> It still needs to obtain the necessary medical certifications in order to sell its glasses and get all the production pieces in place
Oh, ok. I hope they have enough funding to last till the FDA clears them, in 2030 :/
The same organization which allows any snake oil to be marketed as long as they say it’s a “supplement” will hold a pair of glasses up for years, as though there could be a hidden danger to a lens that can change to a second prescription.
I'm under 40, recently had cataract surgery to address mild cararacts, and deeply regret that choice. I strongly feel I lost more than I gained, and now need to carry multiple pairs of glasses every time I go out to engage many common activities.
Unfortunately I don't have presbyopia at all (my surgery still left me myopic) and my inability to change focus distance is drastically more severe than what happens naturally with aging. This first generation of IXI glasses won't be useful to me.
You can swap out your default lenses with multifocal lenses... I use multifocal contact lenses, and my wife and my mother both had the surgery. My wife got the panoptix (no need for glasses at all) and my mother got vivity (just need reading glasses). At night, there are halos with the panoptix lenses (same with the multifocal contact lenses), the severity is not always the same per-person, and it bothers some people more than others (interferes with night driving), but it's an option. Yes, it's another surgery, but depending on your ability to afford it, and the amount it bothers you, it is still an option. From my point of view (admittedly, with contact lenses), going from three different pairs of glasses (vision, vision+reading, plain contact lenses+reading) to contact lenses with no glasses at all was just unquestionably worth it.
I'm unfortunately not a candidate for multifocal intraocular lenses due to other problems with my eyes, otherwise I would have gone with them for the first surgery.
Multifocal contacts are probably not a good long-term fit for those same reasons, and there's the same problem with progressive lenses in glasses. Old-school bifocals are okay, but limited in the usual way.
I am not so sure about the eye tracking and autofocus stuff, but would love a simple focus knob on the frames to adjust instead of changing to a different pair of glasses. I suspect the tracking and focusing electronics must be somewhat clumsy and a battery life of a single day sounds suboptimal for me.
Putting two adaptive dynamic systems next to each other is tricky. Your eyes and these glasses could easily create a positive or negative feedback loop or begin oscillating. So while cool I hope they have some experienced controls people on staff to detect and prevent such things.
In the last two to three years, I've hit a point where I need to take off my glasses (near-sighted, can't see things far away) to read my phone. I can still make out the text with them on, but it's physically uncomfortable and holding it at a distance helps.
I've been thinking about the existence of bifocals and how they aren't ideal as I come to terms with the inconvenience of removing my glasses and putting them back on repeatedly as I task switch. This sounds pretty great and I hope it's not smoke and mirrors (given enough time, science fiction tends to become reality, so I'm hopeful).
I'm at the same point you are, and a couple years ago I ended up getting bifocals, and let me tell you it's absolutely worth it! I ended up getting "multi-tasking bifocals" (what my glasses place called them), which are basically normal glasses with the lower area a second prescription for reading the phone. There are others that have 3 areas (reading at the bottom, distance a small spot in the middle, and then a middle ground elsewhere).
I didn't really want to get bifocals because it's what old people wear ;-). But it's so much better with them.
The glasses place (CostCo Optical) guy was kind of a jerk about it, all but saying "you're going to wreck your car if you use these for anything but at your desk", but I just "yeah, yeah"ed him, I like my prescription dialed back a bit from max power for day-to-day use.
If you can afford it, maybe give them a try? Zenni and other onlines might make them affordable enough to just try?
Honestly, even if they could shift focus via some sort of "command" - a muscle tick or something - that would be a game changer as it is. Every time I play D&D, I have to keep taking off and putting on my glasses so I can read my notes, and see my players' faces clearly.
(I'm aware of the multifocal glasses mentioned in the article; they didn't work well for me.)
I'm in a similar situation but found that getting "computer glasses" made which use the near prescription (and are not for long distance) work well for this. (I run D&D as well lol) I could not handle multifocal at all, was disorienting for me.
As a glasses wearer I'm looking forward to this tech. I like the idea of natural, seamless auto focusing, and as a future fantasy, a simple, toggleable overlay of info would be nifty.
Going out foraging and being able to identify plants and fungi by simply resting my vision on something for a pause is the sci Fi tech I actually want
My understanding of those is that contact lenses work the same way that multifocal glasses work, with the added disadvantage that every time you blink, it takes them a second to re-align correctly. So this should be completely different, if it works.
Looks super cool!
> It still needs to obtain the necessary medical certifications in order to sell its glasses and get all the production pieces in place
Oh, ok. I hope they have enough funding to last till the FDA clears them, in 2030 :/
The same organization which allows any snake oil to be marketed as long as they say it’s a “supplement” will hold a pair of glasses up for years, as though there could be a hidden danger to a lens that can change to a second prescription.
I'm under 40, recently had cataract surgery to address mild cararacts, and deeply regret that choice. I strongly feel I lost more than I gained, and now need to carry multiple pairs of glasses every time I go out to engage many common activities.
Unfortunately I don't have presbyopia at all (my surgery still left me myopic) and my inability to change focus distance is drastically more severe than what happens naturally with aging. This first generation of IXI glasses won't be useful to me.
But I really, really want something like it.
You can swap out your default lenses with multifocal lenses... I use multifocal contact lenses, and my wife and my mother both had the surgery. My wife got the panoptix (no need for glasses at all) and my mother got vivity (just need reading glasses). At night, there are halos with the panoptix lenses (same with the multifocal contact lenses), the severity is not always the same per-person, and it bothers some people more than others (interferes with night driving), but it's an option. Yes, it's another surgery, but depending on your ability to afford it, and the amount it bothers you, it is still an option. From my point of view (admittedly, with contact lenses), going from three different pairs of glasses (vision, vision+reading, plain contact lenses+reading) to contact lenses with no glasses at all was just unquestionably worth it.
I'm unfortunately not a candidate for multifocal intraocular lenses due to other problems with my eyes, otherwise I would have gone with them for the first surgery.
Multifocal contacts are probably not a good long-term fit for those same reasons, and there's the same problem with progressive lenses in glasses. Old-school bifocals are okay, but limited in the usual way.
I am not so sure about the eye tracking and autofocus stuff, but would love a simple focus knob on the frames to adjust instead of changing to a different pair of glasses. I suspect the tracking and focusing electronics must be somewhat clumsy and a battery life of a single day sounds suboptimal for me.
Add to that the blinking LEDs that track eye movements. No thanks.
Are you one of the few people who are able to perceive infrared light?
No. My wife has migraines, though, triggered by flashing lights. I’d have to wonder about the long term affects from the glasses.
Putting two adaptive dynamic systems next to each other is tricky. Your eyes and these glasses could easily create a positive or negative feedback loop or begin oscillating. So while cool I hope they have some experienced controls people on staff to detect and prevent such things.
If only they’d had a frontend web dev on the team!
That's the beauty of eye tracking. The two adjustments are orthogonal. You don't cross and uncross your eyes to adjust focus.
In the last two to three years, I've hit a point where I need to take off my glasses (near-sighted, can't see things far away) to read my phone. I can still make out the text with them on, but it's physically uncomfortable and holding it at a distance helps.
I've been thinking about the existence of bifocals and how they aren't ideal as I come to terms with the inconvenience of removing my glasses and putting them back on repeatedly as I task switch. This sounds pretty great and I hope it's not smoke and mirrors (given enough time, science fiction tends to become reality, so I'm hopeful).
I'm at the same point you are, and a couple years ago I ended up getting bifocals, and let me tell you it's absolutely worth it! I ended up getting "multi-tasking bifocals" (what my glasses place called them), which are basically normal glasses with the lower area a second prescription for reading the phone. There are others that have 3 areas (reading at the bottom, distance a small spot in the middle, and then a middle ground elsewhere).
I didn't really want to get bifocals because it's what old people wear ;-). But it's so much better with them.
The glasses place (CostCo Optical) guy was kind of a jerk about it, all but saying "you're going to wreck your car if you use these for anything but at your desk", but I just "yeah, yeah"ed him, I like my prescription dialed back a bit from max power for day-to-day use.
If you can afford it, maybe give them a try? Zenni and other onlines might make them affordable enough to just try?
Honestly, even if they could shift focus via some sort of "command" - a muscle tick or something - that would be a game changer as it is. Every time I play D&D, I have to keep taking off and putting on my glasses so I can read my notes, and see my players' faces clearly.
(I'm aware of the multifocal glasses mentioned in the article; they didn't work well for me.)
I'm in a similar situation but found that getting "computer glasses" made which use the near prescription (and are not for long distance) work well for this. (I run D&D as well lol) I could not handle multifocal at all, was disorienting for me.
They do! The command is, cross your eyes a little bit
As a glasses wearer I'm looking forward to this tech. I like the idea of natural, seamless auto focusing, and as a future fantasy, a simple, toggleable overlay of info would be nifty.
Going out foraging and being able to identify plants and fungi by simply resting my vision on something for a pause is the sci Fi tech I actually want
How does it compare to multifocal contact lenses?
My understanding of those is that contact lenses work the same way that multifocal glasses work, with the added disadvantage that every time you blink, it takes them a second to re-align correctly. So this should be completely different, if it works.
I wonder how long the wait will be for AR glasses to have this option too.