ChairmanLMAO
I thought the glasses from They Live were coming soon. Here they are!
Worzel
Should make night driving a lot safer, for the driver, and pedestrians, who are often invisible until its too late.
anthony88
Why not cover all the windows of a car with this?
aki009
I don't speak optoscience, but if I read that paper right, the approach does not maintain the light field. Hence it'd still need some sort of optics to control and focus incoming IR and outgoing visible light.

The frequencies supported for any one type of conversion seems a bit limited, but they seem to promise multiple narrow bands if the film is designed for it.

The best part is that all incoming light within the supported bands is upconverted to the visible spectrum apparently with little loss, i.e. the applications are probably quite broad.

Cue the sound of research money spigots opening.
KaiserPingo
IR is not a tech, that will find much use in the military.
paul314
@aki009: that was the question I was wondering about: if if just glows under IR, then you still need optics on both sides to make something usable. Only if it preserves the direction of all the photons coming through and getting converted do you have the easy scenario. (And the article confirms, as you say, that nope)

The other thing is that the conversion is for short-wave IR, aka near infrared, which means that you need some source of IR illumination, because only really hot objects emit measurable short-wave IR. That's not the same as conventional military night vision, which amplifies the heck out of individual photons to get images.
Gregg Eshelman
It "requires no power source", just a LASER, which requires a power source. A power source one step removed does not equal "requires no power source".
HoppyHopkins
If it works on glasses, why not contact lenses?
verdico
Well another littler known benefit is that seeing IR also means that you can see under thin clothing. This is why commercial IR camera's quickly got banned.
Shady Brady
More details on how the laser is used and how practical that use would be in the everyday world.