BMW Brings Back Old-School Goggles With a Twist

Car drivers stopped wearing goggles almost a century ago. BMW wants to bring them back.

The German automaker's Mini unit is showing off a system that's a throwback in looks and a step forward in technology to give drivers a better all-round view of what's going on outside their car. The Mini Augmented Vision, to be demonstrated this week at the Shanghai auto show, feeds motorists information while their eyes remain fixed on the road.

Using augmented reality, the headset projects warnings, speeds and directions onto the lens in front of the driver's eyes. While that's not much more than an adaption of the increasingly common heads-up display technology already offered in the Mini, the device's more advanced trick is to provide feeds from cameras mounted on the outside of the car.