Head-up displays or HUDs were meant to simplify driving, but Ford may have found a very unconventional way to rethink them:
Head-Up Displays (HUDs) were invented as a means to help drivers keep their vision straight on the road without any impediments to their vision. First used in Fighter jets, HUDs display all the relevant information through a projection in the windscreen that the driver can see. It shows speed, vehicle condition, and, in some cases, even map settings.
But it appears that Ford wants to take HUD tech to another level. Alongside an adjustable HUD from last year, the Blue Oval has invented another one – and it's as ridiculous as it looks.
Ford has just filed a patent for its own definition of the HUD, specifically patent no.20260001397 filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on January 1, 2026.
Looking through the patent, Ford's new version of the HUD will be implemented through the sun visor of the vehicle, meaning drivers will be able to deploy the HUD by lowering or attaching it directly...in their line of sight.
The patent filing itself says that the whole idea of this visor HUD is "to eliminate the need to project images onto the windshield and/or to have a projector located on the vehicle dashboard. In certain embodiments, the head-up display visor is portable and is affixed to the driver's conventional sun visor by a clip, thereby allowing a driver to move the device from one vehicle to another."
[...] Another benefit of their project is the visor HUD's portability for owners with multiple vehicles. It must be noted, though, that while a patent has been filed, this is merely Ford's way of protecting its own intellectual property. There is no guarantee that this (novel idea) will ever make it into production.
TFA includes a few illustrations.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Tomahawk on Friday January 09, @12:27AM (2 children)
Have they tested this with people who wear glasses, or are the guys who came up with the idea young enough to not need them yet?
I'm lucky to have 20/20 vision in my 50s, but I still have a slight prescription and will sometimes opt to wear glasses when driving -- my sunglasses are prescription. They are a very mild prescription, but still make it a little difficult to see the dashboard.
HUD projections typically also add distance, meaning a further focal length, allowing for easier viewing of the data both without having to take your eyes off the road, and without having to refocus much.
The visor idea isn't much better than the dashboard I already have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Friday January 09, @01:02AM
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday January 09, @12:04PM
I mean, as someone with some fairly severe astigmatism, the last thing I need driving is more lights flashing in my face. Because people like me don't just get the light source, we get lots of rays and lines coming off of each light we see (this also means that everybody flashing their hazards in bad conditions actually make it harder to see what's actually going on, but somebody decided that was official training so now a lot of people do that).
My dashboard instruments are right below what's in front of me when it comes to sight lines. That's a good place for them - easy to check, but in no way blocking the view. Plus, and I'm surprised nobody thought of this, the sun visor is typically down during the part of the day when the sun is low enough in the sky that looking up towards the visor = looking towards the sun. Which you don't want to do if you like seeing things.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Bentonite on Friday January 09, @05:11AM
such HUD - rather Ford is gambling that another company proceeds to actually develop and implement a HUD that could be argued to fall under such invalid patent (it attempts to cover both the sun visor and also other lowering or attached HUD's) and then Ford will be able to extort royalty payments out of such business.
Yes, the patent is invalid - the idea of a HUD, except located in the sun visor, without even a prototype being implemented is not an invention - too bad the corrupt USPTO awarded a patent anyway.
Yet another example as to why imaginary property does not exist and must never exist.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 09, @06:06AM (1 child)
In the 1960s, some basic Fords came with one sun visor for the driver and none for the front seat passenger. The deluxe model had sun visors for both.
Now, Ford is doing that again? Only the driver gets HUD?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday January 09, @01:14PM
I think you need a passenger visor when you drive east on a E-W road around sunrise.
This is a thing I had to do for about 20 years "back in the day" so I have some experience using the passenger sun visor.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday January 09, @01:12PM
I looked at the pretty pictures and I think I know how they make it work. Or at least how I'd do it if I REALLY had to (although I don't want to, it looks like a stupid idea). If you have a "selfie camera" pointed at the driver, you can see where their eyes are, and if the screen is kept in perfect alignment with the selfie camera, you can display what the eyes "would have seen" based upon their precise location relative to the mirror using augmented reality techniques. Which is a cool idea. Put in a thermal camera for night driving, modify it to a wide field of view 360 degrees and they might have something...
I could be wrong. Also people with really weird face tattoos or overly extreme hairdos that might block their eyes sometimes, or partially/occasionally, might "trick" the camera into not aligning. How do they handle latency? I think I would get serious motion sickness / sea sickness if the mirror operates on quarter second tape delay compared to reality around it, which is also risky WRT accidents. Drive over a bump, see it IRL in your peripheral vision while you feel it, then some time later see it on the screen... ooof VR motion sickness time. Maybe the patent explains how they use 240 Hz cameras and monitors to get around that, I donno.
So I'll read the patent for more details. Google searching indicates you can't. All thats out there now is submarine "astroturf" marketing from multiple legacy media sources using the same or similar corporate news release text. In some ways this is the most interesting part of the entire story! Its not really a tech story because the tech is kept secret, its a marketing story about "make pretend" news services that are mostly publishing propaganda. Massive central control of political stories/propaganda is no different, its hardly limited to "tech" "patent" news. It's just this example is easier to see.
Its an interesting story in multiple ways as per above.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday January 09, @03:48PM
It sounds super neat and I really liked having my phone GPS set up with a see-through HUD. That said, I sincerely hope they're devoting their R&D resources to autonomy instead of trinkets. We're rapidly approaching the point where that will be a must have.
I love driving, but self-driving is one of those things where it's difficult to imagine going back.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday January 10, @11:06AM
I have a nav app that provided a reversed display on a phone LCD.
If the phone is placed on the dashboard and it's reflection on the windshield is viewed, the image is un-reversed and appears to float about a foot beyond the windshield.
Nice for metrics I am trying to track. I would love to have an OBD2 app that lets me track sensors that do this..
Just pair the phone with the sensor, and place the phone, display up, on the dash ,,( Alien Tape? ) and it becomes a see-through right in front of you. But it's useless during the day.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]