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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.
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.
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A HUD would actually help enhance visibility by tracking road markings, signs, and obstacles that are low visibility, as well as alerting you of events happening in your blind spots. Integrating 3D maps and directions would be handy. Putting your speedometer and other dashboard information closer to your view could reduce time you take your eyes off the road.
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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.
Citations for any of this? I don't have one so what I'm saying is no more believable, but I do recall a study that showed HUDs were more of a hindrance than a help.
I don't have any citations, but I do have one car that has a HUD. In all honesty, I thought it would be a stupid gimmicky thing, but I wish every car I owned had one now. Granted, mine is fairly simple, but well designed. It displays a digital reading of speed as the largest item. There's a bar graph of the tach across the top, bar graph for fuel along the right side, oil pressure and turn signals. What I found surprising is that the road is not as far in my peripheral vision when I glance at the HUD vs. the instrument panel. Plus, for me at least, my eyes don't really need to refocus (or not as much) to see the speed on the HUD. The numbers are large enough for me to see them.
I saw something on /. a few months ago that mentioned that the amount of information on a HUD can become a big distraction after a certain point. So I can see how it would be a problem if turn by turn directions are up there and radio information, etc. I would think anytime you need to actually read words, or need to more than glance at something, it's going to be an issue.
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.
About a year ago, I was attending an event in a hotel's banquet room. In the other (bigger) banquet room, a DJ was setting up, She had a transparent, touchscreen monitor (48cm, 1080p) as her DJ console. When I asked, she said it cost about $3000 US. The event she was DJ'ing was longer than the event I was attending, so I looked in on her before I left. Since the room was dark, could barely see her hands through the back of the screen. Mostly, it just added a little to the light show with the level meters and wave forms displayed on the screen.
(BTW, she was running the open source Mixxx DJ console under Gentoo Linux on her laptop.)
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