RLaoFD

iTrader: (6)

i know its old, but ive been around for (what i think is) a long time and ive never seen this.

http://www.blazelabs.com/e-exp20.asp

really appreciable work.

4CN A1R

iTrader: (6)

i'm sorry, but thats the ugliest thing i've ever seen

RLaoFD

iTrader: (6)

Its not the aesthetics, its the concept. I would never do it myself, but wouldn't it have been interesting if this was standard on mid to high end production cars?

dgeesaman

iTrader: (7)

That's a really cool project.

Hitokiri_Gensai

iTrader: (2)

i think thats pretty cool stuff... personally, i like my standard gauge pod, but i love the idea of being able to have 100 percent digital readouts for the car.

gracer7-rx7

iTrader: (16)

wish he had more details on there.

RMRanger

iTrader: (1)

Interesting. Keep in mind that apparently this was done in 1993, before any of those types of displays existed in production cars, I think. (That guy must have had some money!) So it's ugly, yeah, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be made to look nice, if it had ever been put in a production car. Personally I wouldn't put a digital cluster in an FD...I love the stock gauge cluster, it really adds to the classic "sports car" feel. But I wouldn't mind having a display like this in the slot where the radio goes...I mean, the GT-R has been doing something similar for years now, and I'm sure other cars do as well.

Sarusanj

iTrader: (9)

That's pretty good for 1993. Nowadays I would just do a CAMP, Stack, or Defi. But like RMRanger said, the FD is probably 1 of a handful of cars that the stock cluster is too nice to mess with.

theorie

iTrader: (31)

oh god it's hideous

n rider89

this one guy locally did something like that in his integra, except his screen was the entire cluster and he could add/delete gauges, resize, move and change colors ect. on the fly because it was a touch screen. id love something like that

Rotary4tw

iTrader: (3)

"Slotted/ dimpled rotors for reliable braking"

"These brakes help a lot when something happens while overspeeding at over 200km/hr! "

Stopped reading at this point. Thankfully, it was the last sentance on the page.

The Driver

iTrader: (4)

Star treck anyone?

rossc

does anyone know what is required for "on-the-fly" hp and torque measurements? I didn't even think this was possible.

Kento

It's an interesting technical exercise and I appreciate the work involved, but other than a few displays, it doesn't really pan out in practical application.

Digital bar graphs are useless as an instrument that is utilized to relay info in "real time" for many applications, because you eyes and brain have to perform numerous cognitive functions before the info can actually be processed. For example, a bar graph tachometer is very hard to read at a glance, because your eyes need to focus on the display to see "which" bar is lit up (and even then you often need to see the corresponding number in order to see exactly what rpm you're at), versus a traditional analog tachometer that only really requires you to see the needle's relative position on the dial. The same goes for digital readouts on parameters that change rapidly (with the exception being the speedometer, because you're usually only concerned with two digits when comparing your speed to the legal limit, which is easy for your eyes/mind to process).

"On the fly" hp and torque measurements are usually done using inertial accelerometers, but they are very basic estimations at best, because they don't take traction, gearing, aerodynamics, and numerous other variables into account.

rossc

I disagree with digital bar graphs being useless. If the digital bar graph tachometer was invented before the analog tachometer and someone decided to produce a thesis using an analog meter, then you would say that analog tachometers are useless. Your brain is "trained" to recognize an analog tachometer because you've used one your entire life. For a first time car user, they still must look to see where the needle is at, and they still must look to see which RPM number corresponds to that needle position. Over time it becomes a natural process. A properly constructed bar graph with a high enough resolution can have benefits over a traditional analog gauge.

I do completely agree however that displaying rapidly changing numbers real-time in digital format is useless.

Kento

Yeah, perhaps saying that all bar graphs are useless was a bit of an overstatement. I can see where they would have some advantages in some cases.

However, in the case of tachometers, I still feel that bar graphs don't work as well as the traditional analog dial/needle setup. I've ridden and worked with numerous racing machines with bar graph setups for a considerable amount of time, so this isn't some situation where I just looked at it and pronounced it "useless" just because I've been using an analog tach for my "entire life".
I agree that the problem with bar graph tachometers is resolution. Not only contrast in bright sunlight (since LCD is usually the preferred medium in this case), but also distinguishable movement. All of the setups I've had experience with (and there have been many) displayed the bar graph movement in varying degrees of "blocks". This means that instead of a needle's incremental movement across the dial face, you were forced to wait for the next "block" of the graph to be displayed (and most of these were high-$$$ state-of-the-art systems).
It's easy to contrast a needle against a dial face. It's much more difficult to contrast a two-dimensional line against another two-dimensional medium. That's why we had to resort to sticking tape on the outside of the bar graph tachometers to mark various rpm points so that we could spot them quicker and easier.