Microsoft applies for patent for 'Google Goggles'-type AR specs Microsoft has applied for a patent for its very own Google Goggles-alike Terminator-style tech, which will slap facts and figures over everything you see. Microsoft's propose "head-mounted display" Redmond's idea is for "a head mounted display with supplemental information when viewing a live event …
There is no way that patent should be issued. There can be no detail about the invention, because it simply cannot exist at the present moment. In order to insert the information, the computer has to know what it is looking at, and it has very limited and low resolution data to go on. I do not believe that it can do face recognition on faces that far away, shirt recognition, maybe, some of the time, given a state of the art camera. Not a cell-phone one.
Given that no details of the invention mechanism can have been given, all that remains is a simple and obvious concept. And concepts are not patentable.
Any mechanism details that could be supplied are "obvious to one skilled in the art," which invalidates the patent. As one skilled in computers, but not in any sub-field close to this invention, here would be my take, simply from the above article. I have not read the patent.
You could use GPS to locate the event, and get the running order and commentary from online sources or maybe a dedicated server. You could do shirt number recognition or face recognition (given a superb camera too big to mount on glasses). You can recognise the layout of the ground and thereby identify players in specific well-known positions. That would work very well for baseball, much less well for American football, and horribly for most other events, such as horse-racing or (association or rugby) football. Once identified, players could be tracked from frame to frame, and other factors of their appearance could be logged to re-identify them after the chap passing out the huge order of burgers and soda stops standing in the way and sits the hell down again. Given that you recognise the playing field and have live commentary, you can also display the game score, state and other data, including which way the teams are playing and so forth. You could even have an action replay from on-line or over-the-air services. Since loads of people in the stadium are using the glasses, and they are all on-line, you could even have multiple viewpoint replays.
In fact why bother with expensive camera teams? just edit down the view from a few dozen members of the public. The cameras are good enough to see shirt details, and therefore plenty good enough to supply a TV .
I think that there are going to be numerous glasses based options and it will provide whole new apps. I have been working with glasses for a while and we managed to create a system that allows you to do pinch to zoom and rotate with precise hand tracking for augmented reality delivered in glasse, think minority report hand gestures and augmented reality you get in some of the best smartphone apps combined together
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