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Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

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Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#921

Post by jlokier »

londons_explore wrote: post #703
gjadi wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't yet worked on automotive stuff but I work in the embedded space. We're using small MCU (not CPU) to drive 480x272 or 800x600 screen. 240Mhz, 8MB of RAM. For example on ESP32-S2 or ESP32-S3. If you had GPS, bluetooth, wifi, etc. to the mix, yeah that's a challenge and you need to make your UI pretty simple.

Nearly everything automotive now has a GPU. When you have a GPU, even a very low power one, graphics get far easier. simple operations like "fade from this screen into that screen at 60 fps" become easy. They would be impossible with CPU graphics, simply because a slow CPU can't update every pixel on the screen at 60 fps anyway. Despite that, automotive graphics ramain laggy because they normally build something bare…

At the highest resolution of the GP comment, 800×600, and a 240MHz CPU/MCU and 8MB RAM, 60fps smooth updates for things like scrolling, scaling, and drawing new buttons and icons should normally be possible with the CPU alone. Fading and blending large areas of the screen won't be, but small areas will be fine.

Basically anything that involves copying pixels or solid fills without per-pixel calculations. 60fps at 800x600 is 28.8Mpixel/s. Copying and filling at that rate should be achievable by a 240MHz CPU with some tight coding. The rest is 2d geometry, mostly axis-aligned, with relatively few edges. That's not demanding at all.

(I used to write 2d and 3d rendering engines for slower CPUs than that.)

A GPU is necessary for fancier effects like fades and shading, but the basics can be smooth on a CPU and the fancy stuff too if confined to smaller areas.

Also, for the car, people would be happy enough if it could do a consistent 30fps I think.

Those annoyingly slow GUI updates you tend to see on TV set top boxes are not slow because of the hardware... it's usually the software not being written with sleedy rendering in mind.

All that said, you're right that if there's a GPU or even just a Blitter, it should be used and then the CPU speed almost doesn't matter as the geometry calculations are so simple.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#922

Post by justin66 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #708
acapybara wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is just predisabled? I suppose we're all just pre-dead as well? What a depressing way to look at life. You may want to seek out help from a counselor.

I'm glad that by using and defining the word "predisabled", I have raised your consciousness enough to consider your own mortality, and the fact that your vision, hearing, dexterity, mental acuity, and memory are all inevitably going to degrade as you get older. Not everyone is predisabled: many unfortunate people won't live long enough to suffer the consequences of old age. But I'd rather not die before I get old, m…

> But I'd rather not die before I get old, myself.

I suggest we call the people on the other side of this divide "Daltreys" and prohibit them from designing any UIs.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#923

Post by anthonypasq »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #847
anthonypasq wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im pretty sure nearly every single person in existence wants a tv that connects to the internet dude. people dont want to plug in an hdmi cord to access streaming services.

> im pretty sure nearly every single person in existence wants a tv that connects to the internet dude I'm guessing you've missed every thread here about Smart TVs. ref: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=smart+tv

that must explain why 99.99% of tvs sold are dumb tv's because there is such a clamoring demand for them... oh wait.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#924

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

the_overseer wrote: post #412
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A talented software developer should know how to use the phrase ‘no’ Effectively.

And a talented manager should know when to say "Ok. I will find somebody else to do it then. For cheaper". You are easily replaceable.

The kind of manager I’d happily walk from. Either way, I won’t be doing pointless work that inevitably leads to failure - said manager can enjoy their low quality development team and failed outcomes.

When the managers bosses see the manager failed a project after firing all the people who said it would fail, it won’t look good for them.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#925

Post by bfrog »

martyvis wrote: post #837
bfrog wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subaru was awesome. The cvt, the ridiculous headsets, and thin paint mean this 18 xt forester is sadly my last one I think. The 5 speed outback sport I had before was absolutely a joy to drive.

I quite like the CVT, but yeah my Outback paint is pretty much not up to the task of protecting from the Aussie sun, the branches and nuts that fall out of the, and birds and bats that poop all over it. I actually like cars that look nice but I'm now almost at the state of mind as long as it stops the body from rusting it is good enough.

It’s not that I don’t like the cvt, but if it breaks I may as well buy a new car… my friends outback had its cvt self destruct and yeah, no thanks.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#926

Post by antisthenes »

gjadi wrote: post #507
berkle4455 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude Winamp was a clean, simple and wickedly responsive UI that allowed a multitude of real-time audio tweaks and supported playlists with thousands of files. This was in the late 90’s running on 166Mhz processors with maybe 16MB of system ram. Are you saying modern car infotainment systems have fewer resources allocated to the UI?

I haven't yet worked on automotive stuff but I work in the embedded space. We're using small MCU (not CPU) to drive 480x272 or 800x600 screen. 240Mhz, 8MB of RAM. For example on ESP32-S2 or ESP32-S3. If you had GPS, bluetooth, wifi, etc. to the mix, yeah that's a challenge and you need to make your UI pretty simple.

Automotive is different. They're selling a $30,000 car attached to every CPU, there's no reason to have to penny-pinch on the hardware, when an additional $50 would quadruple the specs.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#927

Post by antisthenes »

colanderman wrote: post #771
throwaheyy wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s tactile feedback for that too. You learn how many “clicks” of the knob you need.

Most rotary encoders are programmed to have "acceleration", so it's not quite that simple. And the amount you need to turn it may vary nonlinearly based on the volume and ambient conditions (sound perception is complex!). Rapid feedback is important.

What if I'm switching air vent direction? There's only 5 positions in most cars.

I know the one it was on, and I know how far to turn it to get to the one I want. This removes the necessity of looking at it.

Same for steering wheel buttons (e.g. Up - next track, down - previous track, same for volume)

Same for wipers - only 3 positions and you can tell by their speed which position it's in.

The problem is when manufacturers take existing solved problems and move it to a strictly worse system like touchscreen. That's an inexcusable regression.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#928

Post by neuralRiot »

wolrah wrote: post #864
patentatt wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that's what we get when a rotary encoder is much much less expensive than a 4-6 gang potentiometer. And I also feel your pain with the car "booting up" phenomenon. I don't even have a particularly tech-heavy vehicle and upon starting the car the entire infotainment system feels like booting up a packard bell in 1996.

> I guess that's what we get when a rotary encoder is much much less expensive than a 4-6 gang potentiometer. Also a rotary encoder doesn't age in the same way as a potentiometer. A potentiometer can wear out the area being used most heavily while simultaneously developing oxidation on the areas not being used. Eventually this leads to crackling, dead areas on the dial, and other misbehavior. A rotary encoder on the…

Rotary encoders do fail, they produce the effect of control being unresponsive or “reversed”

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#929

Post by saltcured »

bluGill wrote: post #721
matwood wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow on 2-5, but I thought 1 was 'normal' for cars with a turbo charger?

Turbo lag is normal, but is is rarely more than a couple seconds. Even my F350 when pulling a heavy trailer I don't notice it - unless I'm in too high a gear for my speed. (I've only had a turbo with a manual transmission - I've driven some automatics that are slow enough to shift that you might think it was bad turbo lag, but those cars didn't even have a turbo)

I think it's mostly transmissions and other non-turbo effects that cause these contemporary lag complaints.

With all the fleet mileage requirements, there are much higher gear ratios for cruise and coast modes, so the engine can be bogged way down near idle speeds. Also, there are more software based throttle controls and interlocks. Some of this has to do with heavy-handed reaction to prior "unintended acceleration" panics, and some is just part of all the modern traction/stability control and efficiency programming.

The programming can get utterly confused and fail to dip back into a ground state where it is ready to accelerate. People doing various combinations of heel-and-toe or other transitions between braking and acceleration, including rolling stops, may get their car into a different mode than they would want, and the recovery from this seems like "turbo lag" or worse.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#930

Post by vel0city »

zaroth wrote: post #754
galangalalgol wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't believe it could be that nad, but I looked up the video at Tesla and you really have to go to the touchscreen to speed up the wiper. That should absolutely be illegal. Does it have some autosense feature so that you usually don't have to ise it?

It does have an auto mode. But also, you can now adjust wiper speed / interval on the steering wheel in a Tesla without using the touchscreen. Feature was actually added a just a few weeks ago in a software update.

Does changing the speed using the wheel require either knowing a menu layout or looking at a screen to know what the wheel control is actually controlling at the moment?
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