iOptik contact lenses promise eyeball upgrade for immersive VR

With the promise of helping you visualize the digital world, Innovega has arrived with a stunning and creative idea that is sure to make your eyes pop out in surprise! Well, not exactly pop out but definitely get a tiny bump on them as you wear the contact lenses manufactured by the company. These iOptik lenses enhance your normal vision and make it possible for you to see augmented and virtual reality images in the same way as you would see the normal world in your day to day life - true immersive VR at the blink of the eye! After years of researching and designing better optics and eyewear, the ultimate solution has arrived, seemingly in the form of an upgrade for the eyes themselves.

iOptik

The normal way to view virtual or augmented reality is via devices that sit slickly on one's face. Since the eyes cannot focus on the images that are so close, the devices fool them into thinking that the image is actually farther away. However, these devices are quite bulky when compared to the eyes. Contact lenses have long been used to modify the eyes. They can also create a suitable modification to help the eyes see things that are very close. However, contact lenses find it difficult to keep the world in focus while helping us view extremely close things. Innovega has solved these problems in an innovative manner.

It has created a contact lens that has special filters and secondary lenses that block out all extraneous light from close-up displays other than a narrow beam that is refocused by the lens itself. Thus, digital images are presented by the micro-display in full color and these images can be viewed by the iOptik lenses without impacting the normal vision. This means that if the display that you are holding up to your eye is transparent, you will be easily able to navigate in the real world. The field of view is not obstructed or limited by the tiny images as it happens in head-mounted displays. At the same time, the virtual images too fill the field of view. 3D gaming and movie viewing thus become highly immersive and augmented reality applications get added 'dimensions'!

The focusing optics are present in the center lenslet that is present on the contact lens. Thus, the thickness of the display no longer matters in creating the 3D effect and feel. It can be as thin as necessary without any compromise on the field of view. This means we can now easily think of an IMAX-style sunglasses display with an eighty degrees field of view. This translates into viewing a 200-inches sized display from 10 feet or a 40-inches sized display from just two feet.

These magical contact lenses are being currently prototyped for military use. However, consumer versions should be ready two or three years down the line. This is awesome news for electronics manufacturers who can now think of a million ways to exploit the potential of the iOptik.

Via: Dvice