For my most recent comic book project takes place in the not-to-distant future (40-50 years) and in that time new tech has been introduced and I want to make sure the tech makes sense, it doesn't have to be completely scientifically accurate I just want to create tech where the reader thinks about it for a second and goes "oh yeah, that makes sense." The basic idea behind the tech is they are cybernetic eye implants that creates the image of a computer interface by projecting light in a very specific ways directly into the retinas. The user interacts with the "screen" by using gloves or sensors that can in implanted into the hands directly in later and more advanced models. The gloves work based on there position based on where they are in relation to the eyes themselves. So if you wanted to press the space bar you'd just have to place your finger where you could see the space bar. The gloves would then pic up there position being were the space bar is and then the key would be pressed. The screen could be interacted with in a similar way to move things around or select things about like the mouse. Am I making sense?
Yeah it makes sense and has been done in a few different films I have watched (or roughly the same idea) so it shouldn't be a problem for people to be pulled into.
So it's like "Minority Report", but with contact lenses? I think the idea's okay, but I might add in the option to "anchor" the virtual screen and keyboard to something so that they didn't shift every time you glanced upwards or sneezed. Other than that, sounds fine.
Umm, there's versions of this already out. I mean... There's virtual keyboards. No eye implants or gloves needed. It does the same thing you're talking about. There's gloves, goggles, and helmets for VR or augmented reality. The only thing that is "advanced" is the ocular cybernetics... which I'm not quite sure why would become a thing. Seems like an invasive surgery when glasses or goggles could do the same thing. Maybe cybernetic contacts?
Have you ever heard of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline? What you are describing is OASIS in that book, which is set at about the same time as yours. The VR "goggles" in that book are about the size of sunglasses and draw directly on the retina. It also uses gloves to interact with the world and let you feel it. In terms of scientific accuracy, I see no technological reason that this can't be done. In fact, I think your time scale is very pessimistic. What you are describing is two, maybe three generations away from the current VR technology. We'll likely have something like that before 2030. The time between the NES came out and the Wii U was 27 years. How great is the difference in technology between current VR and what you're describing, is it as big as the difference between those two consoles? I'd say not. You do have to think about UI though. I highly doubt such a thing would have a "space bar." In OASIS, moving was done by making a walking gesture with your fingers and input was done by speaking. Even with modern technology, it's going gesture and speech recognition based. Mouses and keyboards will be as obsolete as 5 inch floppies some day.
If the implants became a reality, there would be tech that was built upon to reach that point. That means that industries, small or large, built up as well. We already have all types of implants that we can use, whether medical or not. I would imagine that when the cybernetic eye implant is available, most getting it would already have various implants in their fingers and a new way of typing by tapping finger tips would have been created a decade before. If mobile devices are still in use, a portion of people would use it's keyboard.
From a technical point of view, the glove could not "know" where the spacebar is, as its position would vary depending on where you're looking. So, basically you would have to approaches: 1. Connect everything to one system so that the gloves handle the detection. This would mean a massive amount of computed data with vectors and all that stuff 2. Make the "lenses" (or whatever is in the eye) compute everything. They'd simply have to check for raycast intersections and check if they're in the bounding boxes of any key. But how would you determine if you only hover your gloves over a key without pressing it and actually pressing a key? Also, what would happen if someone else with these gloves came nearby? Could he "press" your keys?
