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Zigurd 1 hours ago [-]
Everyone who can afford a car with an infotainment system also has a high-end smart phone that they replace several times over the life of the car. It's not quite as bad an idea as putting a tablet in your refrigerator door, but the product lifespan mismatch is of the same nature.
To handle the case where the customer would prefer not to think about interfacing their phone or tablet to their car, a branded compatible tablet should be a dealer option, or at least the tablet-like part of infotainment should be replaceable.
netsharc 1 hours ago [-]
In the US, reversing cameras have been mandatory since 2018, and in the EU since 2024, so any new car sold there will need a display for the camera output.
I wonder if the law specified a minimum display size and resolution, otherwise a car company could sell a car with an Apple-watch-sized display to save costs. I imagine selling a car where the display depends on the user's phone and complying with these laws will be virtually impossible.
izacus 10 minutes ago [-]
The workaround I've seen was manufacturers putting reverse cameras in rear view mirrors.
I can't find a picture right now (man, internet search sucks nowadays), but e.g. lower trims of Kia Optima had it.
jen20 32 minutes ago [-]
I've seen cars that didn't have large screens put the reversing camera in the rear-view mirror - which actually is an excellent place for them.
alright2565 3 days ago [-]
I haven't driven this particular car, but if it's anything like any other infotainment system I've seen, I'm really hoping they're able get a profiler running on there to determine the technique they use to get massive frame drops on hardware they fully control.
GoToRO 2 days ago [-]
It went like this:
We need a team of very good sw developers.
Maybe we can have 20% of the team be cheap "developers", people that have no inclination towards sw development to do the boring stuff.
Maybe 20% of real developers is enough in a team. The rest will learn from them.
Let's have 100% cheap developers, the project only needs changes.
We can get even cheaper developers, come to us with no prior experience and in 3 months we will teach you what you need to know.
Our projects are delayed due to covid.
Oh no, the Chinese!
Phelinofist 33 minutes ago [-]
TBH a lot of devs working on this are probably really good devs, but having experience in the German car OEM market I can quite confidently say that usually it's management pushing unreasonable deadlines/stupid features/setting priorities wrong. Kinda like in most companies that treat SW as second class citizen. Lots of catch up to do.
t0mas88 2 hours ago [-]
BMW has a talent in that space. Over engineered modules with terrible software. I recently drove a Toyota rental and they seem to have hired some former BMW software people as well.
I don't need 120hz Apple-like design, but it's crazy how they can't even keep a basic 30fps UI running smooth. And they still try to throw in more and more bad running animations.
artisinal 1 hours ago [-]
Those UIs are made by embedded software engineers that have been in the automotive sector for 40 years. They have no clue how to make a modern functioning UI. The company then hires a UX expert that draws out a full plan. The software engineers implement it, it looks identical to the UX specification… but occasionally drops to 10FPS.
Probably because an important message passed by on the CAN-bus and that got a bit more priority from the CPU than the GUI
jen20 30 minutes ago [-]
CPUs do not talk to displays via CAN.
jen20 31 minutes ago [-]
Do you have a specific example of a function that exhibits this?
Both my BMWs (one each of the last two generations of iDrive) do not in any noticeable capacity, nor did my 2009 one with what was then known as "professional" navigation.
KerrAvon 2 hours ago [-]
It's actually a little harder than people outside the UI framework space might think (there's really not a lot of time per frame; it's easy to put too much work where it doesn't belong; it's easy to regress if you're not monitoring for it after code changes).
It's core to usability at this point, though. They should make the effort.
netsharc 1 hours ago [-]
A friend had a nice job of driving BMWs for a manufacturer of such a system (it was early 2000s and the system was more embedded than Android/Linux). One test was setting a calendar alarm (because yeah of course the BMW needs an on-board calendar), and while cruising down the highway, wait for the alarm to go off, and then open a door. He said a colleague did this and the system crashed and went dark...
I suppose even driving 20kmh should trigger the "door open!" alarm.
1 hours ago [-]
pixelesque 1 hours ago [-]
16 GB of RAM for a car infotainment system!!
(Maybe it's one of those that supports split outputs for multiple screens for all passenger positions? - i.e. kids in the back? That might be a bit more understandable.)
mrpippy 13 minutes ago [-]
It’s rendering the driver’s display (i.e. the gauge cluster), the driver HUD, the central display, watching a driver-facing camera for fatigue alerting, handling Bluetooth, WiFi, navigation. Calling it an “infotainment” system is underselling a bit
jdalgetty 45 minutes ago [-]
I had no idea Garmin made stuff like this.
izacus 9 minutes ago [-]
While I didn't know it did for cars, Garmin is one of the most popular manufacturers of airplane avionics (which are basically plane "infotainment" screens), so I guess it makes sense.
To handle the case where the customer would prefer not to think about interfacing their phone or tablet to their car, a branded compatible tablet should be a dealer option, or at least the tablet-like part of infotainment should be replaceable.
I wonder if the law specified a minimum display size and resolution, otherwise a car company could sell a car with an Apple-watch-sized display to save costs. I imagine selling a car where the display depends on the user's phone and complying with these laws will be virtually impossible.
I can't find a picture right now (man, internet search sucks nowadays), but e.g. lower trims of Kia Optima had it.
We need a team of very good sw developers.
Maybe we can have 20% of the team be cheap "developers", people that have no inclination towards sw development to do the boring stuff.
Maybe 20% of real developers is enough in a team. The rest will learn from them.
Let's have 100% cheap developers, the project only needs changes.
We can get even cheaper developers, come to us with no prior experience and in 3 months we will teach you what you need to know.
Our projects are delayed due to covid.
Oh no, the Chinese!
I don't need 120hz Apple-like design, but it's crazy how they can't even keep a basic 30fps UI running smooth. And they still try to throw in more and more bad running animations.
Probably because an important message passed by on the CAN-bus and that got a bit more priority from the CPU than the GUI
Both my BMWs (one each of the last two generations of iDrive) do not in any noticeable capacity, nor did my 2009 one with what was then known as "professional" navigation.
It's core to usability at this point, though. They should make the effort.
I suppose even driving 20kmh should trigger the "door open!" alarm.
(Maybe it's one of those that supports split outputs for multiple screens for all passenger positions? - i.e. kids in the back? That might be a bit more understandable.)
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/aviation/axis/overview/