Talk:Virtual retinal display

Disputes
I would dispute the claim of "able to replicate a full-sized monitor on a small device". This breaks the laws of optics. The apparent angular size of the image cannot be bigger than the actual angle subtended by the device at the eye lens, unless the device is so close to the eyeball as to negate the focusing effect of the eye lens. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.129.184.12 (talk • contribs)

So this appears in focus no matter where you're looking? — Omegatron 20:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

As user "Themfromspace" put it, the recent changes are "seemingly promotional and uncited batch of information," which seems about right. If there's no reliable source, it shouldn't be included. Likewise the tone is wholly inappropriate. Stuff like "On the contrary that people could think, this technology is not at all dangerous for our eye" is completely non-encyclopedic - it sounds like a ham-fisted broken-English sales pitch. 65.161.114.224 (talk) 03:14, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think like you, unidentified editor that sign with a IP address. If you think that something is wrong, you can change it. But I don't understand why you delete all my contribution. If you know how write it better, just do it, and no delete my work.

I'm learning English, and I haven't a lot of language resource for writing. You can help me better if you just change my wrong sentences.--Albertcobo (talk) 23:48, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I can't fix what I can't understand - it's not just a matter of moving words around here or there, much of it is unintelligible - I can't tell what you're trying to say. In the cases where it's fairly clear what you're trying to do, the content is often already present in the article before you edited it.  Also, since no sources have been provided for any of the changes, it's impossible for any other editor to accurately revise things.


 * But all that isn't actually helping. Here's what we can do: if you provide your source for the additions you've made (how the technology works and applications of it), I'll copy edit it into something workable.  The edits to the lead are not salvageable - even in they were in perfect English, they're not appropriate. 65.161.114.224 (talk) 16:21, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I put my sources in the end of the article: Catalan Wikipedia and an article called In the eye of the beholder. I can't also understand why a Catalan article is longer than a English article, when the Catalan has only ten millions of speakers and English has hundreds of millions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.219.16.11 (talk) 13:54, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The "Eye of the Beholder" one works, but wikis, by definition, not reliable (see this). If it had citations, those would work, but it doesn't appear to.  I'll take a close look at the "Eye" one and incorporate the relevant info, but it won't be until Monday. 65.161.114.224 (talk) 18:06, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Having trouble parsing this sentence
"On the other hand, although the power required is low, light must be collected and focused down in a point. This is easy to do with a laser, but not so easy with an LED. Even so, advances in LED technology have been needed to further concentrate the light coming from these devices."

(Emphasis added) Huh?? This doesn't parse, what does it mean... Xamuel (talk) 03:35, 5 April 2010 (UTC)


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsing —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.63.22 (talk) 01:02, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

LEDs
I'm not sure why this entire article talks about LED which is an incoherent light source, also all research, prototypes and papers use Lasers. 93.97.63.22 (talk) 22:43, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Military Usage
I've amended the military usage section, the helmet mounted systems referred to (Stryker commander's helmet and aviation applications) are all based on conventional displays, not laser projection based VRDs. VRDs have been investigated for military use, but haven't made the step to operational systems. 77.96.255.55 (talk) 12:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

iPhone usage
This is not the display tech used in the new iPhone, correct? VRD projects directly into your eyeball. matt kane&#39;s brain (talk) 17:50, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Right. It's been removed and added to this article continuously since yesterday. I believe that some mention be made here in some form or another, since many people will undoubtedly end up here in search of information of the iPhone. The text that is there now is incorrect, according to this article at least. --Kotu Kubin (talk) 19:22, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I think it is important to keep this here. I came to this page wondering what a retina display was because of the iphone and it was helpful to know virtual retina display and retina display are different things. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.144.216.215 (talk) 23:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Phew... As it seems Mr. Jobs's improper usage of technical terms resulted in just another marketing tidbit for Apple. I would like to see this removed - even if "people will undoubtedly end up here in search of information" Zuckerberg (talk) 09:22, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Should there be a redirect at the top of the page saying Not to be confused with iPhone retina display? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.22.127.15 (talk) 15:14, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * The problem with removing it is that people will search for Retina Display and find this article. As a result, they will think that the iPhone has a virtual retina display, when it actually just has a screen that has the maximum number of pixels that is useful to a person of average vision when viewed from a foot away.  A disambiguation link (I'm assuming that's what is meant by a redirect) would be increasing the marketing effect while not providing any new information.  This should be debunked here rather than merely on the iPhone 4 page.  Simply saying that the iPhone display is only a high resolution display and not a virtual retina display would be sufficient.  Another possibility would be to create a new article on retina displays that explains the actual usage of the term with a disambiguation link to that at the top of this article.  The PC World article is a useful citation but more dealing with retina displays outside of the Apple context would be helpful for such an article.  Mdfst13 (talk) 16:31, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

4G or 5G smartphone usage
I find it logical that virtual retinal displays should be included in 4G and especially 5G smartphones. Has anyone found any research article supporting that idea? In that case we can mention that in related Wikipedia articles. Mange01 (talk) 13:13, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

"Why VRDs" section reads like Ad copy?
Maybe it's just me, but the section "Why VRDs", as of r431206703 reads as if it's been lifted from an advertising brochure. In particular: What if you could bypass defects in the eye's optical system, such as damaged cornea and lens and reduced retinal sensitivity? What if you could remove the problems of the display environment, such as ambient brightness, angle-of-view and display brightness? What if you could naturally augment the image you see naturally with other information?

This is the promise of a new display device called the Virtual Retinal Display or VRDs. and "Eye tracking is currently used in advanced still and video cameras for focusing on the object you wish to record. Coordinating augmented visuals from the VRD and real world scenes with eye tracking is an exciting I/O combination."

Probably not helped by the lack of citations. (One at the end of the section, as an afterthought, which looks like it was just thrown on to attempt to make it look like verifiable content?)

86.112.105.67 (talk) 17:11, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Contradiction in article
"(However, the portion of the visual area where imagery appears must still intersect with optical elements of the display system. It is not possible to display an image over a solid angle from a point source unless the projection system can bypass the lenses within the eye.)[1]"

and

"More recently, there has been some interest in VRDs as a display system for portable devices such as cell phones, PDAs and various media players. In this role the device would be placed in front of the user, perhaps on a desk, and aimed in the general direction of the eyes. The system would then detect the eye using facial scanning techniques and keep the image in place using motion compensation. In this role the VRD offers unique advantages, being able to replicate a full-sized monitor on a small device."

contradict each other.

Do or dont VRDs allow the solid angle of the display to be wider than the solid angle of the device itself? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.193.3.157 (talk) 20:39, 11 July 2011 (UTC)


 * The first sentence is correct. A ray of light cannot come shooting up out of a cell phone sitting on a desk, then suddenly change direction in midair (in the absence of some reflecting, refracting or diffusing surface there) and head straight for your eyeball, thus seeming to come from some other location. The laws of optics remain in force. Now, if someone opted to have the lens in their eye surgically removed, or wear an extremely powerful negative lens that produced the same effect, it would be possible to "paint" an image directly on the retina and produce the illusion described, but then the rest of the world would all be an undecipherable blur. It would seem much easier to have a tiny, featherweight, energy-efficient high-resolution OLED panel sitting above each eye, and view the images in them by means of transparent curved reflectors in a comfortable sunglasses-like frame, which would have the effect of superimposing a seemingly very large and 3-D-ready hi-res monitor on the still-clearly-visible real world. Clunky, uncomfortable, overpriced lo-res head-mounted video displays have been available for many years, but they are the veriest dinosaurs compared to what is already possible now. The subject of "virtual retinal displays" seems to be a magnet for a great deal of hype and nonsense. A pair of binoculars can be said to "project images directly into the eye", too. AVarchaeologist (talk) 11:19, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

AirScouter? Really?
I don't see any evidence that airscouter is a VRT; am I missing something? - rlpowell 12.199.7.82 (talk) 02:02, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Optics of projection to the retina - unclear - recommend deletion unless fixable
I am qualified to comment as an experienced optics and optical systems engineer and researcher.

A concern here is WP:VERIFIABILITY and WP:SELFPUBLISH. The first reference (Tidwell et al.) appears to be to the author's own work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jabeles (talk • contribs) 16:57, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

This article should be deleted unless the optics of projection to the retina can be explained within a suitable period of time (I would suggest two or three months, maximum, to give proponents of the article a chance to fully respond).

Right now virtual retinal displays, which are not the kind used in Google Glass, are purely science fiction.

To a non-expert, it may seem possible that an optical beam generated by a single small laser, or three such lasers, can be focused to a few-micron-diameter spot at a retina through the natural lens of a mammalian eye, and scanned. The statements suggesting that this is possible are at best glib. At worst they are deliberately misleading, or, even worse, fraudulent. (Companies may have already been been formed and/or received funding based on such statements with insufficient due diligence.) The popular conception of a "laser beam" (imagined as being emitted from a ray gun or a laser pointer) supports this error. There are references to the virtual retinal display concept in the news and quasi-news, quasi-entertainment media. Journalists may well consult Wikipedia for background. It's important that this article not mislead.

In reality, there does not appear to be any practical method to both steer the incoming beam from a pair of glasses, and simultaneously maintain its alignment to the pupil of the eye. There are similar problems in the case of contact lenses. Several serious obstacles to realizing virtual retinal displays using a fixed pair of glasses may be described as follows:

(1) what method will be used to efficiently collimate and steer each of three (RGB) laser beams? (2) how will the diameter of each laser beam be adjusted to match (or be contained within) the mammalian pupil? (3) how will stray light, i.e., laser light that does not enter the pupil, be prevented from reflecting off the iris (of varying size depending on ambient lighting) and creating glare for the user? (4) how will the position of each laser beam, not merely the angle, be dynamically adjusted as the beam is scanned? (5) how will the position of each laser beam be dynamically adjusted as the eyeball rotates in its socket?

These concerns, and/or other similar ones, absolutely must be addressed. If they can be suitably addressed, OK. But I seriously doubt whether that will prove to be the case.

Yes, Wikipedia articles are supposed to be accessible to high school students, but these concerns go to the heart of whether virtual retinal displays are possible or, if possible, whether they are at all practical. It is simply science fiction — as it now stands.

You're welcome.

Jabeles (talk) 18:11, 5 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you.


 * My cynical take on this subject, nearly three years old now, may be found two sections above and there seems to have been no related development of any great significance since then, apart from the advent of Google Glass to serve as a modest demonstration of the alternative approach. Credit me for at least removing a description of a cell phone with a magic laser beam that projected an IMAX-like display into the user's eye from several feet away, an optical wonder from the same alternate universe where images protrude from holograms viewed edge-on. The last I heard, the only proof-of-concept prototype was a contact lens that projected exactly one pixel onto the wearer's retina, with no means of scanning it, but perhaps by now a hi-res 8x8 array has been achieved.


 * IMO the article needs to exist, both because the subject, however overhyped it may be, is now more than sufficiently notable to justify it and because it could serve as a valuable corrective to the nonsense now proliferating unchecked elsewhere online, but it needs to be stripped down to a description of the concept, the physical constraints, and the actual state of the art. The block diagram fluffed up with technobabble (e.g. "Photon Generation" instead of "Light Source") seems designed mainly to look scientific and impress the impressionable, and the various items of vaporware should be clearly labeled as such or entirely removed if very spammy.


 * Some of the systems alluded to simply image an external screen onto the retina and by definition do not belong here at all.


 * It ought to be noted that while the display seen by the user may reasonably be described as a "virtual" one, the actual image formed on the retina is most definitely a real image, despite what someone has seen fit to declare ("No real image is ever produced with the VRD"), not a virtual image. The current linking of the term "virtual image" to the "virtual reality" article is an interesting symptom of this confusion.


 * Given the size and high quality of the auxiliary optics that would be required, the advantages of any VRD which is not in the form of a contact lens (or implanted into the eye) seem very questionable to me. On the other hand, at the risk of invoking that current king of the buzzwords, "nanotech", it seems likely that a contact lens which overcomes the obstacles you enumerate will eventually be practical, as adequate built-in scanning means (or even a very large number of individual beams) are certainly possible in theory, sensors and an on-board computer can enable rapid response to changes in head position, eye orientation and lens focus, dynamic adjustment of the beam(s) can compensate for opthalmic defects, etc., but that day is not yet here or on the immediate horizon and this is, indeed, an encyclopedia, not a science-fiction magazine. AVarchaeologist (talk) 00:06, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Avegant Glyph, VRD?
Is there anything that classifies this display as a VRD other than the makers of the display claiming that it is one? There is no coherent light source, no optical scanning, etc. The optical path seems to be identical to any other HMD, except that a LED needs to be shone onto the DMD. 100.9.139.246 (talk) 03:12, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Virtual retinal display. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20121122080922/http://www.brother.com/en/news/2011/airscouter/index.htm to http://www.brother.com/en/news/2011/airscouter/index.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20130616115002/http://www.brother.co.uk/g3.cfm/s_page/888150/s_name/Airscouterhome1/s_level/264620/ to http://www.brother.co.uk/g3.cfm/s_page/888150/s_name/Airscouterhome1/s_level/264620

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How come none of the findings from the following research article were included on this Wiki page?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13116669_The_virtual_retinal_display_A_new_technology_for_virtual_reality_and_augmented_vision_in_medicine

"4. Conclusions The VRD is a safe new display technology. The power levels recorded from the system are several orders below the power levels prescribed by the American National Standard. The VRD readily creates images that can be easily seen in ambient roomlight and it can create images that can be seen in ambient daylight. The combination of high brightness and contrast and high resolution make the VRD an ideal candidate for use in a surgical display. Further, tests show strong potential for the VRD to be a display technology for patients with low vision." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kutasthanos (talk • contribs) 22:33, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Possible new sources
Would it be appropriate to include information from http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-virtual-retinal-display-market-2016-2025---vrd-technology-is-expected-to-commercialize-in-2016-and-expected-to-be-worth-usd-230-million-564347111.html and http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/tpvcgn/virtual_retinal, or is it too recent? I would be bold and add it in, but I would probably too closely paraphrase the material. Me, Myself &#38; I (☮) (talk) 19:47, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Probably time to start over
The concept described and depicted here-- a scanning point-source emitter positioned outside the eyeball that projects a raster display onto the retina of the user-- is impossible. It violates the laws of optics. The lens in the eye prevents this concept from working. When the emitter is at the eye's plane of focus, all photons it emits (among those that go through the lens of the eye, at least) will land on the same point on the retina. Scanning across the lens won't accomplish anything. When the emitter is out of focus (when it's too close to the eye, for example), its output can be scanned over the area of its circle of confusion on the retina, but this is a very small area; for me, a point source at one inch from my eye when my eye is focused at infinity produces a circle of confusion with approximately the same solid angle as a one-inch circle at a distance of two feet, or roughly 0.001 steradian (I invite you to test this for yourself).

The only way to create a display that appears to cover, say, 0.2 steradians (roughly the apparent size of the average computer monitor at typical working distances) of the human visual field is to use some kind of lens system or projection screen that ACTUALLY covers 0.2 steradians of the human visual field. This is how the traditional head-up display works. This is how the hypothetical contact-lens display would work, though that still requires light field display technology at a level not yet practical.

In short, "retina scanning" offers us no shortcuts, no way to make a tiny display produce big images.

Well, except one. You could literally cut into the eyeball and install the scanning point-source emitter inside it. That method would work fine, but I don't think much of its commercial potential.

Anyway, one thing I hope we've all learned from editing this article (and I've edited it many times over the years, only to see every sensible thing I wrote deleted or distorted into absurdity) is that optical science is almost an ideal growth medium for the Dunning–Kruger effect. Keeping this article on a firm scientific footing will require firm editing. I recommend starting with Select All, Delete. 64.125.50.162 (talk) 15:22, 15 August 2019 (UTC)