The eye should reflect back light similar to a parabolic dish, this concentration of reflected light must be able to be detected by the system.
You don't mean that the device will sense each eye around it, figure out which are paired up and beam a left or right channel, as appropriate, to each eye, do you? Because if you do, THAT WOULD BE FAR OUT!!
Actually, I don't think it must use (or even has available) "concentrated" reflected light from the eye. All it needs is a little algorithm for scanning the surround and identifying the location of every human eye (shouldn't be too hard using modern DSP chips from TXN or ADI). Unless it was bumping up against an upper limit of the number of channels, it wouldn't even matter if it got fooled by spots in the wall, just as long as it did acquire all the eyes. One VRD engine might even be able to deal with multiple pairs of left and right channels, assuming enough computing power (a given IMO), a mirror fast enough (they're getting there), and a light bright enough and able to be switched fast enough (ditto) .
I guess you need to be reasonably close for brightness and to keep the channels from slopping over onto the other eye.
This best version of this idea thing must be a polygonal prism (soccer ball, ±) studded with VRD engines. AND GUESS WHAT IT COULD DO AS A SENSOR? If it can acquire the eyes to feed images to them, it can acquire and record in nearly perfect fidelity the entire surround (360 deg. solid angle). Add stereo sound recording in several directions from the unit and zowie! - - complete telepresence, except for touch, taste/smell, and temp. Temp is easy. Can haptics and artifical smell be far behind?
I'm wigged by this, mebbe it shows. I see what they mean when they say there are scads of uses for the MVIS VRD engine, and I am beginning to think it and its cousins will be viewed as basic devices, like transformers, lasers, or vacuum tubes, with numerous variants and totally unforeseeable uses.
BTW, check out ipix.com (you'll need to load a viewer, but it does give an inkling of what lies ahead). Play with the "photobubbles" and then imagine it with full sound and motion. |
