So, I received my test glasses the other day. Yay! Having fiddled around with them for a couple of days, these are my observations:
Like Brett Taylor, I find that my glasses are slightly too small. I know these aren´t the Shimas, but it does beg the question if the difference in size of human heads has been considered during the design process?
About the phantom lenses themselves, I have a positive comment and a few negative ones…
The positive: Having worn the glasses for an hour straight, I can say that the phantom lens will indeed blend into the background; as soon as you´re not actively looking for it, you really don´t notice it.
The negative: The phantom lens is larger than what I expected, and to make matters worse, the glass surrounding the lens distorts, so the area it effects is an extra millimeter around the entire lens. This makes a BIG difference when viewed close up from the inside; I suspect the visuvisualvisuvisual impimpact of the lens would be greatly reduced if it was more cleanly embedded. Combined with impurities/airpockets in the glass surrounding the lens, this means that the end result is rather messy - it basically looks like the phantom lens was fired into the glasses at high speed, and embedded itself. It even has a tiny protrusion on the front of the glass!
Another negative aspect has to do with the size of the glasses. Again, I kno these aren´t the real Shimas, but the fact remains that the glasses sit so high on my nose that the phantom lens is raised a few millimeters in regards to my pupil - I can´t help but wonder if this will have an effect on the image being projected to my eye…?
A final thought: The lens being as visible as it is when you actually focus on it, and being located in the exact spot that we´re expecting the images to be, what will the end result be? I at least find it hard to look at the lens and not try to focus on it (approx. 1 cm), so will that effect the reflected image, which is supposed to "hover" half a meter away? With this particular lens at least, the images will hover on top of a blurred out background at best.
Below are some photos to illustrate...
Don't like the bubbles! I know these are only alpha demo glasses, but I would have liked the QC to be on par with what we'd expect from production by this point...