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Where Are the High-Res Head-Mounted Displays?
vivian writes "Ever since 1996, when I first set eyes on a Sony GlassTron head-mounted display in Japan, I have been awaiting a lightweight, head-mounted display that actually has decent resolution and doesn't look like a brick tied to your face. The closest contender to date seems to be the WRAP 920AV from Vuzix, and they are partially transparent too, which is great, but as with every other unit I have found, they only offer video quality — 640x480. Given that there have been a number of other discussions on Slashdot, I can't be the only one here who is eagerly awaiting something that could actually be a viable alternative to a PC monitor — especially for gaming or 3d graphics work. Perhaps we could petition a manufacturer to make what we actually want? Something with a minimum of 1024x768 @30-60hz refresh, say, and capable of stereo vision. Extra karma if they incorporate head tracking."
Why spend thousands of dollars smooshing a high resolution display to your face when you can blow up a flatscreen to epic proportions and get all the resolution you need? Practically speaking, the HMD does nothing additional other than give you headache.
Even head tracking has taken a back seat. Interface design has moved away from the idea of strapping gagetry to your body and moved toward motion sensing devices that provide excellent spatial control and immersion without cramming you into a latex glove. (Bow chicka bow wow.)
Take the Wii Remote as an example. Accelerometers and IR sensors work together to provide precise positioning. A gyroscope powered attachment called the Motion+ is coming out to close the gap on orientation difficulties. That's the low-end and look at what has already been achieved. The high end stuff allows researchers to build entire rooms where gyroscopes and camera tracking provide location information while the subject is surrounded by projected images or large flat panels.
The end goal is to blur the line between man and machine rather than having the machine trick man into believing he's in a different world. As it turns out, bluring the line between reality and unreality is hella lot easier than trying to replace the current reality.
In short, don't hold your breath. The VR of the 90's is dead. Long live augmented realtiy.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Been wanting one since the movie Hackers came out back in the mid-90s - which Zero Cool used. Loved the idea, have looked for years yet nothing has ever quite done it.
The main issue as I recall with all of the projection glasses were the concern of eye strain because of too much light. I had a pair of the old sony classes, and they were no doubt hard on the eyes. In fact, I think they had a 4 hour limit of usage as I recall...
In short... Unless the business world converts to a French way of living, I dont think that your glasses will every find their way into high end applications anytime soon.
I was thinking the same thing just yesterday!
That looks seriously cool. Now, if it can work wirelessly with an iPhone (or similar device), include the camera and head tracking attachments, you have an entire platform for augmented reality right there.
I suppose if you needed extra horsepower, you could put straps on a laptop and wear it as a backpack...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
"HMD does nothing additional other than give you headache." After my experiences with the virtual i/o glasses back in 1995 I disagree with your statement. Head tracking and virtual head glasses are the future IMHO. Why mount a monitor in front of you which is static when you could have a virtual monitor in front of you that rotates your view as you look around. Instead of just a monitor in front it would seem like you have a 360 degree monitor in all directions. Some of the best VR I experienced was with the game that actually came with it that was very low res and no shading on the polygons (even for its time it was low res). But the immersion into that world was just fantastic and made up for it. I look forward to a day when a 3d desktop if available in a VR headset with head tracking. A bonus for me would be with some kind of 3d input device. Compiz fusion on X is starting to get some effects that might indicate that direction (3d cube desktop) but there is quite a bit to go before we can use a 3d VR headset with head tracking.
http://www.kopin.com/about-cyberdisplay/ (Tiny LCDs.)
http://wearcam.org/ (More complex than regular 'partially transparent' displays, but _far_ more capable - look up Mediated Reality / Augmented Reality.)
I feel that to bring up motion tracking blurs the line between VR and a more mundane wearable display. I could see countless uses for a wearable display.
/. have other people in their rooms)... and i guess it might be fun to be able to watch pr0n with no one around to be the wiser.
For instance the ability to watch/play with out disturbing anyone else in the room (yes some people that read
I demand my pr0n glasses!
my hopes lie here - hopefully HD in the release... http://www.microvision.com/pico_projector_displays/
"You are still innocent until proven guilty. What's changed is what they do to innocent people." by notnAP (846325)
I think that head mounted displays face something of a chicken vs. the egg situation. Simply put there just aren't currently any real applications for such a device. Traditional video obscures your vision. So, in order to watch it on one of these you must be standing (or sitting) still in one place. In which case traditional displays are simply a more economic way of showing the video anyways.
I suppose that the "killer app" for head mounted displays is augmented reality (or AR), in which you would overlay digital data on the real world. But such technology is very much still in the laboratory stage of development (although some of it is just starting to make its way onto smart phones).
Augmented reality!
Double-blink the restaurant to see the menu!
Double-blink the shopping window to see product specs
I'v been waiting for this since sometime 1998!
Cheers
Peter
I know the University of Washington was working on Retina-based displays, anyone have news or an update on that?
Re: Commercial HMDs, It's been quiet afaik. Nothing in the HDTV resolutions that everyone seems to be craving.
I want some sort of HMD or wearable computer so badly. I want a camera to record where I go and what I do and act as a backup for my cranial memory. I want it to recognize faces to keep track of my history that person. I want an internet connection everywhere so that I can call up an alternative recipe on the fly when I realize at the last minute that I'm missing an ingredient. I want to use the sum analyses of my automotive commutes to recommend ways I can change my driving behaviour to extend the life of my car and use less fuel. I want ubiquitous, always-ready, augmented reality. I want to evolve and extend my senses beyond what any human has ever been capable of, and I want to keep my private matters private.
Is that so much to ask?
People just don't want to be teased with "hey Geordi" everywhere. It's bad enough at my job... I have a Linux box and a Windows box, each with dual monitors (not particularly big ones) and it's always "hey Houston, are you sure you don't need another monitor?" Everyone else
I always thought HMDs sounded like a great idea, too. I guess they won't be socially accepted until they're integrated into eyeglasses without any noticeable extra bulges anywhere, and wireless too. How to get the battery into such a small form factor will be quite a trick to pull off.
You know I'm the son of the baby boomer generation. We were promised a lot. We were all told we were special and that we'd have all these new things to do things with and new ways to do stuff. Just the other day I wanted to know where my wise cracking robot was that could do everything like wash the dishes and wipe my backside after eating Indian 4 days in a row. All our generation was left with was a debt that will take us most of our working adult years to pay off, wars for no good reason at all we gotta fix, and new and more complex social problems to deal with. I applaud you for wanting to know where your high def head set is. I would like to know where mine is as well.
The headmounted displays were accidently left in the flying cars in parking lot of the lunar hotel.
Iâ(TM)ve never been a huge fan of head tracking. I mean, it sounds like a cool idea, but it seems like it would require either excessive movement on your part to do anything meaningful, or it would require you to sit almost absolutely still in order to keep your display even semi-stable. The real problem though is with people that would wear them in public. We already hate people that wear Bluetooth headsets everywhere (you know who you are), how fun would it be to have somebody that looks like theyâ(TM)re looking at you, when in reality theyâ(TM)re looking up dirty pictures of Summer Glao on the internet.
Double-blink the restaurant to see the menu!
Double-blink the shopping window to see product specs
I've been waiting for this since sometime 1998!
And a small blast of compressed air can momentarily blind a user, followed by the user frantically trying to close all the pop-ups before he crashes his car.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
> I have been awaiting a lightweight, head-mounted display that actually has decent
> resolution and doesn't look like a brick tied to your face.
It will still look like a brick tied to your face but it will be from Apple so it will be cool.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Wow, not sure what happened there, apparently slashdot isn't a huge fan of apostrophes.
I bought these a while back
http://www.3dvisor.com/products.php
They work, they are OLED, and they are for around $500. They have head tracking built into them too. I ran Half Life 2 on it, and it was amazing.
Only problem with all VR is the fact that most people, including myself, got sick after playing for 10 minutes. Its due to factors of what the corner of your eyes sees, your ear balance, and the relation to the uncalibrated movement in the game.
HMD's are so retro-chic. Don't you know that all the cool research is now tapping the brain's retina layer to augment/alter vision?
These days, I'm waiting for the hat/camera/socket that allow for text overlay, enhanced-spectrum cameras, and novel perspectives to our existing firmware.
Remember, when dreaming go big.
Duh.
Microvision have all the patents for HMD/Retinal display, and is currently working with the US Army... for a few years. ;)
So you won't see any good HMD that doesn't give you an headache this year. Please retry later
I can't call that English
in the trunk of my anti-grav car parked in my luxury mansion orbiting Uranus.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Its not Hi-Res but its something people would wear more than some bulky goggles:
http://www.digilens.com/products.html
Its more for augmented reality than virtual reality.
Of course if you've a thousand dollars to blow there is always one of Emagin's products:
http://www.3dvisor.com/
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
a 2" screen a half inch from your eye was not the way the human eye was intended to work. no offense to how cool it would be though, but our eyes just have not evolved for that type of input.. things like depth perception, spatial awareness and stereoscopy break down. the best we can do is overlay projections which have been used in broadway musicals for years, and HUD which has been used to help old people drive cars and young people blow up third world countries.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I bet weight and size has something to do with this. When OLED screen tech becomes commonplace, we'll see plenty more of these things. In addition to the other advantages of OLED, the high aperture ratio is useful (to avoid the screen door effect), the size and weight is reduced compared to even LCD, and perhaps even more importantly, the viewing angle issue is solved completely.
Perhaps more importantly, OLED can probably obtain a much higher pixel density more easily (considering this source, and also how small the 11" TV from Sony is...). The former mentioned a 0.38" display with a resolution of 560,000 pixels (1.7 million subpixels) in a press release. Anything even remotely close to that would be amazing.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
looking up dirty pictures of Summer Glao on the internet.*** I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter,if it comes with the dirty pictures.
Yes. Because the MPAA, RIAA etc would want DRM installed.
In a shopping mall with copyrighted music playing in the background? Then backup for your cranial memory is only allowed if you pay per recall and for the "format shifting".
Radio playing somewhere? Same.
Watching a movie in a cinema? Sorry, please check your auxiliary "brain" at the counter first before you are allowed in.
A penny for "your" thoughts would be considered too cheap.
Better fix copyright first, otherwise this augmented stuff isn't going to work so well. You're not supposed to do "telepathy" if the multimedia you're sending to your friends contains some copyrighted material.
The tech is not far off. Monkeys can already play games with just their thoughts. The blind can see with their tongues. People without limbs can feel and control stuff with stuff attached to their chest muscles/nerves.
I'm just not optimistic about the laws.
"Why spend thousands of dollars smooshing a high resolution display to your face when you can blow up a flatscreen to epic proportions and get all the resolution you need? Practically speaking, the HMD does nothing additional other than give you headache."
Because you cannot wear a flat screen of epic proportions. Way to entirely miss the OP's reasoning for wanting a HMD.
What If i want an augmented reality display that will let me surf the web while I'm at the supermarket, so I can look up coupons or my shopping list.
YOU may be happy wandering around with a 42" plasma screen strapped to your face as you look for a power outlet to plug it into, but the rest of us would like something we can mount on our glasses and project the information into our eyes, and our eyes alone, because it's portable and private.
Practically speaking, you've got your head up your ass.
"There is virtually no problem capitalism can't solve. Demand for such a device will entice manufacturers into the market because they will see the opportunity to make money. As other manufacturers see competitors making the big bucks they will be drawn into the market creating a surplus of devices and lowering the prices for the consumer."
"In no time almost everyone will walking around in their own high resolution digital world with brick like devices on their face and the extra large headphones that are the rage with iPoders. If we don't like seeing smog simply write a script that filters it out. Tired of looking at trash - a few bash commands and its no more."
Personally I'm holding out for smella vision (TM me).
Things are the way they are because that is the way they should be...
DR. PANGLOSS
The problem was that Virtual Boy had terrible games and gave users a headache.
Had Virtual Boy succeeded, we might see more of this kind of thing.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I think a high def lightweight HMD would really change things. It is an idea who's time has come. I could sit in bed or on the train and work as if I were in my office and interact with data in new ways. Not to mention the games! Ryan
sfs http://mazok.ucoz.com/
They aren't sunglasses, but they also aren't full bricks: nVisor ST, nVisor MX90.
$20k.
1. Drool over new tech.
2. Wait a few years.
3. Drool over early but unaffordable products.
4. Wait for some market to force affordability.
5. Die of old age, a bitter and disappointed nerd.
Crowds of ghosts with unfinished business haunt CES.
Head tracking would presumably enable a more stable and better job of adding captions or labels to street signs, business store fronts or whatever it is. The point is to project something like Google Street view with captions onto the real world. Ideally these things look like regular glasses or are simply contact lenses but that's likely to be a few years down the road. Vernor Vinge won a Hugo for Rainbow's End whose story to a certain extent revolved around exactly this technology. Store fronts and business end up completely bland because everybody is looking at "skins" projected by the hud in their contact lenses or glasses.
great... as if i don't have enough to worry about when driving to work on my motorcycle. now i have to watch out for nimrods trying to watch a movie on their iPod while driving. i can't wait :|
It ain't cheap, and I doubt you could even buy one if you had the cash, but for state of the art, do a little research into the HMD for the JSF (helmet mounted display for the Joint Strike Fighter / F-35). From the Rockwell Collins website:
"Vision Systems International (VSI), a joint venture between Rockwell Collins and Elbit Systems Ltd. of Israel, is developing the Helmet Mounted Display (HMD) for the JSF. VSI's HMD offers a compact, versatile, lightweight and extremely rugged display with low power consumption. The JSF HMD is a binocular off-the-visor display providing the pilot with a large field-of-view video/calligraphic image to both eyes."
http://www.vsi-hmcs.com/f35.htm
From what I've read, it's simply amazing. The pilot will be able to look in ANY direction (including straight thru his body or the bottom or rear of the cockpit) to see augmented reality - with data fused from multiple sensors including infrared and radar, overlaid on the real world.
http://uscockpits.com/Jet%20Fighters/F-35_Cockpit_(dusk_with_virtual_HMD).jpg
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f-35-hmds-pulls-the-gs-04088/
By the way, "calligraphic" is worth noting. A normal video image simply cannot create very bright and precise light points, because it's a raster image. But a calligraphic display effectively overcomes this limitation, by using a separate CRT gun to hit the same phosphors with much more power in a non-raster format. So the display is a combined raster and beam system, providing some ability to provide very precise details at much higher brightness, while also allowing normal full-color display.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
I picked up some Sony PLM-700E Glasstrons a couple of years back, 832x624 native resolution which can display a PC's 800x600 without scaling and 1024x768 with scaling.
Trying to use a PC with them for any length of time is frustrating, the screens are clear and the optics are excellent (most of the cheap LCD glasses you get nowadays have atrocious optics), but something just doesn't seem quite right, I guess it's to do with how the screen is always set directly in front of your face no matter how much you move your head.
As for gaming, I can stand to use them for 60-90 minutes at most until they become uncomfortable, both the physical thing strapped to your head and the eyestrain at looking at a screen which optically fools you into believing it's about a metre in front of your eyes but not actually physically a meter in front of your eyes.
One of the best applications I've used my various sets of LCD glasses for (somehow I've managed to end up with 6 different pairs now!) is a wireless camera mounted on an RC car - driving it around for long enough you do get a feeling of immersion, that you are actually on/in the small car and driving it around. For that application you need the largest diagonal field of view possible, my Sony PLM-A55's are best at that because despite the low resolution of the screens they're pretty comfortable to wear (glasses style, not strapped on), great optics and have a larger FOV than all the other LCD glasses I have. The Olympus FMD-200's I once owned had as equally as good FOV & optics for this kind of task.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Count me in on any efforts, I've waited for those over ten years as well.
Those, a pair of data gloves and the laptop in my back pack that's already always there anyway.
For simpler tasks than Eclipse, a modern phone would provide enough of a CPU.
Prolonged battery life from walking movement powered generator or solar panel jacket.
Some reason for hiking.
I was the real korpiq until I woke up clowned.
Maybe this is what 3DRealms was waiting for before they finally released Duke Nukem Forever.
I've looked for head-mounted units in the past and what's out there is fairly unexciting, compared to monitor resolution. I considered what units I found online that cost up to $1200 USD or so. If there's anything really great, it costs more than that.
Why bother with a head-mount display? Because it is the next progression in portable ubiquitous computing. Just as we are seeing smaller and smaller netbooks and smartphones with not-full but ever-expanding internet capabilities.
The biggest draw of power on a laptop is the screen. The limitation to the laptop's size and portability is also the screen. Time to get rid of it.
~
If you have a few 100k - Sensics has tiled HMDs (www.sensics.com)
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I had one of the Sony Glasstron headsets. I had the lower resolution one, but it was still expensive. The high resolution one was very expensive, thousands if I remember. Anyway, wanted it so I could watch movies without bothering the wife but the long cords, headaches, poor resolution, and awkwardness of them kept me from liking them. I sold it eventually. OLED sounds like an interesting idea, it would keep the power requirements down.
I hate it when I glance down to the speedo and then look back up to find out little johnny just threw his soccer ball into the street from the dumpster he was hiding behind.
Why can't this info be integrated into the motorcycle hemlet visor?
For an idea of about how big this will look, hold a post-it (3" across) 6.7 inches from your face.
I'm not sure about you, but at that low a refresh my eyes would walk right out of their sockets and donate themselves to science in protest.
Which, in foresight (heh) would be proceeding the rest of the body by only a few hours if I was lucky enough. By dying horribly in one of the following ways: flattened by a Hydrogen powered bus for wandering into traffic, skating right off the skytrain platform and falling the 60 meters or so to my doom or rolling onto the train right-of-way and becoming instant mincemeat. All because I was checking my daytimer and was too airbrained to realize where I was roller-blading.(obtuse old telus ad reference, I *hated* that ad.)
-m
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
The coolness factor of the experience itself is definitely there, but it won't ever catch on unless the displays are extremely lightweight, unintrusive (regular pair of glasses unintrusive), and hi-res. But companies don't want to invest in advancing the technology, because the demand isn't there. Thus the catch-22 that's kept HMDs relegated to a niche market of enthusiasts with lots of disposable income.
Releasing a consumer-friendly HMD right now would be as likely as releasing the iPhone in 1998, or the DS. IMO if it were to ever catch on, it would be in the future when the needed technologies have become advanced enough and cheap enough on their own, and some company has the idea to "go retro" and combine them into a consumer-friendly HMD.
Emagin Visor z800 - 800x600, built in tracker, ~1600 USD If you want better resolution, look at Kaiser Electro-Optics HMDs. However, this is pro-stuff, not for playing games at home or watching video. The prices start at ~20000 USD and higher, without trackers (the built-in trackers are crap - if you are spending this much, you have an external magnetic/optical tracker anyway).
I have been using a Myvu crystal ( http://www.myvu.com/ ) for about 6 months now with my iPhone, and I love it (other than how ridiculous I look wearing them.) It can take a bunch of different video sources, and it has 640x480 resolution (which works fine mostly). I use it to watch movies. The most use I get out them is watching movies lying in bed or while riding a stationary bike at the gym. They work great for that.
Look up the Z800 from eMagin (http://www.3dvisor.com/). Reasonable HMD that uses the Nec Tokin 3D sensor for tracking. There's a Window SDK. I did work for an OSX SDK, gave a demo at their Bellevue offices, then their dev manager left and the company became unresponsive.
Use projectors that mount on your head or over the shoulders, ala the TED presentation that I am too lazy to cite or even google for. You'll know which one I am talking about if you see a calculator app that gets projected onto a hand.
Has VR been overhyped? No, people are just whiners. My first video game was brick breaker. Not the cartridge, the whole system had 1 game (2 if you count pong).
It's worth noting that the 920AV mentioned are not stereoscopic -- they're just displays that attach to your head. Using HMDs for 3D modelling doesn't sound like an idea of that much use, to be honest, and especially so if it doesn't enhance the 3D perception in any way.
I've been looking into HMDs out of an interest in using VR for various art projects, and the Vuzix VR920 model, with stereoscopy and head tracking, seem far more interesting. The main problem seems to be that as far as I can tell, they rely on nvidia supplying drivers, which they are pretty lazy in maintaining.
What does the scouter say about his power level??
Didn't read the stub even, but the answer to the question, 'Where are the high-res HMDs?" is simple. The LCDs are being used in projectors that have a much larger market. No matter how cool a high-res HMD may seem, the practicality is limited and therefore so is the potential sales pool. People like to watch things (and show things off) socially, not alone within an HMD. There are some high-res HMDs out there, mind you, but they are quite pricey for obvious reasons. A single 1400x1050 LCD that would fit over your eye (or be in a projector) isn't cheap, then add the fact that you need two of them and the price is easily in the $20,000.00 to $30,000.00USD range for the headset.
I went to the manufacturer's website, it list optional add-ons - not yet available - of stereo cameras and motion tracking.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
I think somebody wears nothing but super-tight pants.
They don't start that way.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
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Why would optical nerves be mandatory? I think you are very mistaken.
People do not require optical nerves to see.
If you are blindfolded and I write on your back or hand, you can still read it in your mind. What you need is a suitable spot with enough resolution and bandwidth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKd56D2mvN0
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=1C2B5B24E4138762
An AI does not see using a video cable. The stuff running in the AI's computer allows it to see.
The PiSight HMD promises 187 degrees horizontal and 84 degrees vertical FOV by tiling DLP chips. I have yet to see it myself, but the units start somewhere around $20K and go up depending on how much FOV you want). 1900x1200 per eye (kind of low, but higher than anything out there).
The problem to solve with HMDs is not just field of view or resolution--you also need to solve the convergence and accommodation problems.
I envision a future HMD unit integrating eye tracking and auto focus which exploits the way the human eye really sees (few degrees at a time, in extremely high resolution) instead of trying to render a very high resolution image at interactive frame rates. I imagine the fact that this has not been built is due to the catch-22 involving low demand and high cost [when only the military can afford your hardware and is willing to pay for it, there is absolutely NO incentive to mass produce it]
In the meantime, the state of the art in VR is still in systems like the CAVE. I think the Iowa State VRAC CAVE has something amazing like 16 Mpixel resolution...
I am waiting for one of the game companies to start exploiting this. In the meantime, get yourself a pair of NuVision Cinema LCD shutter glasses (around $100), a $500 emitter, and a DLP 3DTV device for under $3000 if you are serious about home-based VR. If you can drive the 3DTV device (NVidia is releasing drivers for it ... there is also hardware available from RealD), the quality is stunning. (You're on your own with head tracking...but there are cheap solutions out there such as the WiiMote based hacks...I've only used the more expensive solutions).
I already have something that does exactly that for me. It can instantly retrieve any information I have already acquired about a person during our next social interaction. I've had it for decades and while it occasionally lags during information retrieval it still serves me fairly well. Of course part of the lag may be caused by my trying to kill it off with alcohol each weekend.
Try the Headplay Personal Cinema
True, but dreaming the most amazing thing without all the less impressive incremental steps is to miss the big picture altogether. If you think of all the little steps as well you have more chance of seeing the path to making it become reality.
JC Denton:"My vision is augmented."
Ignoring all the off-topic responses, I'm waiting too.
I fear that the manufacturers of these products look at the tepid reaction from the market and think "There's no interest in this sort of thing", rather than "our product is crap and nobody will buy it".
Vinge-esque* contact lenses and all may arrive someday, but that day is a long way off. A lightweight HMD with decent resolution would be great.
A.
* Try "Fast Times at Fairmont High" for a Vinge short story with references to contact lens displays, wearable computing, etc.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
give me direct wireless neural i/o. Borg me!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
A completely configurable augmented reality bicycle hud with time, speed, heart rate, wattage, rpms, rear-vision, risk warnings (w/license plate OCR tech). Then, when you look down, GPS and tire status info. And more!
The absolute ultimate geek bike toy!
I've been involved with wearable computers since 1994. Further, I have been designing and fabricating head mounted displays for an academic client who is highly regarded in the field of optics since 2004. To say I know something about this subject would be a coy understatement.
What is clear from reactions to all my previous demos is that people want a head mounted display that is inconspicuous, fits well, has high resolution, full color, wide field of view and produces a high quality image. Oh, yeah, it should be inexpensive as well. Because I've been working with world class optical experts, I know the physical reality of the optics. These criterion conspire against one another; improving one diminishes the others. So, one must prioritize these and do the best we can.
Here is one potential ranking:
1) unobtrusive
2) fits well
3) image quality
4) wide field of view
5) full color
6) inexpensive
7) high resolution
Your request for high resolution with acceptable field of view and image quality makes the unobtrusive criterion impossible with today's technology. This is unacceptable to the public at large.
I am working on a display system now that fits behind an ordinary looking pair of sunglasses. We have compromised resolution and, to some degree, field of view. I'm bound by a confidentiality agreement but I can tell you we are making advances with each successive project. The HMD is the last remaining barrier to a compelling wearable computer. One day your cell phone will be in your sunglasses.
Saw this just today, not quite the specs you stated, but closer than 640x480
http://www.slashgear.com/kopin-golden-i-wearable-computer-headed-for-production-1944260/
My Sig Sucks
I had no trouble finding a high-res HMD. The price made me choke a bit, though.
In the 90's I worked with Sony, and had access to the cool stuff before it was publicly available.
I designed a telepresence robot for Sony Wonder in New York. It had video cameras in its eyeballs that fed what was then a state of the art high res headmount display prototype.
A motion sensor was mounted to the operator's head, so when the operator moved his head, the robot moved in sync. It was given the name "BB Wonderbot" and became a very popular attraction.
When the operators first put on the headset, they were excited and thought that it looked really cool. But after days of operating it for several hours a day, problems appeared. Operaters complained of headaches, dizzieness and feeling sick. We first tried limiting operator time, but later abandoned the entire idea.
Even though the display was excellent for the time, it was still a bit fuzzy. The motion control system had a little delay, and the stereoscopy was not perfect.
We suspect that there is a phenomenon similar to the "uncanny valley" at work here. To be comfortable, a headmount display must be perfect, or really, really close. If it is a little bit off, the brain won't tolerate it for long.
There are already enough idiots driving distracted with hands-free (and not hands-free) devices out there. I'd love to be cut off by some self-important jerk checking his email while wearing one of these devices.
You're wearing one already. It's so high-res and light that you forgot you put it on while you were buzzed outta yer mind last Friday night....
There are a few models that offer 800 x 600
About the best selection is here:
http://www.thevideoglasses.com/
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
I could've sworn I saw in ieee spectrum about ten years ago, a display that scanned directly onto a retina. The scanning part was integrated into a normally sized set of eyeglasses.
Anybody have any recent references to the technology?
That's what I want for my birthday.
As my title says, the pixel/inch (or cm) has not greatly improved in the last 10 years or so. Look at any small LCD or other video screen technology and there has not been much of a push for higher pixel count per inch. This is mainly due to the fact that the normal viewing distance of the devices that are driving display technologies are measured feet, not millimetres. The human eye's ability to resolve individual bits of light is limited to about 1 arc minute (1/60 of a degree) (or approximately 1/16 of an inch at 20 feet distance). Since distance from the eye is a major contributing factor as to how much detail the eye can resolve on the object, and given the fact that the display devices for the eye are driven by devices that are meant to be seen from several feet away, there is no reason to produce a higher density of resolution display device as the human eye can not discern the difference at several feet away.
As a result, all display devices have their pixel density limited to the about the same as what is used for the dominant devices (in our case, computer monitors and HD TV screens). The only devices that are pushing the pixel density are HD LCD projectors and digital camera LCD view-finders. However, they have only just started to really make strides in pushing the pixel density. For wearable displays, due to being millimetres away from the eye, 1 arc minute is a significantly small linear distance between points, with the display 1cm away from the eye, the distance between two points that the human eye can detect is 0.00291 millimetres apart, which would mean you need a display with approx 8800 pixels per inch. Computer monitors are just pushing 150 pixels per inch, with some speciality products in the 200-300 pixels per inch. Which is why in a 2-3 inch screens on a wearable eyeglasses type display, you are only seeing 640x480 resolution.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Something like Dennou Coil? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Coil
I've blown more money than I care to imagine on HMDs over the years, including two Virtual-IO i-glasses (one composite-in video rez with clear optics, one VGA-in 800x600 wiht opaque optics) and some offbrand visor thing, composite, plastic lenses, gak, as well. My favorite was the first one, because you could get a nice video image floating in space in front of you as you walked down the sidewalk. Overall tho I think they're disappointing, and moreover heavy, straining on the eyes and neck, and especially the ones that sit on the nose tend to give me that weird sensation like you get when someone puts their finger between your eyes and close to your nose. I say, save your money and buy a nice CAVE and a big stack of (super-cheap now!) SGI Onyx2 IR2 boxes to run it off.
-- "Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all."
There are lots of "virtual reality" scenarios that do not call for any kind of shape or image recognition. For example, have you seen one of THESE?
The Celestron uses its integral GPS, electronic compass, and accelerometers to determine exactly where you are looking, and it will identify stars for you.
Using the same detector technology, a heads-up display could overlay "virtual" 3-D objects onto your glasses, that appear to be in any location, anywhere. Those objects could move, you could see them in 3D, and so on. There is no need for image recognition at all, just to do that.
Further, if you had two such units networked together, they could communicate their respective locations, and you could see a "monster" image overlaid on top of your friend. Admittedly, this would be a bit rough without the recognition you mentioned, but it could still make for a satisfying virtual experience. All kinds of "virtual" objects could be inserted into your world, and there are a number of fairly trivial ways that could be rigged up for you to interact with them.
Gordon Bell is a supercomputer expert who migrated over to MicroSoft Research. His recent project is MyLifeBits, a complete digital record of one's life.
I am not sure where I read this, but some peopel are experimenting with wearable cameras to take snapshots of your entire day. The camera has a motion sensor in it to increase rates when the wearer appears more active. I suppose an iPhone could be programmed to track both motion and vocal activity of its host.
I further read that psychologists are using this for memory studies. Some hosts report an eerie telepresence effect when they review recent day or two's video. Researchers are studying the effect of periodic memory reinforcement. Perhaps an appliance could be developed for those with memory defects like early Alzheimers.
Shutter glasses, where your eyes are tricked in to thinking they're focusing on a real 3D image, are bad enough.
They're a great gimmick. They also suck, massively, as your eyes try to move to something your brain assumes is in the distance, yet is actually on the same fixed screen. They pull focus, everything goes blurry and it takes a moment to readjust.
For games like GTA, they're great... You're generally focusing on one distance - right where your car is. It only becomes a problem as you pick up speed, try focusing down the street and everything screws up for a moment as the trick doesn't behave the way your eyes expect it to.
For games where you're constantly looking up close and far away - watching the floor in front of you while you jump in an FPS and then sniping someone a block or two away - it's a nightmare.
As I recall, back in the days of head mounted VR rides, nausea was an even bigger issue. At least with shutter glasses you can easily look off elsewhere and your eyes are still focusing a couple of feet away. Now move to screens that push the edge of where you can focus, that wrap all of your vision and you can't look away from them.
Plus there's head movement. When your eyes don't match what your body's senses tell you, in a car, you get car sick. Now picture every slight movement of your body still showing the exact same image.
Sure, you can create a 3D environment that moves with you but they never update quite as fast as you ultimately perceive. Sure, 24fps is enough to fake the eyes in to thinking they're perceiving smooth motion. It takes a lot more to fully fool the brain in to believing reality's updating with every tiny movement of the head. That 120th of a second delay between when it knows your head starts turning and when the image updates is plenty to leave many people nauseous.
Plus there's the eye strain of your entire world being constantly 2 inches from your eyes.
My guess is that any technology that leaves most of its users with headaches and vomiting - plus eye damage over time - is going to have a hard time catching on. Without mass market pick up, its prices won't drop as fast as we're used to for other mass market products. You're left with a niche product for a niche market and the usual high prices that brings.
I would absolutely not want a large (in angular dimension) display -- and a head-mounted display right in front of my eyes is almost certainly going to be very large in that regard -- at a low refresh rate. I suspect the combination of flicker and lack of motion as my head moves would make me violently ill.
People are used to the scene moving as their head moves and the vision system corrects for that. If I move my head from side to side, I don't have a sensation of my laptop screen moving -- the image does actually move on my vision receptor, but my brain corrects for it.
A head-mounted display, unless it were very clever and very high resolution, wouldn't do that. That means that whatever's being displayed would be perceived to be moving in sync with my head, which would probably be very confusing.
The combination of large angular dimension and low refresh rate would create flicker over much or all of my visual field. I suspect that that would make me quite ill. IMAX films at the Museum of Science in Boston are projected on a large dome that basically covers the entire visual field. They warn about nausea from the vividness of the experience, but I don't think that that alone is what triggers it -- I think it's the flicker from 24 Hz refresh rate (exacerbated by the blank intervals between frames). I have no proof, but the disorientation is worse when something on the screen (such as a spinning wheel on a car in a closeup) interacts with the refresh rate -- steady motion isn't as bad. There's some disorientation when the film is showing something from a high place (such as Everest), but it's not as bad as the motion-induced disorientation.
It is a completely different experience.
The difference is largely measured in buckets of puke as far as gaming goes. Some games were/are much worse then others, Descent 2 for example enabled all the features, head tracking, stereoscopic vision but was almost instantly puke inducing. Games that kept up more or less up (e.g. Longbow) were much more playable.
The basic problem of the inner ear confusing the brain vs VR perception will prevent comfortable long term use of VR headsets for many games. It awaits a break trough to explode. When it happens it will be the next Space Invaders. It will bring the kids back to the arcade.
Augmented reality dodges the problem nicely by requiring the virtual world follow the real one. Who new I wasn't just being a moron when I duct taped a web cam to my VFX1.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Here's quite a comprehensive comparison of HMDs - monoscopic, stereoscopic and augmented reality. With specs, prices etc.: http://www.inition.co.uk/inition/compare.php?SubCatID=16 Looks like you're out of luck for getting the moon on a stick, but there's all sorts of stuff out there for big bucks!
Are there games that use Stereo Vision in the headsets.
I have Lazy Eye (Amblyopia), which is normally incurable, but I read about several different teams that used Stereo Vision in virtual reality games to cure Lazy eye in adults. They took PacMan - and made one eye see the moving objects, and the other eye see the outline of the maze and the small dots. You had to synchronize your eyes to play the game. That restored the wiring in your brain so you could play. And it was far more effective in curing Amblyopia than the eye patch, which causes lots of other problems.
I looked into it, but could not find any stereo vision games.
Does anybody know of any stereo vision game: where part of the image is sent to each eye - so you have to use both eyes to play the game.
Here is a BBC article about the research (they talk about a race car video game, where one eye sees your car, and the other eye sees the other cars):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4849244.stm
Or implanted visual input, a virtual third eye with separate visual field. How long would my brain need to grow ability to see eye 3 better than eye 1?
Considering all the talk, isn't a pass through beam splitter Eyetap, or a full processing AR Eyetap what people really want?
But really, the hardware to make this reasonable is the following;
LED laser Amerac (based on pico-projector tech)
USB input with DisplayLink video-in (now with the opensource driver, there really is very little reason left to keep using analog inputs)
USB output of 6DoF/acceleraometer sensor, compass magnetic sensor, and video capture (required for an Eyetap, possibly stereoscopic)(Getting the 6DoF accelerometers and magnetometer integrated into a single chip shouldn't be hard folks)
Why go all digital with USB as the primary in-out interface? Well, it forces migration to unified possibly single chip architectures, which reduces size/power/costs. If there truely is a analog need, use a converter at another stage. USB is pretty much the simplest lowest common denominator digital interface. Finally, inter-chip USB spec is coming along, so the hardware starts to become even more plug-and-play.
For PMP devices and computers, such as an iPhone, all it takes is USB host capability to get things going (in the PMP case it would be USB-on-the-go support within the USB chipset, which is commonly available in the hardware but not supported in the software)
HITLab.
They just cost >$10,000 each to build because it's tricky to get people to buy enough of the things to get the prices down to a level where people will buy enough of the things.
A bit of a catch-22, if you hadn't noticed. We could have had this tech in our hands 10 years ago, maybe earlier, if not for that little cost-of-manufacture problem.
The human direct-neural-interface a-lah the books by Peter F Thompson (either the newer void series or the nights dawn) - though he wasn't the first, just the most current IMHO.
Having worked in the arena of simulation during the early-to-late 90's and working with a company dedicated to 3d and simulation the tech had many flaws (HMD systems) and continues to.
Consider big-end flight sims such as those that CAE produces (http://www.cae.com/en/). If those huge systems could be replaced with hmd's (and it has been tried on many occasions) you cut the cost of many many things by massive factors. Those machines they produce are entire cockpits on hydraulic jacks and they work well - but are dedicated to a purpose.
Personally, i always wanted *Some* form of hmd myself, but more for informational purposes then a full-on augmented reality. i.e. Jump on my bike and show me the vital stats in the visual range - speed, direction, rpm, gear, etc (again, systems dedicated to this purpose exist, im aware of that), but i also want to be able to walk down the street and be told "turn left at this next intersection to get to some place" and "Joe Blogs has sent you an sms" and be able to read it without even moving my head.
I believe that chances are that aint going to happen in a realistic way until we do develop some kind of direct-into-the-brain link with an interface something like bluetooth that anything can connect to (i say bluetooth, but i actually mean an interface that WORKS). The scary part of that is when you combine something like this with MS's latest patent on extorting money from people you just have to be fearful ;)
I want a single eye-piece monochrome display (800x600 at a minimum) with a good pixel density.
Something that I could ssh/mutt/lynx with (ssh being #1 on the list).
I'd pay upto $400 for this display.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Head Tracking? Pfft. Eye-Tracking is the future. It helps if you're already tracking the head.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Not sure about anyone else, but this technology, while great, is only the very start of automatic projection.
Ultimately this technology is useless, because why do you need a screen when any available surface will do? He's putting a rectangular screen down on a white table for goodness sake. What's wrong with projecting directly onto the table?
Look Here's the device we really need: It's a box no bigger than a packet of cigarettes, and will run all day on a single dose of Methane.
It has a screen on one face, but no buttons.
When you place it on a surface, it automatically projects a keyboard onto the surface in front of it, adjusted for angle of course, and then it uses its own projector to survey the surfaces around it. If it's on a flat surface like a table, it'll project the screen directly onto the table. If it's next to a wall it'll prject directly on the wall.
It'll use its inbuilt camera to locate the user's head in space, and it'll correct whatever it projects so the image stays true for the user.
The user could adjust the size of the screen, also. Hell, it could even be projected in 3D.
Plus, it should make little difference what its being projected onto. A smart survey would include measuring the colours and shades of any surface being projected onto. The device should colour correct to effectively remove patterns and colours on the actual screen surface. Sure, you can't get around that 100% - but enough to make it usable on what is currently an unacceptable screen.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
I believe the found the VR causes brain damage of some kind. http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/1994/07/28/could-the-surgeon-general-warn-vr-is-hazardous-to-your-health.aspx
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
That page said: Coming Fall of 2009
I have been researching this for some time, seems many of the HMD companies have folded or been acquired or changed names.
The rest are using simple optics, and are bulky.
Micro Optical had there EG-7
But there has been nothing but vaporware products since.
I found one that seems super cool,SBG Labs Holographic Eye Adaptive Display HEAD Technology but it's also vaporware for the moment.
Here is a youtube clip
didn't NVIDIA already make one for gaming?
I'm a fruit pirate. I bought a watermelon once, and spat the seeds in the back yard. They grew into another watermelon,
http://www.penny.se/eng/index.html has a HMD which projects the image straight into the eyes. I can't find any information about the resolution, but they're apparently going into large scale production later this year.
As one of their suggested customer groups is entertainment, I hope the price won't be too high.
The virtual retinal display (which Microvision has been working on for seemingly aeons) potentially allows for the focus of each pixel to be varied. So your eyes would actually have to focus to different depths as in the real world.
Unfortunately, all microvision ever seems to release is vaporware. Just buy the micro projector 3M makes now for $329
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1594476
... but I prefer to see more clearly to why I had my head bump off. And besides, you _have_ to watch joyfully advertising panels not groggy pirated movies. Only that way you can die happy beneath of a truck.
You want AI, not AR. When a computer can understand your verbal conversation well enough to index it by face and name, then ferret out the most important topics of discussion for inclusion in an automatic bulleted list, you'll get your wish. At that point, however, the computers will probably be more interesting to talk to than are any of us. Five minutes spent on Facebook or Twitter should make it obvious to anyone that computers aren't now up to the challenge of automatically separating the critical from the meaningless, let alone categorizing all the shades of mundanity that lie between the two. The rest of your wishes, save perhaps personal facial recognition tech, are easily covered by existing technology.
Oh, and privacy under omnipresent surveillance? Here is the truth on that topic: any data-collection wizardry you can do, someone three doors down can do twice as well. Paradoxically, "they" will handle their more extensive data on you only half as carefully as you treat your lesser data on them.
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... it sounds like a cool idea, but it seems like it would require either excessive movement on your part to do anything meaningful, or it would require you to sit almost absolutely still in order to keep your display even semi-stable...
I play a lot of flight simulators, and for those head-tracking is great. Movements are amplified (adjustable for every axis) so you only need to move your head a little bit for a much bigger movement on the screen. Precision is excellent, and it can be helped even more by setting a dead zone at the center. Check out some of the videos here:
http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/02-products/product-videos.html
I couldn't imagine going back again.
after reading these comments and looking at the prices... i'm soooo sad!!! it looks like there's not going to be a real breakthrough in getting these to market in the next 20 years to where it's going to be actually useful like they make it seem in the movies (ironman, terminator...etc.)
any opinions on the Lumus technology (http://www.lumus-optical.com/) ?
What do you mean "Where Are the High-Res Head-Mounted Displays?" ??? Theres plenty out there! They just cost money.. I guess theres not enough demand to cheaply mass produce these things.
You suck at Google. Heres a few you may be interested in: 1280x1024, 1280x1024, 1280x720, stereoscopic 1280x1024 and 1280x1024.
Or if you have a lot of money to spare, try this panoramic head mounted display: 1920x1200 and apparently from 800x600 up to 2664x1160.
I can't seem to find the super high-res industrial and military grade ones though...
Common on, this discution is supposed to be about HMD, not the cylon, not Terminator, not wall mounted LCD.. I too am dreaming of a HMD and a very small portable computer that I could strap to my belt and have a wealth of information at the tip of my fingers. Unfortunately for you my friend I dont have much more than vuzix and they are not very impressive yet.
Read "The Penultimate Truth" by Philip K. Dick.
I've seen the eMagin HMD used for visual telepresence. This guy drives a dune buggy and teleoperates a robot using an hmd with head motion controlling a camera system. The eMagin is about $1K. The tracker on the eMagin drifts like crazy though so but a WiiMote tracking would probably be good enough for many applications. Here's a another cool video .
Seems like there are a lot of problems to solve still - I just find it frustrating that there seem to be products out there that seem so close to my requirements, only lacking in resolution, and probably refresh rate.
I don't wear glasses, despite years at a screen since the Apple //e appeared on the scene, and years of reading books in the dark before that, so I have never had to worry about whether you could wear glasses with some particular hmd in my quest for the perfect one, but I suppose that also adds another whole level of complexity to trying to bring a product to as wide a market as possible.
Is there really such a passive price difference between the LCD's they use in these systems that do 640x480 compared to one that could do 1024x768 though?
I could live with it still looking about the same apparent size and distance as a 24" monitor sitting on my desk, but I just don't want to wear a device that looks too out of place on a train or in public, hence the requirement for them to also look passingly like a regular pair of sunglasses.
There are other pathways into the visual cortex than the retina and optic nerve. These may be especially useful for augmented reality and vision prosthetics. For example, the tongue is highly enervated and by-passes the optic nerve. A company called Wicab, Inc manufactures a product called the "BrainPort" Vision Device http://vision.wicab.com/technology/. The resolution is not great, but the race is on and thus far the most promising methods for manufacture of high-density transducer / electrode arrays have not been employed. With prospective military and medical applications "in sight" (pun intended), there is high competition internationally in the development of tongue display technology. I personally know of one such project being conducted by Dr. Anil Raj at IHMC http://www.ihmc.us/ to replace night vision goggles with tongue displays. The main research thrust in Dr. Raj's lab is sensory augmentation see http://ihmc.us:16080/community/ILOVEScience/Activities/TestingReactionTime/IHMCReactionTime.pdf for more information. Experiments have shown that "data" from slaved cameras can be "overlaid" on normal retinal vision, although there are still some registration (match up) challenges.
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann
So, I had this post sent to me from a buddy of mine. And I fine it quite amusing how still misinformed we are about the actual technology that is out there and available to the consumer market in HMD's. I've tried numerous different HMD's over the years like most of you have found them sorely lacking. But a couple of things. 1) Eye fatigue and nausea doesn't happen because of light into the eye's. It happens because everything that we have been given so far have 2 displays. What this does is send 2 images to your eye's. Our Eye's have a massive issue with that. 2)Most HMD's to date have NO or very little focusing capabilities. Ever had someone else's prescription glasses on for a time, Same problem. Now, not to be salesy (I know it's not a word) but I came across a HMD called Headplay that seems to have solved these problems. They use a single display and it has a wide range of focusing capabilities. I've had mine for over a year and have spent hours of game time to my wife's delight (she get's her TV back) gaming,in HD I might add. So the tech is there, you just have to know what your looking for. And by the way I do own a Virtual boy, and a Icuity(now called Vuzix), and I've even have had the opportunity to use a 20K Rockwell Collins. So there is some history.
Would like to see a review on this one:
Virtual Viewer 3D SVGA (800x600)
There is already a 3-D 800x600 HMD available (and it's been around a while) The i3PC goes for $825 (sans tracker) I've had one for a few years, and it works OK. http://www.vrealities.com/iglassesi3pc.html I don't know how this HMD discussion evolved into an AR discussion, it's like saying, "Since they don't make a good ultralight plane; why don't you buy some flippers and a snorkel instead?" They are two very different apps. Only NVidia cards are driving the 3D, and a lot of games aren't really designed to use 3D in a useful way. For example, in most first person shooters, you either have a aiming reticule, which in 3D is impossibly close to your visual field (like using your finger held one inch from your eyes to aim) or you have a gun in the lower right corner, pointing obliquely up to the center. Very few use true 'iron sights' which would allow you to look 'down' the gun barrel to aim, and NONE allow you to use iron sights up to your right (or left) eye to sight. Many games, even though playable in 3D don't have a means of sending tracker data back to the view, like flight-sim which uses the hat switch instead of the mouse data. If game makers could start including standard features to support head-tracking, better 3D implementation and force feedback (now missing from UT3) they would be a greater drive to buy HMDs.
b) what augmented reality is.
Maybe we all just think 4th Edition Shadowrun sucked?
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
http://futurehobbies.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=95&category_id=23&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=53
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