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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."
"Wow, it's like those other cars are coming right towards me!"
It looks like you are trying to crash.
Would you like to
( ) Buy more insurance
( ) Change your beneficiary
It gives new meaning to BSOD.
And the Blue Windshield of Death will actually cause your death.
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.
As the video shows they are doing active head and eye tracking of the drivers position in space and adjust the image accordingly.
It can improve safety of driving in poor weather conditions immensely comparing to current situation. But I'm afraid it will have a reverse effect in reality: increasing driver's confidence ("the HUD displays the road far ahead, so there is no danger") will result in increasing the speed in these conditions, and result in more serious accidents because the system can't foresee everything - obstacles on the road, slippery surface, other cars that don't have it and drive blindly - the kind of accidents slow and cautious driving would help against, or at least minimize impact.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I don't want my attention drawn to a speed signs.
How am I suppose to tell the cop I didn't know I was in a 50 km/h zone with my stupid windshield pointing out all the frigging signs to me.
You could simply put in sanity checks for the number of highlighted entities/on-screen information density. Each type of displayed object having a priority and a weight, based on screen area covered, distance to other objects, and such...
Emotions! In your brain!
You have yet to experience driving through fog so thick you cannot see past the front hood of your car or rain pouring so quickly the wipers do nothing.
Hint: This is when you pull over and wait for the weather to clear before killing yourself/someone else.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Most people with common sense know if you can't see you shouldn't drive, I know that some cases are unavoidable long bridges in Florida where you're not supposed to stop are the most obvious case. The problem with this system is that it will give morons a sense of security, similar to dumb-asses in SUVs going way too fast in the snow, who think they are invincible because they have 4 wheel drive until they try to stop their 1 ton SUV and slam into something, every winter I see more SUV's off the road then anything else. This has the potential to be a great innovation hopefully GM will try to moron proof it by disabling the feature when visibility is low and the car is traveling too fast.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
"Red is pretty much always used to indicate danger of something critical it's a bad color to use for that sort of information amber might make more sense if you have to highlight this sort of information. I would save red for things in your path or moving into your path - real dangers."
Please, think of those of us with impaired color vision, alright? Use red for frivolous bullshit. Save blue for something that really needs attention.
Don't expect green to get our attention, either. I can drive down a big city street at night, and every single light in sight is pure white. Suddenly, one of those white lights changes to yellow, and I slow down, because I know there's a traffic light there, going to turn red. Yes, you guessed, YELLOW is another good color to get our attention. Don't use red, don't use green.
Amber is alright - I see that. I guess some rare people with worse color vision than I have don't even see that.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Been there, done that. Pulling over isn't always the best thing to do. Ask a California highway patrol, he'll tell you that the people BEHIND you, who can't see where they are going, will follow your tail lights anywhere. Trying to stop in that thick fog invites an accident.
I experienced a sudden downpour of rain in Mississippi, on the interstate. I mean, no warning at all. Someone on the CB radio said "Rain", and then I was in it. No little warning spatter or anything. Just a solid sheet of water, like walking under a rain spout during a downpour.
Someone one the CB said he was stopping til it ended, someone quickly answered, "Don't stop - there's oil on the road, you can't stop, and the people behind you can't stop!" In six or seven minutes we had all made it through the squall, no one went in the ditch, and we were happy.
Having driven much of my life on ice, I already knew that the best answer is often NOT to touch the brakes. We got lucky as hell, that day, that no one ahead of us hit THEIR brakes!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I hate SUV's but the argument that you see "more suv's then anything else in some certain scenario then another" is probably more along the law of statistics. There are (or were a few years ago) more SUV's on the road then cars/trucks/vans/etc. So law of statistics is going to say that if an equal amount of dumbasses are driving and there are more SUV's on the road, then there will be more SUV's wrecked.
I will admit that security probably also has to do with it, but I feel pretty damn safe in my ((insert 5star crash rating car here))
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
Saab, BMW, Volvo, you know, any decent European car. The problem is, a lot of Americans don't know what they are (even the people who own cars that have the fog lights) so when people are tailgating obnoxiously I hit the switch (I have rear fogs on both sides, not just the driver side) and the people behind me invariably back off, thinking I am breaking, but I actually accelerate slightly to confuse them and get them to back off further.
You've seen rear fog lights. Ever see a volvo or saab with one super-bright "brake" light that is stuck on? You've seen an idiot who doesn't know what the rear fog light is for and thus leaves it on all the time.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50