Hacker News Reader

Comment by mhandley | Hacker News Reader

You probably wouldn't want to drive in these sunglasses. Normal polarized glasses reduce glare reflecting from damp roads, etc, by blocking horizontally polarized light, as this reflected light is strongly polarized.

The polarization on screens, including the one in your car satnav, is usually oriented so that someone wearing polarized glasses can see it. Rotate the polarization on the sunglasses, and you won't be able to see the satnav, and you'll get maximum glare off the road because the sunglasses will block much of the ambient light, but almost none of the road reflections.

View on HN

The Kickstarter has a postscript that says not to wear them while driving.

A bigger notice mentioning why you shouldn't would be better, though.

Do you mean "why" as in the science mentioned above, or some other clarification or the nature of the harm? What would you have it say?

I ask because it seems to me that the simplest possible warnings are the most effective for the average consumer.

"____ aren't intended for use while driving, because they can make road glare much more prominent than regular sunglasses."

Won't these glasses stop working if your head isn't perfectly aligned with the screen?

A bigger concern is that, if it blocks all LED wavelengths, it may also block brake lights of some vehicles.

It does not block wavelengths. It blocks light polarized in certain directions which may be of any wavelength.

Brake lights will most certainly not be polarized and so they will be dimmed by the same amount as most other objects emitting/reflecting non-polarized light.

Take in mind any glasses that reduce amount of light can be dangerous if used in poor lighting conditions (and yes, this includes those that purport to improve contrast).

hey lmilcin! I'm with the team behind the glasses. It sounds like you might know a thing or too about optics. We're looking for engineers and researchers that can help us solve the hard problem of blocking OLEDs for our next product. A lot of people think it’s impossible but we’re willing to give it our best shot!

Any chance you’re someone that can help?

Hi! I may have a tip for you. OLEDs emit at very specific wavelengths due to materials being used and there are very few materials that make for majority of displays. If you can create lenses that would selectively block very specific wavelengths (probably using same chemicals) then OLED displays would be dark or greatly attenuated and everything else that emits diffuse light would be only slightly attenuated (only small part of the continuous spectrum would be blocked at the specific wavelength).

Thanks for the tip! This is super interesting. We're experimenting with notch filters to block RGB. Is that what you're talking about here?

They could have circular polarizing filters on top of the satnav screens

I think these are wavelength based filters vice polarized filters (see below). However, if they are wavelength based you might have a hard time determining whether a stoplight is red or green (yellow would be OK), so I agree - probably not a good idea to drive with.

If you look at Kickstarter:

By flattening and rotating the polarized lens 90 degrees, light emitted by LCD/LED screens is blocked, making it look like the TV or computer in front of you is off.

These won't work on phones nor Billboards.

These may well work on some (cheap?) phones, I've had phones not display properly through polarized sunglasses before.

They would work for sure with my LG G4.

Sadly, I can not use the phone on landscape while wearing polarized sun glasses. Something very annoying when trying to take a photo on a sunny day.

They’ll also be damned disturbing if you tilt your head at all, and screens start fading in and out of existence.

Exactly as disturbing as regular sunglasses, not very disturbing at all.

No normal sun glasses doesn't have any phasing they are just tinted.

Sorry, I obviously meant regular polarized sunglasses.

They certainly would work on most phones in one of the valid orientations.

Yeah, most phones are not OLED (yet?)

I don't think that's true. Apple has been the major holdout on OLED for a while, and they're now into their second year of using it.

The vast majority of people don't have a year-old phone, never mind a flagship model.

That's true, but the Galaxy S series has used AMOLED since it was introduced in 2010.[0] Looking in more detail my guess is it's not majority market share but it's definitely significant.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_series

Granted, my 2011 Nokia N9 also had an OLED screen. But they became unfashionable for several years due to (then) poor color rendering (although their contrast, naturally, was and is top notch). Currently they've been making a comeback.

Perhaps by LED they're referring to LED-backlit LCD displays. There's pretty much full coverage of the visible spectrum across different LED types, so the only way to block them is with completely opaque lenses.

> Perhaps by LED they're referring to LED-backlit LCD displays.

That's conventional for how LED-backlit LCD displays are marketed to consumers.

That isn't how polarization works. It isn't about the spectrum it is about how it travels or is reflected in a more uniform way (normally horizontal. So if you block out horizontal light you get rid of glare or in the case of panels you stop seeing the screen.

Right, well we aren't talking about polarization since LEDs don't emit polarized light, so you'd need notch filters to block the wavelengths LEDs emit, but the notch required to block all LEDs would be entire visible spectrum.

No idea why this was downvoted - the article explicitly says "Their IRL Glasses, which launched on Kickstarter this week, block the wavelengths of light that comes from LED and LCD screens." This implies wavelength-based vice polarized filters. More halfassed Wired reporting I guess.

I love you too, HN.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com