Micro Vision
Virtual Retinal Display
From Kathy Kasten
However, when it was tested on me, I could tell the difference between reality and the virtual reality - it was apparent that the virtual reality was in someone else's control, a very creepy feeling.
By Elizabeth Weise, AP, dateline - Seattle.
Computers are so small now that a system with all the power of a desktop model can fit in a Walkman-sized packet. But where does the screen go?MicroVision has gotten around the problem by beaming images directly into the eye.
With the new system, there could be, perhaps in the next decade, three-dimensional video games in which the players themselves move through the images.
Virtual retinal display works because sight is the brain's interpretation of the light that comes in through the pupil and falls on the retina. MicroVision's system mimics the way the eye works.
First, an image comes out of a computer and is broken down into its constituent parts, color and brightness.
Then, the system's electronics transform the image into picture elements, or pixels. They are conveyed by fiber-optic cable to a pair of tiny, rapidly moving mirrors that paint the pixel stream onto the back of the eye, just as a cathode ray tube paints an image across a TV screen.
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Virtual retinal display holds amazing possibilities for computer-generated images that users would perceive as real as the real world. Because the images are created in the same way as human sight, the only limit on the sharpness of the picture is the power of the computer behind it.
The virtual retinal display images appear to hang a few feet in front of the viewer, solid, though translucent. The viewer can look at objects beyond. And that will be the first use of the system, MicroVision believes.
Surgeons using minute cameras to guide their work inside the body would have the images float in front of them. They wouldn't have to turn toward monitors.
Looking out over enemy terrain, soldiers would be able to call up detailed maps with locations of hidden mines marked out and overlaying the ground before them.
"Imagine looking at an aircraft and trying to work out how to fix it," said analyst Jackie Fenn of the Gartner Group in Burlington, Mass.
"You can see through the image and see what's beyond. It's completely unique."
Although some might worry about having lasers beamed into their eyes, Todd MacIntyre said the light photons emitted by the display are just like the light coming off a computer screen.