The race to develop a mass-market
color e-ink display is at fever pitch, and there's a new challenger on the scene: electrofluidic display, or EFD. Developed at the University of Cincinnati in partnership with a handful of private companies, the new tech apparently blows everything else out of the water -- according to professor Jason Heikenfeld, EFD has superior brightness, color saturation, and video speed, all in a 15-micron thick panel that can eventually be used in rollable displays. No word on when we'll see any products, but the partnership is spinning off a new company called Gamma Dynamics to commercialize the tech, so hopefully it'll be soon.
[Thanks, Wendy]
Read - University of Cincinnati press release
Read - EFD paper in Nature
posted April 30th 2009 1:47AM
Should be a pretty cool day when I can finally read full color magazines on an e-book reader.
Cool, but what are the nipples for?
What would the use of a full-colour electronic magazine be without nipples?
Would be cool if we could see a double portrait-landscape slider with programmable e-ink keys that could switch between Suretype and Qwerty keypads, different languages and also go inot gamepad mode... possibly show bookmarks as well...
The race to develop a mass-market color *ELECTRONIC PAPER* display is at fever pitch.
E-Ink itself is a brand of "electrophoretic" display. (Which is not the same thing as Electrofluidic)
The cover of the newspaper will always be on, then pay a quarter to read the news in a coffee shop like Starbucks to get your news.
Then after you close it, it erases itself for the next person to use.
Thus, you'll have to pay another 25 cents to read or a swipe of your Starbucks card.
I could see a market for this, if someone's willing to develop it.
Twelfth
You were halfway there.
This is incredibly ingenious. Taken one step further, they could add an additional alpha channel that could instruct the display to inflate a bladder behind each "pixel" to create a raised surface. This means on-screen objects could offer true tactile feedback of the item being displayed.
Imagine an entire keyboard popping up on the display where you can identify each key entirely by touch. Then later using that same display to sample textures for real-world objects where you can both see the texture and feel it by running your fingers over the displayed sample.
Another option... working with vector drawing tools or 3D modeling software. The anchor points, curve tools and vertices are raised above the lines that make the shape, but the lines themselves are also slightly raised above the shape and the background when you run your fingers over it.
This sort of display could revolutionize the way we interact with our computers, in the right hands.
NOW you're thinking with portals.
I don't know about tactile feedback in a display being beneficial for 3D modeling. Modeling requires accuracy and is much more complex than just moving vertices around. However, I could see it maybe being useful for applications like ZBrush where it feels more like you're working with a clay model than a mesh.
Considering I work with 3D on a daily basis, I can definitely say that it would be nice to simply be able to grab any point on an object and immediately make adjustments to it without having to precisely train a pointer on top of it.
Unlike a drawing tablet, you wouldn't even need a great deal of accuracy to interact with it since the points would all be a raised surface. Using Z-sorting in the display bumping, points on the object you're editing that are further away from the camera could simply have their bump height and area of influence adjusted relative to the current viewing angle. If the camera or object moves, the Z-sorting would kick in and readjust the tactile features of each point on the fly.
This gets even better if you're using a high-end app like Maya or Blender, that generates context menus around whatever part of the object you're editing. Each of these menus could be tactile buttons themselves. Once you know the position and order of these buttons, you could issue complex commands to your 3D app entirely by touch alone without having to visually interpret every element on the screen, without having to take your attention away from the screen itself to input commands via the keyboard.
An idea even further out... a physical cube with one of these tactile displays on each face running your 3D software with your 3D object contained within the bounds of the cube itself. Editing becomes almost second nature when you actually "feel" the surfaces of your object as you work on it, and special brushes in the software would allow you to further tweak and mold the object like playdoh.
One thing I am curious about, is whether or not the pigments in a display like this would be susceptible to fading from things like exposure to bright light or the sun for long periods of time. It'd kinda suck if the thing was gradually losing color accuracy day after day.
Perhaps overlaying it with an LCD blind could prevent such issues. (Such a blind might also be useful for making the display "3D" like the goggles used in movie theaters, depending on the refresh rate...)
The glasses work by alternatively blinding one eye so that only the other will receive the appropriate image. An LCD on the device itself wouldn't accomplish anything except give you a headache.
Wasn't it the technology behind Rorschach mask in Watchmen comic? Alan Moore is a visionary.
Nice idea, but the mask was done using bog standard special effects. It was a lycra base with a canvas style finish and they put 20 odd green tracking markers on the front. Then after shooting they just removed his face and replaced it with the SFX version.
I know, I know... I also bought the "making off". I mean the comic book (dated 1986). I remember something related to liquid clothes in the original text that was discarded by a fashion company that he (Rorschach) got from a waste and handled it with a red hot iron to cut and stich the parts into a mask. It was a long time ago when I readed it (original edition), but it is still my favourite comic book.
Hexagonal pixels...hmmm
Colour e-ink Photo frames here we come no more power cable.
No to lcd & oled photo frames
Yes to Colour E-ink photo frames.
Video...
Something that folks may have missed is that this technology is suitable to display video. That would mean that it would be extremely power efficient for the static portions of the display, while still being able to operate as a video display where needed.
For all I know, this could revolutionize monitor technology in general, with video drivers refreshing only those portions of a display that change. So if you're sitting there, reading Engadget, the monitor doesn't draw any power until you decide to scroll or page down. As long as the display doesn't change, there's no power use.
Animated advertisements would be even less appealing to people; they won't be 'green' because they use power to animate. I'm liking this technology.
Now they just need to get some products out the door. In small lots. Of a few tens of millions to start.
It's the same operational theory as what's in my kids' MagnaDoodle!
Nice post btw
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