Looking For HUD

[warvet]

Well Cool,
I can tell you for sure it worked cause I built one about 5 years ago and wanted to see if I could cause i was thinking about building an F15. I actually was one of the guys that dsigned that idea I mentioned of course using technologyfrom other sources to more or less flesh it out.
Here is what i did, I took a piece of 1/4 in Plexi cut it in an Oval shape drilled 2 holes near top attached a simple cupboard hinge the attacked that to a piece of square pvc attaching it to the roof of my pit by a bolt running through center width wise making a pin latch device with a stop lock , to get the projection I angled a mirror under the nose pointing up and a CRT 15" Bouncing onto the mirror with a little adjusting voila an instant HUD and it worked pretty well and software was PM, but im sure you can use any. I made a clock for my wife as well the same way I took a really cool Digital clock off internet made it full screen then bounced it off a cheap piece of mirror I mounted to a piece of plywood and projected it on the ceiling invereted the screen image and it looked great, a beaautiful digital clock om the bedroom roof Anyway Just my 2 cents

Tim

[voucher76]

Building a HUD for flightsim purpose is fairly easy, but if you want it to work properly like a real HUD it is not that simple.

First of all the keyword is a CRT screen. It is much brighter than a regular LCD. You will want this to be as bright as possible. If you can find on old "Point of sale" screen 8-10" go for it. I have found mine on ebay(10").
I haven't tried with a projector, but I doubt that will work. Tha image you see on the combiner" tilted glass" plate is the image from the CRT - mirrored. If you use a projector all it will do is blind you. Again I could be wrong.

The mirror you use must be a special mirror. A normal eg. bathroom mirror will create a ghost image on the combiner, due to the fact that the reflecting material is on the backside of the glass. Instead use a frontsurface mirror.(or firstsurface-mirror).

The next thing which is the most tricky part are the optics.
A real HUD is focused at infinity. That means your eyes will not have to refocus each time you want to look a the horizon, runway, other traffic etc and afterwards focus on the information on the combiner.
If you leave the optics out of you homebuilt HUD, you'll HAVE TO MAKE SURE that the screen displaying outside world, is a the same distance away from your eyes as the HUD is focused.
If for instance you use projectors to display outside world, you will probably have to use optics to focus the HUD. IT IS NOT AS EASY AS IT SOUNDS, but doable for sure.
A small and yet important thing to remember here is that a real HUD is also colimated like a Holo gun-sight. That means it doesn't matter if you tilt your head or close one of your eye, the flightpath, gunsight etc. will always point in the same direction. A real HUD image is therefore only visible within a certain area (called eyebox). The collimating part is very tricky to accomplish. I doubt I will ever get there, but I will try for sure


Last thing. The "combiner glass" which is the tilted glass-plate is fairly simple to create. Yes a plexiglass can be used. For best result the plate has to be "coated" to allow only 70-90% light to pass through. Maybe some very transparent sunfilm for car windows can be used here. This is an area where I haven't done many experiments yet. So there might be better solutions.

Here's a link on viperpit where a guy has built a working HUD for a flightsim.

http://www.viperpits.org/smf/index.p...63911#msg63911

(page 79)

http://www.mikesflightdeck.com/head_up_displays.htm

Best regards.

[warvet]

Voucher is right,
I didnt clarify in my post but the mirror I used was called true mirror same as they use in Telescope or microscopes because as voucher stated it will ghost. Another way of doing it is with an overhead projector and again with a CRT not LCD. Nice demo vid Voucher and great explanation. Also you can use old style video cameras noone wants anymore take out the optics glass and make a combiner this way.Its true its not easy but it isd doable and different ways create similar results. Good Luck

Tim

[ivar hestnes]

Beamsplitters and other interesting optics to be found on link below. Could be useful for the collimated part of a HGS system.

http://www.anchoroptics.com/catalog/product.cfm?id=284