Iron Man is a great resource for anyone interested in Heads-Up displays, the entire movie is full of the Iron Man Suit HUD’s and various floating displays all around Tony Stark’s house.  Bringing these fictional displays to life was the job of several VFX experts, and an article on CGsociety gets into the details of how some of this works.

To get the 3D graphics in the interior of the helmets right, PLF tried several test approaches using combinations of C4D and After Effects. Ultimately, the HUD animations were made in After Effects and the HUD data was projected onto a sphere in CINEMA 4D to get the curvature. That animation was then overlayed onto the actor’s face in After Effects so the face and the display could be visible at the same time. Artists who worked on the HUDs often used models gathered from Industrial Light and Magic that were rendered out in CINEMA 4D using shaders and Sketch and Tune.

via CGSociety – HeadsUp on Iron Man 2.