On Fri, 26 May 2017 18:20:03 -0500, Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet
wrote:

On 5/26/2017 5:48 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 26 May 2017 17:31:30 -0500, Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet
wrote:

On 5/26/2017 5:04 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 5/26/2017 4:32 PM, Leon wrote:

My wife and I have been shopping new cars lately and there is
something going on there too. Apple is showing up in a lot of new
cars these days and I understood manufacturers were reluctant to add
the Apple "Car Play" systems to their infotainment systems. I recall
when there were only about 5 car companies that offered this feature.
Now this is offered in brands that I have never heard of. I can see a
stink coming from the big suppliers of GPS software that car
manufacturers have been using. With Apple Car Play you no longer need
to buy GPS. Your Apple Phone will display the Apple Map application
on the big radio display and steer you most anywhere you want to go.

Anyway

What you said was well said and an excellent point of view!

Not just Apple. Some are using Android and the maps in mine are
provided by Google.

My car has an 11" display on the dash and also shows the next turn in
the Heads Up Display. Much nicer than any phone or small GPS can show.

Wow 11" What are you comparing that too? ;~)

Nah, he wouldn't be bragging if he knew that Teslas have a 17"
display. ;-)

Yeah... and I think some of the upper end Mercedes have a large display.



What vehicle is that on.

We have looked at an RX350 and that had a large display.

We drove a Grand Touring MX9 with a heads-up display, pretty cool.
I was surprised that the display looked like it was 6' in front of the
grill.

That's the whole point (so you don't have to change focus between the
road and instruments).

Understood but it could have looked like it was simply above the dash
also. This looked like it was about 10' away from where you are
sitting. Almost a 3D effect. But as you mentioned "focus", depth of
field remains in focus. It was the first one that I had ever seen. ;~)
I liked the road sign recognition that displays the speed limit or stop
sign in the display.


OTOH, they're also replacing rear-view mirrors
with LCD displays.

Yeah, this is available on the RX350 and for about $200 it can be had at
BestBuy for the vehicle that you drive now.

Integrating the cameras is the hard part. It really has to be built
into the vehicle to work properly.

The idea is that several cameras can be stitched
to get to eliminate blind spots and widen the field of view (even
360-degrees, if desired) but the downside is the image plane is no
longer at a distance (though behind the vehicle), rather 18" from your
eye. Us old farts don't change focus well, or at all, and our glasses
are set up the wrong way for this to ever work. Yet, it seems that
it's still coming.


Yeah, that seems to be pretty common these days if you choose that
option or the right vehicle.

There is a chance it'll be forced on is. Interestingly, though, the
failure mode is a plain mirror. The LCD has a mirrored surface.