Please log into your subscription account to focus
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
43 points (97.8% liked)
Positive News
137 readers
98 users here now
A community centered on positive news from all over the world.
founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS
Average ADHD experience, but still without the focus
Neat idea. They have to solve all-day battery life and reliability with no detectable heat before they make sense as a product, though. Given the need to constantly run sensing I will believe it when I see it. But I do want to see it. And the item they aim to replace is already incredibly expensive, so there's some runway here.
Even manual focus would be nice tho. Like when you tap the side of it, it activates the sensing and adjusts
or like just have it be mechanical, please
any sort of electronics in glasses sounds miserable to me
You can't possibly do what they're doing mechanically, so that's off the table. The question is whether you can solve the electronics issues correctly. I don't mind putting my glasses on a wireless charger overnight, but I am sure not going to stop what I'm doing in the middle of the day to recharge my eyeballs.
If we ignore the location focus you could have two lenses where you moving a lever rotates one compared to the others focal length. Basically how binocular focusing works, or camera Lens focusing. They are just going to be coke bottle bottom lenses Lol
Well, yeah, but we already know how to do bifocals and progressive lenses, which are basically... well, that but stacked on top of each other.
The point is to replace the need to look through a subsection of the lens to see up close for a solution that will give you the ability to switch depending on whether you're focusing close or far. That's a cool idea and fundamentally different to current solutions.
If they can do it automatically I'm not sure why you'd want that. When would you have a need to get your glasses to focus on something your eyes are not?
Because of the reasons described in the comment i responded to...
When I want to focus past something that is obscuring my view.
But the feature as described is not that it focuses on what's in front of you, it's that it looks at your eyes and focuses to match what they're doing. Presumably if you're looking at something past you they'd focus on the far field, same as your eyes.
I mean, it's a lot to put on the quality of detection there, but if it works it should work like you expect without having to manually rack focus on your eyeballs.
Except my point was actually that ANY automated system WILL occasionally produce an error, or focus on the wrong thing in this case. And that was a specific response to your specific comment, not a critique of any attempt at automating parts of a system that will be an extension of my body. In my experience, it's better for my parts to favor reliablity over perfection in design anyway.
That is... just not true.
I mean, any automated system can spit out an error, but it erroring out once in a million times can be trivial if it's refreshing the tracking multiple times per second. There are plenty of automated systems that work reliably. Or reliably enough that having a button you push to manually adjust the thing is itself way slower than waiting for the device to sort itself out.
Either way we don't know until they have a prototype people can test. It could go either way. But to be clear, it could go EITHER way. It could very well just be more reliable than a manual override. That's definitely a possibility.
Looks at something at a different distance
ENHANCE!!!
Sign me up please
Ill keep my manual glasses, these look awful
Do they? How?
I mean, They don't look like anything yet, but what is jumping out at you as being "awful"?
The idea of a pair of glasses having latency, needing to be charged, and most likley requiring a mobile app is absolutely absurd
I mean, you made up the mobile app thing, that's nowhere in the article. I would assume that's nto a thing, considering it'd require the glasses to also include wireless connectivity, which in turn would require more battery capacity to power an antenna and a transmitter.
Ditto for latency. I have to assume there's some, but we won't know until they have some working device for people to test. I've used eye tracking in VR headsets and you can't typically see it unless you're looking for it (turns out your eyeballs have latency too, go figure). More importantly, this is a tradeoff. Bifocals are far from perfect. My understanding is you can train yourself to work with them, but they require a lot of adjustment. There is every chance something like this could have fewer downsides and be more reliable to use.
You're definitely going to have to charge them and I'd say a full day battery is the bare minimum acceptable spec. We'll see if they can get them there without a bulky, heavy battery that gets hot in use. That is a big challenge. And, again, we won't know it's solvable until someone demos a prototype.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this on paper, but we don't know if it's doable.
I personally own a VR headset (Quest 2), honestly the latency and even low resolution isnt a big deal for me. I just think that some things (such as a pair of glasses), not only dont need smart functionality but I would actively rather have it be stable and reliable. There might be a situation where smart glasses can exist alongside traditional glasses but they're certainly not a replacement.
These are not smart glasses, these are taking one piece of the spec of some HMDs (eye tracking, presumably) and applying it to a sci-fi feeling adjustable lens. You're extrapolating based on things sounding the same when they are not the same.
That doesn't mean it'll work, or that it'll work well, it means that the pieces of this tech we have suggest the latency of the detection wouldn't be a big deal. We don't know how long it takes the lens to adjust. Still faster than my neck, I bet.
A solution for people who have different correction needs for short and long ranges is not a solved problem. Don't let the luddism and technophobia modern online spaces promote create the assumption that any technical advancement is a net negative.
My probelm is putting too much technology in critical areas where they seemingly arent needed. Its just hard to be optimistic about the future of technology when everything is AI or enshittified garbage. I find it hard to belive this won't jump on the same trends with forced online connectivity and a built in AI assistant. Theres a certain level of comfert in manual objects that dont need software updates or to even be charged. Sure it might help me (I wear glasses), but I worry about purchasing devices that I fundamentally do not own
OK, but where are they "seemingly not needed"? A lens that can serve people who have different needs for close and long distances IS needed. Which is why we invented bifocals and progressive lenses, which everybody admits are a workaround.
A better prosthesis is a great application for technology. If they can make what they say they're making that is a definite need and a good application.
You are filling in the blanks about software updates, mobile applications and not owning the device. There is nothing to suggest that is the case here any more than with any other prosthesis that uses a computer. There's also nothing to say they won't go that route, but I refuse to start from the position that I don't want to improve medical technology because I'm too jaded by people making AI juicers with a subscription business model.
I suppose ultimately my problem isnt with the technology but with capitalism. The system where technological growth is second to infinite economic growth. Thats why many people like me fear the advance of technology. Because they do not advance technology for the common good but for the good of capital. Because of that they're willing to do dangerous things in the namd of profit.
Ultimately your problem is you don't like new tech and want to be angry at it so you try to make up a reason.
Latency didn't work because they're not VR glasses? Let's blame capitalism.
As if people who make regular pairs of glasses aren't getting paid already and are totally doing it for the good of all.
OK, but that seems unrelated to the subject. If you're going to reject any tech project regardless because it's been spawned by a capitalist system I'm not going to be super interested in your take about the tech, I'm more interested in your take about capitalism. Otherwise we're stuck hearing the same speech about how bad tech is over and over again when it's really not about tech.
To put it another way: get back to me on the tech once you fix capitalism. In the meantime we're both stuck here and I will continue to exercise some care in separating good developments from bad ones.
Heres the thing, good technological development is possible under capitalism. Thats called open source software, its the only thing that keeps me exited in technology (advancements like Risc-V). I suppose I should have started with this, I dont trust companies and I especially dont trust proprietary hardware. Yes I understand thats ironic since no hardware is truly open source but I do think that we should focus on hardware that's as open as possible.
OK, we should have hardware that is as open as possible. Do I take it that you have a phone without a Risc CPU and a PC with a GPU of some kind in it?
It's one thing to have an endgame to strive for, but that doesn't mean you live like a hermit and dissociate from all technology that is proprietary until an alternative exists.
Otherwise yeah, the other guy is probably right, you make yourself sound like someone who has decided the anger is the point and will work backwards from there to whatever gives them a chance to shake their fist at clouds online.
They look like standard horn rimmed glasses, I prefer the look of my Lindbergs, but they don't look awful
They don't look like anything. I assume the pictures in the article are mockups and prototypes. Who knows what the final product would be like.