How are augmented reality glasses created?

Question

3D

How is augmented reality created? How complex are these devices? When will they appear in Russian production?
What to read? Who to ask? What specialist does this?
I'm not talking about content for AR and VR devices. And specifically the creation of these devices.

Answer 1

Augmented or virtual? (complemented with GoogleGlass and analogues, these pokemons are unfortunate, and VR is virtual (Virtual Reality). Not so that there are many differences, but they are. If only because with projections over vision, humanity is still burdened by childhood illnesses.
And in terms of functionality .. Yes, just everything, in general. It looks like a felt boot. You need two screens of small size and high resolution, a three-axis accelerometer (ideally supplemented by a gyroscope), a simple controller and a driver that will translate accelerometer shifts into a shift in the field of view in the virtual world. And the reaction to displacements is a question for the software
.optional. There are cardboard holders that allow you to make virtual reality glasses from your smartphone. Those. the complexity is equal to the complexity of the smartphone in this case (there is a screen, an accelerometer, a processor and a driver). If you wish, you can solder your own, since there are enough ready-made modules with three-axis navigation sensors on the market (after all, you can stick a real compass there).
Why then is Oculus, Vive and Co.? Well, first of all, for the money, of course. A simple and understandable hardware base, maximum software, the development cost of which is very difficult to estimate. But, despite this, they still solve a number of important issues. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is the screen. It must have the smallest possible pixel size, because the eye is very close and the grain can be seen perfectly. The Vive has a 1080x1200 screen for one eye.. and it's in that size! The production of such things still needs to be organized, and then put in such a way that the eyes do not run wide.
To put it simply, all the complexity is purely engineering - correctly and compactly arranging it all into a helmet so that it weighs little and does not interfere. Well, a piece related to experimental tests, so that the device correctly reads its position, movement and understands the incoming signal. These are all software issues, but they need to be addressed.
Russian production.. what for? Who needs it? Who will buy it? Hardware simplicity is simplicity in the world, and we have none of the above. Anyone who takes up development will be forced to buy screens, buy controllers, buy sensors .. and buy software for writing software. And then collect it all somehow. It will turn out to be a golden device two or even three times more expensive than the latest Oculus Rift with a ready-made SDK and a seriously deployed company that will not stop working tomorrow because the money has run out .. And this is provided that you can take a Chinese smartphone for 15k, put it in a cardboard holder cut out of an old TV box and sit watching cat pornography in the virtual world.
Now there won't be any foreign ones either. The whole point of Oculus Rift was that they were the first to release a mass prototype. And then the rest pulled up. Gear well rushed into the gaming zone with the expectation of SteamVR. There are so few manufacturers of these helmets, not because it is difficult, but because no one needs it, especially for that kind of money. After the appearance of the above cardboard boxes, entering the market with an independent device is almost impossible, unless you are a giant like Valve, which knows where to screw these glasses.
Readeverything about inertial navigation in space, controllers and video paths. Additionally, it is worth reading biology and anatomy in terms of vision and perception in order to determine the optimal parameters. Well, in terms of ergonomics, at least something is minimal, so that a brick on strings does not turn out. Naturally, all this is tied through software, so read the programming of all this in parallel (inertial navigation requires not only an understanding of it itself, but also digital processing methods)
Ask forums, articles, the same habr. Do not get attached rigidly that this is VR. Any quadcopter uses exactly the same thing, only differently. There was even an article somewhere where a man attached an accelerometer to his head on an elastic band and controlled the camera in the game. Made on the knee, but fully shows the complexity of the system.
Excuse me, but experts do not do this. It's a hobby for a geek. Any sane mechatronics engineer will do this without leaving home. Unless the screens are taken away from the delivery, if there are no suitable ones on the shelf with trash. It’s just that the question of content is raised and the idea to collect this immediately disappears. There is no content. Those. there are demos, some small softs. Everything is very meager and not interesting, play around, take it apart and make something more useful. It turned out that just taking a finished game, for example, created for a flat screen, and just showing it to two eyes does not roll. It is necessary to shift the image to a viewing angle that provides binocular vision, and this is not so easy to do with the finished product - it turns out obscenely.
Therefore, now all sets of these helmets go in fact as a "developer kit" ... an application developer, of course. Because we need an application market, but there are none and not everyone wants to write. Here the difficulties arose. Difficulties with platforms, difficulties with graphics, engines and a lot of misunderstandings that no one has yet worked out seriously.
And regarding all the same augmented, then everything is the same, only it is difficult to project .. or rather, there is nowhere. Of course, just a week ago, an article appeared on GT, where they made an "analogue" of GoogleGlass from a Soviet calculator, but it is far from the series, although it is interesting. =)

Answer 2

Disagree with the comment above.
From materials existing glasses, monoculars, etc. Augmented reality can be viewed here (partially virtual). nr-look.ru
Here is a discussion of developments
diyprojector.info/forum/topic/6424-proekcija-akran...
Both in Russia and in the CIS, and abroad .. Oculus, Google Glass, Vive are just a drop in the ocean .. they just made for the consumer market. The main market for these devices now is the defense industry, space, aviation (the technology itself), simulators (different areas). But first of all, defense.
In Russia, these developments are just beginning to appear, since in the 90s and early 2000s in Russia and the CIS there was no time for this. Now they are gradually working - research institutes, design bureaus, the same Baumanovka. You will not see their results on the Internet - they are sometimes illuminated at military exhibitions, in a narrow circle of laboratories. They are not interested in the consumer market, since defense orders can provide a large and stable income.
What you see with consumers (the same Google) is run-in schemes adapted for the consumer by these companies, but appeared earlier.
The problem with many of these devices is the cost of components. For example, an OLED microdisplay costs about $450-1000, and newer ones are up to $3000 and this is for one microdisplay (I cited OLED from eMargin and OLED from Kopin as an example), and they need two eyes. And these are only matrices, but also optics and much more. Therefore, the final cost of these devices is $3,000 or more. For the army, this is normal, but for the consumer it is expensive. There are cheaper solutions, for example, the same FLCOS matrix, but they require a different optical scheme, which significantly increases the size of the device (this is nonsense for the defense industry, not for the consumer). There are even microdisplays that have a built-in sensor, that is, they can simultaneously display and enable eye tracking, but their price was $ 10,000 from Frankfurt.
The same Epson Moverio was a random product derived from the development of the viewfinder, and in the midst of the augmented reality hype, they simply flipped the viewfinder horizontally. Epson Moverio has the same optics, if you decide to assemble it yourself, it will cost 60 thousand * 6 = 360 thousand rubles only for optics (the cost of manufacturing one aspherical lens is on average 60 thousand rubles + -).
So sooner or later, these devices and technologies will enter the consumer market when they are adapted and used, giving them a consumer look (as I already said, size and price are important). In the meantime, these are developments for the military and space agencies such as the ISS, NASA and Evopeisky.
I'm writing this because I'm a developer myself.