Tangential to AR and so on but I wonder how far off glasses that can autofocus on what you are looking at are away. If anyone could do it it would be Apple perhaps in partnership with Sony. My Sony Alpha's AF is pretty amazing. Obviously this would require a paradigm shift in lens construction whereby the actual glass properties are altered by electronics. I am not suggesting a six inch zoom lens lol.
I mentioned this dynamic focusing eye glass lens solution in another thread last month... These people don't seem to have a commercial product yet, but it looks like they are on the right track. Part of their proposed solution does involve eye tracking. Focus adjustment is LCD based to change the index of refraction, so no moving parts: http://www.deepoptics.com/
I hope to hell this tech is transferable to prescription glasses. I want this.
" Augmented reality (AR) is a live, copied view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input. Virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one whereas augmented reality takes the real world and adds to it with." Imo no Ophthalmologist would prescribe any kind! or brand! of AR glasses.
So genius, tell me how easy it was to move manufacturing to China under Deng Xiaoping starting in the early ‘80s, when China had zero infrastructure to begin with? If they coyuld do that, I struggle to see why the reverse could not happen.
China was extremely poor back then. It was really cheap to move manufacturing to the country. Tons of people were (are still) willing to work for really cheap wages.
I doubt people in the US are willing to work for $1/hr. So moving it to the US will increase prices (or decrease profit which we know are unacceptable).
Tangential to AR and so on but I wonder how far off glasses that can autofocus on what you are looking at are away. If anyone could do it it would be Apple perhaps in partnership with Sony. My Sony Alpha's AF is pretty amazing. Obviously this would require a paradigm shift in lens construction whereby the actual glass properties are altered by electronics. I am not suggesting a six inch zoom lens lol.
I mentioned this dynamic focusing eye glass lens solution in another thread last month... These people don't seem to have a commercial product yet, but it looks like they are on the right track. Part of their proposed solution does involve eye tracking. Focus adjustment is LCD based to change the index of refraction, so no moving parts: http://www.deepoptics.com/
This is really cool. If they can get it to work it would accomplish what @Gilliam_Bates was talking about. They would have to have some sort of optical tracking mechanism to know what the wearer was looking at, so it wouldn’t be simple
It is disconcerting that Apple continues to chose to outsource the prototyping of what will be state-of-the-art products to a company that will manufacture in mainland China. National security and technology transfer to an increasingly authoritarian regime do not appear to be on Apple’s radar.
Perhaps I wouldn’t be so bothered if China did not represent an increasing threat to the direction of technology development and the rise of the surveillance state.
The fortunes of Apple are already deeply intertwined with mainland China, which ought to be troubling enough for a company so keen on promoting human rights and equality. Why is Apple continuing to forge new and deeper dependencies with mainland China?
I think Tim Cook owes his loyal customers an answer.
Get a grip. These are glasses, not nuclear weapons.
Tangential to AR and so on but I wonder how far off glasses that can autofocus on what you are looking at are away. If anyone could do it it would be Apple perhaps in partnership with Sony. My Sony Alpha's AF is pretty amazing. Obviously this would require a paradigm shift in lens construction whereby the actual glass properties are altered by electronics. I am not suggesting a six inch zoom lens lol.
It is disconcerting that Apple continues to chose to outsource the prototyping of what will be state-of-the-art products to a company that will manufacture in mainland China. National security and technology transfer to an increasingly authoritarian regime do not appear to be on Apple’s radar.
Perhaps I wouldn’t be so bothered if China did not represent an increasing threat to the direction of technology development and the rise of the surveillance state.
The fortunes of Apple are already deeply intertwined with mainland China, which ought to be troubling enough for a company so keen on promoting human rights and equality. Why is Apple continuing to forge new and deeper dependencies with mainland China?
I think Tim Cook owes his loyal customers an answer.
Funny how you guys have no problem with Russia attacking our elections. But get your panties all bunched up over typical right propaganda that continuously fails to support itself with facts when challenged.
Stuff is manufactured in China because they do it better, faster and cheaper -- despite the lies coming from the crazed & deluded right wingers.
It is disconcerting that Apple continues to chose to outsource the prototyping of what will be state-of-the-art products to a company that will manufacture in mainland China. National security and technology transfer to an increasingly authoritarian regime do not appear to be on Apple’s radar.
Perhaps I wouldn’t be so bothered if China did not represent an increasing threat to the direction of technology development and the rise of the surveillance state.
The fortunes of Apple are already deeply intertwined with mainland China, which ought to be troubling enough for a company so keen on promoting human rights and equality. Why is Apple continuing to forge new and deeper dependencies with mainland China?
I think Tim Cook owes his loyal customers an answer.
Yes, it is concerning that a certain political leaning has been defending China when they so clearly do not have anyone interests in mind but their own and will steal and cheat and lie to accomplish their own goals. China is a clear threat.
So you too bought the right wing propaganda..... Not sure if that's foolish or just gullible.
It is disconcerting that Apple continues to chose to outsource the prototyping of what will be state-of-the-art products to a company that will manufacture in mainland China. National security and technology transfer to an increasingly authoritarian regime do not appear to be on Apple’s radar.
Perhaps I wouldn’t be so bothered if China did not represent an increasing threat to the direction of technology development and the rise of the surveillance state.
The fortunes of Apple are already deeply intertwined with mainland China, which ought to be troubling enough for a company so keen on promoting human rights and equality. Why is Apple continuing to forge new and deeper dependencies with mainland China?
I think Tim Cook owes his loyal customers an answer.
You could replace “China” with “United States” and your post would still be more valid.
Tangential to AR and so on but I wonder how far off glasses that can autofocus on what you are looking at are away. If anyone could do it it would be Apple perhaps in partnership with Sony. My Sony Alpha's AF is pretty amazing. Obviously this would require a paradigm shift in lens construction whereby the actual glass properties are altered by electronics. I am not suggesting a six inch zoom lens lol.
All the technologies I’m aware of change the focal length by moving the lens(es). The human eye has the remarkable ability to adjust the shape of the lens to change the focal distance. (As we age the lens becomes less flexible and the ability to focus on close objects is lost, thus the need for bifocals.) It would be cool but I can’t think of a way for optical lenses such as these to accommodate in the way you are suggesting.
Actually, much of that presbyopia may be due to the increasing use of bifocals and trifocals. The lens doesn't magically change shape -- it's done with muscles (the "ciliary body") and ligaments. The effects of that change in shape is called "accomodation". But, when we wear bifocals those muscles no longer have to work. And, like any muscle, if you don't use it, it atrophies and ceases to function. We call that process "aging".... In the case of the eye's lens we call it "presbyopia'. In the case of skeletal muscle we call it "sarcopenia". The medical terminology removes responsibility from the patient and makes money for the doctor who prescribes bifocals, walkers and quad canes for us.
I myself experienced that almost 40 years ago. I had what turned out to be a bad set of contact lenses. But the doctor misdiagnosed it and prescribed reading glasses for me. I found that the more I used those glasses the more I had to use them (like a crutch) and it got to the point where I had to use them because I couldn't read without them. But, once I got rid of the bad contacts I no longer needed the reading glasses and today at 70 years old I still don't need them -- which really pisses off eye doctors. They WANT me to use them! I try to be polite when I tell them to F off, but they get all huffy when their orders are spurned.
Tangential to AR and so on but I wonder how far off glasses that can autofocus on what you are looking at are away. If anyone could do it it would be Apple perhaps in partnership with Sony. My Sony Alpha's AF is pretty amazing. Obviously this would require a paradigm shift in lens construction whereby the actual glass properties are altered by electronics. I am not suggesting a six inch zoom lens lol.
Your eyes do the focusing when you wear glasses.
I see what you are saying but it also requires the lens through which you look to be in focus for the desired focal length for your eyes. Hence Reading glasses versus long-distance glasses. Your eyes can try all they like but looking through someone else's prescription glasses is not fun. Think of diopter adjustment on a mirrorless camera too.
I wonder if one of the tech key is auto adjust focus for corrective lenses for either short/long sighted. That would make the hundred years old corrective glasses obsolete.
I wonder if one of the tech key is auto adjust focus for corrective lenses for either short/long sighted. That would make the hundred years old corrective glasses obsolete.
It is disconcerting that Apple continues to chose to outsource the prototyping of what will be state-of-the-art products to a company that will manufacture in mainland China. National security and technology transfer to an increasingly authoritarian regime do not appear to be on Apple’s radar.
Perhaps I wouldn’t be so bothered if China did not represent an increasing threat to the direction of technology development and the rise of the surveillance state.
The fortunes of Apple are already deeply intertwined with mainland China, which ought to be troubling enough for a company so keen on promoting human rights and equality. Why is Apple continuing to forge new and deeper dependencies with mainland China?
I think Tim Cook owes his loyal customers an answer.
Well, if you don’t like the way Cook is running the company then you simply stop buying Apple products. It’s that simple. As others have said, he doesn’t owe you a thing.
Secondly, I think now is not really the time to hold up the US as a paragon of human rights and democracy, which is why any such criticism levelled by the US merely elicits an “I can’t breathe” response from the Chinese.
Thirdly, is it wise to set up a manufacturing base in a country that’s in the grip of a pandemic and no path out of it?
And saying “bring back manufacturing to the US” is one thing, but has anyone checked if Russia will allow it?
Tangential to AR and so on but I wonder how far off glasses that can autofocus on what you are looking at are away. If anyone could do it it would be Apple perhaps in partnership with Sony. My Sony Alpha's AF is pretty amazing. Obviously this would require a paradigm shift in lens construction whereby the actual glass properties are altered by electronics. I am not suggesting a six inch zoom lens lol.
Your eyes do the focusing when you wear glasses.
I see what you are saying but it also requires the lens through which you look to be in focus for the desired focal length for your eyes. Hence Reading glasses versus long-distance glasses. Your eyes can try all they like but looking through someone else's prescription glasses is not fun. Think of diopter adjustment on a mirrorless camera too.
See my earlier post - you eyes and brain automatically work together to ‘magically’ focus on objects by changing the shape of your eye’s lens. The lens can accommodate to a certain degree so glasses can be thought of as focusing the image to the point that the eye can manage. A set prescription for something like Apple Glasses would not be difficult to do. The easiest way wold be via a prescription lens, just like normal glasses, although an adaptive lens could work, too.
The tricky part comes when you need bifocals. The need for bifocals arises because the lens stiffens with age and can’t accommodate to focus on close objects so we add a ‘close’ lens at the bottom of the regular lens. Assuming it changed the focal point of the entire lens at once, such a technology would need to know whether you were looking at something close up or far away.
It is disconcerting that Apple continues to chose to outsource the prototyping of what will be state-of-the-art products to a company that will manufacture in mainland China. National security and technology transfer to an increasingly authoritarian regime do not appear to be on Apple’s radar.
Perhaps I wouldn’t be so bothered if China did not represent an increasing threat to the direction of technology development and the rise of the surveillance state.
The fortunes of Apple are already deeply intertwined with mainland China, which ought to be troubling enough for a company so keen on promoting human rights and equality. Why is Apple continuing to forge new and deeper dependencies with mainland China?
I think Tim Cook owes his loyal customers an answer.
You know Apple isn't the only company manufacturing AR glasses, right? There are several brands on the market already, probably most if not all manufactured in China.
Cook doesn't owe you shit. We all know why — because that's where the manufacturing infrastructure is.
No one needs reminding that years ago the US had a massive manufacturing infrastructure, before it was hollowed out by American CEOs seeking quarterly profits to increase their near term stock value and their own pocketbooks. It can be reversed.
But as I said, I wouldn’t be so concerned if the behavior of the mainland Chinese government was more benign. I’m not opposed to US companies manufacturing overseas. They will have to if they want access to most local markets. But the Chinese government hasn’t been behaving well on many fronts. Apple needs to pivot away from them to some degree. Moving manufacturing to India and other nations would be prudent at this time.
As far as moving manufacturing on this scale to the US, way easier said than done. And they are moving manufacturing to India and other nations.
So genius, tell me how easy it was to move manufacturing to China under Deng Xiaoping starting in the early ‘80s, when China had zero infrastructure to begin with? If they coyuld do that, I struggle to see why the reverse could not happen.
BTW, you’re flippant answer about Tim Cook not owing us shit for an explanation betrays an unsettling lack of concern for our national security and China’s poor behaviors on the world stage. Maybe you don’t think those things are important. But many people do.
You struggle to see why? As has been explained over and over by Cook and Jobs before him, you have everything from bespoke screw manufacturers that can create millions of precision parts on a dime and the deep vocational education which has led to a massive wealth of engineering talent that we simply do not have here in the US. We don't have the education, the talent, the infrastructure, the workforce, any of it — bringing all that "back" (as if we had anything like what Apple is doing in China here, ever), is not anything less than a massive restructuring of American society on a scale that's almost unimaginable.
"The products we do require really advanced tooling, and the precision that you have to have, the tooling and working with the materials that we do are state of the art. And the tooling skill is very deep here. In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields." - Tim Cook
Apple works with manufacturing partners for their parts and assembly. We simply do not have those resources here. If there's any impetus to move this kind of manufacturing back to the states, it's not on Apple to provide that or offer you any sort of explanation as to why they're operating in China — they already have, you're just ignoring it because it's not the answer you want. Also, how is Foxconn's factory going in Wisconsin? Still empty? Hmm.
You also haven't made a very compelling case for why manufacturing AR lenses for this one product in China — when other companies have been doing the exact same thing already — is somehow a national security threat.
Anyone have any details on how the AR glasses will work? How will digital images appear to your eyeballs?
Some the patents have a projector mounted by your temples that projects the images onto a lens surface. As such, there needs to be an opaque enough surface to reflect the projected images for your eyes to see, yet, has to be transparent enough to see the physical world in front of you. There would seem to be a rather gigantic compromise between image quality and transparency that needs to be made. Ideally, I want to have it good enough for the projected image to be like a video or a display monitor. Probably multiple iterations of the product before something like this is possible.
Anyone other there know anything about transparent films, how they can reflect light? What type of color rendition the reflected light would be? There are multiple implementations in heads-up displays for cars (and airplanes). So, all that needs to be miniaturized and vastly improved in terms of image performance.
Maybe read up on some of the existing products out there?
Here's a good example product that is probably similar to what Apple is developing: https://www.kura.tech
Tangential to AR and so on but I wonder how far off glasses that can autofocus on what you are looking at are away. If anyone could do it it would be Apple perhaps in partnership with Sony. My Sony Alpha's AF is pretty amazing. Obviously this would require a paradigm shift in lens construction whereby the actual glass properties are altered by electronics. I am not suggesting a six inch zoom lens lol.
All the technologies I’m aware of change the focal length by moving the lens(es). The human eye has the remarkable ability to adjust the shape of the lens to change the focal distance. (As we age the lens becomes less flexible and the ability to focus on close objects is lost, thus the need for bifocals.) It would be cool but I can’t think of a way for optical lenses such as these to accommodate in the way you are suggesting.
To quote a recent comment i made on May 25th in the AI article “Latest leak has ‘sleek’ Apple Glasses coming out in 2021 instead of 2022”: Yes, if they had cameras they could …and today I would even add “quite easily”.
You are talking about a fundamentally different technology and approach: A camera that transmits an image to a screen vs a lens that refracts and focuses light. This article talks about lenses that also have an ability to superimpose an image. For this to work, the image your eyes see via the lens needs to be in focus. Using a camera to transmit an image would be tantamount to a VR headset showing you what you’re looking at.
No, I still am talking about the need to see well through AR-glasses independent of any refractive errors in the bearers eyes. I admit we’ve used some quite advanced corrective algorithms, but apart from the required cameras it’s just software.
Also, I should add that in our research we found a much simpler method to achieve the end results — having a clear view independent of near- or farsightedness. I’ll give you a clue: have you ever tried perfectly superimposing a focused image with a defocussed one? If you do it right the results are quite amazing.
Comments
These people don't seem to have a commercial product yet, but it looks like they are on the right track. Part of their proposed solution does involve eye tracking. Focus adjustment is LCD based to change the index of refraction, so no moving parts:
http://www.deepoptics.com/
Oh! I see you bought the right wing China hating propaganda....
So you too bought the right wing propaganda..... Not sure if that's foolish or just gullible.
Fixed that for you....
And saying “bring back manufacturing to the US” is one thing, but has anyone checked if Russia will allow it?
The tricky part comes when you need bifocals. The need for bifocals arises because the lens stiffens with age and can’t accommodate to focus on close objects so we add a ‘close’ lens at the bottom of the regular lens. Assuming it changed the focal point of the entire lens at once, such a technology would need to know whether you were looking at something close up or far away.
Apple works with manufacturing partners for their parts and assembly. We simply do not have those resources here. If there's any impetus to move this kind of manufacturing back to the states, it's not on Apple to provide that or offer you any sort of explanation as to why they're operating in China — they already have, you're just ignoring it because it's not the answer you want. Also, how is Foxconn's factory going in Wisconsin? Still empty? Hmm.
You also haven't made a very compelling case for why manufacturing AR lenses for this one product in China — when other companies have been doing the exact same thing already — is somehow a national security threat.
Maybe read up on some of the existing products out there?
Here's a good example product that is probably similar to what Apple is developing:
https://www.kura.tech
See section on "Novel Structured Geometric Waveguide Eyepiece":
https://www.kura.tech/technology
https://everysight.com
Also, I should add that in our research we found a much simpler method to achieve the end results — having a clear view independent of near- or farsightedness. I’ll give you a clue: have you ever tried perfectly superimposing a focused image with a defocussed one? If you do it right the results are quite amazing.