Putting two adaptive dynamic systems next to each other is tricky. Your eyes and these glasses could easily create a positive or negative feedback loop or begin oscillating. So while cool I hope they have some experienced controls people on staff to detect and prevent such things.

That's the beauty of eye tracking. The two adjustments are orthogonal. You don't cross and uncross your eyes to adjust focus.

If only they’d had a frontend web dev on the team!

Don't say that, I don't want lenses running on Vue/React.

Make it love2d where humans and building are replaced by pixel art.

Maybe they really should. That way, instead of having a run of the mill unusable parallax scrolling landing page, they could have a page with a controllable animation that visually explains the mechanism of action behind these glasses. Would be a hell of a lot more interesting than vague or otherwise inscrutable prose about liquid crystals / their products / their company being cool.

How does it compare to multifocal contact lenses?

My understanding of those is that contact lenses work the same way that multifocal glasses work, with the added disadvantage that every time you blink, it takes them a second to re-align correctly. So this should be completely different, if it works.

I tried them and could not get used to them. I went back to using single focus lenses and using mild readers (1.00 or 1.25 for desktop screen work at arm's length, and slightly stronger readers (2.00 or maybe 2.50) for very close work.

I typically have a pair of mild readers that I leave on the desk and carry a pair of the stronger ones around for reading my phone, restaurant menus, etc.

Note if you wear glasses you can "focus" them to some extent by sliding them up and down your nose.

As a glasses wearer I'm looking forward to this tech. I like the idea of natural, seamless auto focusing, and as a future fantasy, a simple, toggleable overlay of info would be nifty.

Going out foraging and being able to identify plants and fungi by simply resting my vision on something for a pause is the sci Fi tech I actually want

I wonder how long the wait will be for AR glasses to have this option too.

Honestly, even if they could shift focus via some sort of "command" - a muscle tick or something - that would be a game changer as it is. Every time I play D&D, I have to keep taking off and putting on my glasses so I can read my notes, and see my players' faces clearly.

(I'm aware of the multifocal glasses mentioned in the article; they didn't work well for me.)

An alternative to multifocals is glasses with one lens for near and the other for far or to use a contact lens in only one eye in addition to your normal glasses. This also obviously comes with downsides that take some getting used to but some people prefer it.

I don't want to reject this idea immediately without trying it, but this really sounds like it would be unpleasant to experience on a day to day.

Yes, It's something you'd only want to do in particular situations where you know you'd otherwise keep swapping between two pairs of glasses annoyingly often.

They do! The command is, cross your eyes a little bit

I'm in a similar situation but found that getting "computer glasses" made which use the near prescription (and are not for long distance) work well for this. (I run D&D as well lol) I could not handle multifocal at all, was disorienting for me.

How does that work for far vision?

I'm nearsighted, myself - so for near vision, I need zero prescription at the moment. (We'll see how that changes in a deacde, I guess.)

It's not for all day wear if you are going outside or driving, etc. But around the house or in a room it's fine. All depends on your prescription though. In my case, far vision is better than not wearing any glasses, but I'd not been comfortable driving wearing these.

I'm under 40, recently had cataract surgery to address mild cararacts, and deeply regret that choice. I strongly feel I lost more than I gained, and now need to carry multiple pairs of glasses every time I go out to engage many common activities.

Unfortunately I don't have presbyopia at all (my surgery still left me myopic) and my inability to change focus distance is drastically more severe than what happens naturally with aging. This first generation of IXI glasses won't be useful to me.

But I really, really want something like it.

You can swap out your default lenses with multifocal lenses... I use multifocal contact lenses, and my wife and my mother both had the surgery. My wife got the panoptix (no need for glasses at all) and my mother got vivity (just need reading glasses). At night, there are halos with the panoptix lenses (same with the multifocal contact lenses), the severity is not always the same per-person, and it bothers some people more than others (interferes with night driving), but it's an option. Yes, it's another surgery, but depending on your ability to afford it, and the amount it bothers you, it is still an option. From my point of view (admittedly, with contact lenses), going from three different pairs of glasses (vision, vision+reading, plain contact lenses+reading) to contact lenses with no glasses at all was just unquestionably worth it.

I'm unfortunately not a candidate for multifocal intraocular lenses due to other problems with my eyes, otherwise I would have gone with them for the first surgery.

Multifocal contacts are probably not a good long-term fit for those same reasons, and there's the same problem with progressive lenses in glasses. Old-school bifocals are okay, but limited in the usual way.

Perhaps you could try monovision in glasses instead of multifocal?

I have monovision contacts and they work pretty well for me, though mid-tier (e.g. desk computer) work requires special glasses.

I don't have cataracts, but my prescription is so severe and I'm getting to an age where there's an RX difference between near, medium, and far sight, and I just wanted to commiserate. It is annoying to have to have multiple pairs of glasses, and remember where you put them, and do you have the right ones for this, etc.

I appreciate your commiseration! Thanks for dropping by to share :)

I keep my new computer glasses at the computer, and the old ones downstairs for "other" uses. Then I keep my new driving glasses in the car, and the old ones downstairs for "other" uses (tv, etc). Basically, I keep the new ones where it matters and accept that my vision will be mediocre in other cases. And also, I'll see 2 of everything because I have double-vision (corrected with the glasses - but "older" ones don't work very well for it).

I have to choose each year between paying for (main) glasses or contacts, so I usually opt for contacts and that means my glasses are a few years old. When I wear them at night, I definitely see double. Hate it.

I'm a -20, so small differences really magnify.

Wow, that's a wild prescription, presumably ICL would be a huge quality of life difference for you! You could get within a diopter or two. I've been contemplating it at only -6, my commiseration on the multiple focal lengths.

Yeah, I've wanted ICL for years, but I could never afford it out of pocket, and all insurance considers vision correction aesthetic. Which is freaking stupid: There's a huge difference between me and someone who's a -2.

I might be able to stretch it now, but I'm coming up on my presbyopia years, so I'm not sure it's worth the money if I'm only going to get a few years of stability.

At this point, I'm hoping I take after my mother and get some really early cataracts because then I can just pay for the lens and the insertion/replacement will be covered.

If you can afford it, I would go for it, though. Personally, even for people who are candidates for PRK, LASIK, etc. I think ICL is still worth considering because it has some benefits. Less risk of dry eye and the ability to change the lens if your prescription changes. Longer recovery period, though.

I know I'm not a candidate for PRK/LASIK/LASEK due to dry eye (curse you programming!), so ICL was always my fallback, but like you I'm approaching the point where presbyopia is going to be a concern.

Holy fucking shit. I am -11 contacts, -13 glasses, and you are the first person I have ever heard of that is more than one diopter stronger than me.

Ophthalmologists will bring their newer assistants in to look at my eyes to see what a severe myope looks like. I got contacts at age eight, so they also use me to show off what a scrupulous contact user’s eyes look like after >40 years. I’m a physician myself, so I’m happy to oblige - some things you can’t understand until you see them.

Yeah, the only people I've heard of with worse vision than me are those with some sort of associated eye condition (e.g. kerataconus).

For the most part, it's...fine. Insurance has no idea what to do with me and that's frustrating, though. Somehow, I have eyes this bad without any associated pathology, and companies don't understand that the needs that such severe myopia presents on its own. I wear custom made RGPs; they can custom make softs but they're horrific (or at least they were 13 years ago when I gave up on them).

Isn't it hilarious every time you go to a new eye doctor? It's actually really cute: I like watching them get all giddy. They get so excited when they can't use the machines (a lot of them will only go up to a -15) and have to measure my RX manually. You can just see how they're like 'oh my God, I learned about this in school!'

They learn about me. You are a class on your own.

I did have to do a lot of advocating/educating back when I was younger and too poor for insurance. It was good practice for when I was diagnosed with MS, though.

Now I usually look for practices that work with keratoconus patients. They usually have practice with strange prescriptions and unusual contact fittings.

Do you mind telling what procedure you got? I know multiple people that had lens replacement surgery for cataracts and are very happy with their vision. But that is just a couple of stories.

Just had my natural lenses removed and a standard monofocal lens put in in each eye. But I've had only a marginal improvement in visual acuity and none in color vision. Before my surgery my cataracts weren't even detectable in my normal field of view; they were tiny and my brain just patched around them. But my overall acuity was low enough that I met the insurance criteria and I went for it thinking it would be similar to the experiences of others in my life who had received intraocular lenses. But those people were all older or had ICLs or experienced more impairment from their cataracts than I had. I made the wrong call getting the surgery. :(

Have you tried using contact lenses to make one eye long focus and one eye short focus ("monovision" in intraopticlens terms)? Then you'd only need at most one middle-distance pair of glasses on hand.

Exactly what I do, and even though my short focus is set extra short, I only need the middle distance glasses for desk computer work.

Wouldn't you get a headache or have depth perception issues? Whenever I lose a contact in the middle of the day and don't have a spare it's very uncomfortable to keep the other in.

I am not GP, but I don't have a problem with a single contact. What I find really neat is after hours of just one, the vision in my other eye is improved for a while; I can actually see decently from the non-contact eye when I remove the contact.

"Monovision" in the in-eye lenses is a very common choice for elderly patients having cataract surgery. There may be a period of adjustment, which you wouldn't have had.

The local drug store went bust recently. They had a clearance sale, and I bought a collection of reading glasses of different strengths for a few dollars each.

I find them very handy, as my progressive lenses are rather limited for closeup work.

In the last two to three years, I've hit a point where I need to take off my glasses (near-sighted, can't see things far away) to read my phone. I can still make out the text with them on, but it's physically uncomfortable and holding it at a distance helps.

I've been thinking about the existence of bifocals and how they aren't ideal as I come to terms with the inconvenience of removing my glasses and putting them back on repeatedly as I task switch. This sounds pretty great and I hope it's not smoke and mirrors (given enough time, science fiction tends to become reality, so I'm hopeful).

I'm at the same point you are, and a couple years ago I ended up getting bifocals, and let me tell you it's absolutely worth it! I ended up getting "multi-tasking bifocals" (what my glasses place called them), which are basically normal glasses with the lower area a second prescription for reading the phone. There are others that have 3 areas (reading at the bottom, distance a small spot in the middle, and then a middle ground elsewhere).

I didn't really want to get bifocals because it's what old people wear ;-). But it's so much better with them.

The glasses place (CostCo Optical) guy was kind of a jerk about it, all but saying "you're going to wreck your car if you use these for anything but at your desk", but I just "yeah, yeah"ed him, I like my prescription dialed back a bit from max power for day-to-day use.

If you can afford it, maybe give them a try? Zenni and other onlines might make them affordable enough to just try?

I was reluctant to try progressive lenses at first as well. Ended up loving them. Look ahead to see far, look down to see the car dashboard or your phone.

Of course, being a programmer I have another pair of glasses just for monitors. If your work doesn't involve reading a lot maybe you can get away with just progressives, but this is HN so not likely.

I am not so sure about the eye tracking and autofocus stuff, but would love a simple focus knob on the frames to adjust instead of changing to a different pair of glasses. I suspect the tracking and focusing electronics must be somewhat clumsy and a battery life of a single day sounds suboptimal for me.

This exists. There was a frame with a slider on the nose bridge which refocuses circular lenses. I read about it a long (decade+?) time ago.

Sounds interesting. But I suspect my astigmatism would kind of exclude just turning the lenses around

Add to that the blinking LEDs that track eye movements. No thanks.

Are you one of the few people who are able to perceive infrared light?

No. My wife has migraines, though, triggered by flashing lights. I’d have to wonder about the long term affects from the glasses.

Looks super cool!

> It still needs to obtain the necessary medical certifications in order to sell its glasses and get all the production pieces in place

Oh, ok. I hope they have enough funding to last till the FDA clears them, in 2030 :/

The same organization which allows any snake oil to be marketed as long as they say it’s a “supplement” will hold a pair of glasses up for years, as though there could be a hidden danger to a lens that can change to a second prescription.

There is potential danger with a lens that can suddenly change to a second prescription. For example: imagine you're driving and your whole field of vision suddenly starts flickering in and out of focus. That would be incredibly distracting and pretty dangerous. Even if they just started focusing on 1 foot away it'd be quite bad.

These glasses address farsightedness, which doesn't apply while driving. Worst case you just take them off.

Plenty of us are simultaneously far and near sighted. I can't drive without glasses, but until I got progressive lenses I couldn't use my phone with my glasses on.

If you cannot drive without glasses, the sensible thing is to keep a backup pair in the car. After all, glasses can fall off and get lost under the seat, get stepped on, etc.

That's a smart idea, similar to how I keep a little cash in the car just in case. For example, I could get something in my eyes and have to remove my contacts, and an old pair of glasses would let me get home.

This is why I keep a pair of prescription sunglasses in my car. Added bonus is cutting the astigmatism glare while driving at night.

Still doesn't address the fact that if the glasses fail mid drive it poses a serious security risk if you can't pull over to switch glasses. Doing so in a highway in a moving car is inadvisable regardless of the technology behind the glasses.

Keep them within easy reach, like the driver door pocket.

Changing glasses while driving on a high speed lane is dangerous regardless of where you put your spare glasses

Considering what people do whole driving, I doubt this will add any measurable risk.

On the contrary, if you are a perfect driver and only reach for you glasses, that adds a small risk. But this is a complex system, driving and multitasking, so added complexity surely compounds, maybe even exponentially. If you are texting, then talking to your kids, then your brother next to you starts blasting loud music on the radio, adding another task like changing glasses increases the risk of an accident a lot, because less and less you are concentrated on the traffict.

Similarly, if a FAA-licensed pilot requires glasses to fly, it becomes a legal requirement that they carry a readily-accessible second pair while exercising the privileges of their license. This even applies if they use contacts (and, no, extra contacts don’t count :).

It is also a requirement for international flight operations under ICAO regulations. I’m pretty sure this regulation (or something close to it) is enforced by just about every flight-licensing authority worldwide.

It’s plain good sense and I’m glad it’s in there. A plane cannot pull over to the side of the highway while the pilot fumbles around trying to dig his glasses out from under the seat :)

(As a side note, this rule isn’t just for dropped spectacles: there have been cases where they literally get sucked out of the airplane if a cockpit window fails or where a bird strike causing facial injuries also damages the pilots glasses).

According to the article the technology can be incorporated into normal prescription lenses, and when the battery is empty, it would behave as that lens without any adaption for when focusing near stuff.

If they are replacing bifocals, the wearer needs both a near- and far-sighted prescription. Far-sighted only would never need these.

Either failure mode would be dangerous while driving because you need to be able to read your dash.

It's not a crisis if you cannot read your dash. How often do you look at the oil pressure gauge, for example? As for speed, just move with the traffic.

I had a car with a broken dash. The only thing I missed for the month until I fixed it was the fuel gauge. I probably didn't estimate my speed very accurately but I was close enough to not get a ticket.

Yes, with my old cars I've had broken dashes, too. I discovered I maintained speed by the engine pitch - because when I drove a silent car, I couldn't seem to maintain a consistent speed!

As for the gas gauge, the trick is to reset the local odometer at every fillup, and you'll have an indication of the remaining fuel. Some older cars don't even have a fuel gauge, they just have a lamp that glows when it gets low.

I my case I tore the dash apart because the speedometer wasn't working, and the odometer is connected to that. Only after tearing the dash apart could I see the cable to the transmission wasn't turning. Until I found the real problem there wasn't a hurry as I removed the cable several times before I found what was really broke.

On my car the needle fell off the speedo!

Yes, it is a problem. There should be no controversy about saying that clear vision reduces distractions and confusion when operating something.

If you want to talk specifics, you’re supposed to be able to see your speed and how your car is performing. You should be prepared for contingencies, like your temperature changing or a yellow/red warning on the dash. You may need to deal with a problem in the car, like grabbing something that could slide under the pedals.

The same goes for farsighted driving. Yes, in most cases you could just follow traffic and you wouldn’t need to read street signs or look at traffic a mile ahead. But you need to be prepared for unexpected situations, and you’ll generally do worse just mentally managing your reduced vision.

I’ve driven without my glasses and tested an unexpectedly bad trial prescription in a car, if it matters.

I don't need to be able to read my dash. I only need to see where the needle is pointing.

I think the car is 100% a use case. There are plenty of driving bifocals - they address the need to see the road, but also see the dashboard and controls.

Also, lots of older people get cataract surgery and can be perpetually farsighted (distance iol chosen)

Add warning not to drive with them. Problem solved.

If it worked 99% of the time, compliance would be nil, but you don't want these drivers to be affected 1% of their commute

Even if a person would be compliant, if they wore this most of the time, they wouldn't be accustomed to the varifocal lenses while driving, guaranteeing that whatever other solution than these autofocusing lenses they select for driving, they won't be adapted to them whenever they drive.

The FDA needs to make the glasses as expensive as possible.

I don't think the FDA should be regulating based on whether or not it's safe to drive while using something.

There are plenty of FDA-approved drugs that should not be taken while operating a motor vehicle.

Are those drugs required for driving by the people who use them? I would expect if so, they would be tested more thoroughly before putting people on the road with a new drug, much like I’d rather not have someone driving toward me at a combined opposing speed of 100-120mph, two feet apart, while relying on “we didn’t think it will be a problem but we didn’t bother to test”.

That said, there is certainly room for an improvement in funding so that the FDA could go through processes more efficiently, but “efficiency” is rarely ever achieved by cost cutting because it confuses cause with effect.

Or they could just ban using these glasses while driving. There’s plenty of people who don’t actually need to drive who would buy this.

I think enforcement would be poor and therefore abuse would be high, but it could be granted that they're not safe for driving and therefore if you own a pair, you must switch to different (your old regular dual focus lenses) when driving.

Equally hard to enforce as people driving without their normal prescription glasses.

In both cases enforcement is reactive and happens after an accident has already happened.

> For example: imagine you're driving and your whole field of vision suddenly starts flickering in and out of focus

Imagine you're driving with regular glasses and one tiny screw gives way and they fall off. Imagine you rub your eyes and your contact falls out. Those can't be 100% ruled out either.

But anyway, the FDA imposing a half decade of delays on this will do zero to prevent that from happening. The article says when unpowered they revert to being regular glasses for the main prescription. So the main reason they could glitch out like you suggest would be a software bug. After approval, a future software update could still introduce that bug anyway. So either the FDA has to find a way to review every software patch with perfect bug-detection abilities, or they are useless here and just wasting our money pretending to regulate things without adding any value.

Note that I'm not saying they have no role -- though I would say they do seem to be the worst in the first world at their actually needed job of balancing risk and access in the 'actual medications' department.

The FDA doesn’t “allow” snake-oil supplements. They have no authority over supplements.

They in fact do have a lot of requirements for supplements and their labeling, but do not require (in fact forbid) any claims that the supplements should be used to treat or cure any disease.

https://www.fda.gov/food/dietary-supplements-guidance-docume...

You should look into dietary supplement regulations, specifically about label claims and advertising.

You mean the rule that’s basically “Anything goes” as long as you reproduce the magic incantation in tiny print at the end:

“This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”

That's not how it works.

Then perhaps tell us how it works, rather than just being negative toward other people's comments.

That user could have googled it instead of making a false claim.

https://www.fda.gov/food/dietary-supplements-guidance-docume...

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B...

https://ods.od.nih.gov/About/DSHEA_Wording.aspx

Linking to a huge list of supplement guidelines, most of which cover labeling of nutrient content is not helpful. I did try to dig in, however, and found this:

> A qualified health claim is supported by less scientific evidence than an authorized health claim. FDA requires that qualified claims be accompanied by a disclaimer that explains the level of the scientific evidence supporting the relationship.

> Unlike authorized health claims, FDA does not issue regulations for qualified health claims.

That does seem to indicate supplement manufacturers have broad latitude to make claims provided they are disclosed as such.

Literally nothing you posted changes the fact that bogus supplements are constantly marketed with carefully-worded health claims (not "disease"! We didn't say "treat"! We didn't say "disease"! These pills just improve your 'gut health' and 'increase endurance'!), with the magic disclaimer at the end.

It may not be the FDA's fault that their authority can be so easily evaded, but it doesn't change the fact that the FDA is a joke.

Just because people are getting away with selling illegal stuff doesn't mean it's ok. Look at all the fake vape carts from the past decade.

FDA certification would only be needed to ensure US insurance companies foot some of the bill, surely? It would mean a larger market, but the USA isn't the only market for prescription lenses.

"Cameraless eye tracking" is understating the key insight here. They don't even need to track which direction you're looking! The only thing they need to measure is the difference between the two directions, and parallax tells them how to focus.

Important to note, of course, that this only works for people with normal binocular vision -- but that's the majority of customers.

It's only me or it does not explain how it works?

> the technology [...] can be separated into two parts. First [...]

is the part that tracks eye movements and what they are focusing on.

The second part is never written. There is a hint later on:

> [the] prototype lenses, made up of layers of liquid crystal and a transparent ITO (indium tin oxide) conductive layer. This combination is still incredibly thin, and it was amazing to watch the layers switch almost instantly into a prescription lens

>It's only me or it does not explain how it works?

I'll try my best to explain, according to what I understand:

An electric field can re-orientate the liquid crystal molecules, which changes the speed of light within the liquid crystal, and thereby changes the liquid crystal's refractive index.

This changes the angle of light as it passes from other material (such as air or plastic or glass) into the liquid crystal, and that change of angle changes the focal point of the light ray.

That effect provides the ability to focus incoming light, controlled by electricity.

That's probably not exactly right, but it's better than the explanation in the original story, which is non-existent and also has a very confused reference to ITO (indium tin oxide), like you've noticed.

>> The team has also refined the nose pieces and glasses arms to accommodate different face shapes. Apparently, when testing expanded from Finland to the UK, British faces were "...different." A little harsh when talking to me, a Brit.

So the finish company's eyeglasses didn't fit a "British" face?

Fun story about this problem. When I was a kid I was a nationally-ranked swimmer. Almost everyone who could wore "Swedish" racing goggles aka swedes. These are very simple and tiny goggles, just a plastic cup that fits on, almost within, your eye socket. Your eyebrow normally sits over the top of the goggle, holding it onto your face. (I could swim slowly without the strap.) They are amazing, by far the best racing goggles out there. No foam to peal. Small enough not to fall off during a dive. And held together with string so you can adjust them perfectly to your face. They were also dirt cheap. But without any soft parts they are unforgiving to the point of racism. If your skull is even a slightly different shape than the Nordic/Viking/Swedish ideal, the goggles will not sit on your eye socket properly. On Asian people they tend to leak unless you tighten them painfully. On many black people they tend to rotate and climb into the eye socket. To nobody's surprise, they have kept the "Swedish" name because, in this case, any racial connotation is very appropriate.

https://malmsten.com/en/products/p/swim-goggles/swedish-gogg... https://alltides.com/products/lunettes-de-natation-swedish-b...

(If you buy these, ditch the stock straps. Nobody uses them because they rot/age very quickly. Use silicon string.)

Does this mean a single pair can be adjusted over time to adapt to a changing prescription?

Buying lenses is often the most expensive part, especially for those with astigmatism, second only to the frames themselves, which is another racket altogether.

This article is from Jan 8.

I pray for the next major development in glasses tech to be some thing that blocks ultra-bright oncoming LEDs while driving.

Why not in the windshield?

At this point I'd take anything but my guess is this will make windshield quite more expensive (and it's already not cheap to replace it due to the sensor array calibration on most newer cars).

Um, take my money.

This cannot materialize quickly enough.

deal breakers for me would be needing an app/ account,and having wifi/bluetooth if the setup "app" was free to download from there servers, or preferably built in and worked with all major OS's, the this would be very interesting, but there is zero possibility of guggle etall having my vision as a data set and leverage for extortion