Isn’t using an existing one kind of cheating?

Posted at 4:46 am on Dec 1st, 2006 by Crash

We are using an off-the-shelf microdisplay. The optics and the shell are all custom designed and fabricated.

Posted at 5:07 am on Dec 1st, 2006 by Ozan Cakmakci

this is totally kick-ass. imagine with two of them you could make some pretty sweet 3-d graphics.

Posted at 9:38 am on Dec 1st, 2006 by Steve DiRaddo

Thank you. Stereo will be a next step.

Posted at 9:45 am on Dec 1st, 2006 by Ozan Cakmakci

that looks pretty awesome- is it feasible to take pictures of it in action? I guess it wouldn’t really translate to a digital camera that well.
have you considered adding a camera and using the display for vision augmentation? I know one of the companies that comes to recruitment fairs at my uni are very proud of their real-time video edge detector… instant Tron-vision glasses :)

Posted at 10:23 am on Dec 1st, 2006 by PKM

Thanks. Yes, it is indeed difficult to take a high quality shot of it in action. We are going to try to take pictures of the image formed through the system with a pinhole camera for a large depth of field and see if that works better than digital cameras.

Posted at 10:49 am on Dec 1st, 2006 by Ozan Cakmakci

Very nice design, however, I remeber various companies venturing into wearable optics about 10 years back (Nintendo, Iomega, etc.) and I thought there had been problems with severe eyestrain, headaches and even disorientation. Is that something that you’ve addressed with the see-thru design or is it just a “don’t wear them for too long” style fix?

Posted at 11:01 am on Dec 1st, 2006 by Tonytuba

Very nice, price tag in the ICUTI alone is rather high, however. What do you expect the $ range for this the be?

Posted at 11:05 am on Dec 1st, 2006 by ironlizard

If you want to see the real-deal, check these out:
http://www.microvision.com/miloverview.html

I demo’d their ND2100 ( http://www.microvision.com/mil2100.html ) unit, and all I can say is “wow”. Nevermind that the unit I tried was monochrome-red, it was great. The image appeared right in front of me, huge, and sort of transparent.

I’m sure they cost a fortune, but it was nice.

Posted at 11:27 am on Dec 1st, 2006 by SleighBoy

Couple of good quotes come to mind:

that’s no hack…that’s a space station!

this hack is beyond any of us.

RUN!!!

Seriously. _wow_ Well done!

Posted at 12:02 pm on Dec 1st, 2006 by strider_mt2k

There are issues in stereo devices known as the accomodation/convergence conflict. Our eyes have evolved to focus and converge at the same point. In stereo devices, the optics usually map a single object plane to a single image plane with high quality. In a head-worn display, in order to see the image, we always have to focus on the image plane. However, we need to converge in order to perceive depth. For example, if we are displaying a virtual object closer than the image plane, our eyes would focus on the image plane (so we can see) and converge closer so we can perceive 3d. You can find some numbers in the literature related to the magnitude of this mismatch. Some approaches have been proposed to overcome this conflict. To my understanding an optical solution to the accomodation/convergence conflict that is compact & mobile remains an open problem, while waiting for the ultimate solution along with everyone else, we are learning more about these devices and will keep prototyping them. I would also like to warn you that I am not a vision scientist.

Posted at 1:00 pm on Dec 1st, 2006 by Ozan Cakmakci

one correction: I tried to say “tolerable magnitude of this mismatch” above.

Posted at 1:14 pm on Dec 1st, 2006 by Ozan Cakmakci

Guzel olmus Ozan

Posted at 8:58 pm on Dec 1st, 2006 by KGB

Let me know when there’s an actual guide to building one of these yourself, ok?

Posted at 11:47 pm on Mar 19th, 2007 by some person

what kind of images can it display? how do other devices connect to it or is it all just what’s in the system already? hooking this up to some kind of body-suit-pressure sensor (to know when you’re hit and from where type of stuff) and simulated “health” meters would be cool for some real-life gaming simulations =-P

Posted at 1:08 am on Jun 5th, 2008 by Alek

what am i talking about?! just make it compatible with laser tag packs and add that much more to the game

Posted at 1:12 am on Jun 18th, 2008 by Alek