Microsoft Granted Patent For Augmented Reality Glasses 89
another random user writes with an excerpt from the BBC about Microsoft's vision for augmented reality glasses: "A patent granted to the U.S. tech firm describes how the eyewear could be used to bring up statistics over a wearer's view of a baseball game or details of characters in a play. The newly-released document was filed in May 2011 and is highly detailed.
... Although some have questioned how many people would want to wear such devices, a recent report by Juniper Research indicated that the market for smart glasses and other next-generation wearable tech could be worth $1.5bn by 2014 and would multiply over following years."
Noticeable differences from Google's version: two lenses, a wrist computer, and wires.
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Shill
Such eloquence, such insight! Makes me wonder why I bothered to post this [slashdot.org]... oh wait, you're being a total douche aren't you?
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Re:Why MS is better than Google's (Score:5, Informative)
Not at all, if you're willing to back it up.
I don't know about you, but when someone with a brand-new account kicks off the discussion with a first post that praises Microsoft and denounces the competition, and that is their only comment, that looks rather odd to me.
When you remember that there have been a lot of new accounts doing exactly that over the course of this year - the Visual Studio ones being some of the most blatant - well, writing that off as normal user behaviour starts to look like burying your head in the sand.
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This has been going on much longer than a year.
This was over a year and a half ago:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/cdd1ea06-7cc0-11e0-994d-00144feabdc0.html [ft.com]
Burson-Marsteller, a WPP-owned PR agency whose clients also include Microsoft, contacted US newspaper reporters and opinion-piece writers with a view to securing coverage on Google’s alleged use of personal information from Facebook and other social networks.
MS vs ODF (2009):
http://techrights.org/2009/05/27/ghettoblaster-may-be-microsoft-astroturf/ [techrights.org]
MS vs Linux (2001):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/09/26/ms_targets_linux_mac_rivals/ [theregister.co.uk]
There is so much more too....
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Proof 1 [slashdot.org] :
Proof 2 [slashdot.org], specifically time stamp, and FUD that would have been obvious if you RTFA instead of trolling
Microsoft's version would process things independently on the wrist computer
vs
[Patent] indicates that most of the processing work [...] would likely be carried out by remote computer servers [...].
These astroturfers have been operating in the same way for a long time (more than a year I think), posting first-posts pro-Microsoft Anti-Google FUD.
Do you carefully check each and every mail by some Nigerian wanting to transfer some big money via your account ? Maybe THAT one isn't a scam ?
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Not at all, if you're willing to back it up.
OK, two points of proof to back up user Presentss is a shill.
1 - UID is 2780313 registered 11/23/2012 (aka Today)
2 - http://slashdot.org/~Presentss/comments [slashdot.org]
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Re:Why MS is better than Google's (Score:5, Informative)
I would hesitate getting Google's reality glasses because it would mean that all my data would go to Google. Instead of that, Microsoft's version would process things independently on the wrist computer. That's a huge difference and suits to people who want to keep their privacy.
Doesn't look like it:
It indicates that most of the processing work - identifying people and other objects in view, and deciding what information to show about them - would likely be carried out by remote computer servers in order to keep the equipment slimline.
So you'll probably need a .NET Passport/Windows Live ID/Microsoft Account/whatever-they're-calling-it-tomorrow to use it.
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From TFA: "It indicates that most of the processing work - identifying people and other objects in view, and deciding what information to show about them - would likely be carried out by remote computer servers in order to keep the equipment slimline."
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They can record the TSA agents too, can't have that!!!
Snowcrash provides prior art (Score:2)
The novel snowcrash profides prior art to all the wearable computer glasses/goggles thing. I know I have read the same thing in other books too, they just don't come to mind.
The whole patent thing is just so screwed up. If the guy who developed the waterbed was denied patent because of Stanger in a Strange Land, then the system as written already disallowed all this crap.
But that's just reason and logic.
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These novels provide protection over the general idea of "augmented reality" but however, they do not provide protection for the specific implementations as those will likely be very complex assemblages of various technologies that are much more involved than just a general idea.
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They're much more likely to be used for watching porn during boring baseball games.
(...and for blocking out disturbing images of people masturbating at baseball games)
Re:In Store Shopping Assistance? (Score:4, Funny)
In copying everything Apple, Microsoft wants a 'Reality Distortion Field' and has to resort to hardware to do it.
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I just want to know if they will make Windows 8 look like a usable desktop OS?
Patent nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
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Absolutely! This is getting beyond a joke - pretty soon we'll have patent lawyers scouring the SciFi back catalogue and patenting everything in there, since most of what we see coming to market now, or "real soon now" has already been imagined and sometimes described in great detail.
*rushes off to patent phasers, transporters, replicants and geosync orbits*
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This is a piece of hardware, and a specific implementation of it. This is exactly what patents are for.
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Re:Patent nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
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Obviously you and the people who modded you insightful didn't even bother to read the the first sentence of the abstract of the patent. This is NOT a piece of hardware, rather it is "A system and method to present a user wearing a head mounted display with supplemental information when viewing a live event". The head mounted display is already assumed in this patent - this patent is just talking about presenting live statistics/info about the event in a manner that doesn't obstruct the viewing of said event
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I played AR games on my Treo. I'm sure you can find many for any modern smartphone.
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"No practical working implementations"? Has done no research on the matter has you, yessss....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann [wikipedia.org] - This is just the most famous of the group.
There are no "consumer ready" AR glasses for various reasons but fully working implementations have been in existence for years.
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I'll raise you a "never going to happen".
I wear glasses because I'm basically blind without them. Glasses are a pain in the ass to deal with. With most of these systems, I would have to wear contact lenses AND glasses. That sounds great!
Putting things on your face is a pain. Watches are dead now aside from demonstrations of disposable income.. killed by the smartphone. These glasses offer no major advantages over a smartphone.
Tablets are a different animal; they always have been. Tablets offer a substantive
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Augmented reality glasses offer no substantive advantages whatsoever.
That is a lot of cockery. However, they do have to not suck. For example, they need to function as an Eyetap [wikipedia.org]. You can do convincing reality overlay without using an eyetap (which eliminates parallax error) but it requires a lot more processing power, or additional hardware. If you're going to have additional hardware, why not have it be ideal? The eyetap can have a focus adjustment in it, solving the "I need glasses" problem.
Re:I'll just say this now (Score:4, Insightful)
My watch glows in the dark so I only have to look at my wrist at night to see what the time is. It is powered by my wearing it so I don't need a mains supply (and cable / proprietary adapter) to recharge it. It can withstand water pressure of 10atm.
It also only cost me £30 a decade ago and hasn't had any problems whatsoever.
Until my smartphone can do all of those things I'm keeping it.
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These glasses offer no major advantages over a smartphone.
It's not like they won't be able to make them with curved lenses. The *glass* might have to be somewhat custom to the wearer, but that's already the case for most of our computers/mobes anyway, right?
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Why do you need to wear both? why not just clip on the AR system to your existing glasses?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18091697 [bbc.co.uk]
Take a look at the pics in that article, not exactly a quantum leap in design to make it a clip on instead of a full set of glasses (stability is the only major concern I can think of).
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Putting things on your face is a pain.
Do you know how many sunglasses are sold annually? Reduce the cost of these AR glasses enough, add in UV filters and focusable liquid lenses, and you've got the new rich man's (sun)glasses. Eventually they would become everyone's glasses.
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Augmented Reality to provide statistics on geology samples in real-time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWrDaYP5w58 [youtube.com]
Current geology smartphone applications allow you to overlay surface map and geological layer data over a camera view. There are also some smartphone applications that present the visible stars and planets from your location as a 3D view. But if that could be superimposed over a camera image, that would be better.
Nobody is going to wear these things (Score:2)
Seriously.
Unless it's indistinguishable from normal glasses, which it won't be, there's no market here outside of some very specific and special industries.
Why can't we have kick ass VR glasses, like Carmack is working on, instead?
Cool, yes. Is my mom going to want a pair? Probably not.
I cite the entire contact lenses industry as evidence.
Shenanigans!
Re:Nobody is going to wear these things (Score:4, Insightful)
Why can't they be indistinguishable from normal glasses? Google's prototypes are pretty close to normal glasses already:
http://blog.sitestogo.biz/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/google-glasses.jpg [sitestogo.biz]
You think that thick part can't be integrated into the frame and the screen can't be part of the main lens?
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Yes, I do think it can't be integrated. Barring a star-trek advance in battery technology, or a wire running down your back, or a microwave battery power transmitter you carry. Those all scream cool.
These things are so dorky it hurts, and don't offer any serious advantage over a smartphone, that everyone already has anyway.
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And yet in 20 years we've gone from dead-nuts-basic cell phones the size of a house brick (with batteries bigger than today's phones) to having far superior phones built into computer watches that cost about the same as a comparable standalone device. Yet a modest size decrease in these glasses is impossible?
I could see all the electronics being built into the front of the glasses frame and the batteries being in the arms, even using today's battery tech. They might look a bit like hipster glasses but they
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That would be tricky (and dorky-looking, at best it might look like the current prototype), but there should be no problem replacing the flat panes in these glasses with actual lenses.
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It seems reasonable at first to predict that people won't tolerate their own glasses looking unusual. But I think the same way you predict that, can also be used to predict that nobody will ever walk about with bluetooth crap sticking out of their ears. Yet, there the gargoyles are.
This guy [alibi.com] was the future but this guy [wikimedia.org] wasn't? Are you sure you have the fashion expertise to really distinguish between the two? (I'll be the first to admit that I don't have that expertise either...)
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VR glasses? Like these?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Virtual+Digital+Video+Glasses&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3AVirtual+Digital+Video+Glasses [amazon.com]
Play whatever you want, all these are missing is sensors to determine orientation / movement (same sensors inside almost every smart phone).
When it's sunny (Score:2)
You'll appreciate the cool blue tint of the screens of death.
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Well the jokes just write themselves, don't they?
First to mind is that all they absolutely must make BSOD blue a chroma key for transparency so that when it crashes, you don't.
Alternately, they function as peril-sensitive sunglasses. When windows crashes, you can no longer see your wrist-mounted computer.
The next BIG thing! (Score:2)
More than a fad...more than cool and better than Rx; Cx glasses are disruptive game changers. They stand on the shoulders of the PC, Internet, SQL, 802.11xx and HUD at the corner of Fashion and Future hawking the promise of all knowing all seeing Superman intelligence. What kid isn't gonna want to be like that when he grows up? LOL
NONE OF THAT is augmented reality (Score:1)
I work in the area, and:
Displaying some tables or gauges on your glasses is not augmented reality.
Filming stuff with them and displaying it somewhere else (a la Google Glasses), also is not even remotely augmented reality.
Actual augmented reality integrates. Actual augmented reality is stuff that fits itself into reality, and augments it.
Actual augmented reality would be when you walk through your city, and there’s a pillar there that isn't really there, and you can walk up to it, and trigger a switch
Well fuck. I guess I'm screwed. (Score:2)
I've been using AR glasses with my smart phone for YEARS. [vuzix.com]
It's often times faster to overlay the 3D noise source map (gathered from sensors in the field) over the readily available physical model -- Depth culling to remove obscured sources in real time (industrial noise abatement). Sometimes it's faster if the CAD files can be imported easily, to just do it digitally, even so, I can just turn off the cameras. I rarely used my phone when doing this sort of work, but I have done so. I've used it experimen
Too much clutter (Score:2)
This is probably going to sound like a "get off my lawn" kind of post, but "augmented reality" bothers me. I go to baseball games and plays as an ESCAPE from reality. I don't want it "augmented" by screeds of information. I just want to enjoy the experience. Don't get me wrong, I think there are uses for augmented reality, but does life suck so bad for people that they cannot simply live it and enjoy it without cluttering it up?
Art as prior art? (Score:2)
The Personal System glasses from "Norbert and the System", a short story by Timons Esaias from 1993, may anticipate some of the features of this system. I haven't read the patent, but the overlay of contextual social information sounds a lot like what the original poster describes.
(Here's a link: http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Sci-Tech-Society/Esaias-Norbert.pdf [ku.edu])
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Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge, has a good layout of future direction of this.
The glasses understand the entire reality around you, and can erase objecs and replace them. People thus put on virtual costumes, or put them on other people. People also have huge battles using virtual weapons.
Also, people "tag" places, ala Google Earth, and wherever you go you can "see" tag indicators. Some places have spam cluttering things up.
Even -if- prior art did not exist, this is obvious (Score:1)