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It's a reverse light guide. We've been beam forming for a long time, it's unsurprising that the reverse is possible (imaging through a light pipe). The princip

It's a reverse light guide. We've been beam forming for a long time, it's unsurprising that the reverse is possible (imaging through a light pipe). The principal issue will be gathering enough energy. A well lit source like a bathroom mirror (mirror behind the light guide) could work pretty well I'd wager. If the light guide is too efficient then it will appear opaque, so there is a trade-off. I find "turns any window" pretty misleading. Unless I'm missing something this needs very special glass or at the very least a special coating/laminate. For folks worried about privacy, it will almost always be more convenient and cost-effective to install a tiny spy camera somewhere. Zeiss isn't going to aspire to sell cheap glass on razor thin margins.

ysofunny 3y ago
> Zeiss isn't going to aspire to sell cheap glass on razor thin margins. why not?
- verall 3y ago
  It's not what they do, like they probably won't start selling lawnmowers either.
  - alexchamberlain 3y ago
    Whilst I kind of see where you and the sibling comment is coming from, Zeiss do make glass- they make precision glass. Making cheap glass would be quality diversification, which is not exactly unheard of.
    - verall 3y ago
      It sounds reasonable, but if they diversified quality, it would mean making precision glass and then also somewhat less precise glass. They will not start mass producing large panes of low margin glass. It's not what they're good at and it's not a lucrative market. Like Intel isn't going to start making jellybean parts. They could license their name to some existing glass company, but they still wouldn't really be the ones producing it, and I think Zeiss has avoided diluting their brand name like this so far.
      - alexchamberlain 3y ago
        I don't disagree with you, but the way the GP comment made a joke of the idea was unfair IMHO.
    - itishappy 3y ago
      I doubt Zeiss makes their own glass. Most optics companies outsource that to one of the big glass fabs: Schott, Ohara, CDGM.
      - alexchamberlain 3y ago
        Zeiss and Schott are both owned by the Carl Zeiss foundation; the origin story is somewhat covered by Material World by Ed Conway. It's a fantastic book and well worth a read.
        itishappy 3y ago
        WHAT!? This is my day job, but I'm embarrassed to admit I never realized that! Thanks for the book rec, I'll probably start digging into it this weekend.
- cududa 3y ago
  I assume if you’re on HN you work in tech. As a side hustle, why don’t you start building and selling desktop PC’s to local businesses, competing with HP, Dell, etc on margin? That’s also tech, right? While building cheap PCs at razor thin margins is adjacent to whatever your tech job is, and probably something you’re able to do, it probably wouldn’t be the most profitable use of your time
- itishappy 3y ago
  They don't have to. They're the best in the world, and they know it. They price accordingly.
- wongarsu 3y ago
  Zeiss isn't in the business of selling cheap stuff on thin margins, no matter the product.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- dontupvoteme 3y ago
  because they're Zeiss. They made the lenses for the photos on the moon, they're not small potatoes.
MadnessASAP 3y ago
> It's a reverse light guide. We've been beam forming for a long time, it's unsurprising that the reverse is possible (imaging through a light pipe). Beamforming in RF frequencies is old, beamforming at optical wavelengths is pretty new shit. Doing the reverse, that is receiving a signal, is brand spanking new fresh out the cow hot shit at any frequency.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
  No, it's not really new. Small form factor is relatively new but even then the issue lies in yield and quality control. Projector light engines include potentially many light-beam forming condensing and projection lenses precisely to concentrate light into a uniform quadrilateral. That's not new. The industry continues to advance, though. Even holographic projection isn't new. This is just that, except the light is (sort of) taking the reverse path. Technically there is no reason why it can't also project light outwards simultaneously. However light guides aren't really reversible like that: the light usually exits through a small fraction of the guide's external surface area. Reversing that means the entire external surface area is potentially collecting light, which would result in some undesirable caustics in all scenarios I can imagine. Light engines are in part designed to account for this (by reflecting or sinking light into an absorber) but this is still pretty different from what Zeiss is promoting. For a small permanent installation where you are in control of the lighting I could see this working relatively well, but I have a hard time imagining you could get close anything resembling photo quality without a lot of environmental treatment. Conversely holographic projection is pretty doable on a mobile platform like a headset. This is pretty new only in that it's probably at least an order of magnitude more difficult to accomplish and thus hasn't been viable up until now. Fundamentally none of the concepts are new, as far as I can tell. As an example look at your nearest window and imagine it divided into a grid of uniform pixels. Each pixel is a small mirror that reflects a point of focus (wherever you are) to a another, smaller point on an imaging sensor somewhere in the frame. This would look pretty jarring (and jagged) to most people, until you layer a complimentary piece of glass on top of it to make the exterior flush. The two pieces of glass would be high enough precision that once you put them together they are effectively one piece of glass. Ta da. This is effectively the same process as making any other multi-lensed glass, and that's Zeiss's wheelhouse.
buffington 3y ago
> Zeiss isn't going to aspire to sell cheap glass on razor thin margins. Especially true since Zeiss isn't planning on selling these at all. They're selling licenses to the tech. I doubt that undermines your privacy argument in any meaningful way however. Even if the license was free, the cost of producing the components is certainly magnitudes higher compared to the cost of current tech that accomplishes similar goals.
samstave 3y ago
jiminy christmas!!! I lit (pun) came to gripe about light pipes... However here is you solution: 3D print lenses in a header for threads to be arbitrarily placed in a [COMPOUND] lens and pull that feed with AI spatial mapping (yes these are easy now)... EYE And you can make these in many increments - micro even... "Hey NSa, super simple optical prince Rupert drops on a composite eye" (self destrucing fiber lens when discovered)
raphman 3y ago
As I posted below, Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group did something similar (I guess) back in 2011: https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/uploads/publications/7/Wedge-optics-in-flat-panel-displays.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/uploads/publicati... https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/projects/the-wedge https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/projects/the-wedg...
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  I remember a friend on a team adjacent to the surface table team talking about them trying to do this when they switched from projection tables to tables with screens in them. As I recall with the projector based tables (the ones that looked like old cocktail arcade tables) I think they were using an ir camera to detect items and touches on the 'screen'.
  - raphman 3y ago
    Yes, the original Surface tabletop used IR cameras. Its successor, the Samsung SUR40 had in-cell sensing, i.e. photosensors embedded into the LCD so that it could capture a 960x540 image of the table surface.

ysofunny 3y ago

> Zeiss isn't going to aspire to sell cheap glass on razor thin margins. why not?

verall 3y ago
It's not what they do, like they probably won't start selling lawnmowers either.
- alexchamberlain 3y ago
  Whilst I kind of see where you and the sibling comment is coming from, Zeiss do make glass- they make precision glass. Making cheap glass would be quality diversification, which is not exactly unheard of.
  - verall 3y ago
    It sounds reasonable, but if they diversified quality, it would mean making precision glass and then also somewhat less precise glass. They will not start mass producing large panes of low margin glass. It's not what they're good at and it's not a lucrative market. Like Intel isn't going to start making jellybean parts. They could license their name to some existing glass company, but they still wouldn't really be the ones producing it, and I think Zeiss has avoided diluting their brand name like this so far.
    - alexchamberlain 3y ago
      I don't disagree with you, but the way the GP comment made a joke of the idea was unfair IMHO.
  - itishappy 3y ago
    I doubt Zeiss makes their own glass. Most optics companies outsource that to one of the big glass fabs: Schott, Ohara, CDGM.
    - alexchamberlain 3y ago
      Zeiss and Schott are both owned by the Carl Zeiss foundation; the origin story is somewhat covered by Material World by Ed Conway. It's a fantastic book and well worth a read.
      - itishappy 3y ago
        WHAT!? This is my day job, but I'm embarrassed to admit I never realized that! Thanks for the book rec, I'll probably start digging into it this weekend.
cududa 3y ago
I assume if you’re on HN you work in tech. As a side hustle, why don’t you start building and selling desktop PC’s to local businesses, competing with HP, Dell, etc on margin? That’s also tech, right? While building cheap PCs at razor thin margins is adjacent to whatever your tech job is, and probably something you’re able to do, it probably wouldn’t be the most profitable use of your time
itishappy 3y ago
They don't have to. They're the best in the world, and they know it. They price accordingly.
wongarsu 3y ago
Zeiss isn't in the business of selling cheap stuff on thin margins, no matter the product.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dontupvoteme 3y ago
because they're Zeiss. They made the lenses for the photos on the moon, they're not small potatoes.

MadnessASAP 3y ago

> It's a reverse light guide. We've been beam forming for a long time, it's unsurprising that the reverse is possible (imaging through a light pipe). Beamforming in RF frequencies is old, beamforming at optical wavelengths is pretty new shit. Doing the reverse, that is receiving a signal, is brand spanking new fresh out the cow hot shit at any frequency.

xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
No, it's not really new. Small form factor is relatively new but even then the issue lies in yield and quality control. Projector light engines include potentially many light-beam forming condensing and projection lenses precisely to concentrate light into a uniform quadrilateral. That's not new. The industry continues to advance, though. Even holographic projection isn't new. This is just that, except the light is (sort of) taking the reverse path. Technically there is no reason why it can't also project light outwards simultaneously. However light guides aren't really reversible like that: the light usually exits through a small fraction of the guide's external surface area. Reversing that means the entire external surface area is potentially collecting light, which would result in some undesirable caustics in all scenarios I can imagine. Light engines are in part designed to account for this (by reflecting or sinking light into an absorber) but this is still pretty different from what Zeiss is promoting. For a small permanent installation where you are in control of the lighting I could see this working relatively well, but I have a hard time imagining you could get close anything resembling photo quality without a lot of environmental treatment. Conversely holographic projection is pretty doable on a mobile platform like a headset. This is pretty new only in that it's probably at least an order of magnitude more difficult to accomplish and thus hasn't been viable up until now. Fundamentally none of the concepts are new, as far as I can tell. As an example look at your nearest window and imagine it divided into a grid of uniform pixels. Each pixel is a small mirror that reflects a point of focus (wherever you are) to a another, smaller point on an imaging sensor somewhere in the frame. This would look pretty jarring (and jagged) to most people, until you layer a complimentary piece of glass on top of it to make the exterior flush. The two pieces of glass would be high enough precision that once you put them together they are effectively one piece of glass. Ta da. This is effectively the same process as making any other multi-lensed glass, and that's Zeiss's wheelhouse.

buffington 3y ago

> Zeiss isn't going to aspire to sell cheap glass on razor thin margins. Especially true since Zeiss isn't planning on selling these at all. They're selling licenses to the tech. I doubt that undermines your privacy argument in any meaningful way however. Even if the license was free, the cost of producing the components is certainly magnitudes higher compared to the cost of current tech that accomplishes similar goals.

samstave 3y ago

jiminy christmas!!! I lit (pun) came to gripe about light pipes... However here is you solution: 3D print lenses in a header for threads to be arbitrarily placed in a [COMPOUND] lens and pull that feed with AI spatial mapping (yes these are easy now)... EYE And you can make these in many increments - micro even... "Hey NSa, super simple optical prince Rupert drops on a composite eye" (self destrucing fiber lens when discovered)

raphman 3y ago

As I posted below, Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group did something similar (I guess) back in 2011: https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/uploads/publications/7/Wedge-optics-in-flat-panel-displays.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/uploads/publicati... https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/projects/the-wedge https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/projects/the-wedg...

sleepybrett 3y ago
I remember a friend on a team adjacent to the surface table team talking about them trying to do this when they switched from projection tables to tables with screens in them. As I recall with the projector based tables (the ones that looked like old cocktail arcade tables) I think they were using an ir camera to detect items and touches on the 'screen'.
- raphman 3y ago
  Yes, the original Surface tabletop used IR cameras. Its successor, the Samsung SUR40 had in-cell sensing, i.e. photosensors embedded into the LCD so that it could capture a 960x540 image of the table surface.