Google Glass and other head-mounted displays like Epson’s Moverio BT-100 and Sony’s HMZ-T2 mimic a large screen far away, from a smaller screen positioned close to the eye. Somehow they’re able to focus the light so that it looks like it’s coming from far away.
My question is: can this be done for smartphone and computer screens, typically about 30 cm away? Can we make a screen that, when held 30 cm away, looks like a 100 cm screen 3 meters away? I think this can be done with a magnifier, so maybe the question should be: how thin can such a screen be? Also, would such a screen be viewable from a large range of angles, or only have “sweet spots”, like autostereoscopic displays?
The reason for doing this is, bigger screens are always better. But screen size is limited by the practical size of the device. Our current technology can already produce pixels smaller than the eye can see. There’s no point making a 1080 pixel screen smaller than 10 cm, so we need a way to increase the apparent screen size.
It can be done, but it requires optics (either a lens or a curved reflective surface) between the screen and viewer - and those optics need to be in the right place with respect to the display - so it may not actually be possible to layer them directly on top of the display screen.
Also, it might make touchscreens more difficult to use - you’re focusing on something that is apparently 3 metres away, but your finger on the glass is 45cm away - your finger and the display will not both appear in focus to you at any one time.
Another way to do it might be to use the device’s tilt sensors so that you seem to be looking through it into a bigger display (so you can only see part of it at a time) - I’ve seen something likethis done on the Nintendo DS (I think that actually used the camera to detect device motion)
Wow, you were right, Amazon’s new Fire phone has something called Dynamic Perspective, which changes the screen’s view based on its movement. I guess iOS 7 also did it with its icon movement, but that had no practical purpose. To be more realistic, looks like they have to change based on the viewer’s movement as well.