I did a quick search and didn't find any references to them, so I apologize if it's old hat but they look cool

https://www.yankodesign.com/2013/05/2...while-cycling/

Does it even exist in real life?

Looks like it won a Chinese conceptual design contest, but there is no indication that any kind of prototype was ever built: https://www.red-dot.sg/en/online-exhi...=2012&c=13&a=0

Well, I hope they bring it to market. I'm not sure how they would work for anything above a walking pace but I'd like to find out.

Dude, all this time off your bike is turning you into a hipster.

How slow do you have to be going to be staring at the contours 10 feet in front of your bike? Yes, I want some illumination there, but my typical speeds are 15 to 30 MPH with a 19 MPH average. By the time a pothole is as close to my bike as it is in that photo, I probably can't avoid it. I need lighting that goes 50 feet in front of me at least.

Also, that doesn't replace lighting, it would only supplement it. Wouldn't the conventional lighting mostly wash out the grid?

Not sure something like this has a real purpose. My take on it is that people driving at night would not know what it is and then swerve to avoid it. Even if you just put reflective paint around the edge you would probably get the same reaction. Nope, if you decide to illuminate grates and manhole covers it would take a good while before everyone got used to the idea and knew they didn't have to necessarily swerve to avoid it....which they would likely do anyway.

interesting. I saw it earlier but didn't understand the purpose. Depends on how badly it gets washed out by car lights.

I'm also skeptical that it would help you avoid stuff in the road if it's really dark out. I think it would certainly get the attention of drivers but maybe not in a good way. Drivers staring at you trying to figure out why there's a laser show going on in the middle of the road may not be great for safety. I have seen riders with these wheel lights though and they do grab your attention.

It doesn't look to me like ANY part of this is designed to get the attention of drivers - it's for the cyclist to see contours (potholes, etc) in the road.

It's only really useful if it's significantly separated from the cyclist's eyes (IE on the bars not on the helmet) and a regular old light does pretty well for that.

Depending on the pattern of your headlight, I can imagine this light working much better than a regular light as far a distinguishing problems in the road. It would be interesting to test if it ever came to market (and wasn't ridiculously priced).

Well, as mentioned above, this might be something that works fine for tooting around town but not so good for blasting through at 18 mph.

It looks like it has different modes for how far in front of the bike it throws the grid, for exactly this reason. Clearly at some point, the grid becomes either too dim or too wide to be useful.

It sounds neat. I do wonder how well they actually work.

You'd still need an actual white light to see other things in the road - parked cars, animals, etc. And that white light is very likely to wash this thing out.

I don't disagree here. It could be made bright enough to not be washed out, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if your right.

I also agree however the grid does not need to be light as in from LEDs ect it could be a low power <1mw laser beam so would be led prone to being washed out by normal lighting.

Now here is an interesting thought for this product. What if it is mounted on a rack pointing at the back of the rider? I wonder would that make the rider look like something from Tron. That may even get noticed from driver and slowing them down to take a second peek.

A laser isn't going to do it. To be legal it's got to be < 5mw. Spread 5mw out over a grid like that and you'll be lucky to see it in pitch dark. You can test this by getting one of the cheap lasers with a hologramatic grating to make a grid - even in a dark room on a white wall, it's pretty dim. In a semi-lit night environment projecting onto asphalt (usually 12% albedo if worn, 4% if fresh) there's no way you'd be able to see this.

You want a standard LED with optics to project it. That does mean that you're going to need to focus the beam.