 |
|
|
|||||
At a surprisingly star-studded event this morning, BMW showed off the final form of its long-awaited and long-teased Panoramic iDrive system. It's a combination of an oddly angular touchscreen, a windshield-spanning heads-up display, and an LLM-powered AI assistant. The big news? It's coming to every future BMW. Comedians Tim Meadows and Ken Jeong welcomed the assembled crowd into a studio designed to look like an oversized interior of the company's upcoming Neue Klasse. They did their best to goad BMW's Bavarian executives into a series of jokes and bits that mostly fell as flat as the central touchscreen that now dominates the iDrive experience. Thankfully, it's not comedy that brought us to Las Vegas this week, and the good news for BMW is that the interface looks good. The software behind the scenes is called BMW Operating System X, and it powers a new iDrive that combines screens and voice commands to create a familiar but far more comprehensive interface than anything we've seen in a BMW before. It all starts with that central touchscreen, but even that is different. Rather than being square or curved like in other BMWs, the new panel is rhomboid-shaped, a slanted polygon whose leaning posture doesn't seem to really augment the experience but does at least look distinctive. The panel is also tilted slightly towards the driver and is running software that is at least familiar to anyone who's used the current iDrive interface. A static bar along the bottom provides quick access to the most important things, like controls for the heating system. Above that, a stylized, 3D view of the world makes sure you're always situated. Things get more interesting when you move up the dashboard. Running along the base of the windshield is what BMW calls Panoramic Vision. It spans the width of the car, with the left-most portion handling typical gauge cluster duties like displaying current speed, active safety controls, and even warnings. Tim Stevens for Engadget The rest of the Panoramic Vision display is customizable, with six widgets that you can drag up from the central touchscreen covering things like outside temperature, navigation ETA, and even another widget showing you turn-by-turn information. It's much that we've seen in demos from BMW before, but now nearly ready for prime-time with the cars shipping at the end of this year. Given the Panoramic Vision's importance in the overall in-car experience, I asked the guy who oversaw the development of all this, BMW's SVP of connected company technical operations Stephan Durach, whether there were any visibility issues in the bright sunlight. "This technology is a little bit different than a traditional heads-up display... we're using black print on the bottom. In bright sunlight, it's even performing a little bit better," he said. "You'll not have any issues at all." If that's not enough displays for you, there's another HUD situated on the left, up above the Panoramic Vision, which gives 3D navigation information for the driver. Yes, between the touchscreen, the Panoramic Vision display, and the HUD, you can get three separate feeds of turn-by-turn directions. In other words, if you miss a turn in this thing, you have nobody to blame but yourself. BMW BMW also quickly demonstrated a new in-car LLM that, for now at least, is only for navigation. It was all pre-recorded, so it's anyone's guess how well this will work in reality, but in the demo, at least, it quickly found "the best beach" and navigated there. When our pretend driver left the city, the car even asked whether to automatically engage Sport Mode, which was a nice touch. BMW's Durach confirmed that Android Auto and Apple CarPlay will still be supported. He also teased that there are some more fun tricks to come that will get passengers more involved in the experience. BMW ended the presentation by confirming that Panoramic iDrive will not only be coming to the Neue Klasse when it finally hits the market at the end of this year but will be the standard interface for all new BMWs that launch after that. That means the days of the rotary iDrive controller are now officially numbered. I asked Durach if he had any parting words for this once-revolutionary vehicular interface. "We take a look at all of our data and usage... you can really see that the usage of our rotary controller is declining dramatically," he said. "People don't even touch it." It's a harsh send-off, but these days you just can't cry over progress.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/ces-2025-bmws-vision-spanning-panoramic-idrive-will-make-sure-you-never-miss-another-navigation-prompt-192022046.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
The futuristic looking concept electric vehicles that Honda had introduced at last year's CES are now much closer to becoming models you can actually buy. Honda has unveiled prototype versions of the 0 Series Saloon sedan and the 0 Series SUV at CES 2025. It also revealed that it will launch their production models next year in North America followed by Japan and Europe. The Honda 0 SUV will be introduced in the first half of 2026 and will be the first model in the lineup to enter production. It's a mid-size SUV that was originally presented as the Space-Hub concept and will be based company's newly developed dedicated EV architecture. Meanwhile, the production version of the flagship Honda 0 Saloon EV, characterized by its low height and wedge-shaped design, will be launched late next year. Both models will be capable of Level 3 automated driving, which means they can steer, brake and accelerate by themselves, though the driver will have to be ready to take over anytime needed. They will also be equipped with ASIMO OS, the new operating system Honda developed for its next-gen EVs. It is, of course, named after the Asimo humanoid robot the company introduced at CES over two decades ago and will power both its automated driving and infotainment systems. The Honda 0 Series vehicles will come with a North American Charging Standard (NACS) port, so they'll be able to access Tesla's charging stations. Honda is working on building a charging network with other automakers, as well, under a joint venture called IONNA. The initiative, which aims to build a nationwide network of over 30,000 charging stations by 2030, was founded by Honda, BMW, GM, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis and Toyota. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/hondas-saloon-and-space-hub-ev-concepts-are-now-prototypes-190047136.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
NVIDIAs Reflex technology just got a massive upgrade, as announced at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. The companys Reflex 2 kicks things up several notches, thanks to some software wizardry. The end result? A promise to further reduce gaming latency by up to 75 percent. In this case, latency refers to how quickly a game displays the reaction from a player's inputs. Heres how it works, and its pretty wild. Reflex 2 combines the pre-existing Low Latency mode with something called Frame Warp. This tech tasks the CPU to calculate the position of the next frame as the current frame is being rendered by the GPU. The CPU uses player input, typically via mouse, to calculate the upcoming camera position. The tools then sample the upcoming camera position and graft it onto the current frame, waiting until the very last moment to ensure the latest input is shown on screen. This glimpse into the near future should allow players to improve their aim and tracking of enemies. But how can a pre-rendered image exist on top of the current frame without creating all kinds of visual inaccuracies? NVIDIA developed a latency-optimized predictive rendering algorithm that uses data from prior frames to fill in any obvious gaps, so players will see a new frame with the updated camera position without any weird holes. It is, quite literally, warping the frame (thus the name.) The company showcased this technology with Embark Studios The Finals, which will be one of the first games to support the toolset. The proof is in the pudding. With the game running on an RTX 5070 GPU at 4K with max settings, the latency was 56ms. The first iteration of Reflex reduced the latency to 27ms, while Reflex 2 dropped it all the way down to 14ms. In addition to The Finals, NVIDIA says that Valorant will soon support the tech. The company notes that it has used Reflex 2 with Frame Warp to reduce the latency to an average of under 3ms. Reflex 2 will debut as part of the forthcoming GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs, with support for other RTX GPUs coming sometime in the future.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/nvidias-reflex-2-predicts-milliseconds-into-the-future-of-competitive-games-182213650.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||