Long story short, last I checked, Mr. Mann was going the route of pico-laser projector w/ beam splitter (and has a working demo model, as well as previous configurations).

Kopin stuff is nice, but it’s tough to cannibalize because I can’t find a list of OEMs that use their displays. Also, while they encouraged a one-off, they repeatedly discouraged any kind of business plan. I can’t wait till I walk back in there with my own set of HMDs similar to this one.

I wonder why everyone wants to use the Myvu. Seems a shame to me to hack apart a perfectly good product when there are other perfectly good options available, possibly even for cheaper. Steve Mann’s site shows him using old camcorder screens as a start. With anything with one-time-use removeable media being essentially worthless (except for niche uses) nowadays, I wonder how difficult it would be to get one’s hands on some of the higher-quality view screens from not-quite-new camcorders, or other equipment that uses the Kopin screens.

All that being said, I’m jealous of this and many other builds. Can’t wait to do my own!

* It is possible to put the displays inside a pair of sunglasses instead of outside them.

* The sunglasses I used only needed to be made to protrude a barely noticable amount extra from the face to make room for the prisms. Nobody around me seems to notice anything peculiar about the glasses.

* Placing the optics at an angle just under the eyes, there is no obstruction of the view of the world outside. The screen is viewable by glancing down, just like on a car dashboard.

* The lower eyelid can sit directly against the prism without the picture quality deteriorating. This is possible since the specified “eye relief” of 10 mm is a maximum allowing for prescription glass insets. There is however no minimum, the optics behaves similarly to the oculars of a pair of binoculars or a microscope.

* You might expect that having the prisms this close to the eyes should be dangerous, with a high risk of accidentally poking out the eyes. This does not appear to be so, however. Glancing down, the eyes only need to be barely open for a full view of the screen. The eyelids and -lashes therefore prevents direct contact with the corneas. As for blunt impact prevention, I use ample amounts of padding resin to smooth the glassy edges of the prisms and to make large support areas under each eye. But, I have not yet bumped into anything to find out the hard way what will happen… I expect a black eye but no piercing trauma.

* The padding under each eye significantly helps to relieve the nose from the weight of the glasses. I however need to research for more skin-friendly plastics, I seem to react to the stuff I’m using now.

* The reflection angle of the prisms is too shallow to be able to completely overlap the twin images without difficulty. A lightweight and unobtrusive design is also to flimsy to keep such alignment stable, instead calling for large, angular, ugly and generally Star Trekky designs I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. Or if I did wear it, my wife would certainly kill me.

* Instead, I have opted to let the screens display side-by-side. This may preclude some of the really awesome 3D possibilities inherent in twin displays. However, and I think this is really important, it is possible to let the viewable area extend across the two screens, in effect working as an “extended desktop”.

* By the side-by-side display design, the pixel density is in effect doubled and extends that of high-end and military HMD designs without their bulk, cost and minimal availability.

* For now, both displays will show the same image. This is a pity. I hope someone reading this can help me to device some clever electronics to show different images in the displays. What is needed is to take the video-out from a smartphone, cut each frame in half and feed each part separately to the respective microdisplays. It should be doable!

* In essence, the glasses I made work as they are. Really usable wearable displays are possible today, before flat holographic waveguides etc.

I’ve got one. Why don’t you?

I got it after realizing making my own hmd was prohibitively expensive, and most of the other commercially available products were seriously lacking in one area or another (resolution vs f.o.v. vs price vs size vs reliable reviews.)
The headplay was a good compromise (for me) though I had to implement my own motion tracking using a ps3 controller. Currently dismantling it for a ben heck inspired virtual boy casemod. Will submit in about a month.
If you are looking to make your own hmd though I suggest you start with the work of Steve Mann…
http://genesis.eecg.toronto.edu/head-mounted-displays.html
Severely dated, but incredibly, incredibly brilliant.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.6087

http://www.hackaday.com/2007/10/07/25-head-mounted-display/

sadly, the hmd is no longer available from the manufacturer’s site as a replacement part for $25, but you can still get the whole “spy car” kit off ebay for a little over double that. the hmd takes composite input from a headphone-sized plug that can easily be wired up to the jack for a standard RCA cable.

as the proud owner of one of these (admittedly lo-res) hmds, I’ve got a question for the hackaday crowd: how can I get my laptop (compaq presario 2200, ubuntu hardy) to provide this 320×240 hmd with graphical input? the hmd is connected to the laptop via a rca-vga convertor, and stuff occasionally pops up on the hmd when I change the laptop’s display mode, but telling the laptop to display stuff on the hmd via ubuntu’s screen resolution doesn’t seem to have any lasting effect. any suggestions?

(my goal is to have my laptop take input from a camera mounted on top of the hmd, run that input through my homebrew facial recognition software, and display the output on the hmd.)

It’s like the HMD monocles from the Spygear line, 320×240 B&W kopin, but they went the other way, with cheaper and bulkier (I suspect) optics instead.

ANother SVGA model is this: http://www.3dvisor.com/

I forgot about headplay, technology looks interesting. It appears that they may actually be running a “true” 800×600 display instead of (800×600)/3 of a typical color masked LCD. It looks to use a projector type technology(LCOS), as it has 120Hz framerate, but 360 color fields per second, so each color gets its own full field. Should be OK if they’re using RGB LEDs like they should be (although hilarious if they had a spinning color wheel in there!). This also explains why you MUST use their external box, it needs very special drivers. They just had spare horses so they provided a mini media player inside. Hmmm… technically, this technology should scale linearly with DLP projector prices and color capability.

For daily use, however, I believe you either need a translucent display (Heads up Display) or a sidelook display (Heads Down Display). If you can’t operate with the HMD on, what’s the point? The myvu comes close, and will probably cause the least nausea. They focused on making the framework around the display translucent so you don’t get as disoriented as normal HMDs. A lightweight sidelooker for the non-eyeglass crowd is the eyetop.

http://www.tekgear.com/index.cfm?pageID=90&prodid=247&section=83&nodelist=1,83&function=viewproducts

If you want just a single HUD, the Kopin site is the best way to buy single displays of any rez. Otherwise, canabalize! (my motto).