Has anyone here seen these things in the wild yet? To me, judging by the ads, they look like the specs worn by the enemy in WW2 anti-Japanese propaganda.
From what I can see from the ads, rather than tilting your head slightly to deal with bifocals, you instead have to use your fingers to manually adjust the focus, and pay almost $900 for this. Ouch.
The $900 is an ouch. The rest of it … may be better from my point of view.
“tilting your head slightly” … pfooey. I DON’T WANT TO look at a book or a computer screen through the #@!!!&& BOTTOM of my glasses, with my face pointed at the &*%#! wall. I HAVE progressive bifocals which the eye doctor eventually twisted my arm into getting. They are useless, and have been useless for years. I simply take my glasses off to read or use the computer. And get close enough for what I’m concentrating on to fill my field of view. Yes, I read books and screens with my nose stuck in them. I have my whole life.
If the little round lenses are a consequence of the two lens focusing system, that might be a deal breaker, too. Small lenses suck.
I heard that someone was trying to develop a version of these (adjustable eyeglasses) to offer to poor people in the third world. But that would need the product to be available for a lot less money, like under five or ten bucks.
Polaroid had an adjustable focus mechanism that had no fluid-filled sac like these do – it relied upon two plastic sheets with fifth-order curvature sliding across each other or rotating about a common center. I’ll bet you could use that to get your adjustable focus without the complexity of these lenses, and consequently at a lower price.
Besides, historically the problem with liquid-filled lenses have been that they leaked, especially when they involved a flexible membrane.
Er… Whatchoo talkin’ about, Son??
Link?
From the sketchy description in the ads, I suspect the lenses will not correct for astigmatism (they appear to be spherical without a cylindrical component). I wonder if the fixed, rigid lens part could be made with a cylinder on a specified axis, tho.
This is what I heard that they had veen developed for…people in third world countries.
If I recall correctly, the third world version allowed for custom fitting in the field, but it was not user-adjustable. A trained person would fit the glasses to a wearer by adding or removing liquid to each lens through a port on the lens. Once the lenses were correct, the fitter would seal the ports. The lenses could be adjusted later, but not on-the-fly by the wearer the way the Superfocus glasses can.
Thanks, yabob.
I wish I could afford a pair!
Off Topic, but I wish someone could tell me why that if I don’t have my glasses with me, if I make a tiny hole by squeezing three finger tips together and look through that with one eye, everything comes into focus and I can read even the smallest print, albeit one word at a time.
I remember seeing spectacles for sale that worked on this principle and had a plate, where the glass would normally be, but the plate had hundreds of small holes drilled in them.
This is a pinhole occluder - it restricts the field of vision to a fraction of the lens, so larger scale lens distortion does not have an effect. The downside is reduced field of vision and a need for increased light.
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Wow. This definitely looks like a solution in search of a problem. I can’t imagine that I’d be happier with these than with my decidedly old-fashioned trifocals.
Having to reach up and manually adjust the glasses every time I wanted to look up from my book or computer monitor or whatever would drive me nuts.