The optical geometry seems a bit hard to make the contact lens flat enough and still get a big enough range of angles for the lasers on retina. But I’m sure some smart person can figure that part out. Maybe there’s an equivalent to DMD that can individually refract instead of reflect the beams?

It’s a bit out of my expertise. But I’d be happy to write the software if anyone wants to help build this.

I can’t see how one can control all the laser beams, though. Anyone knows?

I promise a highly debatable premise for my next Brain Interface vs. External Sensory VR post.

I agree that 3D display surfaces are going to be more popular than VR glasses. They’ll also be more popular than VR contact lenses for the same reasons. But assuming that people want private visual displays at all, glasses will be the better (perhaps only) choice for a long, long time.

Consider: sunglasses that darken in the sun have been around for decades. Do we have contact lenses that do the same? How long will it be before people routinely choose to wear photochromic contact lenses instead of sunglasses? I expect a similar lag time for any subsequent technological advances in glasses.

Maybe some people like wearing glasses, but once vision problems are routinely repaired, glasses should become somewhat niche. For the nearer term, I think ubiquitous 3D display surfaces are also going to keep VR glasses somewhat niche.

Sunglasses are popular for outdoors (at least on the west coast, not so much in NY), but I’d also much rather have a single display tech that goes with my indoor and outdoor life.

A few decades, more likely. We have rudimentary VR sunglasses now. Current contact lenses are completely passive.

I just don’t think they’ll be as good or as popular 20 years from now.

As good or as popular as what?

Sure, direct stimulation of neurons to produce high-resolution vision for the casual user is a long ways off. But so is having a contact lens that acts as both a high-resolution camera and retinal projector.

Anyway, if by "direct stimulation of the optic nerve" you mean a device implanted and trained for individual neurological differences, then yes, that’s likely in 5-10 years, though not desirable for the casual user and far from video fidelity. For people with impaired vision it’ll be a great option though.

The technology for focusing EM waves from an external (casually worn) source to control individual neurons (assuming we even know which ones and how) is likely more than 20 years out. It’s not the same as zapping a tumor. I’ll post more on that later. My wife is a neuroscientist, as it happens, so I’ll do more research on that and post again soon.

As for the “NO GLASSES” argument: I think that by the time materials technology reaches the point that all the necessary functionality can be combined in a contact-lens-sized object, we’ll have some form of direct stimulation of the optic nerve. The former task seems at least as difficult as the latter, if not more so.

While communication between them is needed for determining focal distance (easier than measuring the eye’s own lens), waiting for one "right" view direction would be worse than the perceived error with two separate ones. Filtering both would better solve that and smooth out any jitter in the sensors. Our vision systems have some built-in image stabilitzation too, especially accounting for eye movements. And I wonder if the contact lens can image reflections off the retina as well as project on it for an extremely precise callibration and image registration? That would be quite cool.

One of the causes of headaches for HMDs is the fact that the HMD assumes both eyes are in parallel gaze, focused at a fixed depth, and generally not moving. The best systems use eye tracking, but even these have a hard time pre-convolving the image so the eyes get the right focal information in the right parts of the images to avoid headaches (same problem as looking at a blurry image — worse if it’s blurry due to the wrong kind of filtering).

Anyway, the contact lenses, using lasers or holographic renderning would theoretically be able to avoid all that, or at least, they require us to solve all those problems to make them work.

The benefits of contact lenses over glasses are first: NO GLASSES. But all of the above specifics about differential vision apply too. The experience would have to be better because of how the lenses would work, better registration of real and virtual objects, better eye tracking, better focal accomodation. Then there’s what you get with your eyes closed, which glases can’t do. I personally like the idea of popping in and out of a virtual world vs. the real one by closing and opening my eyes.

I’m not sure the photovoltaics need to be so advanced as you say. As long as they’re thin and flexible, they can be sealed in a thin coat of polymer but with enough O2-sized holes in the lens itself.

How could each lens could act independently in rendering? It seems like the slightest discrepancy between the two would give the wearer headaches (not to mention ruin any stereoscopic effects).

I hadn’t thought about photovoltaic as an option. So these lenses simultaneously act as projectors, cameras, antennae (assuming that the CPU is elsewhere), and solar collectors, while remaining flexible, hydrophilic and oxygen-permeable? Wow.

And for what? Just so people don’t have to wear glasses? It just seems that external eyewear would be so much simpler.