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Microsoft Granted Patent For Augmented Reality Glasses
another random user writes with an excerpt from the BBC about Microsoft's vision for augmented reality glasses: "A patent granted to the U.S. tech firm describes how the eyewear could be used to bring up statistics over a wearer's view of a baseball game or details of characters in a play. The newly-released document was filed in May 2011 and is highly detailed.
... Although some have questioned how many people would want to wear such devices, a recent report by Juniper Research indicated that the market for smart glasses and other next-generation wearable tech could be worth $1.5bn by 2014 and would multiply over following years."
Noticeable differences from Google's version: two lenses, a wrist computer, and wires.
I am with Richard Stallman and the FFII: Stop all the nonsensical software patent granting. All of them are a disgrace to professionals in the field, a hostile takeover from laywers and patent parasites.
I don't think depiction in fiction counts as prior art. If so, by this point Apple should be owned by the Roddenberry Estate.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Seriously.
Unless it's indistinguishable from normal glasses, which it won't be, there's no market here outside of some very specific and special industries.
Why can't we have kick ass VR glasses, like Carmack is working on, instead?
Cool, yes. Is my mom going to want a pair? Probably not.
I cite the entire contact lenses industry as evidence.
Shenanigans!
..don't panic
You'll appreciate the cool blue tint of the screens of death.
I would hesitate getting Google's reality glasses because it would mean that all my data would go to Google. Instead of that, Microsoft's version would process things independently on the wrist computer. That's a huge difference and suits to people who want to keep their privacy.
Doesn't look like it:
It indicates that most of the processing work - identifying people and other objects in view, and deciding what information to show about them - would likely be carried out by remote computer servers in order to keep the equipment slimline.
So you'll probably need a .NET Passport/Windows Live ID/Microsoft Account/whatever-they're-calling-it-tomorrow to use it.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Shill
Such eloquence, such insight! Makes me wonder why I bothered to post this... oh wait, you're being a total douche aren't you?
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
From TFA: "It indicates that most of the processing work - identifying people and other objects in view, and deciding what information to show about them - would likely be carried out by remote computer servers in order to keep the equipment slimline."
I played AR games on my Treo. I'm sure you can find many for any modern smartphone.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Is there an issue with pointing out obvious shills?
I'll raise you a "never going to happen".
I wear glasses because I'm basically blind without them. Glasses are a pain in the ass to deal with. With most of these systems, I would have to wear contact lenses AND glasses. That sounds great!
Putting things on your face is a pain. Watches are dead now aside from demonstrations of disposable income.. killed by the smartphone. These glasses offer no major advantages over a smartphone.
Tablets are a different animal; they always have been. Tablets offer a substantive advantage over a notebook - weight, battery life - and larger screens than a smartphone. But tablets, like smart phones, get put away when they're not being used.
Augmented reality glasses offer no substantive advantages whatsoever.
For all the type of this, a really nice, lightweight, HUD display for simulations and other environments would be a lot more widely applicable.
..don't panic
Not at all, if you're willing to back it up.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
More than a fad...more than cool and better than Rx; Cx glasses are disruptive game changers. They stand on the shoulders of the PC, Internet, SQL, 802.11xx and HUD at the corner of Fashion and Future hawking the promise of all knowing all seeing Superman intelligence. What kid isn't gonna want to be like that when he grows up? LOL
Augmented reality glasses offer no substantive advantages whatsoever.
That is a lot of cockery. However, they do have to not suck. For example, they need to function as an Eyetap. You can do convincing reality overlay without using an eyetap (which eliminates parallax error) but it requires a lot more processing power, or additional hardware. If you're going to have additional hardware, why not have it be ideal? The eyetap can have a focus adjustment in it, solving the "I need glasses" problem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In copying everything Apple, Microsoft wants a 'Reality Distortion Field' and has to resort to hardware to do it.
I work in the area, and:
Displaying some tables or gauges on your glasses is not augmented reality.
Filming stuff with them and displaying it somewhere else (a la Google Glasses), also is not even remotely augmented reality.
Actual augmented reality integrates. Actual augmented reality is stuff that fits itself into reality, and augments it.
Actual augmented reality would be when you walk through your city, and there’s a pillar there that isn't really there, and you can walk up to it, and trigger a switch. It is when you can have a rendered monster walk around the corner of the wall of a skyscraper. Actual augmented reality is seeing through walls because some database knows more about the other side. Or being able to tune the weather/theme of your view. Or just primitive stuff like having the shop windows display something different for everyone, depending on preconfigured preferences. (Or in my case, show nothing, since I would have an ad blocker.)
It’s when you see and hear things that aren't there, and don't see and hear things that are there, and it's not schizophrenia. ;)
This here, on the other hand, is shit.
I just want to know if they will make Windows 8 look like a usable desktop OS?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Not at all, if you're willing to back it up.
I don't know about you, but when someone with a brand-new account kicks off the discussion with a first post that praises Microsoft and denounces the competition, and that is their only comment, that looks rather odd to me.
When you remember that there have been a lot of new accounts doing exactly that over the course of this year - the Visual Studio ones being some of the most blatant - well, writing that off as normal user behaviour starts to look like burying your head in the sand.
The novel snowcrash profides prior art to all the wearable computer glasses/goggles thing. I know I have read the same thing in other books too, they just don't come to mind.
The whole patent thing is just so screwed up. If the guy who developed the waterbed was denied patent because of Stanger in a Strange Land, then the system as written already disallowed all this crap.
But that's just reason and logic.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
My watch glows in the dark so I only have to look at my wrist at night to see what the time is. It is powered by my wearing it so I don't need a mains supply (and cable / proprietary adapter) to recharge it. It can withstand water pressure of 10atm.
It also only cost me £30 a decade ago and hasn't had any problems whatsoever.
Until my smartphone can do all of those things I'm keeping it.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
I've been using AR glasses with my smart phone for YEARS.
It's often times faster to overlay the 3D noise source map (gathered from sensors in the field) over the readily available physical model -- Depth culling to remove obscured sources in real time (industrial noise abatement). Sometimes it's faster if the CAD files can be imported easily, to just do it digitally, even so, I can just turn off the cameras. I rarely used my phone when doing this sort of work, but I have done so. I've used it experimentally in the field to visualize the pre-recorded 3D noise volumes in real time walking (while all the equipment is safely turned off). It's safer and sometimes faster because it skips the step of constructing a 3D model of the environment.
No longer work in that field, but I now do some game development on the side, and I've found craploads of uses for AR in game dev... Overlay a wireframe of the scanned object to the real 3D clay model, correct minor defects, add wrinkle details, seams and screws and bolts. It's sort of like the modern equivalent of a painter working on a portrait with a live model. If the cameras didn't make me look silly (or pervy) I'd wear them in public to do "Google Glass" right now.
I abstain from reading any patents if I can. I hope MS's new patent is properly limited so that it doesn't PREVENT EXISTING USES OF AUGMENTED REALITY. No, really, just end all patents. This is retarding.
I wear my CHRONOMETER as a practical matter, not an affectation.
Good-bye
You win the 'Stating The Obvious Award'! Congratulations!
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Proof 1 :
Proof 2, specifically time stamp, and FUD that would have been obvious if you RTFA instead of trolling
Microsoft's version would process things independently on the wrist computer
vs
[Patent] indicates that most of the processing work [...] would likely be carried out by remote computer servers [...].
These astroturfers have been operating in the same way for a long time (more than a year I think), posting first-posts pro-Microsoft Anti-Google FUD.
Do you carefully check each and every mail by some Nigerian wanting to transfer some big money via your account ? Maybe THAT one isn't a scam ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Nice try
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Not at all, if you're willing to back it up.
OK, two points of proof to back up user Presentss is a shill.
1 - UID is 2780313 registered 11/23/2012 (aka Today)
2 - http://slashdot.org/~Presentss/comments
This is probably going to sound like a "get off my lawn" kind of post, but "augmented reality" bothers me. I go to baseball games and plays as an ESCAPE from reality. I don't want it "augmented" by screeds of information. I just want to enjoy the experience. Don't get me wrong, I think there are uses for augmented reality, but does life suck so bad for people that they cannot simply live it and enjoy it without cluttering it up?
Proverbs 21:19
The Personal System glasses from "Norbert and the System", a short story by Timons Esaias from 1993, may anticipate some of the features of this system. I haven't read the patent, but the overlay of contextual social information sounds a lot like what the original poster describes.
(Here's a link: http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Sci-Tech-Society/Esaias-Norbert.pdf)
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
This has been going on much longer than a year.
This was over a year and a half ago:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/cdd1ea06-7cc0-11e0-994d-00144feabdc0.html
Burson-Marsteller, a WPP-owned PR agency whose clients also include Microsoft, contacted US newspaper reporters and opinion-piece writers with a view to securing coverage on Google’s alleged use of personal information from Facebook and other social networks.
MS vs ODF (2009):
http://techrights.org/2009/05/27/ghettoblaster-may-be-microsoft-astroturf/
MS vs Linux (2001):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/09/26/ms_targets_linux_mac_rivals/
There is so much more too....
Apologies for not doing a full background check on all /. users I reply to.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
These glasses offer no major advantages over a smartphone.
It's not like they won't be able to make them with curved lenses. The *glass* might have to be somewhat custom to the wearer, but that's already the case for most of our computers/mobes anyway, right?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
They can record the TSA agents too, can't have that!!!
"No practical working implementations"? Has done no research on the matter has you, yessss....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann - This is just the most famous of the group.
There are no "consumer ready" AR glasses for various reasons but fully working implementations have been in existence for years.
Why do you need to wear both? why not just clip on the AR system to your existing glasses?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18091697
Take a look at the pics in that article, not exactly a quantum leap in design to make it a clip on instead of a full set of glasses (stability is the only major concern I can think of).
There is so much of this in the movies and in sci-fi that we've all see our futures with such a device, ever since our childhoods we have seen this. I don't see how this could fail the "obviousness" test. How much more proof does one need to show how broken the patent system is?
Sent from my ENIAC
Putting things on your face is a pain.
Do you know how many sunglasses are sold annually? Reduce the cost of these AR glasses enough, add in UV filters and focusable liquid lenses, and you've got the new rich man's (sun)glasses. Eventually they would become everyone's glasses.
Augmented Reality to provide statistics on geology samples in real-time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWrDaYP5w58
Current geology smartphone applications allow you to overlay surface map and geological layer data over a camera view. There are also some smartphone applications that present the visible stars and planets from your location as a 3D view. But if that could be superimposed over a camera image, that would be better.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads