Fashion: Contact Lens
3D Contact Lenses   (+6)  [vote for, against]
A must have for the digital cave dweller

There are two ways for this idea to be baked so I shall halfbake them here.

First the simple way. Two contact lenses that have a polarized film on them that are each polarized to a different specific angle. They would be near full eye size with just enough lense to go past your iris so you can line up the black and red dots that calibrate the polarizing qualities of the lenses. Red dot for right eye.

(A short rundown, polarized light not matching the polarized angle of the lenses will be filtered out, thus the blurry effect when you take off your 3D glasses in a theatre.)

The more complicated way. Sandwiched liquid crystals in a lense, flip when current is running through them, effectively cutting out most of the light. The red and black dots now more than just for allignment purposes are also IR sensors and minute solar cells. When the correct signal is given off with the picture taken from the angle of one particular eye, the contact lense of the other eye is shut off. Such IR signals can be bounced off a movie screen. Sterioscopic movie cameras are baked this would just allow for a difference in the ordering of the frames in the movie.

In either case, the contact lenses you bring yourself that are equipped with 3D capabilities will be cleaner and less scratched than the ones you borrow from the theatres. Plus, they can be perscription lenses. A further benefit is that they allow for 3D happenings anywhere outside a movie theatre, wherever the right conditions would occur.
-- sartep, Oct 24 2003

US 20110298794 http://www.google.c...tents/US20110298794
Circular polarized contact lenses and methods thereof [xaviergisz, Jun 17 2014]

No need for black and red dots. Contact lenses can be weighted such that they will rotate to the correct alignment in your eye after being placed. Cat's eye costume contacts, for example, have been doing this for a while.
-- darksasami, Oct 24 2003


Yes, but cat's eyes are much cooler.
-- darksasami, Oct 24 2003


Thanks for the improvement on the first pair, weighting them is a great idea.
-- sartep, Oct 24 2003


nice.

I dont think it needs to be polarized, blacking it out with lcd would work, and it could be regulated and powered by microwaves though in a theater you can expect a fixed frame rate so an occillating circuit can be put on the lense and synced by when the microwave generater switches the power on. It might be cheaper to just have the generator pulse for sync.

different frequencies for each eye?

is enough microwave energy to power a tiny lcd (no more than a watch) dangerous?

the lcd itself only needs to be slightly larger than the puple, the outer iris portion can be clear but present for comfort (anyone who has worn hard lenses can tell you it sucks to have a tiny lense floating on your eye.)

weighted lenses are standard for folks with asygmitism (sp?), they're called torics. if they did need to be aligned, any existing manufacturer can handle it.

I think that in the near future, wavefront technology (<-BS--I don't know if wave manipulation could do it) will be able to give you stereoscopic video just by looking at it.

Borrowing lenses from the theater? not going to happen, disposables maybe.

why not use the existing glasses they sell for video games and plug it in for sync and power. wear glasses? no problem, we have these clip-ons.

I like the idea though. now how about a real display bouncing off a bunch of mirrors (to fix the focal length issue) then directed at the retina all built into a contact lense and powered by processing water on the eye into hydrogen and and using an onboard fuel cell. all while remaining 98% gas permeable. hell just tap into my optic nerve just give me my own OSD.
-- nvertigo, May 20 2004


<aside> I saw a 3D TV at CeBIT the other day, and it rocks.. the future's here</aside>
-- neilp, May 20 2004


There is no need to use special contact lenses that rest horizontally. That is not an issue with circular polarization.

"Real D uses a single projector that alternately projects the right-eye frame and left-eye frame and circularly polarizes these frames ... make sure each eye sees only "its own" picture, even if the head is tilted."
-- dinosnider, Sep 11 2008



random, halfbakery