Retinal-Scanning Screen Prototypes 193
Troed writes: "Microvision demonstrated a prototype display that uses three leds and a mirror to display SVGA
graphics from something small enough to be put into cellphones." Not
a lot of technical details, but what's there looks good. It'll be
a few years at best before the prototypes turn into real products, and
I'm not quite sure I want to beta test this one, but I sure can't
wait for when they are ready for prime time.
At long last! (Score:1)
Augmented Reality Folks (Score:1, Interesting)
Imagine walking down a street or park, and projected out in front of you is all types of interactive data about whats going on. You could be hiking, and with the assistance of GPS and this retinal display, a live top map could be projected over your field of vision, giving you great insight and clues as to where you are going. Better still, such GIS information such as water, underground pipes, etc would be available for full viewing just as if you had x-ray vision.
For doctors, full 3D PET/CAT scan data could be overlayed in vivid detail right on top of the patient as the doctor operates. The doctor could see in complete detail exactly what she was doing as she made the incision.
I don't know about you but MicroVision Technologies is a stock I'm going to buy, they are going to be huge.
Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:1)
Not until someone actually DOES and sues the manufacturer for millions of dollars. Remember McDonalds and the lawsuit that required them to put "Warning! Coffee is extremely hot! Drink with caution!" on their coffee cups?
Triv
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:5, Funny)
or maybe "Warning, this individual litigates over own stupidity. Symptoms include rash of complaints, with persistent ambulance chasers."
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
Check out comedian Bill Engvall's [billengvall.com] album "Here's Your Sign", where he makes that very point.
If we gave all the stupid people signs that said "I'm stupid" then we'd know better than to deal with them.
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
I remember years ago, I sat down and there was the TV show 'Wings' on. The characters were suing someone or something, and they have the comic-relief-foreigner say, "You have to sue! It's the american way!"
What we need is if you are suing somebody because of your own stupidity, not only will the case be dismissed but you lose the right to future lawsuits even if it's valid or not. Or maybe penalize the lawyers for it too, if they represent in a lawsuit based upon the stupidity of the person or party then they get disbarred or something.
Yes, this is now off-topic. This just seemed more worthwhile than responding to the article which is pretty much, "ooh flashy things!" and doesn't require much conversation.
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:3, Informative)
Do you remember that the woman got third degree burns, needed skin grafts, spent a couple weeks in intensive care and offered to settle for ~$20K in hospital fees?
Do you remember that McDonald's rebuffed that offer?
Do you remember McDonald's having received hundreds of complaints in the past about the coffee temperature?
Do you remember that after losing the trial, McDonald's lowered the coffee temperature to something consumable by human beings?
Or do you only remember how the media characterized the case?
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
If she hadn't been a moron, she wouldn't have put herself in a situation where all that medical treatment was necessary. Coffee is hot; a hot liquid spilled on clothing that you're wearing is generally a Bad Thing. Most reasonable people would conclude from these facts that coffee should be handled carefully so that you don't spill it on yourself. In a car, it'd be a good idea to keep it in a cupholder when you're not drinking it, not between your legs where the cup can tip over or be crushed. This isn't exactly rocket science, folks.
If stupidity were fatal, it would cut back drastically on so-called "overpopulation"...
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
You're obviously of superior intelligence.
There. Is that what you wanted? A little external confirmation.
The world would be a better place if everyone were as smart as you. You've never done anything so stupid in your life. Wow, gee, I wish there were more people like you.
Happy yet? I could go on if you really need it.
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
It is also considered by many many people in the world to be the "proper" way to make coffee, a fact which is bourne out through labratory tests that show many of the essential flavors and oils are not drawn from the bean at lower temperatures. Very simple.
Many very very common things that we do (often for enjoyment) are fantastically dangerous. They are also part of life. Choice and intelligent handling of oneself will eliminate most accidents; the rest are just part of living in an universe with no certainty.
--
Evan
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
If I was talking to work, I'd rather have the option of being able to choose a place that served it really hot so it was hot when I got to the office. As it is, McDonalds was the place to stop for coffee for long trips because it would stay hot for a long time or it would heat your cold coffee. Nowadays, IHOP seems to have the hottest coffee around. Dunkin Donuts serves at a lower temperature.
By blaming the temperature, you're removing choice - effective legislating by creating a precident of liability. Maybe we should only have butane torches be available at Home Depot and require licenses for aceteline?
And twice they have tried to move from the current 18 and over spraypaint law (hell, I used to buy spraypaint on a monthly basis when I was a preteen/teenager... up until I got an airbrush) to having to sign a form for a reason for buying it (now that I make stage props for Rocky Horror, I'd *love* to fill some of those out).
--
Evan
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
Many years ago. Of course, your laws where you live might differ from the laws where I live. Over here, my neighbors and I are allowed to buy alcohol both in stores and in bars (unlike several places throughout the middle of the United States), and are allowed to do U-turns anywhere we want, turn right on a red light, and we have no emissions testing. But you can't buy spraypaint if you're under 18.
Florida - I'm sure your local legislation has a slew of odd laws as well, as seen from various moral viewpoints.
--
Evan
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
Was this woman a moron? Probably not, after she's apparently capable of hiring a decent lawyer. Is it a shame she was injured? Sure. No one should be hurt. Was McDonald's a jerk about it all? McDonald's is a huge faceless corporation. Duh! If a huge corporation isn't a total jerk and willing to go to the mat over any case however fatuous, every halfwit in America will be dialing whatever lawyer advertises during Jerry Springer and lawsuits would become the country's leading industry, instead of just one of the country's leading industries.
I dunno about you, but someone who manages to spill enough coffee on herself to cause that much injury should take her clumsiness into consideration. I'm a complete spaz, so I make sure when I'm handling something hot or sharp or radioactive or CowboyNeal, to take extra precautions like not opening it over my lap, or sticking it in my eye or trying to juggle it. But that's just me.
If it takes warnings on the coffee cups for a certain percentage of the population to realize that, then so be it. We already have warnings for practically every stupid behavior that could conceivably be taken with a product already because there are always twelve people too stupid to get out of jury duty who are more than willing to award the Litigation Lottery to some schmuck who happens to be stupid or clumsy or excessively unlucky.
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
Yeah, and some of those warnings out there are downright silly. But I guess sometimes we need a warning or two to point out things we might otherwise have just not even considered, even though it should be obvious. The only problem is, how many people actually READ the cup? Oh well.
Well, actually the warnings are only there to help the corporation from being sued. Nobody anywhere reads those warnings or assumes that anyone else reads them. A coworker of mine was putting together a large metal media cart today, which of course is emblazoned with warning labels in that silly pictogram language that we are increasingly inflicted with, when I suggested that the government should approve and issue a standard disclaimer sticker that reads:
Warning! The government has determined that if you do something stupid, you might be injured or killed.
Then we wouldn't have to have companies vandalizing all of our products with multiple labels, some of which, like the anooying and distracting airbag warnings on my car's sun visor, are designed to be not removeable.
Yeesh!
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
So she's a klutz. I'm a bit fumble-fingered sometimes myself. I generally avoid doing things where that could end up being a problem.
This has already been addressed by another poster...proper extraction requires elevated temperatures. If it's too hot to drink right away, you let it cool down a bit. Again, this isn't rocket science.
If true, that makes every food a burn waiting to happen as food served below that temperature presents a greater risk of food spoilage. As much as participants in the Litigation Lottery might hate to admit it, you can't completely eliminate risk. Simple risk analysis usually indicates the better course of action; personally, I'd rather not eat spoiled food.
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
To make tea, you pour BOILING water on the tea. Not just hot, but boiling!
It has to be boiling, or you don't get the flavour from the tealeaves.
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
Tip: Don't drink coffee and drive. You might think your Mario Andretti, but there's already enough distracted dummies on the road.
Tip2: Don't put hot water between your legs.
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
Do you remember that she wasn't the driver and the car was stopped?
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
Re:Oooh, more health warnings. (Score:2)
Personally I like the idea of having a cell phone or a PDA that would let me check my messages, and then hold it up to my eye to view the attached screenshots or presentation someone sent me.
Just not while I'm coming home at rush hour.
Hold it to your eye? (Score:2)
Seems to me this would be more applicable to VR goggles, or head's up displays.
-me
Re:Hold it to your eye? (Score:1)
Re:Hold it to your eye? (Score:2)
What a coincidence, those devices seem to make up the rest of Microvision [mvis.com]'s product line.
Once they figured out how to scan the mirror fast and accurately enough, there are all sorts of uses. Bummer, most of them seem to be out of my price range for at least the next year, probably three.
You can tell it's not ready for primetime, the Spectrum color display system [mvis.com] has a two pound piece that mounts on your head, tethered to a 40 pound box. I want one anyway.
Re:Hold it to your eye? (Score:2, Informative)
it would be interesting to see if this technology could work in reverse as well. Read the information from the retina that the eye is seeing, and then access usefull and pertinant information. For instance, you are looking at the night stars, and the computer locates and displays an astronomy chart over them, helping you to find and name constellations.
Re:Hold it to your eye? (Score:2)
Perhaps a biofeedback mood-scanning system that prints out suggestions for terrible things to say in arguments?
Re:Hold it to your eye? (Score:2, Insightful)
Am I the only one (Score:3, Funny)
~~~
MVIS stock price drops on news (Score:1, Funny)
"Why would anyone want to look like a dork holding a cell phone in front of their face to read their computer screen?" asked one attendee of the press conference.
"We will be able to produce hundreds of thousands of units every year!" claimed Microvision's CEO.
Skeptics remain skeptical, though, with no evidence that wearable computing ever taking off. "This is just another gimmick technology," said another attendee, "if I was really interested in computing, I'd carry a laptop or palm-sized computer. I certainly wouldn't hold a cell phone in front of my face. How would I type?"
Microvision is the leader in cell phone-based retinal scanning screens.
Re:MVIS stock price drops on news (Score:2)
On the other hand, this very well might be were all of those 'destoryed' cuecats are going too.
Forget Cell phones... (Score:1)
Re:Forget Cell phones... (Score:2)
(What the heck?!?!?)
Re:Forget Cell phones... (Score:2)
It wasn't.
You're jealous, aren't you? Perhaps if you posted worthy comments instead of bitching about why others' posts are rated higher than yours, you might get +1 posting yourself.
This is a PROJECTOR, not a scanner (Score:1, Insightful)
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=scan
Re:This is a PROJECTOR, not a scanner (Score:2)
Portable DVD, Yes; Portable Phone, No (Score:5, Funny)
One other question, what about those of us with glasses, can the system work around that, or will I have to start wearing a monocle like Mr. Peanut?
Looks like glasses not a problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the marketing sketches of the optic path accurately show the geometry of the system, you'd be able to see in focus without your glasses. (But your iris would have to be in the correct spot, i.e. you're looking in the right direction, or the image will disappear.)
The focus issue occurs because the light from a given real-world "pixel" arrives as a wide, essentially colimated (rays essentially parallel) beam, and your lens has to focus the light hitting it all over its surface down to a point, or a very small patch, on the retina. If your lens is less than perfect or not currently adjusted correctly, light from one real-world pixel striking different parts of it arrive at different spots on the retina, rather than all at one spot, defocusing the image.
Most displays illuminate the whole retina with a broad beam, allowing you to move your eye or head about and still see the image, but requiring your lens or lens-plus-glasses system to focus properly. This system MAY hit your eye with a narrow beam, which would reduce or eliminate the need for the lens to focus accurately.
But it would also require your eye to be in exactly the right spot, within the size of your pupil as viewed through your eye's lens. Eye motion would make you lose the image. So I suspect the display actually spreads out the light on its way to your eye, and you'd still need the glasses.
Re:Looks like glasses not a problem. (Score:2)
Ah, but my problem is that I need the glasses, I am quite blind and so if I decided to buy one of these as a stylish HUD or video viewer, I'd be half blind.
No problemo. You just hook this display into a digital video camera, and the movie will be overlaid over the "real world" data.
-Mark
Re:Portable DVD, Yes; Portable Phone, No (Score:1)
And here is another question, what about epileptics that respond to flashing lights? I'm thinking this bugger will have government warnings up the wazoo about that. "Let's move the flashing LEDs as close the eye as we can..."
Brings to mind Diamond Age (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone remember the advertising in Diamond Age where images were broadcast directly into the eyes of passersby on the street? I can imagine this on a scale where these are placed in strategic locations in supermarkets, on the street, heck even the freeway. Scary, that you could have images directly placed onto your retina that are beyond your control (other then closing your eyes) Talk about mucking with reality, but then there's a whole new market for special sun glasses that reflect this kind of bombardment... Oakley Ad Blockers!
Re:Brings to mind Diamond Age (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Brings to mind Diamond Age (Score:2)
I guess they might be able to make the ad look BIGGER then they could otherwise.
Re:Brings to mind Diamond Age (Score:2)
It could also be 3 dimensional and would only be limited to your entire current line of sight. A tiny laser tracking your eyes on a billboard could make it appear that a car is about to smash into you via your peripheral vision, or put something 2 feet in front of you when the laser is actually 100 yards away. It could place a person walking towards you that would be indistinguishable from the real thing. That is much more then a 2d billboard could ever do. And much more intrusive.
Great for Singles Bars! (Score:2, Funny)
- Freed
Sheesh (Score:2)
and I'm not quite sure I want to beta test this one,
That's like saying you don't want to test a View Master 3D toy because you're afraid they might have put a search-light-power light bulb inside.
Do you really think they're putting a 1 watt laser in this thing?
Re:Sheesh (Score:2)
From a press release six months from now:
Re:Sheesh (Score:2)
My point is that burning away the retinal surface isn't the only thing to be concerned about.
If it's bright enough... (Score:2)
Doesn't matter if it's a laser or a diode, one watt or one milliwatt. If it's bright enough to paint a visible picture it's bright enough to fry the spot that's illuminated if the scanning stops with the beam on.
So they'll need a safety interlock of some sort to cut off or dim the light source if the scanning stops, or make the amount of light emitted dependent on the actual motion of the mirror, unless they can guarantee that the scanning failure modes all deflect the light away from the eye.
Laser light / Normal light (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Laser light / Normal light (Score:3, Informative)
As far as I can tell, that's not actually correct. UV and the bluer light frequencies cause damage, but provided the intensity isn't too high the lower frequencies cause no known damage.
In this case there is no reason the intensity would be sufficient to cause any damage.
Re:Laser light / Normal light (Score:3, Funny)
Any kind of light ultimately damages the eye
So what are we to do? Apparently we must keep our eyes tightly shut, from birth, except in complete darkness. Otherwise the light will damage them!
Sigh!
Now... (Score:1, Funny)
I guess I'd need a driver.
This has been done before.... (Score:1)
Creedo
Re:This has been done before.... (Score:2)
Re:This has been done before.... (Score:2)
The problem is that the technology requires incredibly small, precise optics that move at high speed... this can be done, but they have yet to produce anything durable enough for consumer use...
Misreading (Score:1)
Very cool... (Score:2)
What about increasing the intensity of the LEDs (Laser diodes perhaps?) and scanning a small portion of the wall adjacent to the device. Most people (the the US anyway) have fairly smooth, white walls. The only drawback would be getting it bright enough to be seen in a light room.
YEAY, Another Microvision Press Release (Score:5, Insightful)
SNL (Score:2)
He wears it on his finger, and it is the size of a matchbox. To read it he needs to put on magnifiying glasses and move the screen from side to side.
Really the only funny part of the sketch.
Cool.......oh CRAP Im BLIND ! (Score:2)
I always love the sci-fi flicks where they have something like this on a thin stick near their eye, walking around in a dark smokey ship hold. a good slap upside the head and , ouch. no more eye.
Or the IBM commercial....same thing.
Im not so worried about the reitanl scanning effects, lasers(no not the little led jobbers), arcs, you name it and Ive looked at it. I can still see, I may have had vison problems for a day or so after some of the incidents but it healed(I know I understand some dont).
What Im WORRIED about is having something the size of a frigging pencil 1 inch from my eye, that sounds scarrier than potential retinal damage.
metaverse (Score:1)
(from Snowcrash for those who do not know the reference)
Screen saver (Score:2, Funny)
I had one of those! (Score:2)
Oh, wait - that's a different Microvision
It's not cell phones, stupid! (Score:2)
Can you say hazardous? (Score:1)
Obviously the answer is to use a phone that urges you to hold it in front of your face for even greater distraction.
Very bad idea.
Now hackers can have more fun. (Score:1)
At last! (Score:2)
What about deformed retinas? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most nearsightedness [allaboutvision.com] and farsightedness [allaboutvision.com] is caused by the eye, and consequently the retina, not being in the correct shape.The image is formed either too far ahead or behind the retina.
I read the article but I didn't see any mention of how the beam would project on malformed retinas. If you are farsighted and you use this Microvision system, will the image appear to be deformed as well? Will it look like you are sitting too close to the movie theater screen?
Re:What about deformed retinas? (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather then asking a series of binary questions, "Is this... or this... better?", give the examinee some control over the process and do things like "Twist this knob until the line is in focus."
Where this could become really useful is in the more exotically deformed eyes... 'normal' near-/far-sightedness is identified plenty well by current methodologies, but imagine someone with spherical distortion being able to fiddle with the knobs until they see things correctly, and letting the computer figure out what the settings are. Or perhaps "Make this line so it doesn't curve."
One could theorectically do some of this with just a screen, but this technology might allow better control over precise focus and other similar precise controls that might make this significantly better then current practice.
I'm not an optamologist, just a nerd rambling, so perhaps this is already being looked into.
Re:What about deformed retinas? (Score:2)
I read the article but I didn't see any mention of how the beam would project on malformed retinas.
As long as the rays from the scanner converge on one point near the surface of your eye, this problem should be greatly reduced.
Take an old-fashioned camera, and set the aperture to something wide (low F number). Then play with the focus. Focus has to be very finely adjusted.
Now set the aperture to something narrow (high F number). Much more of the scene looks sharp - imaging is less sensitive to focus.
I'm told that retina-scanning projectors produce much the same effect (haven't tried one myself, unfortunately).
OLD Technology... (Score:3, Interesting)
MIT's 'borgs [mit.edu] have been using prototype retinal scanning displays from various companies that have offered them for at least half a decade.
Back around '97 I was really interested in wearables, but the availability of this type of display was always a problem, and all the suppliers that the MIT crew had listed no longer sold the devices (and they were only selling them as dev-kits anyway)
Read up on MIT's "Lizzy." The most popular display back then was a single LED (red) scanning display, with 320x240 resolution, but it was the same exact technology.
What about bodily functions? (Score:2)
Be skeptical: this product violates basic optics (Score:2)
Their little scanning laser thingie can scan a beam across your eye, sure, but if your eye is focused properly the position of the final spot on your retina is independent of where the beam comes into your eye. If the spot position depended on which part of your pupil the beam passed through, then your eye wouldn't be in focus -- normally light from a given object (like the screen you're staring at now) comes through all parts of your pupil simultaneously, so the sharpness of what you see depends critically on your lens getting the job done right. So it doesn't matter how they scan their little mirror-and-laser gismo, they aren't scanning the bright spot on your retina -- they're just shining a blinkenlight at your eye.
And, yes, this argument applies to the cool gizmos in Diamond Age, too. They just don't work.
Now, if you defocus your eye, deliberately NOT looking at the projector gizmo, the system might be able to work. Try it now: hold your thumb right in front of your eye. (Take off your glasses if you have to.) The edge of your thumb looks fuzzy, right? That's because light from the edge of your thumb is passing through several parts of your pupil, and your lens is NOT set correctly to focus that light onto your retina: light from different parts of the pupil hits the retina in different places.
That opens up a nice little loophole: if you deliberately defocus your eye, then the Microvision gizmo could conceivably use that defocus to map position on your pupil to position on the image, and project a nice image on your retina directly. That works in principle, but in practice is neither small nor cheap: they'd have to have some kind of machine vision to track your pupil, at the very least, and that kind of stuff is still expensive.
I wonder if that site is one of those FTC trolls?
Re:Be skeptical: this product violates basic optic (Score:2)
Viewmasters, camera viewfinders, LCD goggles, and dozens of other devices project an image onto your eye from a small distance in front of it. The image is sharp and in focus, and in fact your eye focuses on it as if it were actually a certain distance away from your face.
If your objects held any water at all, *none* of these devices would be possible. Are you suggesting that 21st century optics technology is incapable of making light enter your eyeball at the right angle?
Re:Be skeptical: this product violates basic optic (Score:2)
Take your simple Viewmaster. Holding a viewmaster slide right up against your eye illuminates different parts of your pupil with different bits of image -- light passes from the sun or the room lights or whatever through the slide and onto your eye, so there's a little image of the slide projected onto your pupil. What do you see? A blurry mess.
Now stick the Viewmaster slide into the viewer. Lenses in the viewer convert the positional information on the slide into angular information that your eye can process. What do you see? A nice picture of a dinosaur, or whatever.
The point is that the image can only be as big as the apparent size of the lens in the viewmaster. These guys have lots of graphics showing tiny lenses projecting into your eye from far away. That can't work the way that they say. The lens has to be able to get "at" all the different angles coming out of your eye.
It seems to me that they have a sort of (but not very) interesting technology and they're hyping it as the Next Big Thing. But the Big Thinginess comes from applications that are physically impossible. You don't need a laser diode and a scanning mirror to make a ViewMaster work, and there are very nice VR goggles and such that use conventional (if small) LCD displays.
Re:Be skeptical: this product violates basic optic (Score:2)
But the screen is a crucial part of the LCD projector system. If you try to beam images straight into your eye with the projector, what do you see? Try it sometime -- stand in front of the screen. You see a bright lens that looks really tiny, because it's only 3" across and halfway across the room.
The only way to project images directly into your eye is with a lens whose apparent size is larger than the image you want to project (``apparent'' because you can use a close, small lens like a camera viewfinder, or a large, distant lens like those old Fresnel-lens projection televisions...)
If these guys are relying on you to hold their tiny 3" screen up to your head, they've just reinvented viewfinders, which is no big deal. If they want you to project images on the wall, they've just reinvented projectors, also no big deal. They seem to be claiming that they've invented something else entirely -- a screenless projector, if you will, like the interface that Hiro uses in The Diamond Age, but without the cool shades to scatter the light into his eyes. That's not possible, for the reasons I described (apparently not too clearly) above.
Re:Be skeptical: this product violates basic optic (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Be skeptical: this product violates basic optic (Score:2)
But the "concepts" PDF on the site shows lots of applications where the graphics just hang in space, near a small-looking projector. (Check out the one with the Cessna dashboard, or the sports-car ``concept'' image). That's misleading and physically impossible, and that's what I'm complaining about.
Re:Be skeptical: this product violates basic optic (Score:2, Informative)
The concept is not that an image will hang in the air (like you said, impossible). However, if there is an exit pupil in the dash and you look at it, you will see what appears to be a large screen superimposed onto you view of the dashboard. If you make the focus of the image significantly different than the where the dash is, you will only see the image (think looking through a screen door, you only see the screen if you focus on it.).
I think the real probem with this thread is that it started on the cell phone prototype, which has some flaws (being a first gen prototype and all).
The real products that we make are all head mounted displays.
Re:Be skeptical: this product violates basic optic (Score:2)
Cheers,
Craig
Re:Be skeptical: this product violates basic optic (Score:2)
The important point is that different pixels have to come from different places, so that they could get into the pilot's eye at different angles (so that they'd hit different parts of the pilot's retina). You still can't beat the apparent-size-of-the-last-optic problem, because light travels in straight lines when it's not interacting with optics.
okay, so now how do you change your password? (Score:2)
Head mounted displays! (Score:2)
This could be an important step towards wearable computing [google.com]!
-
The research (Score:2, Informative)
The research for this, or at least the bulk of it, is being done at the University of Washington in the Human Interface Technology Lab (HITL). I've been to a presentation by the guy who heads the project and it actually is pretty cool. I first heard about it long ago. Another post said Microvision started talking about it in 1993 and I think that's about when I first heard about it. There's a large chunk of funding coming from the military, of course, and they'll have the first crack at it if not already. Also, Microvision had either a small prototype or a simulation of one at a job fair that I attend in the last year and it was pretty dang sweet I have to say. The prototypes that are at the UW (yes, they have in fact built them) use diode lasers in stead of LEDs. Truly, the diode lasers are fine as they put far less light in your eye than ambient light does but LEDs are more public-masses friendly. Anyway, the UW page for this is hitl.washington.edu/research/vrd/ [washington.edu]. They've probably got more technical details than Microvision does.
I work there... Repost (Score:2, Informative)
reminds me of this ST:TNG episode... (Score:2)
One of the few (if not the only) Wesley episodes I thought was good, and he got a hot girl to boot.
Re:Iris scanning is the more modern method (Score:2)
Scanning, like your TV, not like Star Trek. (Score:1)
Re:Iris scanning is the more modern method (Score:1)
Re:Iris scanning is the more modern method (Score:1)
Re:Iris scanning is the more modern method (Score:1)
This isn't talking about retinal scanning for secure identification purposes, it's talking about using a scanning laser to project images directly onto the retina.
Re:Iris scanning is the more modern method (Score:2)
Re:Iris scanning is the more modern method (Score:2)
"Retinal scanning" is a confusing term for this article to use; they mean the transmitted image is scanned across your retina as the mirror moves, so you can see the image, not so it can see your eye.
Hmmmm. If they can project it on to your eye bright enough, I wonder if with a bit of modification they could project it onto the airplane seat in front of you. A tiny projector for travel would be very cool
-me
Re:Iris scanning is the more modern method (Score:1)
Re:Effects on eyes (Score:2, Interesting)
But I see where you're coming from with the idea, no pun intended. Ever try to focus on a close up object? It's rather difficult, so I figure eyestrain would be a factor.
Also, the article is somewhat light on the specifics on usage, how close to the eye, power usage (current and intended market), etc.
Re:Effects on eyes (Score:1, Funny)
Someone could 0wn your box and turn up the lights.
Re:Effects on eyes (Score:2)
Have you ever used a ViewMaster?
Re:eyes...Remember Nintendo VIRTUAL BOY? (Score:2, Informative)
Well, the technology seems basically identical to Nintendo's virtual boy, but with three leds (red, green, & blue) instead of virtual boy's one (red).
Same concept: a flashing LED is scanned by an oscillating mirror, and you hold the whole thing up close to your eyes.
The Virtual Boy came with an automatic-pause feature, wherein it FORCED you to take a break every 15 minutes. Additionally, a strong warning was stuck right on the machine... it was NOT to be used by young children, because PERMANENT EYE DAMAGE could occur.
Yikes.
Re:eyes...Remember Nintendo VIRTUAL BOY? (Score:2)
Damn, I wish that system would have taken off...I could use more games for it.
Re:Super VGA (Score:2, Informative)
Herc/MDA 80 x 25 text
CGA 320 x 200
EGA 640 x 350
VGA 640 x 480
SVGA 800 x 600
XGA 1024 x 768
SXGA 1280 x 1024
UXGA 1600 x 1200