<story><title>Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year’s End</title><url>http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/google-to-sell-terminator-style-glasses-by-years-end/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pshc</author><text>Not saying this is what they&apos;re selling, but: Real-time overlays are still impractical, right? My intuition is--without a really high speed camera and high fidelity environmental cues--the overlay will have a lag and high uncertainty wrt where you&apos;re actually looking... or has the state of the art moved on? Or are their labs advancing the state of the art?&lt;p&gt;Any idea how they&apos;re making the screen usable at that focal length? Don&apos;t VR headsets usually need optics much more bulky than sunglasses for comfortable viewing?&lt;p&gt;Anyway, even if it&apos;s smartphone-like functionality in a more convenient form factor, I&apos;m looking forward to being an early adopter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>johnyzee</author><text>The current state of camera based AR is not compelling, primarily due to unimpressive displays (low resolution and small field of vision), but also because of lag as you mentioned. Most solutions are based on Kopin display components which are really screens for handycam viewfinders.&lt;p&gt;Vuzix is doing something really interesting with transparent displays using waveguide technology (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/12/vuzix-augmented-reality-smart-glasses-prototype-hands-on-video/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/12/vuzix-augmented-reality-s...&lt;/a&gt;). This, to me, is the future of HUD glasses. A solution with a screen blocking one eye, as it seems Google is doing - I can&apos;t see that working out, unless they are sitting on some breakthrough display technology.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year’s End</title><url>http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/google-to-sell-terminator-style-glasses-by-years-end/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pshc</author><text>Not saying this is what they&apos;re selling, but: Real-time overlays are still impractical, right? My intuition is--without a really high speed camera and high fidelity environmental cues--the overlay will have a lag and high uncertainty wrt where you&apos;re actually looking... or has the state of the art moved on? Or are their labs advancing the state of the art?&lt;p&gt;Any idea how they&apos;re making the screen usable at that focal length? Don&apos;t VR headsets usually need optics much more bulky than sunglasses for comfortable viewing?&lt;p&gt;Anyway, even if it&apos;s smartphone-like functionality in a more convenient form factor, I&apos;m looking forward to being an early adopter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joezydeco</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&quot;Real-time overlays are still impractical, right?&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Word Lens seems to be doing it just fine on an iPhone:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OfQdYrHRs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OfQdYrHRs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, foreign language translation would be a natural for a product like this.</text></comment>