Heads-UP On HUD: It’s Not Top Gun!
The head-up display, or HUD, is finally becoming available to the motorist.
However, it is unlikely to give a driver that feeling of emulating a Top Gun aviator.
It was the classic movie that brought HUD technology to life for many, the projection of navigational and combat data into the field of view of the cockpit glass so that fighter pilots could avoid glancing away to other instrumentation whilst flying at high speed.
How cool it looked, and how eagerly we waited for the same tech to guide us around town in our jalopies with projections on our windscreens.
Well, that was 1986. A fully 30 years later HUD instrumentation displays have now been built into some models by manufacturers.
Finally, more versatile solutions have started to creep into the shops for the rest of our cars.
Be warned, though, they are more Tom Hollander in a Cessna than Tom Cruise in an F-14.
They all rely on sticking an extra rectangle of clear material on the dash in front of the driver, and some make the mistake of incorporating a distracting solid frame.
There are some fairly useless budget options that project a standard smartphone display, giving no real advantage over mounting the smartphone itself.
The market leader, Navdy, available for £500, connects with either an Android or iPhone over Bluetooth, but runs from its own App to deliver a display more suited to a see-through presentation.
It delivers the usual sat nav functions and displays incoming messages.
It also responds to voice commands to allow answering the phone and song selection hands free.
These might have a limited lifespan, though, as driverless vehicles won’t need them!
