Hacker News Reader

Comment by planb | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know if this setup in combination with a camera would work to create a real time color overlay over the mirror image? Or is just white text readable due to the way the light shines through the mirror?

I could imagine lots of useful or entertaining use cases for such a mirror...

View on HN

Reading your question closely, I think what you're asking is "Can the reflection feature Augmented Reality?" (that's why you mention a camera and real-timeness)

In which case I believe the answer is no, we can't currently do AR in a reflection. In order to match the viewer's perspective, you'd have to either use eye tracking (kind of a poor solution for something as shareable as a mirror); or use a multiscopic display, a technology that doesn't currently exist at any acceptable resolution.

It might be possible to implement a limited sort of AR where the mirror's added content is on a plane at a fixed distance by a trick of lenses. But if you or any object sits between the virtual plane and the mirror, there wouldn't be any occlusion, so it would somewhat break the illusion.

You're right, that's what I had in mind but I didn't think this far... Thanks for clearing this up.

> or use a multiscopic display, a technology that doesn't currently exist at any acceptable resolution.

That’s definitely wrong.

REALEYES[1] has built some prototypes, although they only sell static ones.

At my university we actually have a high-resolution (1080p) multiscopic display from them.

It’s just 80'000k EUR

[1]: http://real-eyes.eu/

Well, a "static multiscopic display" is essentially an old-school hologram, we've had those for a while. Their website doesn't appear to mention any real multiscopic display yet.

I'd be curious to know the number of viewing angles and axes of the experimental display you mention. 1080p is only half the information: if it has the angular resolution of a Nintendo 3DS, it would very much fall out of the acceptable zone, especially if your goal is to superimpose any sort of AR on a mirror.

Well, they have one non-static version (one single prototype) that’s standing around at my uni.

Every 2mm by 2mm square has 256 by 256 pixels.

The viewing angle is approximately 90° in both horizontal and vertical.

Well, it’s only one single non-static prototype, and the parters[1] have given up on the project.

But it is possible, and really impressive.

    ----------------

[1]:

Research partners: Fraunhofer IPM & Fraunhofer IPT

Industry partners: RealEyes GmbH & AutoPan GmbH & Co & Euromediahouse GmbH & Meuser Optik GmbH & Kleinhempel Ink-Jet-Center GmbH

Associate partners: Viaoptic GmbH & Soul Pix

Oooooooh... just thought of something that would be cool, would be if the mirror could detect who is in front of it... say as a bathroom mirror, and display the calendar of the person there... minimal facial recognition, wouldn't be too hard to do.

I made one for a christmas present this year. High contrast colors show up great. If colors are close to each other it becomes hard to tell them apart, but you can still see color. Dark colors are hard to see against a black background for the same reason.

I just want to give a +1 to the high contrast colors. I have a few colors on mine (green & red arrows for stock quote directions) and they come out great.

You can see the raspberries are a little dim in this picture: http://blog.dylanjpierce.com/assets/mirrormirror/15_booting....

Looks like it's certainly possible.

I'm not a graphics/projection expert, but you might be able to boost the brightness for more visibility by adjusting the color profile of the monitor or maybe by adjusting the color output of the pi. I think ultimately it depends on the ambient light in the room and the brightness of your monitor. The brightest possible monitor would be ideal to offset the effect of the mirror.

Yeah, my Pyohio talk covered that a bit, it's totally doable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXO7YXvAGFk

Reply on news.ycombinator.com