Arms stretched out, air roaring past, wingsuit daredevil Jeb Corliss glances to an LCD display unit mounted in his goggles. He’s 4,000 feet high, gliding away from a cliff face. Air speed is 90mph, a micro LCD screen reveals, and he’s flying free into the wild blue.
That is the reality of a to-be-released goggle-based display product from Recon Instruments that Corliss has been testing. Built for skydivers, BASE jumpers, and wingsuit athletes, the goggles will offer realtime data to airborne human “pilots” via a mini LCD screen visible when you glance down.
“I was always wishing I had instrumentation while flying,” Corliss said. “All of a sudden we have a speedometer [and other gages]” to use to asses a flight, he noted.
Recon Instruments, based in Vancouver, has a similar product on the market now for skiers and snowboarders that offers speed, altitude, air time, and other stats. The inside-the-goggle LCD screen displays data garnered from accelerometer, GPS, and altimeter gages found onboard in a module hidden inside the goggle frame.
Glide ratio, air speed, and current altitude are some of the stats wingsuiters will get with the new product, called the Flight HUD .
To be sure, an instrumentation product for wingsuit pilots is certainly a niche area. Corliss, a top athlete in the sport, is making a push with Recon to get the product to market within a few months.
But Recon Instruments is not making the leap without market support. Indeed, the company is taking a Kickstarter-like approach: It’s pushing for the pre-order of 250 Flight HUD units from sky divers and wingsuit pilots before it will go into full production.
If you’re into these kind of gravity games, you can order a Flight HUD now for $299. This includes the goggles and built-in LCD display unit. If the company reaches its goal, the Flight HUD goes into production for delivery by the end of this year.
—Stephen Regenold
