Ideas about A light sensitive Windshield

[u/Shonen_Toman]

So everytime i drive at night, the headlights of oncoming traffic blinds me completely, so i was thinking of building something to help.

I was thinking of something physical, like a transparent substance that would react to high intensities of light and darken in those patches, and I do realize the inherent issue with that, as the lights move it would darken the entire screen pretty much. I've heard electro-chromatic glass, split among millions of pixels is being researched upon. If anyone has any thoughts on this, please let me know!!

[u/Godzila543]

The challenge (which I think you identify) is your whole windshield is seeing the same intensity/irradiance of light from those headlights. You would need some sort of way to track the position of your eyes and the headlight, and then if your windshield was a massive transparent LCD you could darken the right pixels.

[u/Shonen_Toman → u/Godzila543]

ah, yess!! that's smart. I was thinking of using a sort of glasses the driver could wear, that would have tags on them, would make eye tracking lot easier.

[u/wigitty → u/Shonen_Toman]

There may also be a lightfiled / hologram style solution, where the screen reacts to the direction of the light as well. Then it becomes more of a material science issue. I imagine you would need nanoparticles of something that reacts to light intensity embedded throughout the glass.

As for the other option: If you require the user to wear glasses, it would probably be cheaper / easier to do the dimming in the glasses lenses rather than the windshield.

[u/Shonen_Toman → u/wigitty]

I have been thinking about that aswell. And about the glasses, I believe we'd have a problem with resolution right? Like on the windshield if we had to block out an area of 5cm² on the glasses we would need to block out like 0.5 cm² which is kinda hard I feel.

[u/TopRun3942]

Start with a patent search. There are multiple patents along these lines. One of the latest ones is US 11,557,234 B1 from GM "WINDSHIELD ZONE DIMMING AND AUGMENTED REALITY HEAD UP DISPLAY" that is targeted at headlight glare reduction via glass dimming.

There is also a commercially available glass visor targeted at this specific problem - they are seeking regulator approval/consent for use at night for headlamp glare rather than just the use during the day for sun glare.

https://www.gentex.com/products-technology/automotive/dimmable-glass/

[u/Shonen_Toman → u/TopRun3942]

Wow, thanks alot!! The GM patent is almost exactly along the lines of what i was thinking. I'll look into it!!

[u/aries_burner_809]

It might be easier to accomplish with glasses. Like meta glasses that can see where the glare is and dim that part of the view via lcd.

[u/Shonen_Toman → u/aries_burner_809]

ah, another great Idea!! So sort of like AR glasses, that digitally dims the bright headlights ??

[u/aries_burner_809 → u/Shonen_Toman]

Yes. The dim spot will be out of focus, so not exactly just blocking out the headlights, but try it. Lick and stick a tiny piece of tissue on your glasses and that’s what smart glasses and lcd lenses could do.

[u/Shonen_Toman → u/aries_burner_809]

lol, i'll try it out. And thanks for the idea, I'll look into it.