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i suppose its possible to have a screen like this, but there would need to be somewhere for all the electronics, so as far as the pic goes, i would say fantasy
No battery? I have some small graphic LCDs (found the one I mounted to a PCB, but never hooked to a microcontroller, last weekend), the have the chips on the glass, pretty cool through a microscope. But to use them, you need a few capacitors. Could almost be real, but no battery, no way to load firmware... have to doubt.
Obviously something as in the picture posted is completely unrealistic but if you think this stuff is far in the future think again. CES displayed a prototype laptop that had a transparent display, as you can see in the video it's still anything but completely transparent but the technology is very real. YouTube - CES 2010: Hands-On With Transparent Display of the Future
Perhaps I am getting old, but I would prefer a traditional screen in a PDA or Smartphone. Also I can not see the point of a semi transparent screen used in a laptop, that would drive me mad!
Perhaps useful for heads up displays, but thats about it and I still like real dials and gauges in my car
There is no point in practicality Rich, it was a technology example of what we can currently do. Imaging if these sort of devices could be built into glasses with enough resolution to give you 500 vertical and horizontal dots with something that can track eye movement and a camera facing the outside world. It allows 'augmented' reality applications to start to be practical. The device knows what our orientation is what we're looking at and can overlap information on the display.
The Droid (and android powered phone) has a couple of neat apps which use this, one is a skyview which uses it's orientation sensors to show the names of stars in the direction the camera of the phone is pointed in. Another is a barcode reading app that allows you to photograph any bardcode and display what that product is. Very simple apps but just an inkling of what's to come.
tcm, you should know this better than most.
It's about putting tools in the hands of people that know what to do with them. If it's a matter of the operator simply having access to the information in the first place seeming silly little things like a basic MPH RPM or other simple car information on a heads up (read augmented reality) will save lives, period, the time it takes a driver to turn their head to read that information is DRAMATICALLY longer than the time it takes to change focus from the 'screen' to what's beyond it.
What if we could (and we can) display trajectory information on specific objects in the field of view to a new operator over their existing view? Can you concieve of how much easier this makes it to train people? You can remove the augmentation later if you want, otherwise you could fully automate it, but as a teaching tool it's powerful.
I can see its uses, but most of the time I think such technology is wasted (like the laptop and the PDA/Phone concept) and that is what I was trying to reference .
The geek in me tends to override some of the cynical, but only occasionally =) The real technology in use is the human brain in discovering uses for what already is well known and established as far as hardcore technology itself goes. We're at least 3 or more generations behind on developing purpose for the technology we already have, let alone the bleeding edge stuff.
I was given two cheap transparent Chinese clocks. They use a transparent LCD display so their current is extremely low from one or two button battery cells. They show the time, day of the week, date, year and temperature. If there is nothing lighted behind them then the display cannot be seen.
They've been able to embed LCD modules in windshields for years, some luxury model cars have them, why it's not more common is probably more a sign of how hard it is to change things in the automotive industry, personally I think we should have been driving with nothing but hand controls for throttle break and steering for the last 5 years or so.
It's also trivial to backlight such a display with an additional light pipe layer for night driving. The cost of the windshield goes up big time though, cause it's not standard, as as mass produced as windshields are it's not so easy to tack something like that on.
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