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Transparent Displays Are Here, But They're Pretty Useless

Posted by msmash on from the making-sense-of-the-tech dept.

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.

2 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They have a use - heads up displays by Goldenhawk · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not so simple as transparent displays. I built a HUD for my car a few years ago, and proper optics are essential to the usefulness of a HUD. Essentially, you need lenses or curved mirrors or specially-tuned diffraction gratings to refocus the image some distance away - preferably many feet ahead of the car, so you don't need to refocus on the windshield.

    Having information presented at the same depth distance as your windshield, but in the same general direction you're already looking for at-a-distance viewing, is distracting and hard for the eye/brain system to tolerate.

    Here's a pretty good overview of HUD optics.
    http://www.mikesflightdeck.com...

    --
    --Brandon / Split Infinity Music

  2. Re:Very niche product. by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.