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Comment by badsock | Hacker News Reader

How would that be different from an LCD, which is something they've presumably looked at and not used?

I don't know. It's similar. I wonder what the problems are with using it, then?

One idea that comes to mind is that a regular screen leaks light. If you adjust the brightness on your laptop as low as it will go, then display a black image, there's still a massive difference between what you see there vs when the screen is completely powered off. But if you take two sheets of polarizing filter and stick them in front of your screen, you can get almost perfect blackness. That's why I thought it was a different idea, since the difference is so dramatic. You can block almost all the light, whereas a regular screen doesn't seem to be able to get that kind of contrast.

I don't think that level of black is a good thing for AR. If you can't distinguish the augmentation from reality, I'd argue that's a bad thing.

Let me be clearer: Being able to show black is super important for AR. For one thing, it's a pain in the ass to read text on a transparent HMD , because you never know what colors will be behind the letters. You can make some educated guesses, and put up your own background colors for the text, but since everything has opacity, it'll always matter what's physically behind the "hologram".

Yes, yes, it's still not a hologram, but the popularized version of holograms (from things like star wars) is still the best way to think about AR display.

If you can show SOME black, text legibility becomes a lot easier. Everything can look way better, even if the world always shines through enough to see it.

If you can show PURE black, enough to ACTUALLY obscure the world, now you can erase stuff. Like indicator lights, panopticon optics, and people.

And that would necessarily be bad?

Right. Pictures of what people see through the goggles seem to be either carefully posed against dark backgrounds (Meta [1]) or totally fake (Magic Leap[2], Microsoft[3]) It's amazingly difficult to find honest through-the-lens pictures of what the user sees. When you do, they're disappointing.

[1] http://media.bestofmicro.com/V/H/563597/original/Meta-Collab... [2] http://www.roadtovr.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/magic-lea... [3] https://winblogs.azureedge.net/devices/2016/02/MSHoloLens_Mi...

I was thinking the exact same thing.

Anyone seen a TFT "filter" mounted on the front of a transparent OLED "backlight"?

Yes I'm sure they must have thought of it. Wonder what the issue is.

[edit] I read the explanation further down now

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