The smallest large display would be projected straight onto your retina

Not sure what you are attempting to commercialize, but your website doesn't explain at all what you have made. Unless I'm supposed to guess it from your background picture of 3d rendered glasses with some sensors in them...

From most studies I've read on the subject, there are a couple big issues. Firstly, physics is hard. It's very difficult to get a useful amount of digital information presented that closely to your eye, where it is in focus, and comfortable to look at. Scaling up resolution beyond a low-res screen is even more difficult. Secondly, tech just isn't there yet. The closest thing I've seen in the market is Google Glass, and that was a huge flop. It also looked dorky as hell, while providing very little real value. Sure, you could read a text, if you squinted and focused your attention up and to the right, but at that point, pulling out your phone is just as easy. It it also makes you look like a strange android while taking your attention away from the real world.

For a product like this to work in the market it has to meet a lot of requirements. Resolution, invisibility (as in, it doesn't feel like you're wearing a clunky awkward device on your face), battery life, safety (you're shining light into your eyes), and provide real, useful, functionality.

Useful functionality, to make it worth caring about a device like this, is good augmented reality integration. And I mean very good. If you put the device on your face and the mapping of the real world stutters for a second, you're going to hate it and never use it - and no one will buy it.

Also, no, being able to project a little cartoon monster on the surface of a table is not "useful" AR functionality...

I don't know if you have a working project, but if you do, let me throw an idea at you. Instead of trying for an 8k projector, give me something that can handle a couple of lines of text -- say 6 lines by 25 characters, and supports a simple serial API.

Augmented reality is a great dream, but an unobtrusive heads-up-display for simple information would be revolutionary in itself. Baseline applications like a clock/calendar/compass, maybe reminders, or a no-look note-taking tool. Next-gen involving real-life closed captioning, or, when supplemented with a camera and an offline database, a basic "who is this person I am talking to" / protocol officer. Further than that a very rough "am I facing the right way" waypoint finder, etc.

If the hardware can be made cheaply for this sort of application, use cases will emerge faster than you can shake a stick at. Overlaying reality, etc., are way less interesting without huge amounts of compute.

Without knowing more about your solution I can't comment on that specifically.

I do know that the mems, fiber coupling to the mems and the waveguides necessary for wide enough FOV and variable focal length are very much bespoke right now and thus costly.

Where do you get an 8k laser pico projector? I don't think those exist on the market.

I'm fairly confused - that would be an absolutely massive breakthrough that several companies worth billions are looking for. What's the downside?

This is cool. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter (seriously).

if the image doesn't sit superimposed in the center of the vision no matter where you look, that's not a retinal display

In an interview, Jeri Ellsworth stated that when she was at Valve around 2012, they were exploring all types of near-eye displays for use in their eventual VR headset, and one of the displays they tested was a laser retinal projection display. It was specifically mentioned because she pointed out the safety concern they had with projecting a laser into the eye.

Last GDC there was a cool BCI talk from Valve[0], if I had money I would bet that the next VR headset from valve would contain some brain activity sensors.

And in this interview with IGN, Gabe Newel talks a bit about where they stand with BCI [1]. Gabe: "reading and writing to someones motor-cortex is much more of a tractable problem than making someone feel cold" The idea that different parts of the brain have different levels of interface-usability was really mind-blowing to me. I guess it's easy to fall into the trap of seeing the brain as one thing, while it's doing a lot of different things which you can interact with in different ways.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhj3C1H5JWo [1]: https://youtu.be/I0zXkwLs_lo?t=647

I liked both and they seemed like good first starts from what I saw. Never got to personally try them so my knowledge is pretty limited.

> What makes it so costly?

I've seen this question a few times, so I'll try to address...

Yes, you can take a bi-axial rastor scanning MEMS mirror (similar to what Microvision uses in their Pico projector, or those supplied by Mirrorcle), shine it into your pupil (at the appropriate) distance and BAM!, you have a point source VRD. However, I would heed the warning on Microvisions Pico projector as those ARE NOT eye safe lasers. It is nit difficult, however, to get your hands on eyesafe laser sources suitable for VRD.

However, with this simple device your FOV will be limited by the angular range of your MEMS. Your resolution will be limited by the pulse width of your synchronized laser. Most importantly though is that the exit pupil (eyebox) is very small such that when you move your eyeball a few degrees, the image will start to disappear. So, you need redundant point sources to expand the FOV and also expand the eyebox to permit eye rotation. These point sources must be spaced in a matrix of less than 2mmx2mm (the typical minimum dilation of the pupil in bright ambient settings).

That's a lot of point sources, so if you try to just use a bunch of MEMS mirrors, the driving electronics will generally occlude your natural view of the environment. That's not a problem for video see-through displays, but for optical see-through displays that's a deal breaker. So, you're back to trying to disassociate the light beam point sources from the scanning-driver electronics. The typical strategy is to use some sort of waveguide - to transport the light beam (for a given portion to the image) through a transparent material (e.g. glass), then get that beam to outcouple from the waveguide at the precise location, then have that light beam continue to raster scan. Now you need to do that for, a few hundred light beams (per eye!) to fully fill the natural human FOV with a composite image greater than 35 pixels per degree (for text readability)

All of the above items are achievable, but it requires precision optics and alignment to get everything working in harmony. Add the component of affordability, and you've got a pretty big engineering challenge on your hand.

I'm sure someone can do it. This is just one viable path to truly transformative AR displays, but I think it's the most promising.

Looks like they're dead, I wonder if the MEMS latency issues killed it.

See: Black Mirror. All technology is bad in the wrong hands. Technology is always just a tool. Smartphones and webcams don't spy on people. People spy on people. People kill each other. People steal from the poor. Et cetera. The shape of the tool can be made to be malicious. For instance, a gun is only good as a ballistics toy that you have to be very creative to use constructively, or it can be used to kill. Nuclear bombs could be used for the most efficient nuclear power generation available (haw haw but it was seriously considered [0]).

So, some questions we must always ask about a technology are:

1. How malicious is its shape?

2. Is it too powerful for use?

3. Does society have enough control over itself to actually prevent it from being made?

This is one of the lines of thinking you see around AI, as the emergence of a powerful AI is seen as a fast approaching inevitability.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gnome

If we are going by analogy, that would be more like plugging the USB camera directly into your CPU bus instead of USB. Your eye is a fine interface. Messing with the literally wet neural interface sounds very complicated.

There’s lots of stuff on BCI. People have been pursuing it for a decades and technology is maturing into handling the quantity of data. The limiting factor is the (apparently) obvious: skulls are thick. You get a terribly weak signal through a skull. Who’s going to get a sub-skull implant so they can play VRChat 2?

I would keep an eye on Valve.

I don't think they're anywhere near doing it yet but Gabe Newell heavily implied that he wants to steer Valve in this direction in his recent interview about Half Life: Alyx on IGN.

This is what neuralink is doing.

It's analogous to in-ear monitors.

https://blog.64audio.com/protecting-your-hearing-while-weari...

> Most pro-level IEMs are capable of producing SPLs (sound pressure level) well above 120db. A phantom power spike or a microphone falling on the floor can easily produce a signal loud enough to damage your hearing.

The article above recommends putting a brickwall limiter on the monitor mix. However, a brickwall will only do so much for a sudden screech centered at 3kHz, right in the zone where human hearing is the most sensitive. And what if the limiter gets disabled? Murphy's Law guarantees that at some point the safety system will fail.

The only way to guarantee that devices like these won't emit signals which damage your sensory organs is to make them physically incapable of producing such signals.

Sure. It's as implausible as (say) your car not starting, or a water pipe bursting, or your phone arriving DOA.

Personally, as cool as it sounds, I'll pass.

For acute poisoning. You're forgetting chronic poisoning, such as heavy metal poisoning.

Which is more what I was talking about, low exposure levels over regular long term periods.

Regular screens and displays cause eye strain and retina damage over long terms as it is.

Ah, good catch. I skimmed for the Bosch product but didn't see it the first time.