http://ustwo.com/blog/cluster/

Discuss! I think it’s pretty sensible. I bet you’re all raging at how it handles speed limits making progress. 😉

the 80s called – they want their dash back.

Thing they’ve missed is that a gauge doesn’t have to be read. You can glance at a gauge and see that I am going at X speed, or have Y amount of fuel left….
You have to read a number.

Which is why digital speedo readouts always seem like a stupid idea to me.

They also mention safety quite a lot and not overloading the driver with information or providing a distraction, but then mention using the display to notify of incoming text messages…..

There are some good ideas in there, but there’s also a load of old nonsense. And they’ve clearly been at the thesaurus to make it sound ‘clever’.

the GTE dash in my mates 2.0 c20XE and f16 gear box’d nova used to make that dash do stupid things like …..5-40-60-100 – and yes it was on a drag strip not the open road 😉 . but the dash wasnt very useful and he reckoned it was actually quite hard to drive with day to day – he swapped it for a dial and pointer in the end.

You can glance at a gauge

Why do we glance at speedos? Any other reason than to know if we’re speeding? In which case you can see a blue, amber, or red block in peripheral vision much more easily than determining where a needle is on a dial. If you want to know the exact number then read it, but you have to do that with a dial too.

Speedo on my current car is set up so that 70 is vertical. At the NSL I see a white vertical line. (the needle of the dial)

I don’t need a colour to tell me I’m speeding. I certainly don’t need a symbol popping up and then fading away

“what was that, was that a text, or something else, was it an engine warning…”

I think it’s pretty sensible.

Can you make it show Star Wars?

If not, I’m out.

Rockplough – Member

Why do we glance at speedos? Any other reason than to know if we’re speeding?

I don’t drive everywhere at the speed limit. I drive to work normally at around 60mph on 70mph roads and a quick glance at the needle on the gauge seems to take less time than reading a number off a display.
I have driven cars with numbers for speedo’s and have never found it as quick to read a number. The difference is small and perhaps I would get used to it, but I don’t think it’s ‘better’.

Presumably this would require cars needing a constant data update for changes in speed limits through roadworks and such like. What happens when the data is not updated, someone speeds and uses the excuse ‘my car told me I wasn’t speeding’?

It just looks to me like in their quest to make the display easier, they in fact risk throwing more data at you and making it more complicated and slower to read; especially if the display changes form depending on what you doing at that time.

I have driven cars with numbers for speedo’s and have never found it as quick to read a number. The difference is small and perhaps I would get used to it, but I don’t think it’s ‘better’.

Which were you used to? I learned in a car with a numeric speedo and found that much easier to glance at than the dial in our astra.

edit: anyhow, this is a question that user experience engineers can answer with actual evidence rather than anecdotes so if it works then can prove it.

Within a few minutes of driving any particular vehicle you very quickly adjust to a dial speedo remembering that 30 is there-ish, 60 is there-ish, making quick sanity checks easy. A dial also makes it easier to judge how rapidly you’re approaching a speed. Want to accelerate to just 30? Easy, the dial has to slow to a stop … there! Same from the other side too. Much easier than with a numbered display.

@rockplough

Is that a turnin turbo dashboard??? I than you for triggering some lovely childhood memories.

Thing they’ve missed is that a gauge doesn’t have to be read. You can glance at a gauge and see that I am going at X speed, or have Y amount of fuel left….
You have to read a number.

Which is why digital speedo readouts always seem like a stupid idea to me.
In competition vehicles it’s always been the practice to set gauges/dials with the optimum position of the needle verticle, that way any deviation immediately attracts attention.
I’m used to the needle being almost vertical at 60, and horizontal at 30, so I can judge my speed fairly accurately, just needing a tiny glance to double check.
I guess that having a digital display, properly designed and laid out, would work ok, as someone said, you get used to things fairly quickly; I got used to judging my speed in my Puma with the tacho, I discovered that 3000rpm in top equalled 60mph, and I worked out other speeds as well, using the digital speedo that was available, and soon generally ignored the speedo.
Can’t judge it the same in the Octy, though.
Of course, the best set-up is a true HUD system, including satnav, then you don’t need to look down; Jaguar have a proposed system where the satnav shows a ‘ghost’ car superimposed on the screen, which you follow, instead of using an arrow, which sounds like a good idea in principle, as people are quite used to following other vehicles.

HUDs are great

My car has one that just shows speed (digital) and an indicator showing you how many seconds you are behind the car in front

I thought it was a shit gimmick when I got the car, and wouldn’t have bought it if there hadn’t been a way to disable it, but I think it’s ace now

My car has a small speedo dial, that’s tucked away, and a simple digital readout in the middle of the dash set within the rev counter which is front and centre.
I rarely look at the speedometer dial (partly because it’s small and partly because its only numbered every 25mph so it takes more thinking!) and use the digital instead.
One ‘pod’ on the dash is actually a colour screen which displays various data that you can scroll through (map, navigation, phone, music info, engine data or trip information) all of which is customisable by the driver.
I like the idea of using a screen to display various stuff but not everything at once and absolutely not how ^ that company was doing it.

Hmm.

Don’t remember the last time my LCD failed on my instrument cluster. Oh yeah, I don’t have one. Currently have a blown bulb but the whole lot still works.

As said it’s trying to spoon feed in the name of safety when in reality it’s doing the thinking for you and opening the door for folk to just blindly trust it. And rather than keeping the important stuff on display (speedo) it removes it all just to check the fuel range? Nah, I prefer to keep it simple.

I’m in and out of vehicles with analog and digital gauges. TBH, it makes no difference whatsoever one you know where to look.

Is that a turnin turbo dashboard???

Yup. The closest I’ll ever get to owning a 911. 🙂

I thought that at first our Yaris digi readout with freaky out of focus thing going on was odd. It is genuinely ace, and a clever piece of design.

Loving the Montego (iirc) dash…

They also mention safety quite a lot

despite that their little interactive simulator has got appalling brakes

My favourite speedo is the readout on my satnav. One big number for the speed limit. One big number for my speed. Closer to my line of sight that the cluster. And much easier to read than the crappy KMH BIG mph small speedos on some of the vans I drive at work.

It’s so much better that on the A9 I’ll put my satnav up for no other reason than easy to read more accurate speed info.

that only makes sense IRC if the new dashboard speedoes are GPS – which i cant see happening.

you only do it because your current speedo underreads and the GPS lets you travel faster.

a number or a dial on your dash … itll still underread.