LAS VEGAS, NEVADA—Someday, someone will make a useful heads-up display (HUD) computer. Google was one of the early leaders with Google Glass, but other than that device, there hasn't been a lot of movement in the area. Here at CES, Sony's component division is diving into the HUD market with a display module that it will sell to OEMs.

While Sony makes and sells its own branded products, it's also a leading component vendor. Just because a device has a certain brand name on the outside doesn't mean that company made everything on the inside. Sony makes many of the individual parts that go into a smartphone or other CE device, and OEMs buy these components for their devices. The company's batteries and camera sensors are very popular.

So what we're looking at is not necessarily a product that will come to market, but a concept product meant to show off the display—this is the excitingly named "SmartEyeglass Attach!."

While Google Glass took an eyewear frame, computer, and display and allowed you to clip glasses lenses onto it, Sony's concept flips that idea around: it's a computer and display that you can clip onto the glasses of your choice.

The clip-on idea solves a few problems with Google Glass. The silver headband for Glass came in a one-size-fits-all model, which is another way of saying it was sized for the largest human head on record, and everyone else got an ill-fitting band that suck out from their forehead.

Things got a little better when Google started manufacturing full-on eyeglass frames for Google Glass, but there were still only a handful of models to choose from. The purchase process for Glass eyewear was pretty burdensome on the customer, too. They had to buy the empty glasses frames from Google, then take them to an eye doctor to have custom-made lenses cut.

Ron Amadeo



Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

The clip-on method solves all that. Just go find a pair of eyeglasses or sunglasses that you like, like your existing ones, clip on the SmartEyeglass Attach!, and you're done.

Now for the bad news: for the gains in flexibility, you lose a lot in compactness. SmartEyeglass Attach! puts two rather large boxes on the left and right of the wearer's head and puts the viewfinder directly in the wearer's vision.

The two boxes contain an unspecified Cortex-A7 processor, a 400mAh battery, bluetooth, and Wi-Fi, and are connected together via a wire that goes around the back of your head. The real point of the device, though, is the new Single-Lens OLED Display Module that Sony has developed. Glass used a complicated prism that required a thick block of Glass with a mirror at one end, but Sony has managed to get roughly the same end result with a much more compact solution.

The real breakthrough from Google Glass was the display. The Himax-manufactured component could output a 640x360 image from an LCOS micro display that was only 0.22-inches. That worked out to a breathtaking 3337 PPI—about six times higher than the best smartphone displays. Two-years later, Sony's concept pretty much ties Himax's effort with a 640 x 400 OLED display that measures 0.23-inches diagonally—that works out to 3430 PPI.

Without the magnifying prism, though, the resulting image is smaller than Google Glass. While the Glass display sat slightly right of center and above your normal line of vision, Sony's display is way off in your peripheral vision—I had to glance to my right to see it. There's also a smaller sweet spot for the display. You have to have it just right on your face to see the screen.

While it is smaller and a little more finicky, in some areas it improved on the Glass display. The thick Google Glass prism would introduce artifacts and reflections on the sides of the display, and in the wrong lighting conditions, light would enter the prism and scatter, leaving you with starry light patches over the image. By getting rid of the prism, Sony manages to minimize a lot of these problems—or at least, it seemed to in the CES booth lighting.

The big problem with Google Glass and other face computers has always been software. Glass never got a killer app and never became useful enough to wear full time. While OEMs will be able to do whatever they want with the display, Sony was pitching sports use cases for things like golf and running.

Making the "smart" parts removable and going with a sports motif gives the HUD a little more wiggle room for being a viable product, since it can easily be stored away when not needed. This allows you to only have a HUD when you want it (read: when no one else is looking) and avoids the goofy always-on nature of Google Glass that the software never quite justified.

The Himax display on Google Glass was impressive enough that Google bought a stake in the company. The lack of any kind of competitor to Google Glass two years on suggests that those Google Bucks came with an exclusivity deal. Now that Sony is making a good heads-up display component available to anyone, we could see Heads-up display products become a regular thing. Sony says the display module will start "mass production" some time this year.