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Is that a projector in your pocket, or…

Posted in Linux on November 18, 2008 at 5:21 pm

I found myself in a rather swanky hotel the other day being shown the latest in Eye Wear from Vuzix. At a consumer level, Vuzix make wearable displays - a pair of goggles, if you will, that through the use of tiny OLED displays can give you the equivalent of watching a 62″ TV, in your pocket.

I’ve got the budget model in at the moment for review, and so far I’ve been pretty impressed. I am although, a little undecided if I consider it a gimmick, or actually something I would use on a day to day basis. The top-end model with higher resolution and accelerometer ready to work with WoW certainly impressed me more, but I’ll have to take a look at those later.

One of the guys at the meeting, Ken Blakeslee, who was in fact an investor in the technology rather than internal to the company, made some interesting points when it came to portable projectors, which are the obvious comparison to such products. Let’s assume, and I don’t think I’m far off here, that portable projectors become small enough that you can integrate one into a mobile phone. Or, if they were just small and cheap enough to carry around alongside it. When would you use it? To get a decent size, it’s got to be 2 to 3 feet away from a surface. So that’s hardly ideal when you’re sitting on a train, with the back of another chair inches away from you. You could mount it on your shoulder, but you’d need some sort of autofocus to take care of movement. Obviously in this scenario, a pair of glasses that you could pull out of your pocket would be perfect. and immersive.

David Lock, Director of European Operations pulled out a suitcase which he wasn’t intending on doing, to give us a glimpse of what was to come. These units looked identical to a pair of rather stylish sunglasses, with wireless transmission and high resolution OLED displays. These were designed with sight augmentation in mind rather than just video playback. He envisioned overlays that gave you extra information as you were walking along, even perhaps a virtual avatar for people you are passing. Any Sci-Fi fans, or in fact anyone with a decent imagination can imagine how awesome something like this would be.

But a pair of glasses are quite personal - I’ve already tried handing my sample to other people and they first have to spend a few minutes adjusting the focus to suit their eyes - so it’s hardly ideal for mass sharing. This is where Ken felt a portable projector would come in handy. Want to show off a hilarious YouTube clip? You turn to the nearest wall/white t-shirt and blast away to your entire group of friends. It’s a very different market.