pcss

Recently had an '18 A5SB Prestige for a service loaner (very nice indeed, coming from a '16 A4), and wasn't aware it had the HUD, until I removed my sunglasses. Those of us who have polarized shades already know that a 90 degree tilt (rotating to the side) can render the view of an LCD screen useless, as in it turns all black. Fortunately (or, hopefully, by design), the LCD VC screen looks perfectly bright and normal with the shades on. But tilt your head some, and you'll see that screen darken. At the same time, the HUD display, understanding it is reflected off the windshield glass, is practically invisible with the polarized sunglasses on with a straight-on view. **** your head to the side a bit, and the HUD display will begin to reveal itself.

I have to believe this was a simple oversight on Audi's part, not having tested this condition, leading to what I consider to be a design flaw - easily rectified by rotating the HUD display by 90 degrees, with commensurate changes in software to account for the rotation of course.

Has anyone else experienced this? It actually has me reconsidering against the Prestige trim, because I will not change my sunglasses just to accommodate this flaw. I have a call into Audi about this, and was informed I am to expect a call back from a knowledgeable tech after the weekend. I will update this post after I hear back.

Just seeking observations from others with this combo of HUD and polarized sunglasses, to learn whether I am alone in noticing this. Can anyone confirm whether this does not occur for them? In case it might matter, my glasses are Maui Jim.

RedBullet

Yup. I had to find some unpolarized sunglasses which kinda sucked. I was pretty disappointed when I figured it out...

pcss

My fear is that Audi will just claim it is working perfectly well, and too bad if one's glasses reveals this darkening flaw. What boils my blood even more is that this was so easily prevented. All it takes is a 90 degree rotation of the display. You can bet they ensured this would not be an issue on the VC display. My feeling is they would have tested for that. Hopefully the Audi tech will shed more light, and if we're lucky, admit a redesign is coming.

friguy3

For several years I only get non polarized sunglasses since they distorted the screens in my old cars too. It's annoying but tilting your head sideways to see the screen was a pain

HudsonS5

Projected HUDs have been in fighter jets and now most commercial aircraft and other high end cars. Guess what, they all have the same problem. So pilots don't wear polarized sunglasses.

Sleazey

The HUD optics do not produce polarized light.

Reflected light is always polarized, by the very process of reflection. The polarization plane is basically 90 degrees to the plane defined by the incoming and reflected light paths. This includes reflection off of water, glass, metal, etc. Therefore, the reflection off of your windshield is horizontally polarized.

Most polarized lenses in sunglasses are vertically polarized. This reduces the reflections off of surfaces, so you can see through the surface of water (fishermen like this), or through glass windows even when the sun is glaring off of the glass into your face.

So even if you rotated the HUD optics 90 degrees, the polarization problem would still be there.

pcss

Very disappointing to learn, but thank you for the background.

dreadlocks

the problem is there's no standard orientation for polarization, with my sunglasses its a crap shoot.. I can see most TV's but many monitors and credit card machines will be blank.. Some displays are horizontal, some are vertical.. some sunglasses are horizontal, some are angled at a 45 and others are vertical.. If everyone just agreed to make displays one way and glasses the other way there wouldn't be a problem.

You can likely have new glass made with the polarization going the other way, if you got glasses with a 45 off from horizontal polarization all displays would appear much darker but none would block all the polarized light like you get with a 90 degree offset.

This video is on another subject but it does quite well at illustrating the problem:

superswiss

Unfortunately as said above, this is not something that can be rectified. A HUD is simply reflection of a display built into the top of the dash and the same reason you can see your dash vents, speakers etc. in the windshield when the sun shines is the same reason you see the HUD. We call this glare. The whole point of polarized sunglasses is to filter out glare, so it filters out the HUD, because it's technically glare. The HUD reflection has the same orientation as the other undesired reflections. It's not a matter of the HUD display as said, it's a matter of how light reflects of the windshield. The only alternative is to get pilot sunglasses.

pcss

superswiss,

Thank you for the explanation, and I do understand the logistics of the HUD display reflected as glare off the glass, and the glasses' function of removing glare. But this being the case, how is it that if I were to tilt the glasses 90 deg., the reflected HUD 'glare' then shows bright and normally? From this, I figured it stands to reason that if the HUD display itself were rotated similarly, I'd be able to see it without a tilt, just as I can see the VC normally - again, if I tilt my view enough, the VC turns black.

(I really don't want to change glasses)....