Maybe we won't be using biological eyes any more. Maybe we'll be interfacing at the retina or neural level. If it's not any time soon, it may not be using any simple solution we can think of right now.
Indeed... and as hard as the problem seems, what we think we see is already unlike what hits our retina - the mind fills in blind spots, balances color and detail, patches retinal irregularities, smooths motion, and so forth. The solution will probably use these qualities to its advantage.
(In Oliver Stone's 1993 miniseries Wild Palms, the near-future AR/VR experiences are sometimes enhanced via a hallucinogen/hypnotic called mimezine.)
When speculating on this sort of thing, it's unnecessary to think in terms of biology and the whole two eyes thing.
A cybernetic implant or augment could produce the effect of having another set of eyes that was seeing something else entirely.
Even cybernetic eyes that had a uniformly high-density perception area, instead of what's actually concentrated in a relatively small zone in biological eyes, might have the advantage of situating things "off to the side" but not requiring you to actually look at them to make sense of what's being conveyed.
Scott Westerfeld's novels The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds mention something like what you mention - several characters have implants that allow them to have multiple "levels" of sight and hearing to interface with technology.
I think a big problem to solve also is the decoding of the external world, so that the AR knows what is empty space, what is floor, what is a wall, etc.
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Maybe we won't be using biological eyes any more. Maybe we'll be interfacing at the retina or neural level. If it's not any time soon, it may not be using any simple solution we can think of right now.
Indeed... and as hard as the problem seems, what we think we see is already unlike what hits our retina - the mind fills in blind spots, balances color and detail, patches retinal irregularities, smooths motion, and so forth. The solution will probably use these qualities to its advantage.
(In Oliver Stone's 1993 miniseries Wild Palms, the near-future AR/VR experiences are sometimes enhanced via a hallucinogen/hypnotic called mimezine.)
When speculating on this sort of thing, it's unnecessary to think in terms of biology and the whole two eyes thing.
A cybernetic implant or augment could produce the effect of having another set of eyes that was seeing something else entirely.
Even cybernetic eyes that had a uniformly high-density perception area, instead of what's actually concentrated in a relatively small zone in biological eyes, might have the advantage of situating things "off to the side" but not requiring you to actually look at them to make sense of what's being conveyed.
Scott Westerfeld's novels The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds mention something like what you mention - several characters have implants that allow them to have multiple "levels" of sight and hearing to interface with technology.
Recommendation duly noted. I'm a big Vinge fan, too.
I think a big problem to solve also is the decoding of the external world, so that the AR knows what is empty space, what is floor, what is a wall, etc.