Slashdot Mirror
Transparent Displays Are Here, But They're Pretty Useless
An anonymous reader writes: Samsung has debuted the first commercial installation of its 55-inch 'mirror' displays at a salon in South Korea with a transparent OLED screen overlaid over a mirrored surface to allow interaction. The Samsung product rivals an equivalent TOLED from Planar, with both intended for high-end use in the retail display and exhibition space. However both manufacturers are struggling to find practical applications for the much-awaited technology. Transparent displays have been a staple of sci-fi films such as Minority Report for decades, but only, it seems, because they helped to open up scenes which would otherwise have been difficult to film. With the pending advent of AR-based visualization, the innovation of the clear monitor seems not only to have come too late, but also offer limited practical use, even if its current breathtaking prices were to descend to the consumer space.
Uber hipsters and possibly automotive windshields.
Who actually wants to wear a headset? No one. Give me transparent displays as a stepping stone, not the same uncomfortable headwear we've been subjected to since the 1980's.
Make the transparency switchable, like with the privacy glass windows/doors that are available for commercial installations. Then we can all have monitors that fade from view and let us see the office through the screen. Probably a ways off from the tech currently available but it is what I hope for one day. I hate feeling like I'm staring at a wall 2 feet in front of me, no matter how fancy the graphics are.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you thought the high gloss screen on your laptop was bad enough...
This is not news.
Anyone with half a brain could tell you that transparent displays are useless except for some very small niche corner cases.
Really the place this will be useful is where we already have clear glass surfaces: windows, windshields, goggles, etc. But the main purpose there will be for AR or simple notifications. Standing at the window and having updates about what you are seeing or random data that somehow applies. Windshields and HUDs seems obvious. 'Smart' Goggles that give you useful info while working on whatever (chemicals, temperatures, electricity, etc). Or for that extra modern look, a TV that you hang on the wall and is clear while off or displays the art on the wall, but then turns on and 'replaces' the wall/art/etc with whatever you want to watch.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Appy screens can be apped with apps to let you app apps while apping other apps!
Apps!
I have a list of applications I'd love to create if these things were readily available. I've been seething for them for a decade. How is it that they can't find applications? I've read university students projects and DIY makers who did frieking awesome stuff with them. Maybe the price point isn't good? Or the technology isn't any good? Or have the engineers been watching too many scifi movies and not going around the real world looking for applications?
And that's about it. If you need a head's up display, you need transparent displays. But if you are not displaying info directly on existing reality, there are few good reasons for a transparent monitor.
If they become cheap enough, I could see car windshields being replaced by transparent displays, particularly for driverless cars.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I see those on CSI. All they need to do is speak and twittle their fingers a bit and all kinds of pictures and information come up. I even seen they showed how a hacker tunneled into their network in real time by using an actual digital tunnel made out of numbers and lines of code.
Maybe this is a first for you civies but the CSI has had them for years.
How about instead of a mirror, it's backed by electrochromatic glass. Then turn it into a window. So I can flip a switch and watch TV, or turn it off and the window becomes transparent.
It would be awesome. I would pay a lot for that.
London: transform any day into a bright sunny summer day. downside: more pub brawls ensue after complicated arguments and tense standoffs arise from disagreements about blustery and sunny.
Canada: images of alberta in february could be replaced by video of the leafs Borje Salming waxing your car which you tacitly know damn well has been under 7 feet of snow since october.
America: imagine a mcdonalds window that makes the food appear to have been cooked from ingredients that came from actual vegetables and known animals. Or a convenient window treatment that could some day make Dick Cheney look like a real person instead of a villain from an episode of captain planet.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I can see a lot of possible uses...
- easy HUD in cars : windshield but also on the external mirrors (augmented reality) for example... ...
- at supermarkets, on fridge doors
- on semi-transparent windows next to doors to show who is on the other side of the door while letting light get through when it's off
basically, on see-through windows for Augmented Reality, on windows (normal or semi-transparent) to let light though when device is off, on mirror or windows where if the device is off you need full mirror/window functionnality (like car mirrors), on glasses, ...
They should have linked "AR-based visualization"
Not everyone knows what Armadillo-Rhinoceros-based visualization is. It's pretty much zoo-centric terminology.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I saw these in Vegas last year. Not at a trade show, in shops being used for serving beer, so obviously the cost isn't atrocious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KAbiQLkuQ0
And people have been doing smart mirrors for ages, and mirror display TVs. Not sure what the "new" hype is about.
No more green screens: but the weather person behind the TOLED screen and we can see both the radar map and where they're pointing.
Maybe they won't even bother with a sweater.
A casino I visit has transparent displays over some slot machines. They've taken LCD diplays and removedance the back lights you can see the wheels through the animated images.
After we have noticed that software that looks great in movies but are completely and utterly shit if they were used in reality (like, say, databases that display EVERY SINGLE false photograph of a potential culprit before finding the correct one, or interfaces where you have to wave your hands about instead of typing on a keyboard), we now find out that hardware that looks great in movies is ALSO crap for real applications.
Who would have thought.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Vending machines
My final job plan is to setup an office were the employees are facing each other and the only input devices on each computer are voice controlled and a vertical transparent touch display.
After I take of picture of the office of the future I will retire and go down in history.
I can think of many, many uses for such a screen. I think it can be distilled as such: you put them anywhere additional information through A/R would be useful, but where the viewer is fixed in space relative to the screen and needs to maintain that perspective to the world. So, perhaps the glass dividing a bank teller and a bank customer. How about a construction worker in a backhoe or crane looking through a transparent display that highlights buried gas lines, or potential danger areas. In fact, any automotive windshield has at least some potential for a transparent display. There are teleprompters that have a method of doing this, but perhaps transparent displays may do it better. If nothing else, the teleprompter only displays text...a transparent display would also allow the onscreen talent to look at images or video without breaking gaze to the camera.
Just some ideas.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
How long until some criminal tries to do a modern version of the James Bond rotating license plate using this?
I saw the transparent LCD display on slot machines at a trade show in Vegas over 6 years ago. They were mechanical reel slot machines with the front glass as a clear panel that could draw lines or pictures over the matching symbols. This video shows one that is a bit fancier than the ones I saw years ago, but after the spin you can see the lines draw across the matches.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
It was always obvious that a see through monitor was a dumb idea, but it allows for the practical implementation of a mirror monitor. That way I can look at myself while I tell other people about my life on facebook.
First thing that pops into my mind. That is a rather huge market.
First off, arcade games have been using these for years. Skip to 45 seconds in for an example (volume warning - it's in an arcade so it's loud): https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
There's another arcade game with little fish bowls that's also transparent. It's really cool just to look at.
Also, many years ago, around 20 or so, I took a calculator apart and removed the back-most layer of the LCD and... voila - it was transparent. This capability has existed for decades (in fact all LCD displays are transparent - it's only the more modern OLED where that hasn't been the case) but there have always been backlights or some other material placed behind them to make them contrast as much as possible.
Better known as 318230.
And for much the same reason -- videophone conversations work well in movies as they more closely resemble the "talking head" interactions the public is used to in films, but in the real world, people don't necessarily want someone else looking at their face while they talk.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
How about layering a number of them for true 3D imaging?
You sound like you still drive your own car like some sort of peasant.
With some kind of multi-touch multi-user software, I would love to see this on a bus, or a train...
You could be able to see maps, transit information, restaurants nearby without losing the view of the city. Even if you don't have AR it could be really interesting
I'd want one on my cornea. Like in Neuromancer I guess.
A significant number of people become sick from this.... kind of makes it a non-starter for serious applications.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I'd use these to keep an eye on time stealing employees (or rather make them use these to make it easier for me to monitor their time theft).
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
Having flown with a HUD, I'd say that the current generation of "reflect off the windshield" is completely adequate for speedometer, tach and such. However, a transparent film is not a good answer for low visibility, as those need to be projected exactly over the real obstacle. That isn't possible with an OLED display unless you have the head tracking correct and figure out how to deal with the parallax between the eyeballs. There's a valid complaint that the image will be focused in the focal range instead of infinity, but moving it up will still be an improvement, as the hundred milliseconds of refocus time has to occur with a dashboard anyway.
This is the first thing that popped into my head, Additionally it is a rather large market if successful.
I don't even like a background image on my desktop. Just a blank blue colour and a few key icons for programs and shortcuts to data.
They got away with that bullshit though, didn't they... good luck with your 'glossy' display, all those lovely reflections so you can hardly see what's on the screen! But ooh, the shiny!
But, but, the JEW film showed us transparent displays in 'Minority Report', so it MUST be right! Whatever is on the JEW TV is true, the JEW said so!
These could be installed in churches and homes to make digital "stained glass" windows.
not able to find uses for transparent displays.
Having personally played Silent Scope: Bone Eater, I can say that these displays do have a use, and it's video games. You can do some REALLY cool things with the 3D effect this game uses by putting a projector screen 3" behind the transparent display, like actually obscuring your view with smoke, while having the object drawn at full brightness in the back. It looks a LOT more realistic than most games, and really adds a lot to the experience.
Obviously
Walking while texting is dangerous
It is about time
I believe transparent displays have had a good run already, BEHOLD THE TRANSPARO DOOR!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf_kjwOSjGI
_
Wow this is great! now I can have multi-Layered displays. Like virtual desktops, but layered on top of each other. One could have a game running, another videos, another some desktops. I frequently have more than one computer on at the same time and it's a pain to keep switching between them. Can't wait for those Dell multi-layered displays.
You can place these for ads in places where you want ads but want to allow the view. I live in Chicago and they just started putting those electronic billboards everywhere. They are ugly and obstruct the natural views. Replace those with glass like surfaces and not only will you up the coolness factor but allow people to enjoy natural lighting and views.
Not to worry, Wolf Blitzer and the acronym alphabet soup primetime police crime dramas will find great ways to distort reality with these displays.
Overlays during surgery. See through where the doctor is working, but with other info highlighted.
Astronomy. Highlight stuff in the sky. You could have one in front of a telescope.
Smart glasses - even if there was backlash for Google Glass.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Transparent display technology has been here since the first LCD screens came along. Just take the backlight off of them. They aren't useful or wanted for the same reason that newspapers and magazines have never been printed on transparencies.
This will be awesome for the fright industry. Place these on a mirror at your pre teans slumber party and get them to play Bloody Mary, put these on the front porch window and the real woulfman can jump at you on Halloween.
put your regular everyday monitor back in, crop the image adequately and set it as your wallpaper!
Joking aside most people put a maximized web browser on their display.
and speech recognition capable enough to pick up "Who is the most beautiful in the world?"
then it'll have some place in disneyland..
And maybe customers in that salon like it too..
There's a reason transparent displays were in the movies, cause they were "movies" The only real world application I see for transparent displays are HUD's, and possibly bathroom mirrors. That's about it.