General Motors has been fiddling around with head-up displays for 22 years now, and there was a time when you could get Buicks with speedometers that projected your speed right there on the windshield. Cool, if limited in its usefulness. But the General is back at it with a system it says will make driving safer and easier.

Rather than project info onto a portion of the windshield, GM's latest experiment uses the entire windshield as a display. Small ultraviolet lasers project data gleaned from sensors and cameras onto the glass. General Motors geeks are working alongside researchers from several universities to develop a system that integrates night vision, navigation and on-board cameras to improve our ability to see – and avoid – problems, particularly in adverse conditions like fog.

"We're looking to create enhanced vision systems," says Thomas Seder, a lab manager at GM's big R&D center in Warren, Michigan.

Trying to make a workable head-up display is a laudable goal. Drivers are inundated by ever-more information from navigation systems and the like, and they need to be able to see and process it easily while keeping their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. A practical head-up display allows that.

GM's experimental system goes beyond the night-vision system found in cars like the BMW 7-Series and the HUDs you find in, say, the Chevrolet Corvette or Buick LaCrosse. While those systems will tell you how fast you're going or whether you've left the turn signal on again, Version 2.0 could make you a safer driver.

"Let's say you're driving in fog, we could use the vehicle's infrared cameras to identify where the edge of the road is and the lasers could 'paint' the edge of the road onto the windshield so the driver knows where the edge of the road is," Seder says. Take a look at the pic below to see what he means.

The windshield is coated with transparent phosphors that emit light when excited by a compact laser, turning the entire windshield into a monitor of sorts. GM says that approach allows the system to alert drivers to things that might be outside their immediate field of vision.

“This design is superior to traditional head-down display-based night vision systems, which require a user to read information from a traditional display, create a mental model and imagine the threat’s precise location in space,” Seder says.

GM has no immediate plans to offer the technology in production models, but Seder says some of features could appear in vehicles at some point.

Main photo of cars in fog: Jeff Kubina/Flickr. HUD system photos and video: General Motors

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GM says its "next generation" head-up display can use lasers and lane detection sensors to project a "virtual" road edge onto the windshield to help drivers stay on the road during bad weather.

Add in the sign-recognition system GM's Opel division has developed and the head-up display can tell you when you're exceeding the speed limit, lead foot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1s6SZ73i8A