Authored by: Andy Gryc QNX Software Systems Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Key Points • Instrument clusters must display vehicle vital signs in an intuitive and immediately recognizable fashion. • OpenGL ES taps a large pool of open-source graphics programming expertise and programming code.

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Resources Freescale Semiconductors, f OpenGL Organization, QNX Software Systems, To drive safely, a driver must remain focused on the task of driving. However, other objects can and do demand a driver’s attention. For example, one object in the vehicle cab consistently distracts a driver from the road: the instrument cluster. Safe driving means the driver spends as little time as possible looking at the cluster. Thus, the instrument cluster must display vehicle vital signs in an intuitive and immediately recognizable fashion. Many automakers are migrating to digital instrument clusters to reach that goal.

At the same time they’re finding the panels cut costs and add some pizzazz to market appeal. Traditional instrument clusters consist of plastic housings that contain indicator lights and mechanical gages. The instrumentation in early clusters were ruggedized electrical meter movements that reported gasoline level or engine temperature, or had friction drag instruments as used in the design of most speedometers. An enclosed flexible-steel cable ran the speedometer. It snaked from the transmission to the instrument panel and synchronized the gage to driveshaft rotation.

As automotive systems transitioned from mostly mechanical to ever more electronics, mechanical instrument clusters gave way to other kinds of displays. For example, many gage instruments today operate from stepper motors controlled by embedded processors receiving data from automotive sensors. However, the instrument cluster is poised to undergo another radical shift with the removal of all moving hardware. The all-digital instrument cluster replaces mechanical gages with virtual ones drawn on an LCD display, driven by a microprocessor and graphics controller. Gathers Vxd 055c Manual Transfer.

Once available only in high-end luxury automobiles, digital instrument clusters are beginning to appear in mid and low-end vehicles. Many factors are driving this migration: Automakers can deploy the same hardware in multiple vehicle lines simply by reskinning the graphics. A skin is the term applied to the graphic-design layout and style. By comparison, manufacturers must retool to change the appearance of fixed-function gages. Cars with complex hybrid or electric drivetrains can have multiple drive modes; a digital cluster can dynamically change the information displayed as the car shifts from one mode to another. Safety wise, digital clusters can reduce driver distraction and promote better driving by displaying only information the driver needs.

Attractive graphics also give the vehicle brand sex appeal more easily than static gages. Compared to a static-mechanical display, a digital display packs more functions in a given space without adding much cost on a per-unit basis.

Displays for digital instrument clusters must meet several criteria. Because the cluster fits in the space between the steering wheel and windshield, the display must be as wide as possible yet short. Most designs currently use displays 1,280 pixels wide × 480 pixels tall.

The display must be visible in sunlight. To aid visibility, displays use bright, high-contrast graphics along with a matte, nonreflective finish. Placing the display deep in the dashboard keeps sunlight from washing out the display. Digital instrument cluster displays need a color depth of at least 16 bits/pixel to render gage needles drawn diagonally. In some cases, the display may need to support up to 24 bits/pixel to have a smooth look or to render graduated blends in the background image.

Attractive gages also need antialiasing to produce a smooth transition from one pixel to the next. This is typically handled by the graphics controller. The CPU power needed for a digital-instrument cluster depends on the sophistication of the human-machine interface (HMI) and on whether the system uses a graphicsprocessing unit (GPU).