Last month I attended and participated in MicroLED and AR/VR Connect in Eindhoven. This conference reminds me of the early days of SPIE's AR/VR/MR conference in that it is drawing some excellent speakers and companies while still offering some excellent opportunities to meet and network with people.

As a sign of the times, it seems many MicroLED companies are now putting an emphasis on optical interconnects and Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) for use in AI data centers.
The one very bright spot is that there seems to be a very big market for audio to visual translation being reported.

Ron Mertens of OLED-Info, MicroLED-Info, the MicroLED Association, and one of the organizers of MicroLED & AR/VR Connect asked for my input on “Why is there no 'simple' solution, where we place a transparent display in front of the user [for AR]?” Or more simply, why aren’t ‘transparent’ OLEDs/MicroLEDs being used in optical-see-through (OST) AR headsets?

I ended up writing a rather long response to Ron, and he wanted to publish it on his OLED-Info Pro (paid subscription (link: https://www.oled-info.com/karl-guttag-transparent-ar-displays-article). I agreed on the condition that I put a summary on this blog.

Introduction Just a short note today. I’m in the middle of my trip, which will end in Eindhoven next week (see notice at the end of this article), when I…

I'm to be very busy in September, including traveling to and speaking at the MicroLED and AR/VR Connect conference in Eindhoven, Netherlands, from September 23rd to 25th. If you would like to meet with me in Eindhoven, please send a meeting request to meet@kgontech.com.

I also want to let you know about an interview I did with The Voices of VR Podcast at AWE 2023, which was released on August 2, 2025.