Helmet-Mounted Sight

With the laser sight, the Predator can tell his Shoulder Cannon exactly where to fire.

A Helmet-Mounted Sight is a new Defictionalization. It is essentially a Heads Up Display that tells your fighter/chopper where you want the bullets or missiles to go. It has also been upgraded to show what friendly fighters are equipped with to provide Stat-O-Vision.

Examples of Helmet-Mounted Sight include:

Anime

• The prototype VF-0 Valkyrie in Macross Zero does it one better: the helmet tracks the pilot's eyeballs in order to acquire targets for the mecha's head-mounted cannons. Presumably, this became a standard feature, but this is one of only two times we actually see how it works.
  • The other time it appears on screen is a blink and you'll miss it moment with Ozma in Macross Frontier.

Comics

• Deadshot, a Batman villain and a member of the Suicide Squad and the Secret Six has one of these.

Film

• Predator. The title creature's shoulder cannon moves in synch with its helmet.
  • In Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, the Predator installs a second plasmacaster on the other shoulder, although both are controlled by the same sight.
• Blue Thunder. The direction of the title helicopter's autocannon is controlled by its pilot's helmet.
• Nicholas Cage's character in Fire Birds, a rookie Apache pilot, has trouble learning to use one of these, leading to some... innovative teaching methods on the part of his instructor.
• In Half Past Dead, Steven Seagal's character explains to his friend (played by Ja Rule) how to operate a crashed helicopter's gun using the helmet. When the firefight breaks out, it comes in handy.

Live Action TV

• Airwolf has one in Stringfellow Hawke's helmet.

MMORPGs

• Among the "aura" options in the costume designer for City of Heroes was a variety of targeting lasers emitted from devices worn on the head or face.

Video Games

• There was a third-party product for the NES which was a headset-mounted zapper gun.

Virtual Reality Games

• A VR game like this was at Segaworld in London's Trocadero c. 1999.

Real Life

• US helicopter gunships since the early 1980s have used the IHADSS system, which can not only aim a laser designator for the AGM114 laser-guided antitank missile, but also aim an autocannon in the powered turret under the helicopter's "chin"
• First found on the MiG-29 "Fulcrum" and copied by the West after discovering how effective they were from ex-GDR examples of that plane, particularly in combination with the R-73/AA-11 heat-seeking missile.
  • er, the Honeywell VTAS system entered service with the US Navy in the late 1970s
• The F22 and F35 are/will be equipped with these. Several attack helicopters are equipped with them as well.
  • Specifically these aircraft, along with several older U.S. fighters like the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 will be made compatible with the new Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing System, which when combined with the new AIM-9X model of the Sidewinder allows for some absolutely gratuitous stunts involving Roboteching.