Meet Glyph, a headset that beams video into your eyes

A headset due to be released this year promises to beam movies, video games or even video calls directly into your eyeballs.

I thought this was a really cool invention. Wanted to share with ATS as I am considering buying one.

Yes. The Glyph headset, from Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Avegant, will create visuals that don't need a screen -- just your retinas and your brain.

The technology that powers the Glyph centers around a set of 2 million microscopic mirrors -- 1 million per eye -- that reflect visuals, including 3-D, into the user's eye.

cdn0.sbnation.com...

Glyph, on the other hand, looks like a pair of headphones sitting on the user's head when not in use. In fact, it doubles as a pair of high-end headphones with noise canceling that compares with some of the leading brands on the market, according to Avegant. To add visuals, the user flips down the band over their head, making it an eyepiece.

David Pierce wrote for The Verge: " 'Life of Pi' displayed perfectly in 3-D without any tweaking, and I played 'Call of Duty: Ghosts' right off a PlayStation 3. All you need to do is to tune the glasses — you focus each eye individually, then set the two eyeholes the right distance apart so they create a single picture. From then on, content just works."

www.cnn.com...

Right now you can preorder a set for 499. For this tech I don't think that's a bad deal. I would love to see one in person first hand.

and i thought the occulus rift was the only one coming out.

these are cooooooooooooooooooool and i love the nightvision style flip down, dayum

thanks for the link i dont know how ive not found this myself being a tech geelk that i am.

reply to post by Biigs


Actually, by adding some infrared LEDs, and an external camera, this could do double duty if you could hook the camera into the feed for the mirrors!

Seems pretty awesome!

reply to post by Pimpintology


I'd like to hear from someone who's tried this. It sounds good, and if the tech can be improved over even what it is now, we may have something pretty nice here. Thanks for finding this, haven't heard of it before.

From your CNN source:

Unlike some entries into the emerging wearable tech field, the Glyph won't be limited to a set of specially designed apps. Tang said the headset, which donors can receive for a $499 "donation" to the campaign, is designed to plug into just about anything you own that has a screen -- be it a smartphone, laptop, television or gaming console.

Users would play the video content on their mobile or entertainment device but watch it on the Glyph instead of their device's screen. The Glyph has a battery life of about three hours, Tang said.

I always distrust anything that is 99, or 99.99, etc., because I know that they are trying to hustle people into thinking it cost less than it is - a marketing tool that makes me thing "If they're hustling me on this, what else are they hustling me on?"

So with this one it would be good to get some neutral feedback on quality.

Shut up and take my money!!!

That looks very promising. I can envision down the road the device will be smaller and more streamlined. It could even have WiFi added to it so people could interact in MMORPG's.

I think they ought to go on to use retinal projectors on cell phones. All the screen you can stand, and it doesn't take up that much room on the phone. We were looking at doing this with battlefield computers using a retinal projector about 3 generations back from this, which was an improvement over Microvision's first gen NOMAD, the original display tech, but not as good as this one is in the OP.

You don't have to light up the area looking at your display in the dark. Just hold the thing near your face, let it find your eye and paint the display on your retina.

Occulus Rift can suck it!

This is badass.

-FBB

reply to post by Biigs


This isn't like the rift.

There's no head tracking involved in this from what I gather, there would only be direct video output.

So it's good for that, but not for actual VR or anything.

~Tenth

reply to post by tothetenthpower


Oh no i didnt mean tech for tech wise, i just meant a real wearable 3d video headset.


The fact that this isnt using tiny screens and instead projecting directly means its technically your entire field of view, which i just cannot wait to try. Shocking this tech is so close already really.

reply to post by Pimpintology


The phrase "deaf, dumb and blind" comes to mind...

Odd claim..

My TV has no problems of beaming images into my eyes..

Wonder what size screen it simulates on your retina's?

reply to post by tothetenthpower


Direct from their Kickstarter page:

And with an integrated 9 Degree of Freedom head-tracker, a whole world of interactive gaming, Point of View (PoV) imaging and interactive storytelling is within our reach.

So it does seem to be an actual VR system to me. This is really cool. I've never been much of a 1st adopter-type but this is pretty comparable to the Rift in price and is a lot smaller.

I could do without those headphones though. It should have lighter headphones so I don't feel like Uncle Fester putting his head in a clamp.

reply to post by thov420


by comparison the Rift:

The field of view is more than 90 degrees horizontal (110 degrees diagonal), which is more than double the FOV of most competing devices, and is the primary strength of the device. It is intended to almost fill the wearer's entire field of view, and the real world is completely blocked out, to create a strong sense of immersion. The resolution is 1280×800 (16:10 aspect ratio), which leads to an effective of 640×800 per eye (4:5 aspect ratio). However, since the Rift does not feature a 100% overlap between the eyes, the combined horizontal resolution is effectively greater than 640. The image for each eye is shown in the panel as a barrel distorted image that is then corrected by pincushion effect created by lenses in the headset, generating a spherical-mapped image for each eye. The panel's resolution is expected to be upgraded to at least 1920×1080 for the final consumer version.

Source

9 Degrees isn't enough to create enough immersion when your moving your head in the field of view. I see this being more used for casual, low end 'mommy games' like angry birds for example or some other variation of simple VR concepts.

Much akin to how the Nintendo Wii functioned with the control sticks.

Sure it's a cool product, but really in the end just a gimmick. It won't lead down the road to something else because the field of view is very hard to increase when trying to beam things to small places like the back of your head.

~Tenth