Recon Instruments has introduced the fourth generation of their heads up display (HUD), the Recon Snow2. The Snow2 fits into your goggle and displays everything from speed, vertical descent, and jump airtime, to resort navigation and buddy tracking. It also allows riders to display texts and calls, and to control their music. Pretty sweet if you ask us.

Read more about the Snow2 and it’s handy dandy features in the press release below:

Vancouver, British Columbia (November 18, 2013)
Recon Instruments, the award winning technology company behind the world’s first consumer Heads-up Displays (HUD) for sports, has introduced the fourth generation of their heads up display for skiers and snowboarders, the Recon Snow2. As with previous versions of Recon’s snow HUD, Snow2 has been designed to work with goggles from the world’s leading manufacturers including Oakley, Smith, Scott, Uvex, Alpina, Briko and Zeal. The Snow2 is also available for sale as a stand-alone unit that can replace an older Recon HUD from Recon’s website for $399. The product is also available at Apple.com and in Apple retail stores worldwide in partnership with Oakley and specialty ski and snowboard retailers in partnership with Smith, Oakley and Zeal.

Recon Snow2 comes packed with an incredibly powerful and efficient dual-core processor resulting in 3x the processing power and a 35% increase in battery life from Recon’s previous generation HUD. Snow2 now has a dedicated graphics processing unit providing enhanced brightness and contrast, and greatly increased screen readability. It also adds much improved connectivity options with Wi-Fi (IEEE802.11a/b/g/n) and Made for iPhone certification resulting in an enhanced iPhone pairing and connection experience.

“With over 50,000 units of our snow heads up displays already shipped, we’ve gotten plenty of feedback from athletes on how to improve our product and our team has delivered a huge number of improvements with Snow2” says Recon’s CEO Dan Eisenhardt. “Snow2 isn’t just a tweak on our last version, it’s a ground-up revise that provides more processing power, longer battery life, dedicated graphics processing, an enhanced user interface and connectivity with users’ social networks.”

Recon’s Snow2 has the following features right out of the box:

Performance Stats
Snow2 delivers crisp graphics and vital information just when skiers and snowboarders need them and keeps them out-of-sight when they don’t. Everything from speed, vertical descent, jump airtime, navigation and distance are calculated and displayed using a built-in precision GPS and an integrated suite of sensors. Advanced gaze detection means the Snow2’s display is only on when the user is looking at it.

Navigation & Buddy Tracking
Snow2 features a built-in GPS that enables full resort navigation, and when paired with a compatible Android or iOS device, provides real-time buddy tracking. The days of soggy paper trail maps are over, with Snow2 riders always know where they’ve been, where they’re going, and where their friends are.

Smartphone Connectivity
Pairing it with a compatible Android or iOS smartphone will allow users to receive texts, display calls and access music player controls all from within the HUD. With Snow2, users can keep their expensive smartphone safe in a pocket while staying connected.

Data Viewing and Social Media Connectivity
Things happen fast on the mountain and the Snow2 HUD tracks it all. With Recon’s new Engage mobile apps and website, users are able to download and process all the data that the HUD has recorded. From the Engage platform users can review and store stats and achievements, and share them via social media accounts.

API Compatibility with Recon Jet
Recon Snow2 shares the same computing platform with the company’s other innovation, Recon Jet, empowering developers to develop simultaneously for both. Snow2 and Jet have the same display size and resolution, and use the same Android-based OS. The open SDK, which extends the Android SDK (API level 17), allows developers to write apps that will run on either device. Both devices are also capable of connecting to some 3rd party peripheral controllers. Many developers are currently using Snow2 and its SDK as a dev kit for apps they intend to run on Recon Jet.