Carry a portable computer and a head-mounted camera. Now the computer sees what you see. It can display information by reflecting light off the inside of the lenses of your glasses into your eyes. The light can be in one color (say, red) and can be plain straight lines. This is much easier to implement and manage than a raster display. It is also well-studied: Many types of aircraft have a similar system that `annotates' the inside of the transparent canopy (or a helmet visor) with information. Other advantages: it does not interfere with your natural binocular vision.<p>

Examples of information you would carry on your heads-up display: If you are in a strange city, the street can be annotated with a big red arrow pointing towards your destination; the destination itself can have a glowing red star on it so that you know it when you see it. When you're at a conference, and someone starts talking to you, they can be annotated with their name and the date of the last time you saw them so that you don't have to remember who they are. When you walked into a hotel or other public building, your portable computer would talk to the hotel computer and would find out where the bathrooms and restaurants were.

[10 July] gilest suggests an excellent application for this: When you look at an arithmetic problem, the solution can appear in your display.
-- dominus, Jun 26 2000

Sounds like Gibson's Virtual Light, to me, except his goggles were opaque and basically just a convenient shape for a device that sent signals directly to the optic centers.

[dominus]: I'm just saying that the end result sounds a lot like the device in Gibson's book.
-- centauri, Jul 10 2000, last modified Jul 11 2000


No, the important point about this invention is that it is *low* tech. It doesn't require an optic nerve interface; all it requires is longer earpieces and a small vector graphics screen mounted underneath your glasses. This is technology that has already been proven to work.
-- dominus, Jul 10 2000


Baked- at least in a sense. There was a portable computer with HUD demonstrated at ComDex 1998. Can't remember the manufacturer, but it was a German company, and the system was more than the idea above- it was a complete PC.
-- BigThor, Aug 02 2000


so terminator vision right? i've been thinking about the cost and size parts to this a very little and i have some questions does fiber cable that stuff about the size of a mini audio cord distort an image with movement or not? if it didnt what about having a small color projection from a unit in a satchell that had fiber running up to the glasses and if that was possible then maybe liq crystal glasses that could polarize like those 3d game glasses so you could also have private emersion maybe fiber focused to cover a larger field of vision and a fiber back for a camera so you dont have to have a head mount or unbearably expensive camera
-- pcprentice, Sep 12 2000


Well I have noticed that the newest pair of RX: glasses I have gotten have a film on them that is suppoused to reduce glare. but interestingly it also allows things behind me to be reflected in a light green ghostly way. this is due to the film, this could easily be utilized by runing a fiber optic cable along the earpiece projecting the image carried across the fiber, to be reflected easily into sight. no need for special lenses or such just project white light into it and it will show up as a light greed color, similar to military night HUD.
-- parnelli, Jan 10 2001


See, the problem is that it is difficult and sometimes painful for the human eye to try focusing on soething closer than about 2". My glasses lenses are about 3/4" away from my eyes at the farthest.

In any case, add some kind of coating like what James Bond has on his glasses in one of the more recent movies (i think the one with the snow machine racing/skiing). They let you see in X-ray - the closest i've gotten is my Sony NightShot Camera.

[too all you voyeurs out there: it really does work! and well too! turn on nightshot in dark room and find someone wearing dark - preferably black - fabric. Women's skintight black dresses seem to work best :D. You can see right through it, down to the next layer of clothing.]
-- Macwarrior, Feb 07 2003



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