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I've convinced myself that augmented reality displays are right around the corner. Don't we have the technology to to do this now? I suppose the challenge might

by vetler 16y ago

I've convinced myself that augmented reality displays are right around the corner. Don't we have the technology to to do this now? I suppose the challenge might be to make everything light and compact enough. The future is so close I can smell it.

daeken 16y ago
There are two challenges: getting it into a form factor where normal people would wear it (our initial dev units will not be too far off this mark) and getting the price down to something sane. The latter is the really hard part, if you care about quality; the 0.5" 800x600 OLED displays we're using are $800 for a single unit, and don't drop to $400/unit until you hit a volume of 1000+ units. Of course, they'll get cheaper over time, so I'm not terribly worried about it.
- rl1987 16y ago
  Considering the first, I suppose it's best to try and integrate display into ordinary-looking sunglasses. Some work has been done to develop "covert HMD" like that. [1,2] However, the prototypes don't seem to have solved the problem of inputting vision field video - there is no camera hidden inside the sunglasses as far as I can tell. [1] Steve Mann - Intelligent Image Processing. [2] http://users.cwnet.com/vvortex3/hmd/ http://users.cwnet.com/vvortex3/hmd/
  - daeken 16y ago
    I did a good bit of research into it, but it just doesn't seem to be viable at this point. It's insanely expensive (fiber stuff isn't cheap), and you can't really do AR due to the lack of a camera. Eventually we'll get there, but as of now it's just going to be goggles.
alanfalcon 16y ago
The iPhone/Android device as a kind of handheld augmented reality window is very real and available in a great form factor at a great marginal price (assuming you want the rest of the features of the smart phone to begin with). Still, it's not quite the same as being able to go full on Snow Crash gargoyle.

by vetler 16y ago

daeken 16y ago

There are two challenges: getting it into a form factor where normal people would wear it (our initial dev units will not be too far off this mark) and getting the price down to something sane. The latter is the really hard part, if you care about quality; the 0.5" 800x600 OLED displays we're using are $800 for a single unit, and don't drop to $400/unit until you hit a volume of 1000+ units. Of course, they'll get cheaper over time, so I'm not terribly worried about it.

rl1987 16y ago
Considering the first, I suppose it's best to try and integrate display into ordinary-looking sunglasses. Some work has been done to develop "covert HMD" like that. [1,2] However, the prototypes don't seem to have solved the problem of inputting vision field video - there is no camera hidden inside the sunglasses as far as I can tell. [1] Steve Mann - Intelligent Image Processing. [2] http://users.cwnet.com/vvortex3/hmd/ http://users.cwnet.com/vvortex3/hmd/
- daeken 16y ago
  I did a good bit of research into it, but it just doesn't seem to be viable at this point. It's insanely expensive (fiber stuff isn't cheap), and you can't really do AR due to the lack of a camera. Eventually we'll get there, but as of now it's just going to be goggles.

alanfalcon 16y ago

The iPhone/Android device as a kind of handheld augmented reality window is very real and available in a great form factor at a great marginal price (assuming you want the rest of the features of the smart phone to begin with). Still, it's not quite the same as being able to go full on Snow Crash gargoyle.