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Comment by sigkill | Hacker News Reader

The most important part of this entire project in my opinion is the ability of the Glass to function as a head up display. Imagine that you can now wear it while driving, and there's an app that will show you everything about the route and your cars' statistics right in front of your eyes. Heck, if it could project the phone's screen on its own display then applications that have already been written get a new life - Think Torque or CarHUD.

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Imagine that you can now wear it while driving, and there's an app that will show you everything about the route and your cars' statistics right in front of your eyes

Unless you're in one of Google's Self Driving Cars this sounds like a recipe for disaster. If these things take off I'm pretty sure wearing them while driving will be pretty quickly outlawed.

The display in Glass is incredibly unobtrusive. Glancing at a direction arrow (for maps) is no more distracting than glancing at the speedometer--it's less distance for the eye to cover, and the displayed images are ruthlessly simplified so that absorbing them is almost subconscious.

I think the danger comes from people who get text messages while they're driving and want to look at a shared photo. That should be disabled while driving, which glass can make a pretty good guess at.

Why? Seriously wondering here. I don't see it any different than having wireless phone, navigation, radio, and the countless other things we already have in the cars. Main difference is this would be right in front of us meaning we don't have to take our eyes off the road to change the radio station, check the nav or answer that call.

And it's voice activated.

Doesn't seem like it'd be much different from glancing at the dash, console, GPS, etc.

Have you noticed that we haven't seen even the slightest attempt at a camera shot of the collimated display? It can certainly be done.

Why Google Glass will fail: When normal people who didn't sign agreements discover just how positively awful the "screen" is.

I've tried my best at home with ghetto optics/techniques to get something near a collimated setup. Other than a trip to the optician with very specific values I don't see myself being able to collimate my cellphone's display. Without wanting to spend a couple of thousands AND needing to cut a hole in the dash panel of my car, I think the Glass is my cheapest (terms of money, time and effort) bet.

Some cars, like the Chevrolet Corvette, have had HUDs built into the dash/windscreen for over 10 years now. They're /really/ cool.

Speedo/tach/fuel get overlayed on the bottom of the windshield while you're driving.

BMW, Audi, Merc have them too and while they are indeed very cool, it's an option that costs several thousand and that also requires a special windshield glass (making replacing it more costly).

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