The virtual windscreen from Jaguar Land Rover

Jaguar Land Rover will soon offer new ways to give drivers higher quality, life-like graphics and information that will offer an enhanced 'virtual' view of the road or race track.

For example, ther Virtual Windscreen concept uses the entire windscreen as a display so the driver's eyes need never leave the road. High quality hazard, speed and navigation icons could all be projected onto the screen together.

For performance drivers, imagery that could aid track driving includes:
Racing line and braking guidance,
Virtual racing lines on the windscreen appear to be marked on the track ahead for optimum racing line, with changes in colour to indicate braking guidance,
Ghost car racing,
Improve your lap times by racing a 'ghost car' visualisation of your car on a previous lap, or compete against a lap uploaded from another driver,
Virtual cones can be laid out on the track ahead for driver training. These could be moved as the driver's ability improves.

Jaguar Land Rover's research team is also looking at technology that could replace rear view and external mirrors with cameras and virtual displays.

Using two-dimensional imaging to replace mirrors is limited by the fact that single plane images on a screen do not allow the driver to accurately judge the distance or speed of other road users. The car maker has therefore developed an innovative 3D instrument cluster, which uses the latest head- and eye-tracking technology to create a natural-looking, specs-free 3D image on the instrument panel. Cameras positioned in the instrument binnacle or steering column area track the position of the user's head and eyes. Software then adjusts the image projection in order to create a 3D effect by feeding each eye two slightly differing angles of a particular image.