Heads up displays

What do you think of heads up displays, Veeky Forums?

>oem
god tier
>aftermarket
absolute trash

cool beans

just another useless thing that makes producing a car more expensive

It's literally just a light and piece of glass, it realistically shouldn't cost more than 30 dollars for all the components. It amazes me what they charge for them.

Projector bulbs and lensing needed to make a proper heads up display (such that the information is focused at infinity instead of on the glass itself) is more expensive than you might think.

You have to look at the big picture.
Calculate these expenses for everything involved (yes, even the tiny HUD has to get developed for the particular car, parts etc) and then the costs for the units for hundreds of thousands of cars.
It's just a useless gimmick. Fun but gets old really quick.

>shouldn't cost more than 30 dollars for all the components
wrong, maybe a shitty aftermarket one
for a proper head up display you need about the same components as for a video projector
therefore they are priced pretty similarly

Useful at highway speeds for me.
At the height I keep my steering wheel it obstructs the speedo around the top which what I need to see at those speeds

My parents had one in a Cadillac DeVille, or SeVille. I forget which, but it was a nice digital green speedo that was really easy to read.
I had a cool red one in a Pontiac G6 Coupe, then after that they kind of disappeared from the market. I'm glad to see they're coming back, always thought they should be standard features. I like that BMW will show you turn by turn directions on theirs too.

I'd like to see one that can overlay TBT navigation instructions onto the actual road. In most cases just hearing it is enough but in areas with a lot of side roads bunched up close to each other having the actual course projected onto the road (sort of like Forza Motorsport's track directions) would be pretty helpful. Other than that, not much to them that hasn't already been done. Maybe outline things like deer and other road hazards at night to make them easier to see?

Projecting things onto the pavement itself would be pretty cool and futuristic, but it'd be impossible to manage in traffic.
BMW does have a HUD where it'll show you a tiny turn by turn map, in color too. Thats as close as you'll get.
The new Supra is supposed to have some kind of fighter jet HUD though.

>Impossible to manage in traffic

Eh, I think it could probably be done. The pavement doesn't move in relation to traffic or the car, so projecting the approximate location of things based on GPS + some machine learning to teach the car what roads look like sounds doable. The key would be making sure that the projection doesn't distract the driver too much from the cars surrounding it.

Cool idea but idk what I'd use one for if the gage cluster isn't a clusterfuck.

I guess maybe now that radios are turning into those retarded touch screen abominations it would be good to project the display so I don't have to peer at some piece of shit in the dash board while I'm trying to drive.

my buick regal gs i had a few years ago had one. it was pretty nifty. I liked it.
It's one of those things you dont know you like til you have it. Then when you don't have it you forget you ever had it anyway.

>people bitching about the price and how it makes cars more expensive
>offered on the Mazda 3 which still costs the same as one 10 years ago adjusted for inflation

It's only offered on the top trim level IIRC. My sister just got one.

I bought one cheap when I was on holiday in Hong Kong used it for about a month then boxed it back up. Felt like it detracted from the experience of driving.

noice carbon fiber windshield insert

is that aftermarket?

you know it ;)

>My uncles old Nissan bluebird from the early 2000s had one
>Never seen anything like it before
>Always wanted one on a new car
>They aren't even offered anymore
Welp

>it realistically shouldn't cost more than 30 dollars

>what is combination of transparent glass with optical transparecy
>what is ECU compatibility to get readings
>what is software support

Test drove a Mazda 3 Grand Touring with one. I liked it well enough. It displayed the speed limit for the road I was on and my current speed.

Thought it was fairly useless overall though and I wouldn't pay extra for one.

HUDS have been a thing since the 80's. It's not new technology