a crude simulation of a holographic lense crafted by "white" light. Tunable lasers would improve the art a great deal, of course.

Re:Lasers on both ends...

[Short Circuit]

I wouldn't worry about the slightly different responses to red, green and blue wavelenths. Many different people can look at the same computer monitor and see the same image. (I believe modern phosphors have a fairly narrow emission range, but I can't cite my sources. :)

There are other technical issues, but it's still interesting to think about.

Sorry, this is probably way off topic :p

Nah...this is what makes Slashdot interesting. :)

Re:Lasers on both ends...

[JohnFluxx]

Quite possibly. To get a close approximation for a normal everyday scene requires a minimum of 5 wavelengths (due to the funkiness of the eye). You would also need to filter out the light you aren't using.

I'm not sure how you could combine large numbers of diffraction gratings. The gratings would collapse into an incoherent mess if there were too many of them, and the emulsion would have to be thick (relative - it's still very thin to us) so that the gratings would make a deep volume hologram for each grating to be very selective about its wavelengths.

Yeah, I make holograms for a living ;)

bah

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll still never help my wife see reason...

Lasers...

[sconeu]

Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball,

WARNING: Do not look directly into laser with remaining good eye!

Re:Lasers...

[omyar_hunt]

Warning: a small spec of dust on the lens may, under the right conditions, refract the light into a four-way square structure, forever burning the microsoft logo into your eye.

Just move your head closer.

[jos3000]

Lister: Any problems?
Kryten: Well, just one or two. In fact I've compiled a little list if you'll indulge me. Now then, uh, my optical system doesn't appear to have a zoom function.
Lister: No, human eyes don't have a zoom.
Kryten: Well then, how do you bring a small object into sharp focus?
Lister: Well, you just move your head closer to the object.
Kryten: I see. Move your head ... closer, hmm, to the object. All right, okay. Well, what about other optical effects, like split screen, slow motion, Quantel(tm)?
Lister: No. We don't have them.
Kryten: You don't have them -- just the zoom? Hmm. Well, no, that's fine, that's great, no, no, that's really great, that's great. Now then, my nipples don't work.

Really cool gun sights

[thesuperbigfrog]

Imagine what a rifle scope built with this technology would do for Soldiers on the battlefield. Well-aimed fire is one of the primary factors that decides who wins in a firefight. The military would definitely profit from wide-spread use of super vision lenses.

Re:Really cool gun sights

[Brushfireb]

The military already has this. They have scopes that can accurately fire for miles. Being able to see doesnt help other conditions -- wind, curve of the earth, shit in the way.

Battles are fought in cities, and cities are built so that there arent large stretches between buildings. Close-combat warfare is where most people die. Increased vision wouldnt help much, unless it allowed you to see through walls and such.

Re:Really cool gun sights

[theJML]

I agree. However, the gun it's attached to will also have to be made more accurate, and the scope may have to take into acount other things as well (wind, distance, movement, etc..). However this would be a nice part of the system. Hopefully whoever's shooting at me didn't buy one.

Re:Really cool gun sights

[JesseL]

http://www.rifleshootermag.com/gun_accessories/sig hts_092105/index2.html
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/dn75 96

Re:Really cool gun sights

[chaosmarine]

unfortunatly, being able to see does not make it easier to aim.

IAAPMI*

*I am a primary marksmanship instructor

Re:Really cool gun sights

[somersault]

"super vision lenses" - you mean a magnification scope? _

Will they ever be wearable?

[Obvius]

I can imagine some serious eyestrain coming about if your eye has different ideas to the 'smart lens' about what is supposed to be in focus. The fovea (small area of retina that receives the focussed image) is pretty small. You try to focus on a roadsign 400metres away - the super lenses think you're looking at a tree 500metres away. Hellish biofeedback loop ensues. It's giving me a headache just to think about it...

Re:Will they ever be wearable?

[CatsupBoy]

I dont think these glasses actively adapt to your eye's focusing. They work like traditional lenses, they adjust incoming light to address improper vision. Only they do it on a much finer scale than normal lenses, and adjust to minute problems your retina might have.

from TFA:

Technicians scan the eyeball with an aberrometer -- a device that measures aberrations that can impede vision -- and then the pixels are programmed to correct the irregularities.

After they are programed, it seems the lenses are set and will not change until the next time you go in to have your vision checked.

Re:Will they ever be wearable?

[Obvius]

Fair comment. I'm hypothesising a bit here and my reply isn't specific to the lenses in the article.
But I'd guess that the aberrations measured by this guy's laser are a function of the focal length your eye is tuned to at the moment of measurement. And imperfections in your eyesight vary with focal length (whether you're short or long-sighted). Carrying this kind of technology to it's logical conclusion, i.e. a super lens that adjusts itself to iron out imperfections in your sight as a function of focal length - that would be pretty neat. But I'm sure you'd get a lot of headaches whilst you adapt to it.

Last time I checked

[Jordan Catalano]

Pixel = pix[sic]ture element

That is, although a pixel can be a phosphor, LED, or dot of paint, it's a tiny component that makes up an image. What we're talking about here is an array of fine-controllable lens elements. While a lens may manipulate the perception of an image, it does not constitute a piece of it. Seems a little silly to be naming the company over an utterly misused term.

Lexels, anyone?

Soon? i'll believe it when i SEE it

[AustinTSmith]

Is this another scientific application that will take years to produce before the rest of us can afford it? probably. Much less have some level of style where we weren't embarrased to wear them in public? I think so.

Ok, so I am a little skeptical... the computers and sensors they plan to attach to the glasses will be cumbersome, and the piece about "dynamic adjustments" sounds a little far fetched. And where do the batteries go??

You might as well add a zoom and x-ray vision to the product suite.

I think better applications that weren't mentioned would be for when good vision is required for safety or a cool factor - snowboard/ski goggles, commercial airline/helicopter pilots, bus drivers, police, military (mentioned), professional atheletes, etc......

Sounds cool but...

[warmgun]

"Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball, and structures in the eye scatter the resulting beam of light."

...and blind you in the process. (ba dum bum)

Re:Sounds cool but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Low power laser light doesn't damage your eyes, any more than normal light can. It's only unusual feature is that it travels in a linear pattern, so over a short distance travels in a straight line. Good for measuring things, bad for Moonraker lasers :P

Re:Lasers? Evolved Sharks Very Interested

[meringuoid]

Seriously though, this is cool stuff. But also, seriously, it'll go wrong.

I tell you what, the computer running these things better be secure...

* puts together a cunning means to pwnz them, and a nifty blue and white logo with a scrolling quote from Catcher in the Rye *

Now, if you'll excuse me I have a pharmaceuticals giant to bully.

Re:Lasers? Evolved Sharks Very Interested

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you're missing the bigger picture here.

Sharks + Laser Beams (attached to heads thereof) = awesome weapon of mass destruction

"Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball..."

[Caspian]

Hmmmm. You go first. :)

Re:"Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok. Done. 12 years ago, I tried out one of those "paint the map of where you are on your retina with laser." gadgets. (they sucked btw) your turn.

Re:"Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball..."

[uncl_bob]

A few years ago I stared a little too long into the sun during a partial eclipse without any eye protection. Result: yellow spots on the retina which would not go away. Not too good.

So I went to the doctor and the first thing they did was to use a new device which scanned my retina for "bumps" created by inflammation. This device used a laser and it scanned in the same way a CRT creates a picture on the monitor glass. The doctor then got a 3d-image of my retina with the "bumps" marked in different colors. Pretty cool.

Re:"Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball..."

[Art Tatum]

So I went to the doctor and the first thing they did was to use a new device which scanned my retina for "bumps" created by inflammation. This device used a laser and it scanned in the same way a CRT creates a picture on the monitor glass. The doctor then got a 3d-image of my retina with the "bumps" marked in different colors. Pretty cool.

And...? Then what? Did they find a way to repair the damage? Don't leave us hanging like that!

I remember

[MourningBlade]

I remember reading about two professors at (I believe) UCLA who were working on this, and had supposedly made a deal with Bausch and Lomb. At least, that was on the measurement-of-the-eye bit and the deformable mirror array.

I was wondering what all had come of that.

Truly amazing that these things take as long as they do to get going anywhere. Is a cure for cancer languishing in some lab?

Re:Lasers? Evolved Sharks Very Interested

[saskboy]

Hey, I didn't miss that connection at all, I was implying it. After all, aren't the eyes on a shark's head? Sharks with fricken laser beams in their eyes would be 2 times awesome. Way better than the formula:
cats + stuff = AWESOME [try Coral Cache of that site.]

How long before yuppies start giving their purebred pets super vision anyway?

TNG

[woodlouse_man]

Didn't Geordi have super-vision in Star Trek.

Sorry - I'm a geek.

Re:TNG

[Excen]

Geordi had the ability, courtesy of his visor, to "See" excited particles outside of the normal visual spectrum. One could argue that he had super vision, but not in the context of the article. Unless I'm wrong, in which case I will be pimp-slapped by a true redshirt trekkie.

There are grades too.

[skids]

The technology is still improving so I always tell my friends they might want to hold off on "getting etched" unless they just can't stand the contacts anymore. Might as well get the best possible correction.

What makes me wonder about this article is that although the PR makes it sound like these lenses move around while you're wearing them, I see nothing that actually says that. The other company doing "optimized" optics seems to just grind a lense based on scans. So does that mean you have to hold your eyes steady? If so I think I'll wait until they get something that dynamically tracks the eye before I get what would be for me a cosmetic product.

For that matter, maybe I'll wait until they have a switch-on binocular/microscope mode built in too.

Re:There are grades too.

[BewireNomali]

dude, that's good advice.

i just did freelance consulting work with an influential investment banker here in NY. He's in his 50s, and he had the procedure done 6-7 years ago by Tiger Woods' doctor (for those unaware, Tiger Woods had his vision enhanced to 20/15 or 20/10 in order to give himself a golfing advantage). All of which to say is that he can't see now.

I asked him about it several times and pride prevented him from being truthful about it. But finally he confided in me and said that his vision has degraded significantly in the past year. He also mentioned that some of his older colleagues who have have laser correcting surgery have had similar degradations in vision. I know that this guy has had at least one "correction" done, but he now has his secretary reading his own emails to him.

So it sounds like its a good idea to not get lasik done unless you absolutely have to or are aware of enhancements that improve the long term prognosis for eye health.

Other than that, this is such a FUCK AMAZING TIME TO BE ALIVE!!!!!

Re:There are grades too.

[rossifer]

The technology is still improving so I always tell my friends they might want to hold off on "getting etched" unless they just can't stand the contacts anymore. Might as well get the best possible correction.

Somewhat true. Decent advice anyway.

The latest refinement appears to be the "no cutting" or "pure laser" systems that are just appearing in clinics. These don't require the slicing of the cornea, presumably because the laser can be accurately focused to disrupt cells at specific locations within the corneal material. The lack of slicing means less scar tissue and fewer possible complications, but may require more correction.

As for the "best possible correction", the wavefront scanners reveal higher order defects and pretty much allow for full correction now. All that's changing is how the correction is applied to the cornea.

The other company doing "optimized" optics seems to just grind a lense based on scans. So does that mean you have to hold your eyes steady?

No. These scanners are the wavefront scanners, which I've seen "up-close" quite recently. You put your head in a machine and you look at a target to keep your eye in basically the same position, but if you move your eye a little, the machine will compensate. If you move your eye a lot, the machine aborts the scan and the technician asks you do try again.

Regards,
Ross

Re:There are grades too.

[Ryan Amos]

Lasik is pretty mature. It and its predecessor, RK (lasik with knives,) have been around for about 25 years. They can get most people to better than 20/20 vision, and even if your vision is really bad, they can get you close enough that you probably won't have to wear glasses.

Re:There are grades too.

[Anonymous Coward]

LASIK does not, and cannot currently fix presbyopia, cataracts or macular degeneration.

According to my LASIK surgeon, most people who get the procedure done are in their mid to late 40's, which is right about the time the above conditions begin to manifest.

It's a great surgery, and has changed my 20/400 vision to 20/15. However, don't fall into the trap of believing it will stave off father time.

Re:There are grades too.

[rossifer]

i just did freelance consulting work with an influential investment banker here in NY. He's in his 50s, and he had the procedure done 6-7 years ago by Tiger Woods' doctor (for those unaware, Tiger Woods had his vision enhanced to 20/15 or 20/10 in order to give himself a golfing advantage). All of which to say is that he can't see now.

But Tiger Woods can still see very, very well without any further correction. So what's the difference between them?

The difference is that your friend didn't take his doctor's advice, and was a poor candidate for laser correction because his vision was not stable and was in the process of degrading. So the surgery corrected his vision at that moment and his eyes continued to change.

Wealthy people seem to be more prone to these kinds of errors in judgement and an "investment banker in NY" would seem to qualify him with brass knobs.

My eyes have been stable since I was 18. Left eye great (20/15), right eye not so great (20/80 w/ astigmatism). Turns out I'm a very good candidate for long-term improvement from laser surgery. I'm now in the process of saving up money for correcting the single eye.

Regards,
Ross

Re:There are grades too.

[benbean]

Just my 2p,

I had LASIK done about 5 years ago and I'm still 20/20 with no problems, halos, signs of weakening eyes, scratches and all the other standard horror stories.

YMMV of course.

Re:There are grades too.

[Anonymous Coward]

The all-laser thing doesn't mean no cutting. They still make a corneal flap, they just use a femtosecond laser to loosen the corea and then cut the flap with another slightly stronger pulse.

Re:There are grades too.

[pnuema]

As the husband of a former optician whose eyes are so bad she is legally blind, I'd advise you to hold off. Complication rate on LASIK is low, but still significant enough that there is no way she would touch it. New technologies such as implanted contact lenses look like they are performing better and hold less risk. With 20/80 vision, you are essentially inconvenienced - you can still see fine out of one eye, and 20/80 is not really that bad (to put it in perspective, my wife is closer to 20/800).

Think of it this way - would you risk a 1% chance of blindness to avoid having to wear glasses for 10 years (until the new tech develops)? No thanks, I'll pass.

Re:There are grades too.

[cayenne8]

"Complication rate on LASIK is low, but still significant enough that there is no way she would touch it..."

Well, I keep noticing that most of the doctors I see performing LASIK, are all themselves wearing GLASSES.

That kind of scares me away from doing it to myself....

Re:There are grades too.

[John Hurliman]

He'd only be blind in one eye, and it would be a great excuse to wear an eyepatch with a skull and crossbones.

Re:There are grades too.

[NaijaGuy]

I thought I would wait until my upper 20s to "make sure" my eyes were stable or whatever (I'm 25), but I had a conversation with my eye doctor recently, and he knows all the guys who do LASIK here in Houston. He wears eyeglasses, and he asked me, "Why do you think none of us have LASIK done?" He then gave me a very good and lengthy explanation of how too little time has passed to know what percentage of people who have the surgery done will experience a degradation later on (we really haven't even seen 2 decades pass since the more primitive form of the surgery became mainstream).

Sure I have some nearsightedness, but why should I want to start etching away at 2 healthy lenses without knowing how they might end up 20 years from now?

Re:There are grades too.

[skids]

> If you move your eye a little, the machine will compensate.
> If you move your eye a lot, the machine aborts the scan
> and the technician asks you do try again.

Good to know. But what I meant was with the eyeglass lenses in the OP -- they say they have "electrically activated" pixels in them that allows them to "be programmed." That would make some people think that the lense moves around in real-time to present your eye with the right curvature no matter where your eyeball is pointing. It does say you can "turn off the bifocal" which is neat, however nothing I saw specifically says it tracks eye movement -- so these glasses may give you 20/10 only if you line them up just right and look straight ahead. The other company noted in the article produces a product for which this is almost certainly the case.

Well not like you can buy them yet anyway, so I guess no point in saying "caveat emptor."

Re:There are grades too.

[rossifer]

Oh. Whoops.

The "smart glasses" that react to your eye motion certainly would be a lot more expensive, so I suspect that will have to wait until the "2nd generation" is released...

Regards,
Ross

Re:There are grades too.

[DiscoLizard]

I'm not sure what your wife's eyes have to do with this, but as someone who has actually had it done, I'd advise anyone thinking about LASIK to do it - provided you are a suitable candidate.

The ability to SEE is incredible - clarity is an amazing thing to gain after years of bluriness.

The fact that you don't have to worry about eye infections from contacts...
The fact that you can see when it rains, and don't have to wipe your glasses every 5 seconds...
The fact that you can go out at night and not worry about finding a place to keep your contacts, or that your eyes will get dry and they will come out...
The fact that you can wake up in the morning and see the alarm clock...
etc etc etc etc

People who say "there are too many risks involved" usually are not those who are going to be taking the risks. As long as you have stable vision, your cornea is thick enough, and you use a reputable establishment to get your procedure done, then I would say do it, regardless of cost or anything else.

Re:There are grades too.

[John Miles]

Sure I have some nearsightedness, but why should I want to start etching away at 2 healthy lenses without knowing how they might end up 20 years from now?

What a load of FUD. For one thing, LASIK alters the cornea, not the lens. For another thing, cornea surgery in one form or another has been around for decades, if not close to a century. There's nothing we don't know about how the corneal epithelium heals. (The truth is, it never really does... which is fine unless your pupil size in dim light is large enough to cross the ablation-zone boundary.)

Meanwhile, peoples' eyes are being damaged every day by eye infections and neovascularization caused by contact lenses.

In short, no, we are not going to see any mysterious maladies emerge in LASIK patients who were properly screened for corneal thickness. We'd have already seen those maladies in other contexts. (And, parenthetically, relying on an optometrist for advice on this is about like asking the kid down at Jiffy Lube if your air filter needs changing.)

Re:There are grades too.

[somersault]

you do realise that lenses are attached to the front of your eyes, and therefore do move when your eyes do..? I doubt your eyes change that quickly unless you have an accident or something

Re:There are grades too.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Any geek that can give up his or her nerd glasses to obtain a little convenience deserves neither."

Damn!

[pablo_max]

And I just got laser surgery last week too!!! If only I has known I could have super eyes!.
Although, my eyes are now 20/10(thats right 20/10) it could have been better with this stuff. With the newest lasers and good doctors, you dont need a special lens I guess.

Re:Damn!

[dfghjk]

How do you know it could have been better? If your eyesight is indeed 20/10 (is that both eyes or each eye tested individually?) then you've max'ed out the test chart. There's a limit to just how good a human eye can be and there's no reason you should assume that an imaginary set of glasses could possibly improve yours at this point.

available for purchase?

[JFlex]

and when will these amazing new devices be available for purchase from ThinkGeek?

Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake me when I can have Xray vision.

Till then I'll be happy with my 20-20 Golden Hindsight.

adaptive optics

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the term you are looking for is: adaptive optics.

Beer Googles

[a803redman]

Can they make the girl look the the same in the morning as she did in the club last night? Please tell me I'm not the only one with that issue...

Re:Beer Googles

[SeekerDarksteel]

Can they make the girl look the the same in the morning as she did in the club last night? Please tell me I'm not the only one with that issue...

You must be new here.

Re:Beer Googles

[failure-man]

Actually, you probably are. This is Slashdot. We know little of these "girls" and "clubs" of which you speak.

Re:Beer Googles

[Lord_Dweomer]

I'd prefer it just still looked like a girl as opposed to the punctured inflatable mess that's lying in my bed right now.

Hmm I like your ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

and i would like to subscribe to your newsletter

Dr. Evil is Waiting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Between this story and the one on Shark's sixth sense below it, I'm left wondering how soon it will be before Dr. Evil's dream is realized.

military prototype

[dfn5]

...working prototype within a year that is built to military specifications...

How about a prototype that is built to just commercial specifications?

Re:military prototype

[somersault]

one that breaks a couple of minutes after its 28 day warranty has expired? :p

My eyes are fine...

[LilGuy]

I've stared a computer screen since I was too young to walk, yet I have 20/15 vision according to the last eye test I had done. Somehow this still interests me... I would dig having 20/10 or 20/5 vision... I wonder if they would consider making special lenses for people who have good vision already, but would still like to improve it?

Re:My eyes are fine...

[dfghjk]

Hell, why not 20/0 then? Why limit yourself? Ever seen a 20/5 line on a test chart?

Once presbyopia sets in you'll wonder why you ever even thought of such things. Your eyesight is already perfect. Why would you think that your life would be enhanced in any way by making it marginally better? Ask someone who requires correction if the difference between 20/20 and 20/15 even matters. It doesn't. You should be thankful that you don't have to mess with glasses, contacts or lasik.

Re:My eyes are fine...

[rossifer]

20/10 is the theoretical focusing limit of a normally sized human eye. That's the diffraction limit, where the light that diffracts through your pupil (this diffraction is the change of the light from the theoretical beam into a cone) prevents further improvements in perceived resolution.

Doctors tend to talk about 20/15, 20/12.5 (or just 20/12) and 20/10. 20/5 just isn't going to happen to your bare eye (your eye without magnifying optics).

Regards,
Ross

Re:My eyes are fine...

[Anonymous Coward]

What a stupid post. Who wouldn't want better vision if it could be had with no risk?

I had my vision restored to 20/15 with Lasik. This is not the best they've ever been but I can sure as hell tell the difference between 20/15 and 20/20, I know this because for years Opticians would refuse to correct my my myopia to better than 20/20 for fear of making it worse. It wasn't until my late 20s that they finally decided I was old enough to have stable vision and gave me lenses enabling me to see to the best of my own eyes' natural ability. i.e. around 20/12.

20/0 ?? since the number is a ratio you're saying why not infinitely good vision?

Once the eye is well focused in the spherical sense, differences in the quality of vision from other factors (higher order aberation, quality of cornea, retina, optic nerve etc) determine whether someone can see 20/8 (yes, some people can), 20/20 or unfortunately worse.

Just because someone can see 4 times better than you (20/5 vs 20/20) with perfect focus has *absolutely no* bearing on whether that person is prone to presbyopia or not. All it means is that person will still be able to read fine print 4x smaller than you, even with the same presbyopia and same correction.

Re:My eyes are fine...

[Anonymous Coward]

>your eyes are already perfect

To say 20/20 is 'perfect' is a fallacy. It's like saying an IQ of 100 or better means you are perfectly intelligent.

>Why would you think that your life would be enhanced in any way by making it marginally better?

Marginal!? The difference between 20/10 and 20/15 is same as the difference between 20/20 and 20/27 (26.666).

20/10 is a whole third better than 20/15, and entirely possible for an average sized healthy eye.

Rubbish

[slavemowgli]

I think (some) people are getting a bit too excited about this without considering the downsides. It's already possible to give people much-greater-than-average vision using laser eye surgery, and has been for a while, but it's not usually done, simply because those it was found out that when your vision is *too* good, it'll start to irritate you after a while - you'll get headaches, dizzy spells etc.

So... superhuman vision might be useful on occasion, for short periods of time, but if you think that we're all gonna wear contacts that will literally give us a hawk's vision in 20 years, think again. It won't happen.

Re:Rubbish

[Dr. Zowie]

No, actually, the reason people don't correct their vision to better than about 20/15 is that the surgery itself introduces aberrations at that level. The diffraction limit is about 20/10, so 20/15 with surgery is pretty good. Most high-order LASIK patients come out of the surgery with that level of vision. (that means "more than 50% of...", not "if you get the surgery you will...")

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit on your rubbish.

Just maybe the problems of laser surgery are related to ...ummm...having surgery?

Having much better vision than the rest of the population doesn't condemn you to headaches. Some small fraction of the population (found in high concentration in the subspecies with the ability to hit a curveball with a long stick of hickory) has 20-10 vision. These people seem not to be in agony over their eyesight.

Lasik can already give you 20/10 vision

[PaulModz]

If your sight is 20/40 or better, you can already get enhanced vision as high as 20/10 or 20/15 with Lasik. Some doctors even specialize in vision enhancement for professional athletes. Many golfers and baseball players (most notably Tiger Woods) have had their vision enhanced, with real results.

So why is Lasik ok while Steroids aren't (there's little or no medical evidence supporting the idea that steroids are harmful when used properly).

Here's an article that ran on Slate during the congressional hearings on steroid use - http://www.slate.com/id/2116858/ Buckle up, sports fans, there are all kinds of elective surgeries in the works to improve human performance. I guess as long as you don't inject yourself, anything goes!

Re:Lasik can already give you 20/10 vision

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know anyone who got Lasik and their balls were shrinking, growing tits, and developed violent personalities, do you?

Re:Lasik can already give you 20/10 vision

[dfghjk]

No one cares about that. It's about "cheating". Why would anyone insist on excluding Bonds or McGuire from the record books simply because they risked growing tits (as you say)?

Now, how many steroid users with shrivelled balls or grown tits do you know?

Frankly, why shouldn't professional athletes take performance enhancing drugs?

Lasers... Eyyeball.... No, you go first.

[MrJerryNormandinSir]

My first job out of college was at M.I.T. Lincoln Lab.
I was there in 1986, guess what I worked with? LASERS!
You kno wwhat happens if you shine a LASER in your eye?
retina damage.

I'll pass.

Re:Lasers... Eyyeball.... No, you go first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because obviously it doesn't matter what strength the laser is as to whether it'll cause any damage or not

Re:Lasers... Eyyeball.... No, you go first.

[Anonymous Coward]

My first job out of college was at a metal shop. I was there in 1986, guess what I worked with? Water jet cutters! You know what happens if you point a water jet cutter at your body? You get cut to shreds.

I'll pass on that shower.

Re:Lasers? Evolved Sharks Very Interested

[jameskojiro]

Yeah, but no doubt there will be copycats out there that will imitate you and bully even more companies.....

Maybe you should become a deaf-mute????

Inaccurate title

[harris s newman]

Andreas Dreher, the company's CEO, says the lenses won't likely improve vision beyond 20/20, but they provide better contrast and less double vision than traditional lenses. So exactly what is this super vision you speak of, better contract and less double vision? I think super vision would be more like seeing microscopic or magnafying.

Re:Inaccurate title

[adamgoossens]

Actually, the title isn't misleading. There's two companies mentioned in the article. You're referring to Andreas Dreher, the CEO of Ophthonix (a competitor). Their product gives enhanced contrast and less double vision, but not greater than 20/20 sight.

The main body of the article is referring to PixelOptics (presumably lead by Ron Blum) who claim the greater than 20/20 vision to which the title is referring.

Not a good solution without active control

[Dr. Zowie]

Using wavefront sensors to fully characterize your eye is not new. LASIK patients get that treatment now -- you look into an autocollimator that includes a Shack-Hartmann sensor, and it reads out all the high-order aberrations in your eye. The LASIK treatment then gets rid of all those aberrations, so that after correction your eye could in principle be "perfect" -- limited only by quantum uncertainty of the photons entering your pupil.[In practice that's not the case, because the act of cutting your cornea and letting it heal introduces a low level of new aberrations that weren't present when your eye was characterized in the first place].

If wavefront sensing is so easy and painless, why don't we all have super-duper glasses to fix our vision? Historically, it's because high order lenses are hard to grind, but more recently it's because your glasses can't be aligned with your eye very well. You could make high-order corrective glasses out of the usual glass or polycarbonate or whatever, but they would only work if you looked straight through them: if you turned your eyes to look sideways, the corrective aberrations in the lenses would no longer line up with the aberrations in your cornea, and your vision would be worse than with conventional glasses. If you have astigmatism you can get that effect now by turning your glasses 90 degrees as you look through them: at 90 degree rotation, the cylindrical correction actually worsens your astigmatism rather than correcting it. high order terms are more sensitive to angular and positional alignment.

Contact lenses are better since they are attached to your cornea and therefore stay approximately aligned -- but they're not affixed to your eye, they sort of drift around in there. That's one reason that astigmatic contacts (a relatively new product, BTW) are only available in 10 degree increments of correction angle -- they don't line up any better than that. The only thing that stays really fixed relative to your cornea is, well, your cornea -- which is why high-order correction is feasible for LASIK.

So to make your super-duper glasses work right you would have to mount a small camera under the frame, pointed back at your eye. The camera would have to back out the motion of the eye and correct the active pixels in the lens as you looked around. That may be what these guys are doing, but TFM didn't mention it. Without that sort of feedback, high order correction isn't likely to work well.

BTW, wavefront sensors appear like magic to lots of folks but they aren't. Those eye autofocusers at the optometrist work by autocollimation: if your eye is perfectly focused, then a beam coming in should be focused to a single point on the retina, and scattered light from the retina should then be refocused into a beam that goes straight back where it came from. The autocollimator adjusts an external lens assembly until the beam coming back out of your eye is nice and clean. Wavefront sensors use a bug-eye lens to produce (say) 25 little images, each of which records the beam coming out of a small patch of your pupil. If the eye is in focus, then all the little images should line up. If it's not, then they are misaligned. It's that simple.

Re:Not a good solution without active control

[Anonymous Coward]

Contact lenses are better since they are attached to your cornea and therefore stay approximately aligned -- but they're not affixed to your eye, they sort of drift around in there. That's one reason that astigmatic contacts (a relatively new product, BTW)

Just curious. I have astigmatism in my right eye. Couldn't tell you exactly the "degree" of it or whatever, but as I think about it I remember seeing the number 3.75 on the bottle of my contact lens.

"Relatively new" must mean "in the last 25 years." I started wearing contacts in 1983. They worked just fine -- always have. The Commodore 64 was "relatively new" at that time.

And also, my father is additionally astigmatic. He has worn contacts for as long as I can remember. I would speculate based on family photos that he started wearing them in the early 1970's. So, what do you mean by "relatively new?"

Re:Not a good solution without active control

[Dr. Zowie]

I mean that contacts that correct astigmatism only became popular in the mid-to-late 1990s. Before that (to my knowledge) contacts only corrected the spherical term, which is usually the larger correction. They're hard to manufacture because they have to be constructed to align themselves correctly on the cornea. The ones I use are weighted and rotate slowly if I don't get them in right the first time; some others have little fins/ridges/bumps on them that are designed to be dragged straight by your eyelid when you blink.

On your prescription you can read out your astigmatic correction as the "cyl." term. There's usually a "sph.", which is the overall lens power, a "cyl.", which is the additional cylindrical power (the same sort of effect as looking through the stem of a wine glass), and an "angle", which tells you the direction of the cylindrical correction. The numbers are given in "diopters", which have units of inverse meters, so a +1 correction means that the lens in front of your eye can project an image of distant objects onto a piece of paper 1 meter behind the lens. A +2 correction means that the best focus would happen 0.5 meter behind the lens; a 3.75 correction is relatively strong and means the paper would be only 26 cm (about 10.5 inches) behind the lens. Negative corrections (-3.75) correspond to nearsightedness; positive ones (+3.75) correspond to farsightedness.

Re:Not a good solution without active control

[Anonymous Coward]

If the bottle for your contact lenses has only one number then I highly doubt your contacts have any correction factors for astigmatism. There should be at least two numbers. One for near/far-sightedness and the other an astigmatism factor.

I know somepeople haven't been able to get contact lenses until the past few years due to a bad astigmatism. This is largely in part that the proper contact lenses weren't developed until soft lenses came about due to issues with hard lenses.

I hear that there are now oxygen permeable inflexible lenses now that can fix astigmatism as well.

Re:Not a good solution without active control

[FredMenace]

FYI, I was given an astigmatic correction soft contact for one eye (the other wasn't so bad, so didn't need it) when I first got contacts in about 1982 or 1983. They are also known as "toric" lenses.

I, for one.....

[UttBuggly]

....welcome our new Cylon overlords and their laser-enhanced vision.

"By your command"

Super'Bowl' Vision to the rescue...not!

[Rocknrico]

One week too late.

After 50 years, the NFL still can't tell conclusively whether a ball made it into the endzone or not. Super'bowl' Vision ... just when we I needed you the most. But if I can accelerate my ol' Camry to 88mph...

oh great

[szembek]

They would probably amplify my eyestrain/fatigue from staring at the monitor all day.

Note to Wired editor...

[imroy]

Note: "supervision" is already a word, and it is not the same as "super vision".

In the US Army's sniper school

[blueZ3]

they teach you a bit about the mechanics of shooting (zeroing the rifle, holding steady, leading a moving target, estimating bullet drop, etc.) but a lot of what you learn is how to gauge distance and wind. There are a number of ways to gauge each (in the desert, the wind affects the "heat shimmers" you see in the air; in open field terrain, grass etc. moves in the breeze). This is the most difficult part of shooting well at extreme distances, because across long distances the wind may differ between the shooter and target.

The Army's standard-issue sniper rifles aren't the .50 caliber jobs you need for really long-range shooting, anyway. The classes were intense and very interesting in an abstract fashion. Fortunately, I was never called on to put any of this knowledge to practical applciation.

And as the parent says, close combat in cities (MOUT--Military Operations in Urban Terrain) moots most extreme long distance shooting. There's just too much maneuver for a sniper to be effective from a fixed postion with a long view.

More detailed artwork, here I come!

[192939495969798999]

I'd love to have a pair of resolution-sharpening glasses for doing artwork. There are lots of times when it would be helpful to see what was going on in detail without having to get so close to the canvas that I can't see the whole picture anymore.

Zoom would be cool

[mangu]

with some extra controll mechanisms to be able to optically zoom as well

That's exactly what I need. My blonde neighbour always draws the shades whenever she sees me pointing my telescope at her bedroom window. With zoom I wouldn't need any telescope, and if I got a retina remapping too, I could pretend to be looking to the other side as well...

I had a similar idea recently...

[SgtXaos]

based on my failed adaptation to progressive lenses. (Guess I am not going to get rich inventing adaptive eyeglasses now!).

For those who can tolerate progressives, I salute you. It didn't sound too bad when they were describing how they would be, but I wore them for a week before giving up and asking for a single vision prescription and a reading prescription separately.

All during that week, I thought of alternatives, and naturally (this is /.) I thought that some sort of adaptive lenses would be the cool way to deal with the combination of astigmatism/myopia and my newfound presbyopia. Getting old has many drawbacks, but it is good to have survived 46 years... :)

The other thing I thought of was a replacement lens of some kind of material that would mimic the properties of the youthful human eye lens. This would be a surgical implant, but it should correct one's vision back to the point before they needed glasses, wouldn't it?

Anyway, this is exciting technology, if it progresses beyond the VC/Vapor stage.

Re:I'll Believe it When I See it(pun intended?)

[bingo4000]

eno2001 said To me, all the applications I just came up with are in the same league with what this guy proposes. And I think his idea is much more far fetched than my own.

Sure... to you. Seriously, I think the dynamic vision device decribed in TFA would have the potential for mass appeal. Of course you'll probably see this on the battlefield first where soldiers will be the initial beta testers. Then the devices will get all kinds of publicity(probably during the war with Korea or whoever is next after Iran), then they'll go commercial. That seems to be what's missing from this era of war. Something cool and marketable like the HMWVV. Heck this thing was the star of Gulf War I along with the Patriot missile, must a surface to air missile is a lot tougher to market to the upper middle class. By the way, your Swiss Army headgear idea is all over the place. It's not a new idea, it's a collection of old ideas with a very limited target market. Super optics on the other hand would have a MUCH larger target demo in both commercial and consumer apps. Hunting, Fishing and Boating come to mind. I'm sure Law enforcement would love it. Imagine being able to read a license number in the distance. I've only been thinking about it a few minutes, but I could go on and on.

Up next: cameras

[PFI_Optix]

I'm waiting for the version with an integrated 2 MP camera. That way everyone can take pictures without anyone else knowing and it won't be limited just to those people who can cleverly conceal their cell phones.

Aren't you guys looking forward to browsing a forum and seeing thousands more bad pictures of random moderately attractive women doing everyday things? I know I am.

Another, contrary, data point

[jeff.paulsen]

I'm rather nearsighted, and have been wearing glasses every waking minute since I was about 6 years old. My vision "peaked" at about -3.5 diopters, when I was around 12.

Every exam since then has shown improvement, such that at age 30 my prescription was around -2.5 diopters. There's also 0.25 diopters of astigmatism, but only in one eye, and I suspect that was simply undiagnosed in my earlier tests.

My equally nearsighted coworker reports similar experiences. My father has gotten increasingly farsighted with age, and it seems that we are, too -- we might have normal vision when we're 60.

Re:Another, contrary, data point

[vodkamattvt]

I certainly cant dispute that, and Im sure it happens. My point was not that nearsighted eyes always get worse, but that they are definately at risk to get worse because of corrective lenses. It depends on how much you strain them and how much your individual eyes can take. Since its from the focusing "muscles" tightening up, and that varies with activity and individual, why not take preventative measures? There is nothing to lose from wearing reading glasses during computer and close work.

Diagnosis for reading glasses holds especially true for children .. to lessen the chance of early onset myopia. But if you regularly work at the computer or are in school you should consider them as well. They do not harm your eyes like negative leanses do (why do you think you need a prescription from a doctor for negative leanses and not reading glasses?). My thought was, and is, why not wear them if it has a chance to save some of my vision. They also seem to relax my eyes while reading and make it easier somewhat.

I think getting increasingly farsighted with age is normal, Im not a doctor so I dont know the reason, but many many many people need reading glasses as they age.

Re:Another, contrary, data point

[dfghjk]

Except that what you say isn't true in my experience and it's an unsubstantiated claim. You may not have said that nearsightedness always gets worse but you strongly implied it (since all your friends fit in that category). Why don't you show where strain on the focusing muscles is what's responsible for nearsightedness?

Also, getting farsighted with age isn't normal. That process is called presbyopiahttp://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions /presbyopia.htm/. Basically, presbyopia is a hardening of the lens as we age that reduces the eye's focusing range. It has nothing to do with the eye itself changing shape. Of course, if you wish to imagine that using reading glasses now will save you from presbyopia when you get older then go on with it. Others know better.

Re:Another, contrary, data point

[COMON$]

I seem to be a case that defies what you guys are discussing. I have worn glasses since I was about 6 and my eyes stabilized when I was about 20 at -4.75 and -5.25. I wore contacts all during college due to sports. After I got out of college I went back to glasses and my eyes started improving. My eye doctor says it was due to the excersize or whatever that my eyes did during FPS games and looking at computer screens. My focusing ability also went through the roof. That was when I was 25.

I just got PRK surgery on Jan 10, 2006. My eyes improved to about 20/15 and have held steady with one small complication in my right eye.

So take that for what it is worth but maybe my eyesite wouldnt have been so bad if I followed the theory above, or maybe in some people your eyes just degenerate. But I would rather take an Opthomoligist's word for it than 2 hours of my own personal study

Just think of how many times you computer geeks out there have to but heads with someone who "knows what they are doing" after tinkering with a computer for 5 minutes vs your 10 years of experience.

Double the Distance?

[cosmotron]

"Theoretically, this should be able to double the distance that a person can see clearly."

I don't get it; eventually things get so small (distance wise) that you can't see them anymore anyway...

Re:Double the Distance?

[Obvius]

Take the maximum distance at which you can read a car registration plate. 20 metres?
I assume what TFA means is: using this technology you would be able to read the plate at 40m.

Re:oblig. simpsons reference QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

Email me -- I'd like to send you an invitation to my party. You're EXACTLY the kind of dazzling and witty personality that'll liven up any gathering!

$3.5 Million contract

[LeftyLucy]

This is being championed as a great opthamologic leap, and truly, if it works, it is. But this company now has a great big contract with the DOD for quite a sum of money. Now I ask you, is this great leap for the good of mankind, or a way to get people to have retinal scans for the benefit of Big Brother?

Wired just gets worse and worse.

[GigG]

There was a time when Wired was a OK place to get tech news. That time is ended.

To quote the first graph of the TFA. "... About twice a year, he would encounter a patient whose eyesight was better than 20/20. Such cases of super vision were a phenomenon that Blum and the science of opthalmology couldn't explain."

We all know that 20/20 means the test subject can see at 20 ft what a person of normal vision can see at 20 feet. We also know there are a lot of people who can't see as well as a person with normal vision. Is it so much of a strech of the imagination that there will be some people who do see better than normal to call it super vision?

Re:Wired just gets worse and worse.

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

I have 20/10 vision, I can see at 20 feat what most people see clearly at 10ft. Been several times to the eye doctor, same results, even with randomized eye charts (i.e. I am not memorizing the last few lines on the chart). From what the eye doctor said, this wasn't uncommon or super by any means.

Re:Wired just gets worse and worse.

[GigG]

From what the eye doctor said, this wasn't uncommon or super by any means.

Exactly, Wired sucks as a news organization.

Re:Wired just gets worse and worse.

[esampson]

You complain that the writer for Wired (along with the editor and fact checker who looked over this) should have caught something like this. I, for one, am comfortable with giving them the benefit of the doubt. I mean, they aren't opthamologists or anything.

What floors me is how Blum, who is an opthamologist, couldn't explain it.

Worst.Opthamologist.Ever.

Re:Wired just gets worse and worse.

[GigG]

You complain that the writer for Wired (along with the editor and fact checker who looked over this) should have caught something like this. I, for one, am comfortable with giving them the benefit of the doubt. I mean, they aren't opthamologists or anything.

It's the lead of the story. They are a major magazine. They should have fact checkers especially when phrases like "super vision" are used and the person using it is a guy that is trying to sell something that will give it to you. What floors me is how Blum, who is an opthamologist, couldn't explain it.

Worst.Opthamologist.Ever.

I couldn't agree more. It kinda puts a intellectual taint on the whole thing.

Just Press Start

[CoachS]

We already have a whole army of teens and college-aged kids who are expert marksmen. They know that you click the left directional button to zoom in, press Y to turn on your night-vision for better contrast in low-lighting or bad visibility conditions, kneel for better stability, and squeeze the right trigger when you're ready to fire.

It's not about developing better sights, it's about developing the right kind of controllers.

Their biggest shock if they get into real combat will probably be in discovering that you can't turn off the vibration.

-Coach-

re: the risks?

[King_TJ]

Several years ago, I knew a woman who was finishing up her studies to become an optometrist, and she told me one time that I should be very concerned about the Lasik procedures out there, and didn't recommend having it done at all.

I don't know how much fact there was to it, but she claimed that the "dirty little secret" of Lasik is that it more or less casues eventual legal blindness in around .5% to 1% of patients. They tend not to inform people of the real risk because it's such a profitable business, and they're better off settling the occasional lawsuit than telling people the truth.

If there's truth to this, I imagine they get away with downplaying the risk factors because the vision loss happens over a length of time, and can easily be blamed on other factors, in most cases where someone complains?

Super Vision?

[nytes]

If I had any supervision I wouldn't be posting on /.

Uh, what?

[scutato]

Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball, and structures in the eye scatter the resulting beam of light.

I'm sure it's supposed to be "laser beams." Lasers bouncing around in your eye may be a bit...uncomfortable.

Re:Uh, what?

[TeknoHog]

Well, if we get all technical, laser is the name of a technology or idea: light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Throwing around ideas is usually quite fun IMHO :)

Is a real-time solution neccessary?

[ao_coder]

I'm curious as to whether or not having a real-time correction brings any real improvement in vision correction. Are cornea aberrations a realtime problem? If not, is a pixelated lens superior to an high-precision lens of some stable material?

I know that the advantage Othonix glasses offer is that they use adaptive optics (a laser and wavefront sensor) to identify a prescription for your vision that is much more accurate than the techniques currently in use at most optometrists. This allows more precise measurement of low-order aberrations, and begins to address the higher-order zernike modes (up to the 11th I think). Opthonix also has some technology for taking said prescription and grinding a lens- but all you are talking about here is a pair of glasses that have a MUCH more precise prescription than was possible before.

It's good to hear about these developments, because correcting the wavefront of the light entering your eye is guaranteed to avoid introducing any error to your cornea, whereas a lot of forms of eye surgery introduce deformity to your vision that might in the long run be harder to correct.

Re: the risks?

[Hrodvitnir]

Unfortunately, there are people in any field that will tell you whatever it takes to get your money. It is true that a small percent suffer permanent eye damage or blindness. Lasik is still a skill-based procedure. Finding the right doctor is crucial.

If you are concerned about this, I recommend this site:
http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/lasik/

As with everything, a healthy bit of skepticism should be employed with any "too good to be true" offer.

Been there, done that

[Allen Akin]

This theory was popular 40 years ago, when I was first diagnosed with myopia. I went through an extended eye exercise regimen as well as glasses for close work, but to no avail. Eventually I started wearing glasses with the ordinary correction for myopia. My prescription remained essentially stable for 30 years (until I started wearing contact lenses, which required some tweaking).

My understanding is that in myopia the lens is simply too far away from the retina for its accommodation range to bring the image into focus. So there are two variables: the lens, and the eyeball geometry. You'd expect some cases could be solved by increasing the accommodation ability of the lens, but you'd also expect some geometries to be beyond the ability of the natural lens to handle. My wife's correction is -10 diopters, for example.

So my take is, feel free to try this approach, but be aware that it won't always work.

Been there, done that.

[DancesWithBlowTorch]

The reason why all your ideas have not been realised is economical: It makes sense to develop a very expensive piece of technology that can help a lot of people, thereby bringing the price per treatment into an acceptable range. However, it doesn't make sense (yet) to use such complicated technologies to clean windshields because nobody is prepared to pay 200 k$ for a windshield cleaner (while a specialised ophthalmologist would certainly be prepared to pay as much for such a machine).

This technology is certainly no "pie in the sky". It's actually quite close to the market. I'd send you to this site, but it seems they spend more time on developing their machines than updating their site. :-) It's even more a pity that this press release is available in German only. Believe me, this is serious business.

Can't resist...

[SeanDuggan]

So this guy buys a black-market penile enhancer, and gets it in economy size. Reading the jar, he sees that the intended dosage is 2 pills and will last for a month. He decides to take a larger dosage; in short, he gulps the whole jar of pills. The next day, he's talking with a friend and mentions the drug.
"Yeah, I kind of took too many and it's had... side effects."
"Oh, how so?"
"Well, you see that girl on the hill way over there?" *ZZIP* *WHIRR* *PLUNK* "Got 'er!"

Obviously, the joke works better as physical comedy, but eh...

Yah, just don't look in the sun!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Darth Vader will come down from the planet Vulcan and melt your brain!

And?

[Beardo the Bearded]

I have lousy vision when uncorrected. (20/500 or more)

With my glasses, it gets down to 20/20.

With my contacts, I get 20/10 in one eye and 20/5 in the other.

Without zoom or nightvision, explain how my vision could be improved...

Re:Lasers? Evolved Sharks Very Interested

[PitaBred]

I'm apparently not the only GITS fan here, then ;)

Re: the risks?

[mapmaker]

Lasik is still a skill-based procedure. Finding the right doctor is crucial.

I thought LASIK was pretty much a robotic procedure, no human involvement at all other than pushing the power button.

Hey! You shouldn't be telling jokes like that!

[Art Tatum]

After all, you're a priest! :-)

Obligatory Futurama Quote

[orkysoft]

Touch eyeballs to screen for cheap laser surgery.

the retina has fundamental resolution limits

[Anonymous Coward]

There's only so many photoreceptors in your retina and each of these receptors takes up a good bit of space. This means that there is fundamental limit to the spatial resolution you can see. It's basic sampling theory.

"Individual cone cells have a diameter of approximately 2 um. The
foveola has a diameter of some 350 um. These dimensions impose certain
limits on the maximum spatial resolving ability of the retina. The
photoreceptor density at the foveola limits visual acuity to 20/8. Objects
requiring resolution finer than 20/8 can still be seen, but their perception
will be degraded from high amounts of "sampling error" or "aliasing." As
discussed below, sampling takes place even at lower spatial frequencies,
so other physiological constraints on vision exist besides photoreceptor
density."

Contrast sensitivity and limits of vision.
Int Ophthalmol Clin. 2003 Spring;43(2):31-42. Review. No abstract available.
PMID: 12711901 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Priest Identity

[SeanDuggan]

Oh no! I knew I would one day be confused with him! That or the graphic artist, or the insurance salesman... ^_^ Myself, I'm the third down on the list as of the last time I looked. Or, alternately, follow the link listed for my username. Oddly enough, I've been mistaken for a priest several times IRL, but I'm really not sure why. Apparently I just "look like a priest" as the people involved have said. Either I'm sporting a halo or it's that lack of focus on this world in my eyes.

As for priests telling such jokes, I find that priests are often the worst offenders there. I think it's partly to relieve the pressure of celibacy and partly because they're constantly being told such jokes. I personally don't see it as wrong. Such jokes don't exactly incite lust in others and it's just one more example of subjects we joke about because we're afraid of it. Same as the jokes about war, death, and religion.

Re:Priest Identity

[Art Tatum]

I met the guy at a piano workshop once and thought of him immediately upon seeing your nick. He's an expert Bach player. Of course, Bach was Lutheran. :-)

Some Canon EOS cameras have eye-controlled focus.

[Explo]

As said in the subject, some Canon EOS SLR camera bodies have had eye-controlled focus point selection for a while now. Some people claim that it works beautifully for them. I don't have a good link about this, but googling for ECF or eye-controlled focus and Canon EOS toghether should provide some basic information about it.

Re:Some Canon EOS cameras have eye-controlled focu

[somersault]

Strange, I've never heard that, but I guess I've only looked at the lower range EOSs. That's rather cool. It's only on the 5, 50, 30 and 30V apparently though.. the best I've looked at is the 10 and I think that's out of my price range, not sure about the 30D