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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

For a long long time, science fiction movies have used transparent displays to seem more "futuristic." However, actual transparent displays have been underwhelming in practice.

This technology is being use by Xaomi to make a "transparent TV"[1] which in theory you will be able to buy. (I realize that not all of these sorts of announcements survive until actual product shipment).

It will be interesting to see one of these "in the flesh" as it were, I'm at a loss what you'd have behind it that wouldn't make it really really annoying to watch, but the cool factor could be right up there.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21363861/xiaomi-oled-tv-t...

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Yes, I worked on a video game that was in the near future and had transparent and semi-transparent screens everywhere. I spent a lot of time adding new rendering features to the engine that did proper transparency sorting, blur/darkening passes and helping artists tweak materials to make them more readable. At multiple points in the project I wanted the art direction to switch to opaque screens. Not only because of the technical effort (in many ways that was fun) but just because how impractical they were in many scenarios.

Tangentially related, the "futuristic" displays in video games and movies and TV often look worse than what we'd see in real life.

Sometimes it's a hologram, which would be cool even if the fidelity were a bit shit, but it's interesting that art directors make them pretty bad looking even in fiction, presumably as a cue to the viewer that it's a hologram. Any fiction that portrays holograms as opaque and convincing usually plays it for surprise, because standard-issue holograms in fiction aren't convincing.

I was particulary offended by this in the recent Star Trek: Picard.

In previous shows the Federation has demonstrated the ability to create totally flawless and interactable holograms.

Yet somehow in this show everyone has switched over to glowly flickering interfaces hovering over your desk.

In the headquarters of Star Fleet, a giant hologram of a star ship is in the atrium, and it glitches out for a moment as the camera looks at it just to let the viewer know it's a hologram.

Not only is there no reason for holograms to glitch out all the time assuming that the technology could be created, but this TV series has already demonstrated their ability to do this much better!

ST:Picard and ST:Discovery are unfortunately both regressions where it comes to ST wordbuilding and style. Frankly, Lower Decks - currently airing animated "Rick&Morty meets ST:TNG" - does it better. Holograms there look and behave like they should.

I've heard, and the art director on the game followed the same philosophy, that art directors tend to make future tech look worse\glitchy on purpose so it's very clear to the audience that it's "tech". Technology that for all intents and purposes works mostly flawlessly looks a little too much like magic to audiences I guess? Like really you'd just want to have a person show up and look like they were there, but that might not read clearly as a hologram to a 20th or early 21st century movie goer so they're monochrome blue, flickering and noisy with clear projector rays. I'd like to see a sci-fi game or movie where all of the tech mostly worked flawlessly except maybe in some exceptional situations.

isn't that like most episodes of STTNG? All the fuckups are becuse exceptional situations, usually involving tachyons.

Or many others did too. Earth Final Conflict for one, the hand tablets. Hell Tech works amazing in black mirror, one might argue WAY TOO WELL.

Right. Tech in Star Trek is part of the world, protagonists are living and breathing it, so it's shown as mostly working and not exceptional to people on-screen. Still, usually the viewer is told that something is a piece of tech through sounds and blinking lights.

As for Star Trek holograms, when the episode doesn't want to "play for surprise", it usually briefly shows the hologram appearing - which uses its very specific VFX, so that it's immediately recognized as a hologram (and not confused with teleportation, which uses a different style of VFX).

I thought the Hologram technology in Blade Runner 2049 was pretty "flawless". The most interesting thing for that movie was that you see different levels of hologram technology.

The hologram that follows the main characters seems to be pretty high tech, and looks flawless. And they show the hologram stuff by having her move through objects.

But when the main characters walks around the city, you see hologram commercials that are the size of buildings. Those don't look lifelike. They're transparent and have limited colors.

The "transparent TVs" shipping last year seemed ok.

From the Linus Tech Tips hands on review of one (Dec 2018), they seem like they're already useful for some scenarios. eg shop windows:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yxs4IS9HXU

That is pretty cool. I hadn't thought what it would be like with two of these back to back in a gaming situation.

From the video you linked the opacity seems to be much better than I expected. I'm hoping one or more of the high end TV shops put this into their show room so I can see it in person.

If creatively combined with the new "transparent Loos" in Japan, they could enable some pretty pretty funny pranks:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/18/loo-with-a-vie...

Why not combine the two? Have your traditional opaque displays, then overlay the transparent system. I imagine this could be useful in court, allowing both the prosecution and defense to scribble on video evidence presented to the jury to point things out and highlight important bits, without ever modifying the underlying evidence video. Kinda similar to how sports commentators will use video overlay to scribble on replay segments to point out the movements of the various players to highlight why those movements were important and contributed to the outcome.

Or double layered: Transparent black LED behind transparent OLED

The black LED pixels can supplement the dark/opaque colors, while simultaneously supporting transparent colors with OLED pixels (i.e. like the png format).

I think it would be nice to have a transparent oled + e-ink display. Sort of an indoor-outdoor display.

Interesting. My Palm V (palm pilot) had a nice transreflective display 20 years ago. It was great in direct sunlight. I often think of that when using devices that can’t crank up the nits enough to compete with sunlight.

> science fiction movies have used transparent displays

I always figured this was for cinematographic reasons. It lets you see what’s on the screen and the character’s face simultaneously.

It would be cool if they could be used to implement a wearable HUD-style/face mask interface, like Google Glass but where the entire lens is the screen.

You end up needing more complex optics to focus the image comfortably onto your retina at a distance that feels comfortable. An OLED display on a glasses lens with no other optics would just look like a bright blur between you and the rest of the world.

> It will be interesting to see one of these "in the flesh" as it were

Transparent OLEDs are not that new, they have been around for a while. See this Thermostat by Johnson COntrols.

https://www.amazon.ca/Thermostat-Johnson-Controls-Translucen...

Well for one it would be great to place on mirrors to "try on" clothes, or any kind of augmented reality like that. They can also be placed on your windshield for directions and other info like your speed. Gaming monitors with "designer" internals so that when your screen is off you can see the cool inside, similar to some watches with exposed gears.

you don't need a mirror for that. Just use a camera and a tv.

You can already do the first one, just put a mirror in front of a regular display. The light from the display will be visible through the mirror.

Yup, Tony Stark's transparent phone looks futuristic:

http://media.comicbook.com/uploads1/2015/01/tony-stark-trans...

Yep, contrast and color accuracy are terrible problems to solve. It would be easier to fake it with a camera on the back of the phone... like Merged Reality.

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