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GM Working On Interactive Windshields
this_boat_is_real writes "Rather than project info onto a portion of the windshield, GM's latest experiment uses the entire windshield as a display. Small ultraviolet lasers project data gleaned from sensors and cameras onto the glass. General Motors geeks are working alongside researchers from several universities to develop a system that integrates night vision, navigation and on-board cameras to improve our ability to see — and avoid — problems, particularly in adverse conditions like fog."
Given GM's historical failures, and their new immunity from market forces (thank you taxpayers), it's not the place best suited to develop this kind of tech, if indeed this tech is necessary. What's wrong with driving more slowly in the fog? Why do I need HUD, or worse, banner ads, on my windshield? If Toyota, once the paragon of automotive quality, can bork up the drive-by-wire system, it doesn't bode well for GM. I don't want my windshield blue-screening on me.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I live west of my place of employment, and the recent time change has given me it's yearly double-whammy. When you live west of where you work, it means that you're driving east in the morning to get there, and west in the evening to get home. Depending on start and stop times, it means that the sun can be right on the horizon, blinding you at both times. This happens for a few weeks each spring and fall, until the sun rises earlier and sets later, so that the visor can adequately and easily block it. Then time change comes, knocking the sun back down to the horizon.
I want an "active windshield" that knows where my eyeballs are, knows where the sun is, and blackens just the right spot (with a little margin, of course) to shade my eyes. Compared to that, any heads-up displays are secondary.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Great, so instead of a new windshield costing $100-$200, you'd have to pay $2000 to get one from a dealer.
Yes, I live in Utah where the endless road construction has cracked two of my windshields in the last year so this is a concern for me.
Making "decent", efficiant, cars before working on further power drains.... I would love a car with a better alloy of steel, or even perhaps frames of aluminium bronze, with lightweight plastic coverings.... Immune to rusting out after five years.... And maybe a decent engine. Or go the path of Honda.... Build an electric car as you want it: the best motors, interior, etc, but instead of a ton of batteries, use a fuel cell to hold the energy in the form of quick to refuel hydrogen.... If a battery can ever be made that fits and fuels, cool, but until then you can get the kinks out everywhere else until that advancement has been made....
I say, make fewer, better cars.... Cranking out miles of unsellable crap doesn't help in the long run...
Actually that's a pretty easy problem to solve, given that there's never more than one driver. A headband would be an obvious solution, but there are at least 5 that would work fine.
Allow people to better see in fog and they will drive faster.
That doesn't sound very hard. You can figure out where the driver's eyes are by the orientation of the rare view and side view mirrors. On that note, since you're supposed to adjust those mirrors before you start driving, it's just one more thing to adjust before you drive off.
My problem with Japanese vehicles is that they don't offer me what I want. I like their cars, but their trucks are inadequate. They have adequate trucks in other markets (Toyota HiLux, Nissan Patrol) but they don't bring them here. Even if they did, they wouldn't come with diesels due to the emissions equipment; both companies sell numerous vehicles that they sell in the states in other countries, but with diesels as an option. The pickups only have maybe 4 liter diesels at the largest. Ford is about to offer a half-ton diesel, allegedly. If Nissan would offer me a 3.5 liter turbo diesel patrol here in the USA, I'd like to own one. I can't afford a new car anyway though, so even if they brought it out tomorrow, I'd still be rocking my antique 7.3 liter diesel ford F250 for some time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, the "Bailout" thing was the government buying into GM, called "Thinly veiled socialism." GM is owned by the Government (or "The American People," comrade).
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I don't know how useful / distracting an entire interactive windshield will be, and I can easily see possible issues; but I had a 1995 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP with a true HUD that projected speed, turn indicators, etc. up on the glass. When you combined it with the radio control knobs on the steering wheel, I really only had to take my eyes off the road to look at the rear-view or side-view mirrors. It was not distracting at all even though it was directly in front of vision when looking straight out the front from the drivers seat; and it really helped / eased concentration in my opinion. It didn't add squat to the cost of the car and the only downside was that the windshield was expensive if you had to replace - you had to use a special coated one instead of just any replacement. Personally, I cannot figure out why all cars don't come with one. I truly miss mine.
I hope it is. The last thing cars NEED is this. Cars have already been over engineered in that it costs thousands of dollars to repair simple shit and hundreds of dollars a month in required insurance to to protect yourself if you have to do major car work do to some mess up (not talking about health care costs or injuries).
I'll take a more efficent car from the 60's that was easier to maintain than the motorized computers we have today. Cars are suffering from the excess.