According to foreign media reports, at present, car infotainment systems are getting bigger and bigger, but one startup has created a new prototype device that pushes this trend to the extreme – similar to Ford’s pillar-to-pillar touchscreen, which turns the car windshield into a full-color 3D head-up display (HUD). According to foreign media reports, last week, Distance Technologies showed its design at the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California, USA. The company was founded by the co-founders of head-mounted display maker Varjo with the goal of upgrading head-up displays to more than just flat, simple overlays.
Distance Technologies’ prototype device features an LCD panel facing upwards towards the windshield, which is coated with a reflective coating that projects a transparent image onto it. Conceptually, the product is similar to the HUD of existing vehicles, such as after-assembly parts and integrated solutions from companies such as Volvo and Mercedes-Benz. However, these HUDs still typically project flat, eerie images in narrow areas of the windshield, while the newly developed system is wider and more convincing in terms of spatial perception.
The prototype is a bit like a projection version of a glasses-free 3D display, with a large LCD panel covered with a kind of parallax barrier that can display a slightly different image for each eye, while a (eyeball) tracking camera can help determine the driver’s gaze direction and redraw the image accordingly. Jussi Mäkinen, the company’s co-founder and chief marketing officer, said the parallax barrier was just a stopgap measure for the company to iterate on the software technology, and CEO Urho Konttori was wary of the precise mechanics of the prototype. Overall, the prototype has the effect of a translucent 3D display that covers half of a normal-sized windshield.