Monday's Musings
Given the recent meteorological drama unfolding here in the UK it seems somewhat fitting that I recently stumbled upon the Transcend by Recon Instruments and Zeal Optics. Advertised as the world’s first goggles with built in GPS and a heads up display that shows real-time speed and altitude data, it definitely reached out and touched the geek within me. It certainly looks like something that only fighter pilots would wear, and the glorious over-the-top promotional video is only a few gratuitous explosions and a Linkin Park soundtrack away from being next summer’s big extreme sports/Hollywood blockbuster cash-cow. And all in a package that costs less than a pair of Oakleys!
Actually, the Transcend does look like an impressive piece of kit, and I am just jealous I can’t afford them.
Hoping for an Iron Man style AR-HUD overlaying graphics on your field of vision I was dismayed to find that the display was actually a tiny LCD screen mounted on the inside of the goggle. I put my credit card away and took the Top Gun soundtrack out of the stereo. It seems my dreams of a night-vision enabled goggle that will allow me to board in a full white-out blizzard while listening to AC DC will have to wait. This is probably not a bad thing; when such technology does arrive it will probably look more like this visual nightmare of Geocities proportions:
