I havn’t seen any specific patent or concept, but it strikes me that the ideal opticaly transparent display will need both LED and LCD layers.
We need it to emit light for use when there isnt enough ambient light, so we need LEDs (or rather, TOLED).

But at the same time, we want contrast…blacks…so we need LCD’s too.

Has there been screens done with two layers like this?

Seems that would need to be a step taken for concepts like the device linked above to be created.

I was originally favoring the IPhone as a good early stage AR MID, but Apple screwed everyone with the SDK and lack of access to the camera (frame grabs only, which is why some AR apps on the IPhone are slow…you need to hack a workaround).

The screen may be smaller on the HTC Diamond Pro (renamed as Touch Pro or HTC Fuze for AT&T), but the CPU is dual core (confirmed) and it has some other nice bits, like video out.

We are a few years off from the ultimate MID, but I think by that point the screen isn’t going to be as important as transparent wearable displays…the MID will handle all the telecom and data crunching. On the other hand, if the wearable hardware hasn’t matured enough (tiny LCDs and vision occluding formfactors), then the tablet / see-through panel will be the big deal.

I still wonder though if that might not be separate. Imagine a small, beltbuckle or watch sized device (wearable computing?) that is connected (bluetooth or something) to a handheld that is the display (I’m thinking something like this: http://petitinvention.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/future-of-mobile-internet-search-applications/

Personally, I’m in favor of transparent wearable displays connected (wirelessly) to a micro wearable device. We can break away from the desktop now, but things will really kick into gear and get interesting when we can get away from a handheld device and make it immersive and first-person.

Question is…is the camera confirmed as suitable for video?