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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.
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.)
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.
It is very different. This system uses a scanning system to disperse the light energy over the retinal display area. If the scanning system fails for any reason and the laser stays focused on one "pixel" for an extended period of time, all the energy will be focused in one spot. Result: instant scitoma.
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!
You won't know anything's wrong until its far too late.
Seriously, though, does anybody else find the idea of projecting directly on the eye a little disturbing?
Having been hit in the eye with a laser at a light show (flight path was supposed to terminate below where I was, but something went wrong), and lucky to escape without long term injury, I do.
Having had half my head seared off by an industrial metal-cutting laser, I agree with you. The microwatt lasers that these systems use must be identical to the ones that they use in laser light shows.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.