Nvidia shows how your car's displays could work (pictures)
At CES 2013, NVidia showed prototype cabin electronic interfaces running off its Tegra 3 chip, and they look a lot better than anything in production.
Wayne Cunningham
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
LAS VEGAS--Mounted in a buck, a center dashboard piece outside of a car, Nvidia demonstrated the power of its Tegra 3 processor for automotive applications during CES 2013. This Linux-based interface shows what automakers could be building into cars, with Nvidia's hardware and good graphics designers. This screen shows an elliptical menu, which the driver could merely swipe to choose different car functions.
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The climate control screen displays a graphical representation of the car's cabin, overlaid with buttons for the different fan and temperature settings.
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This prototype stereo screen shows play and volume controls next to a browsable list of artists. During this demonstration, the touch screen reacted quickly and fluidly to gesture control.
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The phone screen combines a keypad with a list of contacts.
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Nvidia demonstrated this map interface, showing the car moving through a virtual urban landscape with 3D-rendered buildings. The Tegra 3 chip rendered the maps, taken from Google, in real time.
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This screen shows how this prototype system can integrate third-party apps.
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Even more impressive, at the touch of a button, the screen changed to this Microsoft Live Tiles type of interface.
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Next to the center display prototype, Nvidia had this LCD instrument cluster, which not only showed vehicle and engine speed, but had a center area that could be used to show a phone's contact list, music selection, or any other information. The display could also change themes on the fly.
