A reflector sight or reflex sight is an optical sight that allows the user to look through a partially reflecting glass element and see an illuminated projection of an aiming point or some other image superimposed on the field of view. These sights work on the simple optical principle that anything at the focus of a lens or curved mirror will appear to be sitting in front of the viewer at infinity. Reflector sights employ some form of "reflector" to allow the viewer to see the infinity image and the field of view at the same time, either by bouncing the image created by lens off a slanted glass plate, or by using a mostly clear curved glass reflector that images the reticle while the viewer looks through the reflector. Since the reticle is at infinity it stays in alignment with the device to which the sight is attached regardless of the viewer's eye position, removing most of the parallax and other sighting errors found in simple sighting devices.
Prototype of the Grubb reflector sight attached to a rifle
German paratrooper looks through the reflector sight of the Flakvisier 40 gunsight on a FlaK 38 anti-aircraft gun (1944), one of the more sophisticated sights at the time
Longitudinal cross-section of a basic reflector sight for pre-WWII German fighter planes (1937 German Revi C12/A)
HUD inside the cockpit of a fighter jet
A sight or sighting device is any device used to assist in precise visual alignment of weapons, surveying instruments, aircraft equipment, optical illumination equipment or larger optical instruments with the intended target. Sights can be a simple set or system of physical markers that serve as visual references for directly aligning the user's line of sight with the target, or optical instruments that provide an optically enhanced—often magnified—target image aligned in the same focus with an aiming point. There are also sights that actively project an illuminated point of aim onto the target itself so it can be observed by anyone with a direct view, such as laser sights and infrared illuminators on some night vision devices, as well as augmented or even virtual reality-enabled digital cameras with software algorithms that produce digitally enhanced target images.
A Royal Canadian Sea Cadet looks through a machine gun sight.
Picture through an aperture (or closed) iron sight on an H&K MP5 submachine gun
A view through a 20× power telescopic sight
A circumferentor featuring a pair of slotted sights effectively constituting an alidade