Another article... they're coming, and from more than one vendor. It remains to be seen if these are a good idea or not.

I'm sure there will be a cacophony of complaints about this kind of thing at first, but the fact is, this is the future.

And lest anyone suggest that this sort of thing is a dangerous distraction, let's remember that fighter pilots who are in control of far more complex beasts moving at far higher speeds and in 3 dimensions have been able to use such technology for years now.

I think the key for moving HUD technologies into the motorcycle arena will be finding the right and most effective ways of blending them in such that they inform without being excessively distracting or requiring a disproportionate amount of the rider's attention...

Indeed, the trick is in the balance. On the flip side here is arecent article where too much automation is a problem.

Airline pilots depend too much on automation, says panel commissioned by FAA:

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/19/21537851-air...

Yes, and especially with airline pilots, this has been a longstanding complaint--that they are babysitters for planes which mostly fly themselves, which in turn leads to atrophied piloting skills.



On a bike, have a limited transparent overlay with GPS info (direction, speed, road name, upcoming curves, traffic info), temperature (plus maybe frost warning), remaining fuel estimate, caller ID from your cell, and perhaps rear vehicle proximity warning, and a trip odometer might be good candidates. You would of course be able to adjust to your preference of what was displayed at any given moment, plus have the ability to cycle through the available info.

I was going to post the airline pilot article. As you know, I'm a big believer in skills first and foremost.

Indeed, and I wish the MSF courses were longer than 2 days. It is worthwhile to note that the training for pilots is much more rigorous and many trainees don't pass due to high standards.

I often have often discussed with my wife the differences between driver training between the US and Europe (she was raised largely in Denmark). In much of Europe the standards for obtaining a license are much more thorough and the tests are intense, sometimes multiple tests are required. I was quite surprised when she told me she was required to demonstrate forcibly losing control in a skid and demonstrating to an instructor how to regain control from the skid. Short of going to professional driving schools here, it is hard to find that level of training. We both agree that if the US improved it's course instruction, harder and frequent testing and skills requirements then we would have fewer accidents and better drivers on the road. Being in EMS prior, I can testify to this and while she isn't fond of me riding, she is most definitely fully behind me getting further training and practice.

Personally I would not feel comfortable with such a distraction in my helmet for some time until my skills are vastly improved. Maybe the question is how can we encourage motorcyclists to focus on skill before going gadget crazy? The ability to keep a bike up right and ride straight does not constitute skill nor readiness, and there have been way too many organ donors as a result of the lack of mental humility or escaped ego.

For the more experienced here, do you feel you would be willing or ready to try a technology as this? And how could one conceivably "train" to ride with these technologies safely? (Similarly as a pilot trains to fly a plane with a HUD and dozens of controls).

I am unlikely to ever adopt this technology. Even just having the communicators in the helmets in a distraction if someone is chattering away while riding. 

I'll have to think more on this.

I'm not sure I would jump on board with this idea at all, and I'm pretty tech friendly. If I had to guess, I think a lot of mental conditioning would have to probably happen first to train the human mind to adapt to the frequency of use without significantly impairing concentration, vision or providing any distraction.

Possible Examples of conditioning:
- Train using Google Glass (or similar) in everyday life such as walking, computing and other tasks
- Test under controlled and cautious circumstances in an automobile (assuming it becomes legal).
- Ideally certify / test people to see if they can be distracted (thinking driving laws ammended, this may be inevitable).
- Train users by certified instructors and evaluation for the ability to maintain driving concentration without distraction (ideal world).
- Implement controlled technology that switches the tech off, alarms and minimizes the wearer once swerve is seen, proximity alerts or other possible loss of concentration is detected (in conjunction with other onboard technology). As such it would be disabled to provide the wearer full concentration on driving.

Those would be the only circumstances I might trust it right now... if that. I hope driving laws will be amended appropriately to deny/permit these technologies. Right now I believe Google Glass counts as a ticketable offense when driving.

Good points.

I think the key would be to start off with a very simple/basic set of overlays. Too much information/too many inputs would reduce the usefulness of the technology. 

But imagine a limited subset of stuff that would allow you to not have to look down at your instrument cluster or GPS? That would be progress.

Finding the right balance between being simple/unobtrusive and being sophisticated/featureful is tough for a lot of companies.

Take for example the latest fad of "Smart Watches". The two big contenders in the market are the Pebble and the Samsung Galaxy Gear.

The Pebble is not my first smart watch, it's my third. First was a Microsoft watch back in '04 which had very limited capabilities and still managed to crash almost daily. Second was Chronos, a watch with an integrated wireless radio and microcontroller (MSP430) sold by Texas Instruments as a development platform. It was an early prototype for what became Metawatch. Now I have the Pebble.

The Pebble is actually the first smart watch I've seen that gets it right. In comparison to its predecessors:

* It's small and light, like a watch should be.
* It's stylish. It won't stick out and call attention to itself.
* It's it's simple. You don't need read an instruction booklet to figure out how to make it work.
* It connects to your smartphone. It doesn't try to replace it, it augments the tools you already have.
* Most importantly: it works as advertised.

With the Galaxy Gear, I believe Samsung is actually regressing on the advancements made by Pebble.
* It's twice as expensive.
* It has a color touchscreen instead of a monochrome screen with physical buttons. There are four problems with this:
1. You can accidentally "palm" your watch.
2. The bright color screen makes is not subtle. It will stick out and call attention no matter what you do. It's a distraction.
3. You have to look at the watch to operate it, you can't just feel for the buttons and ignore a call or silence an alarm without breaking eye-contact with the person you're talking to.
4. All this unnecessary fanciness comes at the expense of battery life.
* The Gear has about 2 days of battery life compared to almost a week for the Pebble or MetaWatch.
* The Gear stuffs in a speaker, a microphone, a camera... basically it's trying to replace your cellphone, which you still have to carry around in order for the all the Gear's features to work anyways.

MetaWatch doesn't make nearly as many mistakes as the Gear. In fact, in most ways it's pretty similar to the Pebble. It also comes from a pretty good pedigree (electronics from TI, design from Fossil). Where they messed up is the software. Rather than focusing on just one thing at a time, they split the screen into four quadrants so they can present multiple tiny widgets at once. It makes the screen incredibly busy and unnecessarily complicated.

So if anyone is in the market for a smart watch, I would highly recommend the Pebble.

Why am I talking about smart watches in a thread about motorcycle HUDs? Because in trawling Kickstarter (where I got my Pebble) I came across the NUVIZ Ride:HUD, one of the HUDs described in the article. If the renderings they show are accurate, I think they're making the same mistakes as the Samsung Gear.

Instead of being simple, subtle, and unobtrusive, they're going for bright and flashy with a high-resolution color display. Instead of focusing on one simple task, they're trying to incorporate every feature under the sun. The Ride:HUD may be a fantastic technological feat, but it's flashy and distracting instead of simple and subtle. I don't see myself using a product like that.

The Skully looks like it suffers from the same problem.

On the other hand, Reevu's concept looks like something that I might be able to get behind. It's a subtle display of simple information. They're not trying to impress the user with fancy graphics, just efficiently convey the minimum information necessary. Reevu looks like the company to watch. If this technology is going anywhere, I predict it will go in the direction that Reevu is pursuing (at least until we can do real AR overlays with no perceivable latency). 

Sitwon very well said.