Concur. With the latest advances in laser projection (see: Microvision's pico projector), it's only a matter of time before we see low-cost see-through HUD glasses. Add a small cam on the bridge for image recognition, and you've got pretty much Terminator vision.
Let me expand on that a little bit, though, so I'm not misunderstood: use the cam for image recognition, sure. But instead of piping the cam image to the projector, simply use it to map the augmented reality elements (visual tags like addresses, direction-path, and so forth) directly to the projector so they line up correctly with what you actually see through the lens. Add a digital zoom pip for when you want some far-off detail up close, I suppose...
Microvision has been touting those projectors for at least most of a decade now. They're so incredibly awesome, if they work and don't have major drawbacks, that I conclude they don't really work. :(
They've shown actual products working, most notably at e.g. CES. Wonder why they haven't brought them to market yet? I'm thinking they're still rather expensive to produce.
If they don't fail in some obvious way (low battery life; heavy or wearing on the ears and nose; risk of damage to the eye; can't produce true color; or something), I'd happily pay thousands of dollars for one, and I can imagine many, many other people would as well, which would help them drive costs down.
At first I thought they were holding out for a large contract from the DoD or something, but after this long I just assume there's something critically wrong with them (one of the above), or that the managers are idiots who can fail to profit from having warehouses of gold. :)
yeah it seems like it would be reducing the scope of problems by orders of magnitude. The thing about heat makes me stomach hurt, maybe unlikely... but i don't want to take a chance of burning my cornea!!
Agreed, though you make them sound a lot worse than they are.
For me, getting contact lenses was one of the best things I ever did, and liked them as soon as I tried them on. I hadn't seen my own reflection without glasses from a distance in over 10 years. I'd forgotten what it was like to have decent peripheral vision. They gave me a +2 boost to confidence, purely for vanity reasons.
They were annoying to get in at first, though that was the only real issue. Once you get the trick of it (for me, getting over squeamishness about touching my eyes), it's generally between 5 and 30 seconds.
I know glasses are more convenient (to put on - you don't have to constantly clean contacts throughout the day, and they're less prone to getting lost) - and I like having both. Glasses are to lenses as slippers are to shoes - something I wear when I first wake up for convenience.
I'd been put off getting contacts for years, since I hated things being near my eyes, however I now recommend them to all my bespectacled friends. Also, I find it easier to imagine tech like this article as contacts rather than glasses - contacts are much more like an extension of your body.
Yeah, eventually you get to the point where you can put in both contacts in about 30 seconds without a mirror. It's cool how different that is from when I first got them, when it took me as much as 10 minutes and a mirror.
As someone who has worn soft contacts for years, I say it can be about 10 seconds. It takes a lot of getting used to, but eventually it gets to the point where you barely notice the process.
On the other hand, I could put my glasses on in less than 30 seconds without a mirror as soon as I first got them. Of course, they therefore don't give the same sense of accomplishment. (Which is also one of the forces leading people to program in, say, C++, as other people have remarked before.)
Of course. But with contacts, you don't have anything hanging on your face, and you have better peripheral vision.
For me, glasses are better for reading paper and the screen. Contacts are better for everything else. Being able to play various sports without having to choose between worrying about breaking my glasses or being seriously visually impaired is freeing. Even things like running and lifting are so much easier because I don't need to constantly adjust my glasses. And I didn't realize how nice it feels to not have something constantly on my face until I started wearing contacts.
There are ups and downs to both glasses and contacts, which is why I wear both during the week and day. But implying that people wear contacts because they feel a sense of accomplishment by putting them in is foolish.
Some glasses have frames made of memory titanium and are literally indestructible. My pair have survived a few years of harsh treatment. I've sat on them twice, gotten hit in the face with a basketball several times, and they still bounce back to their original shape. They weren't cheap (about $350) but they will definitely last until my vision changes enough to need new lenses - which aren't even scratched because of some protective coating. Even so, I often use lenses so I can play lacrosse and also because psychologically it makes me feel better not to wear glasses.
The psychological benefit of contact lenses is at least as great as the vision aspects. A guy I know ditched his glasses and bad haircut over the summer, and now with blue opaque lenses and Sun-in his whole persona has changed from nerdy to cool!
My glasses have the same kinds of frames, and while they're resilient, nothing is literally indestructible. They're still inappropriate for many sports.
The value in the frames, to me, is how light they are.
