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There also seem to be a lot of anecdotal suggestions that learning how to use that AR/HUD single-eyepiece thing when flying the Apache helicopter similarly requires some brain-reorganizing shenanigans to fully master.

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True. I flew Black Hawks instead of Apaches, but we also had a HUD monocle that we could attach to our NVGs (so it was only for aided night flight in our case). It prevented us from having to shift our eyes from the NVG image down to the actual cockpit instruments. For me, adapting to the HUD was much easier than adapting to the NVGs themselves; I remember drifting backwards at 15 knots and 30 feet over a runway when I thought I was at a stable 10-foot hover a few weeks into NVG training[1]. The Apache monocle is probably more difficult to use because it overlays the instrumentation on the real-world instead of another synthetic image.

[1] Somewhat amused, the instructor pilot let it happen for a few seconds before asking me if I was OK and could see what was happening. It was a formative learning experience.

> Somewhat amused, the instructor pilot let it happen for a few seconds before asking me if I was OK and could see what was happening. It was a formative learning experience.

I think the formative learning experience is why the instructor let you drift for a while. Of course, plus 20 feet has a different impact on safety than minus 20 feet :P

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