Zeiss's "Holocam" turns glass windows into cameras

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/this-holographic-camera-turns-any-window-into-an-invisible-camera

by toss1 • 3 years ago

585 215 3 years ago

digitalcameraworld.com

Comfy-Tinwork• 3 years ago

Wonder how long intelligence agencies have had this.

throwup238• 3 years ago

One comes standard with every shower door.

forward1• 3 years ago

Implants which modulate and reflect incoming radio signals back to the radar device, especially powered by the radio wave itself, is nothing new in clandestine surveillance.

i8comments3• 3 years ago

They'd probably put it in lightbulbs (to get a long lasting power source and good viewing angle).

93po• 3 years ago

They'd probably pay a contractor $60 million to develop it for the military and not actually wind up with anything of use

sheepscreek• 3 years ago

This is beyond even science fiction. I could have never imagined something like this was even possible - I still can’t. Is there a demo of this tech in action?

a2l• 3 years ago

Found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NORPeCcIXRQ

dazhbog• 3 years ago

holy shit, the glass camera in action.. Scary

adolph• 3 years ago

Rough translation of video transcript (YT transcript translated by deepl.com):

  Lenses.
  This year's theme is now holograms
  and it's pretty funny that this is
  is called a holocam, and it's pretty funny.
  If you look at it right now, if you look at the spring right here.
  you can see a little bit of blue
  you can see a little bit of blue, which is actually
  what is it?
  it's actually acting as a camera, so
  Now, if you listen to the explanation
  what we call holography.
  is that it's now reflecting light, so we can gather that light
  and you can collect that light and act like a camera
  like a camera, so for example, you can now
  what?
  the meat.
  it can recognize the blue color
  and only recognize the blue part.
  Jace's
  holocam. It's quite
  interesting.

micromacrofoot• 3 years ago

great find, this is much better than the article

pushcx• 3 years ago

I spent a few minutes looking for more info, doesn't seem that Zeiss has published anything but a press release yet: https://www.zeiss.com/corporate/en/about-zeiss/present/newsr...

fourteenfour2• 3 years ago

Here's their CES page with a video: https://exhibitors.ces.tech/8_0/exhibitor/exhibitor-details....

airstrike2• 3 years ago

Thanks for sharing. More of an animation than a proper video

tasty_freeze• 3 years ago

This video is nothing but holographic displays. The article is about an invisible layer camera sensor.

junon• 3 years ago

https://www.zeiss.com/oem-solutions/products-solutions/multi...

wiml• 3 years ago

It seems to be their "multifunctional smart glass"? https://www.zeiss.com/oem-solutions/products-solutions/multi...

mikewarot• 3 years ago

Having played with light fields and photography, I have questions.

There has to be an imaging sensor somewhere. Where is it?

I strongly suspect most of this "magic" will condense out of this cloud into a puddle of marketing sponsored bovine excrement.

notaustinpowers• 3 years ago

The Holocam technology "uses holographic in-coupling, light guiding and de-coupling elements to redirect the incoming light of a transparent medium to a hidden image sensor."

It looks like it still requires a sensor, it can just be hidden in the frame of the glass.

ithkuil3• 3 years ago

Sure it has a sensor, it's not magic. But OTOH if it can capture the POV of a real line of eye contact with another image projected _through_ the camera, the effects are transformative, it doesn't matter whether ultimately there is a sensor somewhere or not

beginning_end• 3 years ago

That was a truly horrible web-page. Does anyone have a link to the actual technology?

aftbit• 3 years ago

Do a search on "non line of sight imaging" (aka NLOS). Here's just one public paper.[1] If this is what is being published, what do you think the intelligence agencies have?

1: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2024468118

haswell• 3 years ago

Given the current fear around hidden cameras in Airbnbs, the idea of every single window (or even shower door) in a rental property being able to spy on you is a little disconcerting.

While there are some really interesting potential applications for this tech, it is also more than a little disconcerting.

The ubiquity of camera phones and the emergence of tech like those Meta glasses is already pushing us to disconcerting (albeit interesting and in some cases very useful) places, but some of these cutting edge concepts worry me. WiFi seeing through walls also comes to mind…

pedalpete• 3 years ago

I'm surprised this isn't the top comment. I'm all for the benefits of this tech, and hadn't even thought about the airbnb style implication.

People didn't like that Google Glass could always be filming, now we don't even have a physical camera.

Rayban/Meta (I believe) have a sensor to detect that the wearer has not attempted to cover the light which shows that the camera is in use, but how will that work when every piece of glass is a camera.

internetter• 3 years ago

There are already microscopic cameras that can be bought for thousandths of the price

mintplant• 3 years ago

Sounds like this could work great for eye-tracking in VR/AR headset optics?

saalweachter• 3 years ago

I'm curious if we'll finally get videoconference technology that lets you look people in the eye.

calmworm• 3 years ago

Or make eye-contact, rather? Interesting to consider. Though I imagine a camera behind a screen could do this, too.

KMnO4• 3 years ago

The article is poorly written, as it only discusses the camera component. Strangely, they chose stock images of holographic and optical displays, but didn’t mention that even once.

The Zeiss site is a much better read:

https://www.zeiss.com/corporate/en/about-zeiss/present/newsr...

In summary:

1) ZEISS unveils holographic Smart Glass at CES 2024, both for displays/projection/filtering, but also another component which is a holographic camera

2) The holocam works by utilizing coupling, decoupling, and light guiding elements to redirect incident light to a concealed sensor, eliminating the need for visible cutouts or installation spaces in visible areas.

3) ZEISS doesn’t plan to be manufacturer, so other companies can use the tech

lawlessone3• 3 years ago

nd light guiding elements to redirect incident light to a concealed sensor,

So you can't just stick on any existing window or pane of glass? That's good.

buffington3• 3 years ago

I don't think so. From the article:

The Holocam technology "uses holographic in-coupling, light guiding and de-coupling elements to redirect the incoming light of a transparent medium to a hidden image sensor."

That suggests, at least to me, that you'll need something more than just a simple sheet of glass. There's probably some engineering required to allow light to be guided and redirected towards what sounds like a typical camera sensor.

Groxx• 3 years ago

ESA and NASA space missions have carried this trailblazing ZEISS technology on board for many years. It is also well established in the semiconductor and medical technology sectors.

Huh. Seems like it should be fairly easy to find info on then... though some googling around makes me think they might just be referring to their more general diffraction gratings and whatnot.

itishappy6• 3 years ago

Zeiss multifunctional smart glass

Product page: https://www.zeiss.com/oem-solutions/products-solutions/multi...

NASA/ESA mention: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/zeiss_automotive-augmentedrea...

swyx2• 3 years ago

Edit: theres an actually good demo video showing the real state of the tech rather than mockups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NORPeCcIXRQ buried below in the comments so just surfacing higher. everything else is artists lying to you.

---

Glass surfaces can also generate energy. The microoptical layer in the window pane absorbs incident sunlight and transmits it in concentrated form to a solar cell. This combines the advantages of conventional windows – natural light and an unrestricted view – with the additional benefit of efficient energy production.

what? holy shit?

IshKebab2• 3 years ago

Nah, this will only be good enough for sensor-level power (like 5W from a whole window). Only useful in very limited circumstances. It's not going to replace normal solar power.

sroussey3• 3 years ago

That video is pretty cool. Truly an invisible camera.

0xNotMyAccount• 3 years ago

Thanks for linking to that.

coupling, decoupling and light guiding elements to divert incident light to a concealed sensor

So, there's a camera in the dash looking up at the windshield and focusing where it expects to see a face, thereby using the windshield as a reflector? And maybe there's some additional etching and deposited films in the windshield to support the angles required?

And perhaps you can put cameras elsewhere, and similarly subtly modify the windshield or other glass to look at other things as well?

lowdest• 3 years ago

It collects through the edge, and the glass can be (apparently) flat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NORPeCcIXRQ

ChuckMcM3• 3 years ago

First, holy crap!

Second, #3 is always a red flag for me. It is sometimes code for "we can do this in the lab but we have no idea how one would manufacture it." A similar analogy is "we've got this great idea for a program you can license but no one here knows how to actually code it up."

Third, the impact of this going mainstream would be hard to underestimate. All those people working on transparent displays like they do in sci-fi movies? Yup they could do that. A video conference system with solid eye contact (mentioned in a couple of places) sure you could do that too. A mirror that could show you wearing different clothes? Yup I could see how that would be coded.

That #3 though. That is what tempers my enthusiasm. Did I miss any announcement that they had a display at CES? (or was it just an announcement) If the former I would seriously consider flying over to Vegas to check this out.

makeitdouble• 3 years ago

Second, #3 is always a red flag for me.

Does Zeiss manufacture any public facing camera currently ? All their general public facing projects are collaborations with Sony or Vivo or other makers, and I think they only manufacture lenses, so nothing with a high quality chip in it.

It's probably another story on the medical side, but this doesn't fit a highly specialized, peofessional only niche with a PC doing the processor on the side.

dontupvoteme2• 3 years ago

If it was anyone but Zeiss I'd call it a red flag too, but they're basically Old Gods of Glass.

epaga• 3 years ago

Here is a demo video from someone who was there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NORPeCcIXRQ (from another hn comment)

lgkk• 3 years ago

Pretty cool and hella alarming lol.

Next someone will tell me they have a way to “ssh” into the universe and get process details on every entity in it including every human and what’s happening.

Kind of like in the matrix with The architect.

i8comments3• 3 years ago

I guess the closest thing you can get to that -- ssh into somewhere and get details on every human -- is to ssh into the government's database on everyone remotely of interest, or even accidentaly connected, (in essence almost everyone), both made of computer and human agent collection and analysis.

schainks• 3 years ago

So... more mass surveillance tech coming from every window in every building?

lawlessone3• 3 years ago

Nah , It would be easier and cheaper just to stick tiny regular cameras everywhere.

xyzzy_plugh4• 3 years ago

It's a reverse light guide. We've been beam forming for a long time, it's unsurprising that the reverse is possible (imaging through a light pipe).

The principal issue will be gathering enough energy. A well lit source like a bathroom mirror (mirror behind the light guide) could work pretty well I'd wager. If the light guide is too efficient then it will appear opaque, so there is a trade-off.

I find "turns any window" pretty misleading. Unless I'm missing something this needs very special glass or at the very least a special coating/laminate.

For folks worried about privacy, it will almost always be more convenient and cost-effective to install a tiny spy camera somewhere.

Zeiss isn't going to aspire to sell cheap glass on razor thin margins.

ysofunny• 3 years ago

Zeiss isn't going to aspire to sell cheap glass on razor thin margins.

why not?

verall2• 3 years ago

It's not what they do, like they probably won't start selling lawnmowers either.

cududa2• 3 years ago

I assume if you’re on HN you work in tech.

As a side hustle, why don’t you start building and selling desktop PC’s to local businesses, competing with HP, Dell, etc on margin? That’s also tech, right?

While building cheap PCs at razor thin margins is adjacent to whatever your tech job is, and probably something you’re able to do, it probably wouldn’t be the most profitable use of your time

itishappy6• 3 years ago

They don't have to. They're the best in the world, and they know it. They price accordingly.

wongarsu• 3 years ago

Zeiss isn't in the business of selling cheap stuff on thin margins, no matter the product.

dontupvoteme2• 3 years ago

because they're Zeiss. They made the lenses for the photos on the moon, they're not small potatoes.

MadnessASAP• 3 years ago

It's a reverse light guide. We've been beam forming for a long time, it's unsurprising that the reverse is possible (imaging through a light pipe).

Beamforming in RF frequencies is old, beamforming at optical wavelengths is pretty new shit. Doing the reverse, that is receiving a signal, is brand spanking new fresh out the cow hot shit at any frequency.

xyzzy_plugh4• 3 years ago

No, it's not really new. Small form factor is relatively new but even then the issue lies in yield and quality control.

Projector light engines include potentially many light-beam forming condensing and projection lenses precisely to concentrate light into a uniform quadrilateral. That's not new. The industry continues to advance, though.

Even holographic projection isn't new. This is just that, except the light is (sort of) taking the reverse path.

Technically there is no reason why it can't also project light outwards simultaneously. However light guides aren't really reversible like that: the light usually exits through a small fraction of the guide's external surface area. Reversing that means the entire external surface area is potentially collecting light, which would result in some undesirable caustics in all scenarios I can imagine. Light engines are in part designed to account for this (by reflecting or sinking light into an absorber) but this is still pretty different from what Zeiss is promoting.

For a small permanent installation where you are in control of the lighting I could see this working relatively well, but I have a hard time imagining you could get close anything resembling photo quality without a lot of environmental treatment. Conversely holographic projection is pretty doable on a mobile platform like a headset.

This is pretty new only in that it's probably at least an order of magnitude more difficult to accomplish and thus hasn't been viable up until now. Fundamentally none of the concepts are new, as far as I can tell.

As an example look at your nearest window and imagine it divided into a grid of uniform pixels. Each pixel is a small mirror that reflects a point of focus (wherever you are) to a another, smaller point on an imaging sensor somewhere in the frame. This would look pretty jarring (and jagged) to most people, until you layer a complimentary piece of glass on top of it to make the exterior flush. The two pieces of glass would be high enough precision that once you put them together they are effectively one piece of glass. Ta da.

This is effectively the same process as making any other multi-lensed glass, and that's Zeiss's wheelhouse.

buffington3• 3 years ago

Zeiss isn't going to aspire to sell cheap glass on razor thin margins.

Especially true since Zeiss isn't planning on selling these at all. They're selling licenses to the tech.

I doubt that undermines your privacy argument in any meaningful way however. Even if the license was free, the cost of producing the components is certainly magnitudes higher compared to the cost of current tech that accomplishes similar goals.

samstave• 3 years ago

jiminy christmas!!!

I lit (pun) came to gripe about light pipes...

However here is you solution:

3D print lenses in a header for threads to be arbitrarily placed in a [COMPOUND] lens and pull that feed with AI spatial mapping (yes these are easy now)... EYE

And you can make these in many increments - micro even... "Hey NSa, super simple optical prince Rupert drops on a composite eye" (self destrucing fiber lens when discovered)

raphman3• 3 years ago

As I posted below, Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group did something similar (I guess) back in 2011:

https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/uploads/publicati...

https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/projects/the-wedg...

sleepybrett2• 3 years ago

I remember a friend on a team adjacent to the surface table team talking about them trying to do this when they switched from projection tables to tables with screens in them. As I recall with the projector based tables (the ones that looked like old cocktail arcade tables) I think they were using an ir camera to detect items and touches on the 'screen'.

mrandish• 3 years ago

After some searching I found a patent I think may be related to this https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2020225109A1/en because it uses the phrase "Holocam", is German and was filed by Audi (the press release mentions automotive applications as the primary initial use case). It's a translation from German which makes it a bit tougher to parse than the usual patent.

The total lack of any deeper information beyond the bold yet vague claims in the press release is frustrating. The PR makes it sound like a miraculous breakthrough destined to change everything. The source release on the Zeiss site only adds two bits of info.

"The transparency of the holographic layer has only a minimal effect on the brilliance of the image reproduction. It is also possible to detect spectral components as additional information to complement the visible image. The resulting data provide insights into environmental contamination such as air pollution and UV exposure."

However, experience shows that in reality bold+vague claims like this inevitably come with significant trade-offs and constraints which limit its applications (little things like cost, power, fidelity, size, speed, etc). This is especially true in early implementations of new tech. That said, it may still be both interesting and useful. Unfortunately, we have no way to even think about how it might be useful because Zeiss marketing has chosen to play 'hide the ball' instead of just releasing a technical explainer outlining relevant trade-offs, limitations, etc.

If I was talking to someone from Zeiss my first questions would be about how much the additional components impact the optical characteristics of the glass, what the resolution of the resulting image data is, how large are the components needed at the edges and how far away can they be from the capture zone? Then, of course, how the output of the resulting imaging system maps into traditional camera/lens metrics like f-stops, aperture, imager size/density, gain, focal length, etc. Zeiss is an optics company after all.

mannykannot2• 3 years ago

Thanks for finding this.

The paper mentioned in the Description section can be read here: https://www.academia.edu/52566311/_title_Volume_phase_hologr...

My guess is that each of the items in patent diagram labeled 20 and 22 are gratings of this sort, perhaps with the fringes angled at 45 degrees.

Some additional info may be gleaned from the one patent citing this one, invented by one of the co-inventors of the latter: https://patents.google.com/patent/DE102019206354A1/en

bcherny• 3 years ago

Are there any numbers on how many megapixels the camera is, and how many DPI the display is? (What are the upper bounds for these over time?)

The demo looks greyscale, and super low res and low FPS.

lawlessone3• 3 years ago

The demo looks greyscale, and super low res and low FPS.

I think then intention is it just needs to be enough to know where the users face is and project a HUD at them.

teeray• 3 years ago

This means that everything from the window in your car to the screen on your laptop to the glass on your front door can now possess an invisible image sensor.

Retailers, marketers, and data brokers are salivating.

autoexec2• 3 years ago

I can't wait until the windows in our homes plaster ads over everything every time we look outside.

It'll sure be distracting when it's the windshields of our cars, but I do look forward to the legal drama when companies get sued for painting their "holographic" ads on top of the adspace other people already paid to pollute with their own advertisements.

from-nibly2• 3 years ago

how would an image sensor display ads?

ProfessorLayton• 3 years ago

I'm not sure where you live, but in many places there's strict city/county level ordinances restricting signs (Particularly lit up signs) and advertising. There's a reason people's backyards aren't littered with billboards.

Anyone that's experienced a cracked windshield understands that this won't be going anywhere outside of some very niche and expensive cars.

dr_kiszonka• 3 years ago

I think it may be more cost effective to put ads in subsidized smart glasses and contact lenses. (A little dystopian, I know.)

LegitShady• 3 years ago

It honestly doesn't seem that useful to me.

m3kw9• 3 years ago

If you look at it where does it show your eye looking once captured?

iamthepieman• 3 years ago

They're specifically marketing to car manufacturers in the press release video. Which is unfortunate because I don't need more non-haptic buggy interfaces in my car. The technology itself is amazing even though the holo-cam appears to be just greyscale and rather blurry right now. The ability to embed the optics in/near (hard to tell from the marketing) the edge of the glass is awesome as you don't need a projector that is separate (by much) from the display surface.

wkat4242• 3 years ago

Yeah it sounds like a great option to place a camera invisibly in the middle top half of your screen so you can actually look a person in the eye when videoconferencing. No more weirdly looking down or to the side for everyone.

I'm sure it can be used for creepiness as well but I see the benefits too.

boxed• 3 years ago

iPhones solve the camera angle by changing the position of the pupil in software instead.

NooneAtAll3• 3 years ago

1986 solution vs cyberpunk solution

how did we even get here?

marcellus232• 3 years ago

Are you sure? I remember that being present briefly in a beta several years ago, but then it was removed. I don't remember it ever coming back.

jameshart2• 3 years ago

Given that this will probably only produce a relatively low res, high SNR image, it might be the sweet spot is to use this tech to capture a true eye-contact perspective from the glass in front of a screen, then neural net combine it with images from offset cameras, to create a 'true' through-the-screen view.

bilsbie• 3 years ago

It’s a bit uncanny valley though, right?

hammock• 3 years ago

Which versions of iphones do this?

godelski4• 3 years ago

Having the screen be the camera 1) removes the need for the holepunch as well as magic island workaround 2) could clearly be used in tandem to improve the effect, even potentially reducing the required computation. Sure, Google also fixes images in post, but that's still not a substitute for better cameras. You're always information limited.

gitinit• 3 years ago

I believe Nvidia offers something similar with Nvidia Broadcast[0]. [0] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/broadcasting/broadcast-...

Wowfunhappy• 3 years ago

This doesn't solve the issue, because it looks like the person is always making eye contact! You don't want that—you want it to look like the person is making eye contact only when they are actually making eye contact. Constant eye contact is exhausting.

doodlesdev• 3 years ago

It does what??? How have I never heard about this before? Is this deployed right now? Is it always enabled? I have so many questions, don't even know where to start. That sounds amazing.

jh00ker• 3 years ago

If I look at my camera lens when I'm talking and I look at the screen while you're talking, and then you do the same, then there's no issue. Am I the only one that does this? (I know the answer. I am. At least at my company, I am.)

danjc• 3 years ago

This feels normal if you make videos but it's pretty unnatural.

wil4212• 3 years ago

Years ago I was able to visit Zeiss in Oberkochen. They had a fantastic headquarters with a few older lithographs. I think a couple of the instruments were 80 millions dollars or so.

There’s a facility across from the Autobahn that was so sensitive trucks going by would throw off their machines. They had to put padding on the autobahn to prevent it. This was after they put the foundation on some kind of suspension. My coworker said they hire the most PHDs in Europe.

stronglikedan2• 3 years ago

Sounds like LIGO, but they're in the US. They had to put the AC unit for their entire facility on suspension because their instruments were so sensitive. And they ask people to not accelerate or decelerate so quickly when driving around the campus.

fnordpiglet• 3 years ago

Feels like it would be easier to buy land not next to a highway :-)

wil4212• 3 years ago

You need to attract PHDs and account for logistics. If you want to attract top talent you need to be in a desirable place or be a desirable place with access to desirable places.

mannykannot2• 3 years ago

None of the PhDs are in Facilities Management.

tqi3• 3 years ago

"Webcams that enable you to look anywhere on your screen."

Minor aside, but does anyone actually care about this? Forever ago, I was told to try and look into the camera in order to project eye contact during video calls, but now that just seems like a cultural hangup that arose from people not being familiar with video calling. Now that it is more ubiquitous, I feel like we all have collectively agreed that the eye contact thing is unnecessary?

toomim• 3 years ago

It's not just cultural. We've evolved to recognize eye-contact. Newborn babies immediately know when you look at them. Eye contact with a dog communicates dominance.

You've just acclimated to losing that signal during video chats. Bring it back, and you'll have a richer experience.

More generally, we have evolved special neural hardware to recognize gaze, with a special case for when gaze is directed at our eyes. Gaze is important because it's a sign of where people are attending. And as Herb Simon said: "in the information age, attention is the scarce resource."

hn8305823• 3 years ago

No, and I'm absolutely not willing to give up the mechanical camera shutter I have on my laptop for that feature. They could add a mechanical shutter to the hidden camera in the frame but why do all of this.

Edit: Should have said "mechanical lens cover" instead of "mechanical camera shutter"

asow922• 3 years ago

Just so you know, in photography, "mechanical camera shutter" can mean something very different from what I think you mean.

cududa2• 3 years ago

Idk, I’ve noticed when I’m on sales calls, some sales people make a very conscious effort to look into their webcam, and the effect of them “looking at me” in the video feels:

A)Initially, a little bit odd, because 98% of people don’t do it/ I’m not use to seeing that

B) Then feels pleasantly good/ natural.

I’m not going to make a decision on a performative behavior like looking at the webcam - at least, not consciously - but I’m sure if/ when this becomes the norm, webcams NOT focused on eyes will seem very “off”

krisoft• 3 years ago

but now that just seems like a cultural hangup that arose from people not being familiar with video calling.

Eye contact is about as old as humankind. So maybe in 300,000 years we can check if we get over it with video calls.

It is not that communication is not possible without it. It just removes an additional layer.

Eye contact conveys all kind of useful meta data. Depending on the circumstances and other verbal and non-verbal cues it can mean "I'm listening to you", "oh, maybe let's push more on this topic", "have you also caught that?", "perhaps it would be wiser to not talk about that", "i'm specifically addressing you" or "can you help me out here?". And these are just the ones immediately applicable in business settings. Let's not even talk about all the ways it can be used during flirting.

And it works on a subconscious level. I regularly DM role playing games, both online and in-person. The lack of eye contact is a serious impediment in online games. One can use eye contact, or the lack of it to judge engagement. One can signal with eye contact turns or who an NPC is talking to. It can also be used to help less talkative players seize amazing role playing moments.

Can we get by without it? Sure. We can communicate anything using a 1-bit communication channel using morse code. It is a bit like dancing in shackles. Can be done, just leaves something extra on the table.

tqi3• 3 years ago

To clarify I didn't mean that all eye-contact is cultural, I meant specifically during video calls. I was told that if I didn't look into the camera during my interview, it would be perceived as rude or unprofessional.

layer8• 3 years ago

No, we haven’t agreed that. I continue to feel somewhat rude when not looking at the camera during a conversation. And it matters to nonverbal communication.

tqi3• 3 years ago

I also still habitually look at the camera (due to said training early in my career), but I think that the important thing is I don't think it is rude when other people don't do it. And in my experience, the vast majority of people I interact with don't either, which is why it feels like we have agreed that it is not important.

jameshart2• 3 years ago

Consider the possibilities when the screen-glass camera view could be different for each of the participants on your videoconference screen - so as you shift your eyes from one to another, they get different experience of eye contact.

Staring into your camera on a multiparty call means everyone feels like they are getting your eye contact, which devalues it. Eye contact moving between participants is the gel that holds conversations together and it's why video calls are still stuck in the conference call era in terms of talking over one another.

perryizgr82• 3 years ago

I feel this is not an issue with 13 inch laptops. But I recently installed a webcam on my 32 inch desktop monitor and it is really distracting how I'm always looking way below the camera. Currently using Nvidia broadcast to make it better but it does lose tracking if I look at the bottom of the screen.

from-nibly2• 3 years ago

I'm just excited to have a cheapish webcam embedded in my monitor. That way I can look at people while I'm on zoom. That's it.

JumpCrisscross• 3 years ago

Glass surfaces can also generate energy. The microoptical layer in the window pane absorbs incident sunlight and transmits it in concentrated form to a solar cell. This combines the advantages of conventional windows – natural light and an unrestricted view – with the additional benefit of efficient energy production.

This is pretty cool.

mrexroad• 3 years ago

Agree. Obviously a few orders of magnitude in cost reduction would be required... but this seem like it could have interesting potential for energy generation in high-rise buildings, which currently have near-zero solar footprint. With that said, the lack of any mention regarding efficiency makes this part of the press release seem like a bit of smoke and, erm, mirrors.

bouvin• 3 years ago

Looks pretty cool, though it is not quite Slow Glass [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_of_Other_Days

thr0waway987• 3 years ago

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.

_the_inflator• 3 years ago

Apple rejoices, I guess. This brings their vision of getting rid of the notch closer to reality.

1letterunixname• 3 years ago

Reads like press-release wank. So not a Lytro, but imagining the possibilities of reflection-based computed image reconstruction. They accomplished getting their brand out there without offering anything new. Check out their about us:

From time to time we also publish advertorials (paid-for editorial content) and sponsored content on the site.

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/about-us

biomcgary• 3 years ago

Given that Zeiss proposes this technology for vehicles, windows, etc., I'm curious about the effects of water droplets in direct contact with the surface changing the index of refraction locally (vs air).

nefrix• 3 years ago

Let the mass surveillance begin!

sumtechguy• 3 years ago

too late

AnarchismIsCool• 3 years ago

For the people kinda worried: this is a highly specialized piece of glass that is extremely complicated to manufacture at present and must, due to the laws of thermodynamics, not be 100% transparent. It's not going to allow surveillance through existing glass installations in any form, just possibly new ones if there's room for the support equipment and through the use of 4-5 digit piles of cash.

Any camera glass like this will have at least a mild tint and will be used in specialty applications. It'll also have pretty horrible SNR, resolution, and low light performance.

Currently the structural component of this tech is mainly used in extremely high end aerospace applications (various heads up display type systems) so it's unlikely you'll ever run across one of these within the next decade.

Nasty remote sensing tech people can be worried about right now: RF surveillance from various combinations of mmWave, wall penetrating radar, and wifi interferometry. Add in the fact that your IPhone has mac randomization but every other device you own including your car's TPMS doesn't. Also Geiger mode lidar is fun, one company I worked for mapped the inside of a random person's house with it as a demo.

sroussey3• 3 years ago

I agree with everything you said, but the example on the CES floor does not have an apparent tint.

xyzzy_plugh4• 3 years ago

I assure you it is semi opaque. A one way mirror is a primitive example of this. You can make the reflection increasingly transparent but it will be tinted up until the point it doesn't reflect anything.

It may not be noticeably visible to the human eye under most lighting conditions, though.

hnbad• 3 years ago

Neither do most storefront windows and yet they're often made to reduce the transmission of UV light to protect displayed goods from sunlight or intentionally darkened so they're less transparent when the display is not lit up. You just don't notice it normally or dismiss it as an effect of ordinary glare, which is the point.

neallindsay• 3 years ago

I agree that this shouldn't be anywhere near the top of people's privacy concern list. A $1 traditional digital camera can already be hidden very easily and this probably costs thousands of dollars at least if you could even get it.

It's still creepy though.

nonrepeating• 3 years ago

Thanks. The original description made this seem like far-future technological magic. A system that can somehow analyze a random pane of glass and derive all the transformations needed to use it as a high-precision waveguide? I actually had a manager ask me to develop such a thing, and I asked him how many dozen optics PhDs I could hire to accomplish this feat.

shrx• 3 years ago

Apparently the number is finite.

Krasnol• 3 years ago

So what you say is: this early prototype might be hard to see if it's not close up?

I mean, this will be worse if the tech advances no?

thfuran2• 3 years ago

and must, due to the laws of thermodynamics, not be 100% transparent.

It's perhaps worth noting, however, that it wouldn't be unusual for a window to have only ~60% transmittance in visible spectrum.

mensetmanusman3• 3 years ago

A fresh piece of uncoated perfectly clean glass is ~ 90% transparent.

godelski4• 3 years ago

due to the laws of thermodynamics, not be 100% transparent.

How useful is this statement though? Regular glass isn't 100% transparent either, even in just the visible spectrum. Shouldn't we be more concerned with the delta in the visible spectrum is if we're concerned about easy identification? (before mentioning that plenty of glass is purposefully tinted and dynamic tinting is an application here) And reasonably, couldn't we, theoretically, pick up a decent signal from simply capturing the reflections around the glass edge? I mean we can now do 3D reconstructions from pointing a camera at a mirrored ball. I'm sure it'd be very noisy, but there is signal. I mean to have the capability of projecting you'd have the ability to do the reverse too given that I doubt the internal structure of the glass would be (that) directionally dependent. Right? I can be missing something, it's been awhile since I've done optics.

fortyseven• 3 years ago

I was just thinking to make ALL the glass the same tint, regardless of specialty.

MrYellowP• 3 years ago

You can't know how much it improves in a year, two, five.

Johnny5553• 3 years ago

For the people kinda worried: this is a highly specialized piece of glass that is extremely complicated to manufacture at present and must, due to the laws of thermodynamics, not be 100% transparent. It's not going to allow surveillance through existing glass installations in any form

If you're worried that your Airbnb host is going to use it to spy on you (which was mentioned in the article), unless you already scrutinize every nail hole, photo frame, electrical appliance, electrical outlets, smoke detector, etc, this doesn't open up a new vulnerability.

Pinhole cameras with a lens as small as 2mm are already readily available and cheap, no ones going to use an expensive "window camera" to spy on you when they already have so many other options.

Perhaps those that fear government surveillance or other well funded adversaries may have cause for concern, but few of us are in that category.

theyinwhy2• 3 years ago

Pinhole cameras by definition do not have lenses and are known since 500 BCE or 1893 if you need a recording unit ;)

fennecbutt• 3 years ago

Nobody would ever find a OV6948 if it was hidden.

ijhuygft7762• 3 years ago

It's not going to allow surveillance through existing glass installations in any form, just possibly new ones if there's room for the support equipment and through the use of 4-5 digit piles of cash.

Total surveillance is just a matter of time...

WhackyIdeas4• 3 years ago

I agree. I had this worrying idea (realisation..?) that one day, maybe triple digit years away, maybe sooner, that tiny cameras and mics the size of grains of salt will be everywhere. They will cost nothing to produce, be self-charging, interconnected to each other and created to ‘reduce crime’ or ‘make you safer’. And in the same way as forever chemicals, you can’t get rid of them. Trillions of them, in fields, the ground. Spreading around stuck to your shoes, on your car tires.

Just a crazy idea, but I think that if they could make that happen today then they would. And that part is the main point - There is no limit to surveillance anymore. I live in the UK, that realisation is in my face every day. Can’t even take a trip to Tesco without being run through facial recognition.

There is no care for the concept of privacy anymore. All the richest companies in the world don’t make their money from caring about our privacy.

JCharante• 3 years ago

and through the use of 4-5 digit piles of cash.

5 figures doesn't sound like much for an organized crime network

kristjansson• 3 years ago

Where could someone surreptitiously place a wildly expensive pane of glass they couldn’t already put an $20 hidden camera?

AceyMan• 3 years ago

I read it as the thickness of the deck of bills (thousands or more) so if they are 20s or 100s, that's be some serious funding.

ryukoposting• 3 years ago

Add in the fact that your IPhone has mac randomization but every other device you own including your car's TPMS doesn't.

The truly pathetic thing is that virtually all of these devices could use RPA but don't, because nobody remembered to flip that flag from "n" to "y"

Log_out_• 3 years ago

Oh tempo oh rex moores

bradknowles• 3 years ago

There are some places where a not-completely 90% transparent piece of glass might not raise too much suspicion, but it could be more difficult to retrofit with a more traditional "pinhole" style spycam.

Like the wall of a shower stall, which you would expect to be less than 100% transparent.

I do think this threat model is less likely, however.

What I think is more likely is a Minority Report style system where there are pervasive cameras everywhere, constantly scanning your face, etc.... Maybe not constantly scanning your retinas and identifying you that way, but facial recognition alone would be more than enough. Either way, once you're recognized, you could be easily tracked silently, or you could be called out publicly by a nearby display.

i8comments3• 3 years ago

Is there on the market any device that should be able to detect this tech if it is used as hidden cams?

neilv• 3 years ago

Get legislation against all hidden cameras.

sroussey3• 3 years ago

Is it just me, or does their car stuff look a lot like the BMW Neue Klasse stuff?

nickpinkston• 3 years ago

This video seems to show what they're talking about better than that article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NORPeCcIXRQ

xyproto• 3 years ago

Changing rooms will never be the same.

erikpukinskis• 3 years ago

I’ve said many times, eye contact will be the killer app of VR…

… but it will be ironic if 2D beats the VR companies to it, using technology like this.

What an utter failure on the part of Meta that would be. With such a huge head start and they still don’t sell eye contact (except on their Pro device? Maybe?)

ChrisMarshallNY• 3 years ago

Looks cool. The unfortunate thing, is that, whenever an "exciting new camera tech" is announced, the image quality is often debatable.

But even relatively poor image quality might be cool, if you had a camera built into your monitor, so you could do direct-eye-contact video calls.

justinl33• 3 years ago

Can some correct me in saying that this is equivalent to having a 20+ inch sized sensor? The focal length would be extraordinary

regularfry• 3 years ago

That's what's making me wonder about marketing it to car makers. What does it do if your entire windscreen is a lens?

raphman3• 3 years ago

Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group did something similar (I guess) back in 2011:

https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/uploads/publicati... https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/projects/the-wedg...

emmelaich• 3 years ago

... Does not turn glass windows into cameras. From the headline I thought this might be a possibility.

Requires Zeiss Multifunctional Smart Glass(tm)

olivermarks• 3 years ago

Would be good to have a formal notification on glass stating 'this window/screen/etc contains a camera that may broadcast your image'

jack_riminton• 3 years ago

Am I alone in thinking this is cool but not inherently useful? The only use case where this might be useful is in video calls to make ‘eye contact’ more realistic but I’m sure there are software fixes (altering pupils)

In most cases such as the windscreen you can just have a camera on the frame. Why does it need to utilise the glass itself?

Aeolun2• 3 years ago

Why does it need to utilise the glass itself?

I think you’ll find that for a lot of people, it looks cool/elegant/stylish is a deciding factor.

ericfrederich• 3 years ago

https://youtu.be/NORPeCcIXRQ?si=7uonp0AGn5dNdGti

tgbugs• 3 years ago

I'm super excited about whether something like this could be used to prevent bird strikes on windows. If anyone wants to grow the market for this technology there are likely square miles worth of glass that could have this installed to prevent birds from being killed.

sleepybrett2• 3 years ago

So embedded micro light pipes? Cool idea. I wonder if it creates any kind of noticeable perturbation in the glass. Like if you embedded this in a window and were looking through a portion of the glass that contained these light pipes would you be able to notice them? Might be a problem for putting this type of glass in front of a display.

chernoby• 3 years ago

There is a video on youtube, camera resolution a bit poor quality but game changer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NORPeCcIXRQ

crazygringo2• 3 years ago

I've read through all the comments here but I still don't have the slightest idea of how this works.

I see some references to "light guides" and words like "coupling" but I don't know what those mean at all, and all of my googling is not helping to explain how light guides embedded in a thin, mostly transparent layer could possibly be used to project a hi-res holographic 3D light field out of a piece of glass. How big is each guide? What is it exactly -- what is it actually made of? How is it shaped? How are they arranged? How are they illuminated? How do you manufacture something like this?

Can anyone ELI15 how this works?

terminous• 3 years ago

Don't think of it like a transparent camera. Think of the window as a giant external periscope lens, connected to the rest of the camera with such thin fiber optics that you can't notice.

crazygringo2• 3 years ago

Sure, but how do you build fiber optics like that? Especially so each "pixel" has to shoot out hundreds (?) of separate fibers to cover every possible angle to achieve the holographic effect?

For just a 1MP display, we're talking like hundreds of millions of fibers? That fit in some thin transparent layer? How?

mensetmanusman3• 3 years ago

There are nanoscale features in the glass that scatter or reflect the incoming light in an engineered way to small camera sensors in the frame.

It's basically something like the Microsoft Halolens in reverse.

Zeiss's "Holocam" turns glass windows into cameras

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