I took the following screenshot yesterday to include as part of a rapid talk I gave about our future reality research. In the picture, I’m in the middle of explaining some of the math behind four dimensional rotation. When I saw it, I was reminded of something I wrote in this blog about seven years ago (before I had the gray beard).
One thing to note about this image is that the text in the glowing matrix to the left is forward, yet the “Future Reality Lab” logo on my shirt is mirror reversed. This reversal would make perfect sense if we were doing a Skype call, because it would ensure we are both looking in the same direction when we read any text between us.
But it wouldn’t work in the physical world. After all, when you and I are standing in front of each other in the flesh, we are not actually mirror reversed, and that can create a problem for shared text in augmented reality.
It’s the same problem that arises if you write a message on the glass surface of a window. If I am standing on the other side of that window, to me your text will look backwards.
I described one possible solution to this problem in this blog in 2011. Back then, I figured sooner or later those AR wearables would be coming, and we’d need to deal with this. Now that those glasses are a lot closer to becoming a reality, I am going to actually implement the solution I proposed then, and see how well it works.