Apple Patents Augmented Reality Display, May Be Building A VR Headset (roadtovr.com)

An anonymous reader quotes an article from Road to VR: Apple has just been granted another AR/VR related technology patent, to add to their growing list. In this case it's a transparent, high field of view display which looks to be aimed at the augmented reality sector and, alongside other mounting evidence, could indicate Apple is preparing to enter the immersive technology race sooner rather than later... Anticipation that the company is working on 'something' AR/VR behind the scenes at Cupertino has been stoked by a series of company acquisition and staff hires. Most interestingly however are the trail of patent applications made by Apple.
This week's new patent specifies a "Peripheral Treatment of Head-mounted Displays" to deliver an image to the wearer's eyes through a transparent display medium.

Comments

And ?

[Space cowboy]

Apple patents a lot of things. It's a big company, sure there'll be people at Apple working on AR/VR. There'll also be people there working on colour-coded mouse buttons... There's also the somewhat-nuts situation of "hey we should absolutely patent this in case we ever need it in the future, and we don't want someone else to patent it first".

Personally I think you should have to have demonstrable progress on anything you patent on a yearly basis until it makes it to the market. Also, the whole idea of patents as a tradeable commodity is nuts. If it has to be tradeable, make the patent lifetime be cut in half for every trade...