Imagine strapping a pair of goggles over your eyes, lying back in your favorite recliner, and cruising through the Net. What about typing an email to a friend-- or even a term paper or article-- without having to sit at a desk or look at a screen?

With the latest technology from Microvision, these visions will become reality sooner than you may have thought. Virtual retinal display (VRD) technology allows users of electronic devices (like computers) to view digital visual information without the burden of a screen. The way it works is that a low-power laser beam projects thousands of color image pixels onto the retina of the viewer's eye. The source image can come from any sort of electronic device, and is seen with the aid of eyewear placed on the viewer. Through this eyewear, the image appears as if it were a mere arm's length away.

Hmmm. More than scientific fact, this sounds a bit like something out of William Gibson's Neuromancer or Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Both of these seminal cyberpunk novels present us with a world where virtual reality is nearly indistinguishable from physical reality, a world where characters enter cyberspace-- and leave their "meat" bodies behind-- simply by placing a pair of goggles over their eyes and jacking into the Net.

But-- as we're all quickly learning-- the lag-time between science fiction and scientific fact is ever-shrinking. Pretty soon, microprocessors implanted in our bodies will give us better-than-human vision, or the ability to calculate difficult math equations with ease. Great-- sign me up! Unfortunately, such inventions won't make it to store shelves before the next millennium. VRD, on the other hand, is here.

Continued...
· VRD Turns Science Fiction Into Fact

· Microvision
· Fresh Gear Poll Results
· Liquid Image M1 Personal Viewer