10 ms·

I want an open source monochrome vector display delivered by laser to my retinas directly. I would slambuy such a thing and dedicated the rest of my life to mak

I want an open source monochrome vector display delivered by laser to my retinas directly. I would slambuy such a thing and dedicated the rest of my life to making the best pocketable chorded keyboard. I, like many of you, am very good at telling a computer what to do with letters and symbols. I spend a lot of time in voice calls and I often write little scripts while I'm talking to answer questions, ballpark numbers etc. That's not to mention the power of tools like Wolfram Alpha and Google. I would like that to be everpresent in my life. I know we'll get some semblance of this with conversational AI at some point soon, but for me I crave the determinism of real programming. I want to be able to summon a quake-style REPL from the sky at will, and while looking someone face to face google facts or compute probabilities. I want to be able to sketch algorithms while walking around in nature. (Intel was working on something like this at one point but sadly the project was abandoned)

atoav 4y ago
Seems like a good space for advertisement and pop ups
birdyrooster 4y ago
Aren’t lasers high energy? Why would you ever want that pointing into your eye? Why not project regular light? Edit: never mind above TIL lasers are light and can be dimmed
- pastdiscovery 4y ago
  Can/has been done before. To make VRDs safe, they need to be dimmed with a filter, but it's achievable.
  - sleepybrett 4y ago
    A bunch of research at the University of Washington in the mid to late 90s. Has a working display. http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrd.html http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrd.html
- once_inc 4y ago
  Lasers are regular light, just all pointed in the same direction. The output of the laser (its capacity) is what makes it "high energy" and the number of photons hitting your retina is directly responsible for any warming of the tissue. A laser capable of just a bit of power, enough to outshine regular daylight by a little bit would be more than enough in most cases to make it feasible without concerns to your eyes damaging.
- croes 4y ago
  No, there are low power lasers https://hackaday.com/2020/04/15/the-smallest-large-display-is-projected-straight-onto-your-retina/ https://hackaday.com/2020/04/15/the-smallest-large-display-i...
- tootie 4y ago
  Laser just means the light is tightly focussed in a beam. It says nothing of intensity or wavelength. Those little pen-size laser pointers run on AAA batteries.
leach 4y ago
Have you ever read snow crash? Makes me immediately think of when Hiro goes into gargoyle mode. I think it would be quite fun to have a HUD like that for daily life.
nighthawk454 4y ago
I remember that Intel project - Vaunt. They sold the patents to North which was acquired by Google. According to this reddit thread, most of the team went to Magic Leap afterwards https://www.reddit.com/r/AR_MR_XR/comments/javtb8/remember_the_intel_vaunt_smart_glasses/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AR_MR_XR/comments/javtb8/remember_t...
wiml 4y ago
I knew some people at a university lab which had developed exactly this — back in the 90s or 00s. I think the problems it had are mostly solved since then (lightweight compute/fast digital radio/etc). Presumably the university eventually sold the patents off and they're sitting in some dusty corporate vault now, but maybe they'll expire soon.
skedaddle 4y ago
Dumb question maybe, but why does it need to be transparent or else projected directly into your eye? What doesn't work (or wouldn't work for you) about a flip-down hard backed display?
- thot_experiment 4y ago
  I want to keep situational awareness. I want to be able to interact with an ever present computer as second nature. I want it to be a seamless part of my life. Bicycle for the mind and all that. Obviously a full color display that could overlay reality at will with a wide FoV would be better, but I think the monochrome vector laser thing is achievable today and for me personally would be invaluable.
- shagie 4y ago
  A lot of distance approximation for humans is done with parallax. (not everyone, I worked with a guy who's brain wouldn't do distance approximation via parallax and so when he went to 3d movies with friends he wore an eyepatch) If you completely obscure one eye's vision that no longer works and you've lost your depth perception. Even having one eye blurry is sufficient for parallax to work. (I have very different prescriptions for each eye and if I take my glasses off I can still do distance vision even though one eye can't read any text further away than about 2 feet) So try it - put an eye patch on for a day and see how many door frames you walk into... or the headache you may get trying to use focusing an eye at different distances (and that's fairly tiring for the lens muscle to be doing all day if it isn't properly exercised).
  - skedaddle 4y ago
    That makes sense. I wonder how these transparent displays handle the focus issues though. If you're not looking at your Monocle/Glasses, maybe 1in in front of your eye, but instead on something hundreds or thousands of times that distance behind it, how does the semitransparent information dense overlay appear at all, let alone in sharp focus? The "Open source platform" part of the slideshow shows object detection at various distances. If it can box a car 20 feet away, a building 400 yards away, near objects on my breakfast plate, etc., then the plane of projection has to vary over a huge range as you look around (?). In general many of the demos I see seem to have remarkable things going on, in terms of what parts of the UI and world are in focus simultaneously.
Cub3 4y ago
> making the best pocketable chorded keyboard I have been seriously considering building a keyboard along these lines for in person meetings, so I can essentially have it on the table in front of me and take notes without a display. You might enjoy Ben Valack's videos on the topic (18 key keyboard) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c18vkHG_7tY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c18vkHG_7tY
sleepybrett 4y ago
welcome back to the cyborg wearable kids at MIT (and elsewhere) in the 90s. An earlier version of this was the keyboard of choice : https://twiddler.tekgear.com/ https://twiddler.tekgear.com/

atoav 4y ago

Seems like a good space for advertisement and pop ups

birdyrooster 4y ago

Aren’t lasers high energy? Why would you ever want that pointing into your eye? Why not project regular light? Edit: never mind above TIL lasers are light and can be dimmed

pastdiscovery 4y ago
Can/has been done before. To make VRDs safe, they need to be dimmed with a filter, but it's achievable.
- sleepybrett 4y ago
  A bunch of research at the University of Washington in the mid to late 90s. Has a working display. http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrd.html http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrd.html
once_inc 4y ago
Lasers are regular light, just all pointed in the same direction. The output of the laser (its capacity) is what makes it "high energy" and the number of photons hitting your retina is directly responsible for any warming of the tissue. A laser capable of just a bit of power, enough to outshine regular daylight by a little bit would be more than enough in most cases to make it feasible without concerns to your eyes damaging.
croes 4y ago
No, there are low power lasers https://hackaday.com/2020/04/15/the-smallest-large-display-is-projected-straight-onto-your-retina/ https://hackaday.com/2020/04/15/the-smallest-large-display-i...
tootie 4y ago
Laser just means the light is tightly focussed in a beam. It says nothing of intensity or wavelength. Those little pen-size laser pointers run on AAA batteries.

leach 4y ago

Have you ever read snow crash? Makes me immediately think of when Hiro goes into gargoyle mode. I think it would be quite fun to have a HUD like that for daily life.

nighthawk454 4y ago

I remember that Intel project - Vaunt. They sold the patents to North which was acquired by Google. According to this reddit thread, most of the team went to Magic Leap afterwards https://www.reddit.com/r/AR_MR_XR/comments/javtb8/remember_the_intel_vaunt_smart_glasses/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AR_MR_XR/comments/javtb8/remember_t...

wiml 4y ago

I knew some people at a university lab which had developed exactly this — back in the 90s or 00s. I think the problems it had are mostly solved since then (lightweight compute/fast digital radio/etc). Presumably the university eventually sold the patents off and they're sitting in some dusty corporate vault now, but maybe they'll expire soon.

skedaddle 4y ago

Dumb question maybe, but why does it need to be transparent or else projected directly into your eye? What doesn't work (or wouldn't work for you) about a flip-down hard backed display?

thot_experiment 4y ago
I want to keep situational awareness. I want to be able to interact with an ever present computer as second nature. I want it to be a seamless part of my life. Bicycle for the mind and all that. Obviously a full color display that could overlay reality at will with a wide FoV would be better, but I think the monochrome vector laser thing is achievable today and for me personally would be invaluable.
shagie 4y ago
A lot of distance approximation for humans is done with parallax. (not everyone, I worked with a guy who's brain wouldn't do distance approximation via parallax and so when he went to 3d movies with friends he wore an eyepatch) If you completely obscure one eye's vision that no longer works and you've lost your depth perception. Even having one eye blurry is sufficient for parallax to work. (I have very different prescriptions for each eye and if I take my glasses off I can still do distance vision even though one eye can't read any text further away than about 2 feet) So try it - put an eye patch on for a day and see how many door frames you walk into... or the headache you may get trying to use focusing an eye at different distances (and that's fairly tiring for the lens muscle to be doing all day if it isn't properly exercised).
- skedaddle 4y ago
  That makes sense. I wonder how these transparent displays handle the focus issues though. If you're not looking at your Monocle/Glasses, maybe 1in in front of your eye, but instead on something hundreds or thousands of times that distance behind it, how does the semitransparent information dense overlay appear at all, let alone in sharp focus? The "Open source platform" part of the slideshow shows object detection at various distances. If it can box a car 20 feet away, a building 400 yards away, near objects on my breakfast plate, etc., then the plane of projection has to vary over a huge range as you look around (?). In general many of the demos I see seem to have remarkable things going on, in terms of what parts of the UI and world are in focus simultaneously.

Cub3 4y ago

> making the best pocketable chorded keyboard I have been seriously considering building a keyboard along these lines for in person meetings, so I can essentially have it on the table in front of me and take notes without a display. You might enjoy Ben Valack's videos on the topic (18 key keyboard) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c18vkHG_7tY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c18vkHG_7tY

sleepybrett 4y ago

welcome back to the cyborg wearable kids at MIT (and elsewhere) in the 90s. An earlier version of this was the keyboard of choice : https://twiddler.tekgear.com/ https://twiddler.tekgear.com/