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Would it be possible to have a watch display (for instance) that appears larger than the actual screen of the watch by using lasers (and eye tracking) to paint

Would it be possible to have a watch display (for instance) that appears larger than the actual screen of the watch by using lasers (and eye tracking) to paint the display directly at the retina?

PaulHoule 5y ago
Nope. I am interesting in pushing the limits of persistence of vision displays. I'm pretty sure you could catch a driver's attention with an array of LED strips stretched out over the road. They'd have to be looking in the right place with their eyes focused at the right distance to see an image but I bet you could get them to hit the brakes anyway. (If that fails there is always the digital flashbang...)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tgb 5y ago
I was going to say impossible, reasoning from how I understand your eye's lens to focus. But that doesn't rule out the possibility of it working if out-of-focus. If you look at a small point light source and let your eyes go out of focus, the light smears to a larger range. The shape and texturing of that range depend upon the light source: for example search for bokeh shots during a partial solar eclipse. This should be emulatable with a small projector. However the size up of the image should be no bigger than what you see when you let your eyes go out of focus, which isn't really that much. And you'd have to find a way to make your eyes want to focus like that, which could be tricky.
- tedunangst 5y ago
  It's got eye tracking. Once you look at the watch and the image is created, whatever part you choose to look at can be in focus.
ak217 5y ago
Babak Parviz had a team working on this at UW back in 2010 (https://spectrum.ieee.org/augmented-reality-in-a-contact-lens https://spectrum.ieee.org/augmented-reality-in-a-contact-len...). They wanted to use either an LED array with microlenses, or (as you allude) a kind of laser DLP. Both approaches are feasible for projecting a virtual image onto the retina, but integrating them in a working product is very difficult, as illustrated by Parviz's trajectory at Google.

Would it be possible to have a watch display (for instance) that appears larger than the actual screen of the watch by using lasers (and eye tracking) to paint the display directly at the retina?

PaulHoule 5y ago

Nope. I am interesting in pushing the limits of persistence of vision displays. I'm pretty sure you could catch a driver's attention with an array of LED strips stretched out over the road. They'd have to be looking in the right place with their eyes focused at the right distance to see an image but I bet you could get them to hit the brakes anyway. (If that fails there is always the digital flashbang...)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tgb 5y ago

I was going to say impossible, reasoning from how I understand your eye's lens to focus. But that doesn't rule out the possibility of it working if out-of-focus. If you look at a small point light source and let your eyes go out of focus, the light smears to a larger range. The shape and texturing of that range depend upon the light source: for example search for bokeh shots during a partial solar eclipse. This should be emulatable with a small projector. However the size up of the image should be no bigger than what you see when you let your eyes go out of focus, which isn't really that much. And you'd have to find a way to make your eyes want to focus like that, which could be tricky.

tedunangst 5y ago
It's got eye tracking. Once you look at the watch and the image is created, whatever part you choose to look at can be in focus.

ak217 5y ago

Babak Parviz had a team working on this at UW back in 2010 (https://spectrum.ieee.org/augmented-reality-in-a-contact-lens https://spectrum.ieee.org/augmented-reality-in-a-contact-len...). They wanted to use either an LED array with microlenses, or (as you allude) a kind of laser DLP. Both approaches are feasible for projecting a virtual image onto the retina, but integrating them in a working product is very difficult, as illustrated by Parviz's trajectory at Google.