Sunglasses That Block All the Screens Around You (wired.com)

Scott Blew, an entrepreneur and engineer, recalled an article he'd recently read in WIRED about a new kind of film that blocked the light emitted from screens. He wondered if the same technology might work on a pair of glasses, to block the screens that seemed to be everywhere. From a report: He contacted Steelcase, the company that made the Casper screen-blocking film, and ordered a sample. Then he popped out the lenses in a pair of cheap sunglasses and replaced them with the film. Amazingly, it worked: Blew could look through the lenses and see everything -- except for screens, which turned black. Now, Blew and a small team are turning that concept into a real product. Their IRL Glasses, which launched on Kickstarter this week, block the wavelengths of light that comes from LED and LCD screens. Put them on and the TV in the sports bar seems to switch off; billboards blinking ahead seem to go blank. Within three days of launch, the project had surpassed its funding goal of $25,000.

Comments

Wavelength

[religionofpeas]

block the wavelengths of light that comes from LED and LCD

Has nothing to do with wavelength, but with polarization of the light. Anybody who has looked at screens with polarizing sunglasses is familiar with the effect.

Re:Wavelength

[Spamalope]

Exactly. They've discovered polarized sunglasses! Genius!

Color is how we distinguish light frequency. That's what color is!

I think they're ready for a kickstarter! Who could you trust more!?! Maybe they could add something about solar roadway glasses so we know they're 100% legit and know what they're talking about.

Re:Wavelength

[taustin]

I have prescription polarized sunglasses (damned good ones, too). No, it doesn't work this way. Yeah, half the screens will go dark, being polarized one way. The other half will be largely unaffected. Which half depends on which way the glasses are polarized. The effect also varies with the angle at which you're viewing the screen. I regularly see screens dim, then brighten back up, as I walk by.

The only way to do this with polarization would be have two layers, at 90 degree angles. Which would render you completely blind, as no light of any kind would get through.

Re:Wavelength

[Moof123]

+1. Most screens are polarized the same way to mostly get along with polarized sunglasses, but there is still a good 10-15% of screens that are in portrait orientation. Higher end smartphones clearly have had effort into making them work with polarized glasses. most iphones have funny tints to the colors as you rotate them, but are always readable. My mid-range Moto X4 however disappears when in portrait mode, which sucks for taking pictures on a sunny day (when will manufacturers just put in a square sensor and let me choose the format before or after taking a picture?!?!).

Re:Wavelength

[GrumpySteen]

They've discovered polarized sunglasses! Genius!

Nah. They've discovered a way to sucker hundreds of people out of $40 or more for a pair of cheap sunglasses and get free advertising that will probably get even more idiots to jump on the bandwagon before the kickstarter campaign is over.

Re:Wavelength

[ShanghaiBill]

Color is how we distinguish light frequency. That's what color is!

Who said anything about frequency? These glasses filter by wavelength, not frequency. Totally different thing.

Re:Wavelength

[religionofpeas]

most modern screens emit light only at 3 specific frequencies

Only OLEDs do that (and they don't work with these glasses).

Normal TFT LCD screens use white backlight and 3 different colored filters. The filters are fairly wide band (easier to make and also better for increased brightness). The white backlight spectrum differs based on the light source. Older screens used fluorescent CCFL bulbs with fairly narrow spectral lines, but they had quite many, and the position depends on the phosphor mixture. Newer screens use white LEDs (typically blue/UV LED + yellow phosphor) with wide spectrum.

Re: Wavelength

[lgw]

There is no reason for using wavelengths outside the maximum sensitivity of each color receptor i the eye. Specialty screens may be different, but they're rare, especially in public.

No reason other than accurate color presentation. Sure, most LCD screens optimize for efficiency, which is why LCD has a bad rep among TV snobs. There are wide color gamut LCD monitors available, though, and they're pretty standard for anyone who works with color professionally.

No screen will show you the extremes of red or violet of human vision, but you can get pretty close without the extreme inefficiency of trying to show the entire spectrum, and that's enough to make colors appear lifelike. As OLED screens become the norm, however, the term "wide color gamut" may vanish, and just leave people wondering why those old screens looked so bad.

Re:Wavelength

[powerlord]

Considering the Team page ends with:

"In Memory of Levi Felix, Co-Founder of Digital Detox and Camp Grounded, whose passion and prankster spirit continually inspires us"

and that the people leading the project are "Scott Blew" and "Ivan Cash" (so they're even telling you that you "Blew Cash" on the product) I would lean more towards this being a mild scam or an Andy Kaufman style hoax.

Re:Wavelength

[locopuyo]

The OLEDs in TVs actually use white oleds for each subpixel with color filters over them (LG makes all the panels). In most phones they use different colored oleds.

Re:Wavelength

[Hognoxious]

Well done but to subtle

... or not to subtle; that is the question.

Re:Wavelength

[amicusNYCL]

The details are really hard to come by. I guess I should have clicked on the Kickstarter link first, where they do say things like "The polarization is TAC 1.1, Cat 3, UV 400" and "IRL Glasses block LCD/LED screens through horizontal polarized optics".

Instead, like the last time Slashdot ran this story, I thought to myself "surely they didn't just discover polarization." So, instead of Kickstarter, I clicked on the link to "Casper screen-blocking film." Which, by the way, they literally refer to as "cloaking technology." The intro video describes the "inventor" as suddenly remembering something from childhood and "testing his theory about light." The text "polar" is nowhere to be found. The few seconds in the video devoted to how it actually works claims "physics, science, and a little of this *space shuttle launches*". This isn't for sunglasses, by the way, it's "architectural film" for putting on open glass conference rooms so that people walking by can't see the screens inside.

The 7-page Designtex Casper Cloaking Technology Process Overview PDF does not contain the text "polar." But under the section about "validating monitors", it talks about mounting your monitor either "regular," or rotated 90 degrees, but not rotated 45 degrees! They also show a layout diagram and point out that people viewing through glass that is angled 45 degrees to the screen, or people near the wall and viewing almost from the side, will still be able to partially see it.

So, yeah, it's polarization, and for some unknown reason, as if polarization is not some widely-known thing, the design company goes to pretty far lengths to not use the word "polarization."

Here's the list they specifically say it won't "cloak":

Microsoft Surface Hubs
Cisco Spark Board
Direct LED displays
Passive 3D displays
OLED displays
Plasma displays
CRT monitors and displays
Prysm Laser Phosphorous
Displays (LPDs)
Smart Kapp white boards
Traditional white boards
Projection devices

It will "cloak":

Most LED displays 40” and
larger
Telepresence and media:scape
units
Google Jamboard

And it may "cloak":

Small computer monitors
Laptop computers
Notebook computers
Touchscreen computers and
kiosk displays
Displays mounted behind glass

And what about LED traffic lights?

[ravenshrike]

Should be amusing the first time they get sued because of a car accident.

Re:And what about LED traffic lights?

[religionofpeas]

LED lights aren't polarized, so the glasses have no effect on them.

Re:And what about LED traffic lights?

[Calydor]

Keep an eye out for the ad saying they're available.

ridiculous

[cellocgw]

Mark this down as 'Most Uneducated Self-Promoter of the Month" .

Commmercial display manufacturers (e.g. LCD for gasoliine pumps, POS systems, etc.) are very careful to align the output polarization so that it will pass thru polarizing sunglasses, which in turn are carefully aligned to block the glare/scatter from solar irradiance. Try rotating a pair of sunglasses 90 degrees and you'll see how much brighter the thruput is.

Peril sensitive sunglasses at last!

[Mspangler]

Granted the peril may be different than originally anticipated, but still a worthy development.

Re:The perfect accessory for virtue signaling

[DontBeAMoran]

So you view interaction with more people as being more important than interaction in real life with fewer people?

See, I just interacted with you. But I don't know you and you don't know me. Either of us could die tomorrow and we'd never notice it since we're just one of the dozens of people we reply to, every day.

I already tried this...

[Bluecobra]

I already tried doing this, and the results were frightening. Aliens everywhere, and all the billboards said stuff like obey, consume, etc. I ended up chucking the sunglasses in the bin.

Re:Doesn't work on portrait screens

[TeknoHog]

Regular polarizing sunglasses should work for those. Presumably, the polarization direction in most LCDs is chosen so that they remain visible with polarizing sunglasses (whose direction, in turn, is chosen to reduce reflections from horizontal surfaces).

Re:Something similar for headlights?

[Herve5]

You can impose, by law, polarizer filters in front of all headlights, and then you'll filter most of the light of oncoming cars with simple polarizer glasses while the light reflected by ordinary objects will be unpolarized thus visible.

You could even start this development without changing laws through another key feature, which indeed is fog : if you illuminate fog with polarized light then look at it with counter-polarized glasses, you almost damp all the fog droplets reflections, and see through it the actual scenery.
This, a life saver, I proposed to my governmental lab in charge of road counter-fog measures years ago. The idea was trashed 'for imposing more power on headlights'. Imagine my gaping.

Later on I discovered it had been patented, a couple of times (yes, more than one, in different countries, this happened in the good ol' time), somtimes with glasses, sometimes with a windscreen filter.
Nobody succeeded in selling it anyhow, and patents are probably dead now (my story is >10 years ago)

If you want to start a serious, significant Kickstarter for real, do this.
Fog-suppressing kit, two headlight filters, polarized sunglasses just an option. Low-cost and easy to test.

I'll buy your first model. I'm too old now to restart with this -at the time I tried, internet didn't exist...
But God I'll buy your first model.

Cherry on the cake

[Luckyo]

Creator's name is "Ivan Cash". Yes, he wants cash. For a pair of polarized sunglasses.

I'm just speechless.