http://xkcd.com/941/

but this would do perfectly. Imagine getting a feed from the Keck Telescopes (or the VLT in Chile) for this. Give you a whole new mind blowing view of the universe.

Is Sony back?

Well, no, there is a reflective or refractive element close to your eye, with an OLED display a few inches away.

That detail aside, I’m curious what it is about having something close to one’s eye that you object to.

Also, Second Life was kind of a flop.

The competing products (such as Vuzix) don’t even match the resolution of the iPhone’s retina display… I’m sure that’s ok for video, but for text that’s lame.
Anyways, I’m definitely excited about the HMZ-T1. I hope they are not as bulky as they look.

Update: I’m excited by the HD resolution, but I found one worrying quote in the news reports (see below). 720p is 921,600 pixels… Can we confirm whether the resolution is actually 720p?

> According to Yoshinori Matsumoto, from Sony’s Home Entertainment Business Group, the 0.7 inch (18mm diagonal) panels “have a resolution of 350,000 pixels and are closely related to the OLED electronic viewfinders found in the new Alpha 77 and NEX-77 cameras.” (from http://www.techradar.com/news/television/why-sony-s-personal-3d-viewer-is-game-changing-1015622 )

http://www.brother.com/en/news/2011/airscouter/index.htm

The semi-circular canals and otoliths in the inner ear serve as a set of accelerometers and rate gyros providing the vestibular response (sense of balance). This is coupled with our visual  perception of motion and tracking of horizon cues in the Vestibular Optical Response (VOR). When the two senses disagree motion sickness or simulator sickness occurs. Unless the goggles incorporate inertial sensors and shift the imagery consistently with the percieved motion you are going to have a lot of severe motion sickness.

This pretty much doomed the (technically excellent) Sony Glasstron units from the ’90s.

Depends on the projection technology. Presumably the emitters would be arranged on a spectacle-like frame so as not to block the user’s central vision. Multiple emitters at different locations on the frame would allow full-range eye movement without loss of the projected image.

The frames also provide a stable platform registered to the users head which would allow for a large virtual display that would (necessarily) track head movements but that also allows the user to look around via eye movements to examine the display (and to take advantage of gaze-detection focus technologies).

Never tried a 3D movie, mostly cause I’m afraid that it’ll be extra money wasted.  I’ve looked at some 3D tvs and they work alright, but I can certainly see flicker in the picture from time to time.  Maybe with enough refresh it wouldn’t be that bad.  The only real experience with any VR I’ve had was the Virtual Boy….and that was like driving an ice pick through my eye socket.

Twitching eyes = no retinal projection … makes me sad.  Cause we will probably get that before we get a neural connection.  (And probably not either one cheap and of good quality in my life time.)

The sony goggles seem like they are using some sort of magnifier so it might not be as bad as the old style glasses. But id imagine your eyes would still get pretty tired. Looking in a microscope for a few hours for example is very tiring. You have none of these problems with a retinal display projector. 

The military has been using them for years. The tech is starting to trickle down to civilian use now. Brother have a retinal projector that they are looking at selling to businesses and its meant to launch some time this year

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=3021

Strangely enough, despite being legally blind, two of my friends with RP worked as video editors. 

I was hoping this did retinal projection and not just tiny screens.

Serious question: what’s the difference? Isn’t a screen just projecting light into your eyes?