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Goggles Simulate 52-inch TV 65

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-that-rocks-my-world dept.
al-bob writes "Sony introduced at PC Expo a set of goggles that simulate a 52-inch monitor viewed from 6 feet away, including surround sound. Each color LCD display has a resolution of 180K pixels and they can be switched to see-thru and are AC/DC. Quite a cool bit of technology, but it costs $899! " Of course, $899 is a bargain for a 52 inch screen. The resolution isn't quite up to snuff for hi-res computing, but hopefully it isn't far off. I'm stoked to try a pair- but they won't be available until september. Update: 06/24 12:47 by CT : Sam Livingston mentioned that an 800x600 version will be available for $2600 too. Still cheaper than a 52" monitor...
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Goggles Simulate 52-inch TV More

Goggles Simulate 52-inch TV

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  • I owned a pair of I-glasses, and actually enjoyed them quite a bit. I tried the version that has a VGA input, but the resolution on them was not quite good enough to use a dos window, and there was some clipping on the edges which made things even harder to use. For watching movies, though, they were pretty cool.

    Weird moment: Sitting at home late one night in the dark with my VR goggles strapped on my head watching the scene in "Strange Days" where someone in the movie goes home late one night, straps on some VR playback machine and sits in the dark watching movies. Of course, the scene is supposed to show how lonely and isolated that guy is... :)

    I've used Sony's Glasstron, too, when I was in Tokyo last year and stopped by the Sony store. It seemed to be about the same as the I-glasses. I even picked up the brochure that they have for them, but it's in Japanese, and I don't have it scanned in. The big difference seems to be that Sony's version uses batteries.
  • Damn HTML formatting conversion of special characters! http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/ss5/home/camc order/camcorderaccessories/plm-a55_specs .shtml is the URL... Copy and paste it
  • Other then my wearable, watching a porno-flik
    via goggles is wonderful cuz nobody can catch you
    doing it ;)
  • They do, see www.mimi.com
  • As for the article saying that they'd be available in September...um, they're available right now

    Actually Sony has two versions of these. The ones you saw, which have been out since the begining of the year, and these new ones. The new ones apparantly have bigger view area, better colors and transparancy option

  • With the lack of a correct horizon reference, your Vestibular Ocular Response will be totally fouled up. I.E. these things will give you the worst case of motion sickness you can imagine! This limits the use of the units as a Hi8 Walkman eyephone.
  • Posted by 2B||!2B:

    I have a far more useful application for these lightweight glasses than movies or porn or laptops or video games:
    some of us need them in real life.

    7 years ago in a car wreck I had severe damage to the orbit of my left eye (all 4 walls; that's bad). Anyway, the eye is fine, and the optic nerve had little damage, but the muscles were permanently damaged, and they're not the kind of thing that can be repaired with transplants or anything else. So, like many people who have a bad eye (which is more commonly an eye that always points either out or in, a "lazy eye"), my eyes aren't aligned, preventing me from having proper depth perception or peripheral vision (which makes sports and driving a nightmare; you don't find half-blind guys in the NBA!). There are probably a ton of people in the same state; you normally don't notice because most of us wear sunglasses day and night to avoid stupid comments. I only wear an eye patch when I perform with my rock group, since it's more appropriate then.

    As these lightweight LCD glasses improve in resolution, the possibility improves of someone building a pair which would supply a real-time image transformation (in combination with a really high-res CCD or other mini-camera, and a good set of DSP's) for the bad eye so that all of us with a bad eye could see correctly again (thus it would only need the LCD on one side, improving the cost). Normally the mind blocks out the image of the bad eye, but with image alignment it becomes useful again.

    I'm not sure what resolution, refresh rate, and color depth it would need to be useful, but I would guess at least 1024 x something, 16-bit as a bare minimum. I'm more of a programmer than an electronics guy, but I may end up trying to organize such a thing myself if somebody else doesn't.

  • A congenital cataract in my right eye (i.e., a birth defect) rendered me monocular before it could have been identified & fixed. So even though I wouldn't get the benefit of any 3-D simulation technology, at least I can't get my depth perception screwed up from using these relatively primitive headsets.

    When we get to headsets we can wear all day long and count of for high-rez apps like photo retouching, CAD, and DTP, I'll pester my boss for a pair -- it'd be nice to get my desk back. Until then, this is all expensive proof-of-concept looking for a niche market.
  • If you provided a separate channel for left & right eyes, then you could have stereoscopic vision. Slap on a couple data gloves. Have the computer project an image of a virtual keyboard in front of you. Touch type (or hunt 'n' peck). Now there's an image as people walk down the street.
    Christopher A. Bohn
  • Lemme know when the display's 1280x720, and I can attach a portable DVD with integrated line tripler...

    Cheers,
  • The page I'm looking at [sony.com] on sony's site says that the goggles are $2599.00.

    I can't connect to the site listed on your message either.

    The specs for these glasses say 'virtual 30" screen' and not 52", maybe these are two/three different sets of glasstrons... doesn't seem likely though.
  • If you check out the actual sony specs (at http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/ss5/portable/ camcorder/camcorderacc essories/plm-a55_specs.shtml) [sony.com], you'll see that the actual resolution of each LCD is 800x255, on a .7" LCD. The input is a standard NTSC RCA plug, so I don't know how they fit the 4:3 aspect ratio into this resolution.

    Another cool feature is the viewing mode adjustment. Apparently there's a shutter, so you can close it for movie viewing or such, and open it so you can also see what's going on IRL, which would be more appropriate for wearables-style apps.

    Y'know, looking at the picture, doesn't this remind you a whole lot of the chick from Neuromancer, with the built-in silver sunglasses? Get these surgically implanted and you're set!

  • Re:Call me with 720p or better... (Score:3)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Wednesday June 23, 1999 @11:25AM (#1836480) Homepage Journal
    Where are you going to put a DVD on a system built around glasses? A DVD beanie? Why don't you put a propeller on the spindle to keep the system cool (temperature wise) while you're at it? :)
  • I got one word for you: Pornos.

    Especially those new multi-angle DVD titles I saw last week that let you switch cameras on the fly. Could be dangerous...

  • Here we go:
    http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/ss5/portable/ camcorder/camcorderacc essories/plm-a55_specs.shtml [sony.com]
    HELP! Slashdot is busted! The above link should NOT have as space in "plm-a55", and doesn't as I write it, but the preview has a space there. Get rid of that space, and send a nasty note to CmdrTaco.

    The other Glasstrons, for computer use, are here:
    http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/prod ucts/av/glasstron/ [sony.com]
    They have 832x624 resolution, and support HD15 as well as RCA inputs. However, they're $2600 as opposed to $800.
  • Posted by kodokan:

    They are available in San Francisco at the Sony Style store in the Metreon. You can try them there and you can buy them
  • Sure, mathematically they might be the same, but because of our depth perception, we are able to determine how large something actually is. I'm sitting about a foot and a half away from a 21" monitor right now, and downstairs I have a 52" tv which I sit at least six feet away from. Although the 21" monitor may take up more of my field of vision, the 52" screen still appears to be larger and is more appealing to watch. Sure, this may just be a psychological effect, but I'm sure most people would rather watch a movie from the back row of movie theater than sitting close to a 25" television regardless of field of vision.
  • Or just damned poor resolution right in front of your eyes.
  • It sounds like with only 1 video connector you can't address the left/right LCD screens separately. That's ashame, two video inputs would be great for stereo image viewing.

    Two eyes. Two video inputs. Two video cards. That much closer to virtual reality...
  • Take a Gyropoint mouse, the kind with an internal gyro, and duct tape it to your head. They're cheap, and work well enough.
  • hah, i'm surprised no one else has thought of this... There was the previous discussion of rats that move a robotic arm using an invasive procedure.... and then the one about moving a house pointer with just electrodes strapped to your head.... so, you just stick a few 'trodes on the headset, and whamo, there's your input device:)

  • virtual i/o handles this with frame multiplexing. The even and odd frames go to different eyes.
  • But is this the same?
    Because this is called Glasstron but is 25 hundred
    not 9 hundred dollars. Strange to me.
    picture [sony.com]
  • This does not bode well.

    and like the other guy whoever he was. 52@72 = 13@18

    My 15" @ 1280*768 looks great by comparison.

    Hardware in a closed economic system... $...
  • Acturlly they have been in the European product catalog for about a year...

    So no. It's not really a new Sony product
  • Virtual IO has had a product called iGlasses [vio.com] for a while now (atleast 2 years i think more like 3) but now they have an enhanced version with twice the res for only $799 the price they have always been so i dont know what all the hoopla is about the sony ones it seems sony has a way of creating hype over a product that isint really that new or cool i know that the AIBO robot dog is really cool but damn its just and over priced Tamagotchi... what happens when you program it for love (so it seeks out attention or someone to play with it) and it starts to get annoying??? thats a real expensive Toy that will have an A.D.D. Factor all of about 10 days then it goes in the closet with the rest of my "gotta have" gadgets... any one remember the robot that apple made back in the 80's that was cool i wish i could remember the name and find one possibly on ebay any one who know's what i'm talkin bout send me an email

  • actually the price isn't bad considering the
    current VIAO headsets go for either $2499 or
    $2599 list... I may actually pick up a pair of
    these...
  • reveals that a 52" monitor viewed 72" away occupies the same field of vision as an 13" monitor viewed 18" away.
    Christopher A. Bohn
  • WOW...sounds like a great new toy for long trips. Not so sure how it will sell for normal use though, considering most people like watching movies with others and not alone.

    I can't imagine what the effect that lets you see the outside world too would look like...can't wait to try them!

  • dammit... (Score:1)

    by tgd ( 2822 )
    They weren't letting people try it when I walked by, they were just giving a chat about it. I didn't think to stick around and see if they were demoing it.

    Anyone else here go to PC Expo and find it as much of a disappointment as I? Not much new or interesting things there this year.
  • The resolution on these puppies is terrible. What is it, like 512x384 (NTSC???) or something? I thought sony already had glasses with 800x600 resolution?
  • 180k pixels puts this somewhere just below NTSC resolution. For reference, a 1024x768 monitor has 786,432 pixels next to this things 180000. Ntsc is around 512x384, or about 197k pixels.

    Not particularly impressive, esp. for 900 clams.

    I'm sure many others will point out that there are lots of headset type of displays out there better than this.

    In fact, the nice thing about this type of article is that you wind up with a list of lots of URLs to similar products.

  • It would be nice to find out a little more about these glasses from a technical point of view...180k pixels means less than 512x384 resolution. If the refresh rate isn't high enough we could also have problems that plagued the old active matrix displays...that of latency and ghosting. Anyone have links to more info?
  • Some people have mentioned that the resolution is pretty poor, with which I agree. But are you going to be connecting something like this to your video card? Probably not.

    Doesn't it make more sense to use it in other applications? I'm not sure what Sony had in mind when designing this, but it seems it would be better for these kinds of applications:

    1. Wearable computers. Ie; a device with a wireless Internet link. Are you going to try doing a multipage layout using goggles? Probably not. But what about checking your email? Sounds more likely, I guess.

    2. PDA-style apps: Palm meets goggles? Or, umm, Palm *in* goggles? Could be cool. You just go around wearing these goggles (should make for interesting scenes in downtown LA) that overlay your Palm screen with what you would normally see. Sounds pretty cool... no more groping for the holster on your belt. I'm not sure about data entry via this method, but still, could be cool.

    3. Television/etc...: 512x384 of true pixel resolution sure isn't bad for television watching. In fact, it is pretty good. Depending on the focus depth of the image, it could turn out that you'd enjoy this more than your present television set. Especially with surround sound embedded right in.

    Although I'm wondering how they've simulated a center channel speaker...
  • The thing they were showing didn't look like that. It had the same high-tech sort of cheesy look, but that's not it. Maybe its more advanced now?
  • The wearables movement keeps rocking on.

    I have a condition which weakens my muscles, making a laptop a bitch for me to carry around. I am drooling in anticipation for my first wearables.

    Besides those with handicaps of any kind, wearables will be IT for the business traveller.

    I though, would like one to use during the day for work. Those glasses would be a godsend!


    BTW, does anyone know if these will work with the new Powerbook with the detachable screen coming out??
  • Although I'm wondering how they've simulated a center channel speaker...

    I believe it would be unnecessary with a headphone type arrangement. The thing that limits dual speakers in open air from imaging an infinitely wide sound stage is the fact that the sound coming from the right speaker and intended for the right ear also wraps around the head and reaches the left ear. Same thing for the left side. The net effect of this is that the virtual soundstage is limited (short of special signal processing) to the width of the speakers.

    This is because the brain normally calculates the location of an object (width) by knowing the time delta between sound impingement on each ear (as the speed of sound is not infinite). The longer the time, with the known width of the head, the further to the side the virtual sound source is located. The brain is basically continually triangulating based on the known speed of sound, the delay between reception of the same signal, and the width between your ears.

    For headphones, the sound for each ear is delivered to each ear, with no spillover. This means the width of the virtual sound stage can be infinite, and is much more amenable to easy signal processing.

    The way the front to back location of sound is done by the brain is an even interesting.

    Sound is attenuated in a different way as it passes by the back side of your head and as it comes in past the back side of your ears then when it comes in the front. The combination of hair, facial features, and ear shape cause the high, middle, and low frequencies to be shaped differently (an example of this is that sounds from behind can sound "muffled").

    Your brain compares the differences in the frequency spectrum envelope received on each ear, and can make a pretty good guess at if it went past the back of your head or the front of your head.

    You can use signal processing to create this effect with two front speakers or with headphones, or you can add a third speaker behind on a different channel with a non manipulated signal and let your brain sort it out.

    So what are the implications of this uninvited rant?

    1) You would not necessarily need a third speaker for surround sound with a headphone like device.

    2) Neural nets can achieve amazing performance for some tasks.

    3) God was one hell of a good engineer.
  • The article says it simulates viewing a 52" TV from 6.5' away. Correcting my math for 78" separation, this is the same as a 12" monitor (albeit with very high resolution).
    Christopher A. Bohn
  • Speaking of crappy resolutions... Hasn't anyone ever heard of the VirtualIO goggles? They were exactly the same thing (or near enough), 180k pixels and all the rot. US$450 at The Good Guys about 3 years ago. They sucked. I looked at a Playstation with them, and it was horrible. I didn't buy them then and I wouldn't buy them now. Until they make some goggles sufficient for viewing a command line for under US$1K, they're just a toy and not worth my time.

    My friend has the model that was from a year before the ones I saw. Each screen is 320x100, but they display 320x200 by each screen displaying every other horizontal line. He bought them at cost for US$600 and has regretted it ever since. They even have a motion tracking device that only works in games that have code written for it (like the special edition of descent that came with it). Of course, when you moved the mouse it would spin your view crazily and make you sick.

    -dj

  • More information: (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/ss5/home/camc order/camcorderaccessories/plm-a55_specs .shtml
  • So when does the Quake mod come out for Real Life? :)
  • At least one of those store front Manhattan stores
    that sell all manner of electronica had these in the front window. On Monday...

  • I have seen those in several video equipment stores here in NYC, usually in the $500 to $600 range.

    Here [jandr.com] is one example.

    Later.
  • It's like viewing a 10 story screen from 150 feet away!
  • I bought my this past March. I located a
    distributor.. it took a while for delivery since
    he had to specially order them from Sony and I got
    them for $600, instead of Sony's $800. The
    batteries are expensive my 12 hour Lithium Ions
    cost $140 each and the charger was $120. The
    Glasstron comes with charger; however, for my
    wearable computer I needed to charge multiple
    batteries at once.

    They do 640x480 fairly well with the AiTech
    Pocket Scan Converter (aitech.com, $75), however
    the Glasstron crops the sides of the image..
    requiring your to hack your X modeline entries.

    With my 3dfx card I couldn't get it to work with
    quake3, however with a bit of hacking Im sure it
    would be possible. The main problem was the lack
    of a hz chooser (my NTSC > VGA converter requires
    60hz) However since my last attempt I found a
    glide configuration tool (glide control center)
    which may help if I choose to try it again :)

  • The ZDNet article has an incorrect price for the goggles. The price as shown by Sony's page on the goggles [sony.com], is $799.

    Just thought I'd mention that.
  • Don't forget an hyperdermic with some nutritive liquid - why waste some time eating ;-)

  • Ah yes, the Glasstrons (Score:3)

    by Ethan Butterfield ( 7481 ) on Wednesday June 23, 1999 @11:07AM (#1836526)
    Been out in Japan for a while. I had the chance to try them out at the Sony Style store in the new Metreon complex in SF yesterday, and I was rather non-plussed. They're ok for TV watching, but I could not use them for serious computer work for 8-hours in a row. The resolution is simply too poor, and the headset too uncomfortable.

    As for the article saying that they'd be available in September...um, they're available right now. If I wanted to drop $900 + tax, I could have walked home with one yesterday. Metreon had about 20 in boxes.

    One thing that wasn't mentioned is that the Glasstron demoed at PC Expo is only the low-end model. There is a second, higher-end (and much more expensive) Glasstron, the PLM-S700 PC. The PLM-S700 can do up to 832x624, and has a VGA connector in addition to the NTSC/PAL inputs. I haven't been able to take that one for a test drive, but the MSRP on it is $2600. You can see the specs on it at http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/produ cts/av/glasstron/ [sony.com].

  • The URL I was referring to is http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/ss5/home/camc order/camcorderaccessories /plm-a55_specs.shtml [sony.com] I must've put a typo in there somehow
  • Er, wear it on your belt with a wire running up from your waist? There _are_ dvd/headset combos available now.. Check this [go.com] out..

    pps: of course, one must have DD5.1 decoded thru (improved) headphones as well..

    ppps: I wonder if I _could_ get a Peltier helmet? ;)

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