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Comment by Slix | Hacker News Reader

Would this be useful for augmented-reality headsets?

Well, you get serious eye strain from focusing too close, so it would need optics to create a virtual image at a comfortable distance that your eyes can focus on.

In reality some lens(es) take the screen's light and bend it so that the angles of the light rays correspond to the light of a screen at that comfortable distance, but your eyes can't tell, just like they can't tell that the things are actually smaller when you look through a good pair of binoculars.

Assuming the transparency (article says 70-80%) can be improved for clarity and the pixels small enough then it could be great.

However you'd have to keep in mind that others looking at your face could see the same image. So don't go running that "X-RAY:make them appear naked!" app...

Sunglasses block much more than 30% though. And can have a mirrored surface so others can't see your eyes, or your creepy app notifications :)

Fair point re: sunglasses! Not sure "mirrored" would stop light being projected back through but may well help disguise it. Maybe a simple black LCD layer to block the outgoing light might help.

Also, I don't want the creepy Xray app.

But porn has this way of working into society/technology so I don't doubt for a second some form of that app will exist if it doesn't already.

I definitely would want smart glasses that don't obviously look like smart glasses!

Also it looks like a transparent phone held in front of your face without an optic

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