Camera Phones Plaza

Are you searching for a way to look like Geordie LaForge in Star Trek or Cyclops from the X-men team, but you don’t really want to appear as a weirdo? Well, now you can do all that with a QVGA display embedded in a pair of cool glasses from Sony.

That’s right, Sony has recently showcased a pair of eyeglasses that can display full-color video images in front of your eyes. The prototype demoed for the press supports a QVGA resolution, weighs 120g, has 3mm thick lenses, and a contrast ratio of 50:1. You might say that te contrast ratio is too low, but remember that you still have to see through the lenses in order to know where you are heading.Sony claims that their new pair of glasses uses a proprietary holographic waveguide and an optical engine made up of a LED light source and a transparent LCD panel. Video coming from the optical engine is reflected by a film in the holographic waveguide. It then bounces off a glass plate and is diffracted to the eyes by a second holographic film layer.

Even though the technology isn’t new and there are other similar solutions that should appear in the near future, Sony wants to further promote their glasses and even intends to slim the prototype down to 80g and make the lenses transmissive enough to be used in dark places. The Japanese company thinks these glasses will be commercialized by 2010.