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Companies To Invade Your Retinas As Soon As Next Year?
Engadget is one of many reporting that Brother and NEC both seem to have retina display technology in the works for release next year. Brother, at least, seems to have a fully functional prototype, while so far NEC is mostly talk. "Naturally, there are a few considerable limitations compared to more traditional displays, but the company's as yet unnamed goggles do promise to beam an 800 x 600 image directly into your retina that'll appear as a 10-centimeter wide image floating about one meter in front of them -- which is certainly no small feat, even if it may not be the most practical one. Slightly less specific, but also working on a retina display of its own is NEC, which apparently hopes to incorporate a microphone into their display and use it as a real-time translation device that would quite literally display subtitles as you talk to someone."
I for one welcome the retina-porn overlords
...a real-time translation device that would quite literally display subtitles as you talk to someone.
Wouldn't it make more sense to display subtitles as someone talks to you?
I think "Liberation" would be a better word. The companies will enter the eyeball (in small numbers), and will be cheered by all the cells... at first. But then they'll get caught up in the bitter rivalries, with renegade Rods lobbing bombs at the Cones, who will in turn blame the support cells in the Sclera for fomenting dissent.
This can only end badly.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Do not look into goggles with remaining eye.
Seriously, though, does anybody else find the idea of projecting directly on the eye a little disturbing?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I always remember faces, but names are tough. Here I could finally know everyone's name (combined with some facial recognition software).
Replace that low power LED with a super-high-power multi-Watt LED!
Hilarity ensues!
(As does screaming, and permanant blindness.)
But aren't all images we see the result of light beaming into our retinas?
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Also the retina isn't that big. You are practically forced to look just right into the display to see something at all.
I'm working at a device to make pictures of the retina and it's pretty hard to make good images of the retina. These guys projects something on it that must be sharp enough to be useful. Kudos if they pull it off, but I'm skeptical. Show me the goods. This is just marketing blabla.
This will be awesome for 3d games (first person shooters).
One image per eye, producing a 3d scene.
I imagine generation 1 will look weird with all the images being in focus, even though the Z distance varies.
With a little more work, generation 2 could detect what you are trying to focus on - like those eye test machines do - and produce a more realistic scene - blurry in the background, sharp foreground.
It would be cool to hit a key and have the scene zoom on what you're looking at.
How is this "invasion" if you need to willingly put on a special pair of goggles that enable it?
It's sort of like calling someone accepting a gift at Christmas robbery or theft..
It's not a bug, it's a feature. Some people pay lots of money for laser eye surgery...
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Imagine a world with many "blank" surfaces ... dull? Not without your wireless network retina vision (WNRV) - projected advertisement on "billboard surfaces" just around the (metaphorical) corner!
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
WOOHOOO Universal Translator, one step closer!
No matter how good the focus is, 800x600 is wasted at that small a visual angle.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
http://www.vuzix.com/iwear/products_wrap310.html
Available right now for under $250. Also one of the only head mounted augmented reality systems that is commercially available today.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Who knows what ads they want to burn into our retinas.
I just hope it won't be an unignorable HeadOn ad, because that is liable to give me unignorable... headaches.
Now if only I had unignorable audio too, so I could know where I apply the HeadOn...
The Engadget article says "10-centimeter wide image" where as the Register article that Engadget uses at its source says a 10cm^2 object.
That's quite a difference. If the image displayed is also in 4:3, that makes the Engadget image 7.5 times larger (10x7.5 cms).
Given the size of the Prototype shown in TFA, how much heart burn would it be to make the hardware 1600x1200? Basically use 4 units combined into one?
Shouldn't it be retinae?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I found a bluetooth headset that does mono A2DP (bluetooth audio streaming) and enjoy listening to podcasts while doing whatever. I'd have no problems keeping this on as well.
I'm sorry to be the first to inform you, but you have been judged as having an imagination which is unfit to be used in conjunction with this website. Please remove this URL from your favorites and hand in your geek card on the way out.
Thank you.
Err, goggles. I posted the parent comment without even reading the summary. (Ha!)
That's not so bad then. And don't we already have virtual-reality glasses and goggles and other things already? How would this be revolutionary?
Naturally, there are a few considerable limitations compared to more traditional displays, but the company's as yet unnamed goggles do promise to beam an 800 x 600 image directly into your retina that'll appear as a 10-centimeter wide image floating about one meter in front of them -- which is certainly no small feat, even if it may not be the most practical one.
I would've pointed out that this is currently vaporware.
In other words: THE GOGGLES! THEY DO NOTHING!
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
See, that's the awesome thing. They put a tiny camera on the other side, then project what the camera sees/the device obscures right onto your retina, plus some extra info. It's like the projector isn't even there!
Sure there are some parallax issues, and one day you forget it's there, go to bed with it on, roll over, and gouge your eye out, but hey, that's the price of progress!
Do you know by any chance the Doctor ? ...
Because he'd only bibblabobbli wobblidoodli like that!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Thank you, I was previously unaware of this product.
You can die now. Your life is complete.
Finally, perfecting this technology will be the final introduction of *true* 3D (2.5D). ;-)
(Without the need for extra glasses
And it will be the end of big TV screens sucking up power and manufacturing resources.
As a bonus, in games I can really look around with my head.
Can't wait...
Seriously? For disabled people this is great, but otherwise its 1. lazy and 2. going to get spam broadcasting right into peoples heads.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
The goggles (from NEC), they do nothing?
I'm not projecting anything directly on my retinas until there has been at least 5 years of letting large numbers of other people test the safety of doing that on their eyes.
If it works out it really holds promise for people with color blindness and other vision problems. Not to mention the possibilities for enhanced reality. Talking to some gal while Googling for naked pictures of her and then trying line up the body image with her real face while you're talking.
No, not distracting at all...what was the question?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Not that I want any advertising blasted onto my retinas as it is... but this event saw to it that my left eye became pretty well useless for this application. No pun intended.
-- haaz.
...so ten years ago, i had the pleasure of visiting a startup (back then) called Microvision, developing what seems to me like exactly the same thing. Looking at their site now, they are still in business and working on the same stuff, which i think is cool.
I recall wearing a similar device, with a Windows 98 desktop being laser-projected directly on my eye, altough at 640x480. I recall the nervousness of what would happen if lightning would strike at that very moment. Just the idea of a Windows desktop etched on my retina...
Naturally, there are a few considerable limitations compared to more traditional displays,
There's also the problem of me taking a hammer to any system that tries to project something onto my godamned retina. I'm not kidding, Brother/NEC. My hammer, your fucking projector, guaranteed.
HEY WORLD: GET IT RIGHT.
"My eyes! The goggles do nothing!"
prohibiting people from operating a vehicle while wearing them.
Just one thing to keep in mind: the display, no matter what, won't be any larger than the subtended angle of the display apparatus as viewed by the eye. In other words, if you have a display covering 90 degrees of your field of view, then the apparatus generating that display will have to cover 90 degrees of your field of view.
Now, that apparatus may be transparent and not interfere with viewing the rest of the world in that 90 degrees, but this doesn't mean that some little bug-like object on a lamppost twenty feet away is going to be able to target your eye and draw an advertisement that subtends 90 degrees of your field of view, since the little bug-like object doesn't subtend that 90 degrees - it will be able to make an advertisement no bigger than the bug looks to you.
Really, this isn't much different than the head mounted display I was playing with years ago, which had a small mirror in front of the eye, and a display module that clipped to the side of your glasses. This just uses lasers rather than diodes.
www.eFax.com are spammers
what could go wrong?
I think I'll wait for version 2.1 on this particular tech. First, because I don't want 800x600 on a 10cm screen a meter away. That's not useful to me. I want 1080p visible as a 52" 16x9 screen about 10 feet away. NOW we're talking.
Aside from that, I think we'll wait and see just how much eye strain these things cause first -- and how well they travel. COOL would be if they'd sit at the hinges of fully functional sunglasses so the display could be a heads-up while you do other things (maybe not driving).
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I'm personally looking forward to being able to beam images into peoples retinas. I can imagine all sorts of delightful pranks.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Who needs those key combinations when you have your non-work related documents projected directly on your retina, as opposed to on the same screen as your urgent work related documents, and you see/hear your boss coming?
I think it's less arduous than you think, considering that the projected image is slightly translucent - this means that there is still continuity between the two retinal inputs.
Hah, owned. I even did a Google search for "goggles nothing" to make sure I had the right phrase, but I didn't scroll down or follow any of the links. Sloppy.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Seek out the instructional video summarized here. It should provide you with insight and wisdom.
Also... the Hero of the story? He actually hangs around these parts.
Well... the guy who played him. I hear he is much cooler IRL.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
> as yet unnamed goggles Google Goggles, of course! Oakley Omnis? Apple Eye's?
Demo 20 seconds into this vid: http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=095290d81130331d905bbdf900ab219a
I mean the thing is right in front of one of your eyes. This means the other eye is free to look at the environment. This leaves the brain the arduous task to merge the two images into something useful.
Arduous? Our brain is quite nicely tuned to handle specifically such a task!
Here's a little experiment for you. Place your finger closely in front of one of your eyes. Does it preclude you from seeing normally? It shouldn't - you'll just see a translucent finger overlayed over unoccluded image from another eye.
The same thing will happen with the screen. In effect, you get translucency for free - hardware-accelerated, so to speak...
> I mean the thing is right in front of one of your eyes.
The next step will be some tricky optics (no, I don't know how it will work) such that the light will be reflected off (or refracted out of) the glasses lenses and into the eye while still allowing you full vision through the lenses.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I already have a monitor that beams an image onto my retinas at much higher resolution than that.
A girl I knew over 10 years a go had a 3D set of these hooked to her computer.
Screenshot or it didn't happen. The 'girl' part is a dead giveaway...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
closed captioning for real life
Nice
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
You know when you look at a pattern really long, you get that burn-in effect.
Now imagine it, about 10,000 times stronger. Must be "fun"...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
That it uses laser to scan a raster directly on the retina.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I don't want to sound too harsh, but they'd better be DAMNED sure to include a screensaver. The last thing you want is to have an undesirable image 'burned-in' (not literally, but I'm pretty confident that overstimulating receptors could lead to degeneration) so that you see it constantly.
If they do use screensavers, I hope they include:
1: Lunitic Fringe
2: Starfield
3: Flying Toasters
Honestly, the market potential for a new version of AfterDark is huge!!!1!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Doing that for hours on end probably increases eyestrain and fatigue tremendously. I can't say that I've ever been bored enough to try holding my finger in front of my left eye for half a day, but I'd imagine the effects are similar to being in very bright, contrasty, or dark places for extended periods.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Just turn on the subtitles for Survivor or The Amazing Race, and you'll see real-time live steno-captioning that's as good as it gets - with a 5 second delay, which is unusable even on TV, much less live conversation. I happen to know this about those shows because, being severely deaf, I managed to get a reply to a complaint about the inadequate subtitling of those shows. Believe me, I would love to have subtitles on real life, but I really don't think the tech is up to it.
I wouldnt call it vaporware, since the technology exists and is already in use. Its a military tech, just trickling down to civilians now. James Cameron used it for the upcoming Avatar film.
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
I was gonna do it but then I was thinking you'd hit my hand and gouge out my eye.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
> Apple Eye's?
And when those come out such devices will instantly go from dorky to cool.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This has been around a while : http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrd/ -s
You know, the nerds who wear glasses and as such can't safely wear the thing depicted in TFA. If i have to get contacts just to use this thing, forget it.
http://www.microvision.com/ has been doing this for years with their Nomad displays.
Nah, they would be too distracting.
Sounds great - lead the way by example, fearless preserver of society's Good Living People.
Funny how it never occurs to racists or homophobes that their own diseased thinking is the real problem.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Now we can have ads beamed directly to our retinas.
I'd been wondering what the difference was between this and the LCD or other projector displays (like myvu) currently on the market.
As far as I can tell... not a whole lot.
The ______ Agenda
Either someone's having a bizarre laugh at my expense, or the standards for positive moderation near the top of the thread are just really, really low.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Ergo the system must somehow do a continuous auto-focus on the changing properties of the lens of your eye as you are automatically adapting your lens to the distance of the object you intend to see. If that isn't the case, your one eye will continuously try to focus on the projected image and the other eye will try to focus on the outside world. I can tell you that that is arduous.
The camera isn't mounted in front of the projector. It's mounted at the same distance from a double sided mirror as the eye. There's no parallax problems.
---k--
</stupid>
That would be awesome, but isn't it a little too ambitious for a single product right now?
"Hey guys, I don't think that a safe, good, affordable retinal display system is hard enough. Let's add vocal recognition and real-time language parsing in two simultaneous languages!"
Either one of these things would be very impressive. It seems a bit much to be shooting for both before either has been done well.
"iPhone or a similar device"
What's that word - ah, um, *thinks* ah, yes, "phone"!
I was gonna do it but then I was thinking you'd hit my hand and gouge out my eye.
That's absurd, only people whose hands are larger than their faces are dumb enough to think that might happen.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
Now for someone to create a marketroid to english translator.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
yeah, you're a barrel of laughs. i'm sure you're one of those bitches who goes on and on about religion being a drain on society when faggots are a drain on society too. anyone who thinks religion needs weeded out shoul agree that faggots need the heave-ho too.
Oh dear! And he's a conflicted Christian as well! Now that explains a great deal. Goodness, you are an unholy mess of contradictions, aren't you?
But just remember what you were advised you to ask yourself in times of moral conflict; WWJD?
-FL
If they're going to start beaming an image directly in the eye, I want to make sure that the xorg.conf file is correct.