Hasta La Gadget!

The software behind Google’s augmented reality future may not be here yet, but if this wearable display from Olympus is any indication, the hardware part of the Project Glass equation may be easier to solve. The MEG4.0 connects to smartphones via Bluetooth to serve as a secondary display, among other functions.

Note that the MEG4.0 is separate from the glasses, so you don’t have to worry about it not being cool enough for you. The display itself is just QVGA (320×240) resolution, though. Aside from functioning as a display, MEG4.0 also has a direction sensor and may be used in conjunction with GPS software. According to Olympus, the idea is to enable users to check their phone in short bursts. If it’s turned on for only 15 seconds every 3 minutes, then its battery will last about 8 hours. I think the short battery life is a good thing, unless you want to be run over because you’re busy tweeting while walking down the street. And because the person who ran you over was also tweeting while driving.

It’s significantly less useful than the concept device for Project Glass, but then again, everything’s worse than a concept. Olympus hasn’t mentioned if they’re going to release it as a consumer device, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just a prototype either. Perhaps MEG9000 will be good enough for daily use.

[Olympus via Akihabara News]

Apple‘s engineers are experimenting with wearable displays that could one day present an iOS rival to Google’s Project Glass, a newly assigned patent suggests, bouncing projected light through specially created lenses. The patent, ”Peripheral treatment for head-mounted displays“, was filed back in 2006 and granted this week, and tackles what’s perhaps the most difficult element of wearables, making displays in close-proximity to the wearer’s eyes look suitably distant without causing eye-strain.

The technology Apple describes is similar to total internal reflection, where light is bounced within a lens from an origin point – such as a micro-projector, or LCD/OLED panel – through to the user’s eyes. For instance, one length of lens spanning both eyes could be supplied with different images for the left and right eye from a single miniature display:

“One advantage is that the treatment of the peripheral area of the field of view leads to increased viewing comfort compared to conventional HMDs, and may also lead to a smaller likelihood of the user experiencing “motion sickness” phenomena during extended viewing. Another advantage is that users can make individual adjustments of their HMDs to fit the distance between their eyes. Further advantages include a greater immersive experience, larger virtual field of view, and increased overall image brightness” Apple patent

Apple argues that traditional wearable displays lead users to suffer from eventual discomfort because the virtual image falls short of the field of vision (FOV) of the human eye, leading to a shortfall in peripheral vision. It’s an issue that Google has attempted to tackle with Glass, offsetting the transparent mono-display up above the eye, so that the wearer must deliberately glance up to access projected data.

Of course, as with any patent, there’s not necessarily a production project at the end of it, though we’d be very surprised if Apple’s engineers hadn’t at least played with wearable prototypes. A previous patent application from the company suggested a wearable iPhone dock for augmented reality use, though this new system could access content from a remote device, such as streamed using AirPlay Video from the iPad in your bag.

[via AppleInsider]

Forget the iPad Mini, we want Apple’s Google Glass is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This is rather interesting – who would have thought that the ‘world’s thinnest display‘ is actually a screen that is one huge soap bubble? According to the international team behind this particular transparent display, that’s who. Who knows, the future might see us normal folk actually watch films on soap bubbles, although I do wonder just how sensitive such displays will be to blowing air, and what happens when there is a wayward insect flying through the air and decide to fly right through the soap bubble – would our display be distorted after it bursts?

I guess this particular soap bubble display is very different from the highly fragile soap bubbles that we played with during our childhood, as ultrasonic sound waves are used instead to change film’s properties, creating either a flat or a 3D image. As for the bubble mixture, it has soap as the main ingredient, but will have a mixture that is far more complicated than what our kids get. I wonder how much the first commercially available version will cost…

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Lumus OE-31 See-through Wearable AR Display , E Ink is dying because of tablets,

There are waterfall screens, but what if you’d like your display to be a little more… pristine? Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a display that hits soap bubbles with ultrasonic sound to change the surface. At a minimum, it can change how light glances off the soap film to produce the image. It gets truly creative when taking advantage of the soap’s properties: a single screen is enough to alter the texture of a 2D image, and multiple screens in tandem can create what amounts to a slightly sticky hologram. As the soap is made out of sturdy colloids rather than the easily-burst mixture we all knew as kids, users won’t have to worry about an overly touch-happy colleague popping a business presentation. There’s a video preview of the technology after the jump; we’re promised a closer look at the technology during the SIGGRAPH expo in August, but we don’t yet know how many years it will take to find sudsy screens in the wild.

Continue reading University of Tokyo builds a soap bubble 3D screen, guarantees your display stays squeaky clean (video)

University of Tokyo builds a soap bubble 3D screen, guarantees your display stays squeaky clean (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jun 2012 20:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Glass may be grabbing the headlines at IO this week, but with Explorer Edition developer devices not shipping until 2013, it might be worth looking elsewhere for your head-up display fix. Recon Instruments has just the thing, with a new Android SDK for the MOD Live eyepiece that will allow developers to create their own applications that float in the user’s eyeline.

The MOD Live is a complex little piece of kit, with various sensors integrated: an altimeter, barometer, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyro, 3-axis magnetometer, and a temperature sensor. There’s also Bluetooth Smart Ready (aka 4.0) and GPS, a d-pad for navigation, and of course the eyepiece itself.

Power is from an 800MHz TI OMAP3 Cortex-A8 processor paired with 256MB RAM and 512MB of flash space, of which 180MB shows up as mass storage. ”Because our SDK is pretty much completely the Android SDK, creating an HUD app takes about the same effort as a regular Android app” Recon claims.

The facility for the MOD Live to take advantage of basic http pull and push is due to be added in the next week or so, and Recon plans to give away ten free eyepieces (and subsidize a further 100 by 50-percent) to encourage developers to jump onboard. Normally, the MOD Live is priced at $399.99.

You can sign up to be considered as a developer here, and see an example of an app – detailed here – intended for skiers in the video below.

Can’t wait for Google Glass? Recon’s MOD Live has you covered today is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.