On Tuesday 05 July 2011 21:31:50 Bowie Bailey wrote: > On 7/2/2011 7:34 PM, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > > I could in principle imagine all that coming in the future, but the > > "monitor == shades" thing is just only Fi with no Sci in it. A human eye > > cannot focus properly on any object which is closer to the eye than 10-15 > > cm (depending on the eye quality), so there is absolutely no way one can > > use shades or contact lenses or something similar as a monitor, > > regardless of technological levels of any human or alien races (James > > Bond notwithstanding). Unless of course one surgically adapts the eye > > lense itself, in which case the person would not be able to see anything > > else... ;-) > > Hmm...something like this perhaps? > > http://www.i-glassesstore.com/i-3d.html > > Still a bit bulky and expensive, but not impossible. These apparently > use a lens of some sort to allow the eye to focus at 5' while wearing > them. I had the chance to play with a pair of these 10 years ago. At > that time, the resolution sucked and they were about 1.5" thick. They > had built-in motion tracking. Playing Descent with those things was a > blast! :) Well, yes, sure, but they have to have this lens to allow the eye to focus properly, as you said. This means two crucial things: (a) they have to be bulky, and (b) there is no way to make them transparent, so that a person can watch the monitor picture and the outside world simultaneously. By (b) I mean having computer graphics overlayed on top of real-world scenery (like in Terminator or Robocop movies). I'm just saying that this kind of overlay is impossible to achieve with a regular human eye, except with very bulky equipment hanging off your head 15 cm in front of your face. Anyway, for both of the above reasons, these AV-headsets don't qualify even as a predecessor of "monitor-shades" (which are by assumption thin and transparent). These things are used for virtual reality applications, and they have existed for some time now. But as long as they cut you off from real world, I cannot consider them as "shades" in any way. ;-) Best, :-) Marko