On the new car now, if there is a big screen, it is not a selling point.
Especially in the past few years, under the leadership of smart electric vehicles, the on-board screen is getting bigger and bigger, and you are embarrassed to greet people below 10 inches; there are more and more, one is three or four pieces, and the places that can be touched are screens.
(The screen is in hand, the world I have)
But many friends have said after the new car that the big screen is not as good as imagined. The screen is bigger, the picture is indeed stretched, but when driving, it can not be used to chase the drama; at the same time, a large number of physical buttons have been relocated to the central control screen, the screen is larger, and it is more busy to find the button, and it is not as reassuring as the blind press of the mechanical age.
(I'm looking for a button on the big screen)
Real-time 3D technology, the right hit on the big screen
The big screen control car, but also Tesla to do the correct demonstration.
The first time I test-drove the tesla model 3, I was amazed by its engine system
Although the Model 3 cancels most of the physical buttons, on the 15-inch large screen, the body and interior are digitally modeled. Through the way of touch and swipe, I felt for the first time the advantages of large-screen interaction over traditional mechanical buttons.
(This is a convenience that the wind direction adjustment of traditional air conditioners cannot match)
But at last year's CES show, I saw GM's newly released GMC-HUMMER EV and Cadillac Lyric's model demonstration, and I suddenly felt that Tesla's big screen was not fragrant.
Thanks to the blessing of Epic Games Unreal Engine (yes, you read that right, it is the unreal engine of the famous game company Epic Games, the technical core of the AAA masterpiece, the reason why you bought the graphics card at a higher price), the operation interface of the vehicle control has leapt from Tesla's flat map to a high-quality 3D panorama with a light chase effect.
This feeling is like upgrading from the Little Bully learning machine to the PS5, directly opening the perspective of God, and the 2-ton car has become a toy for people to flip and fiddle with in the game. This interactive revolution not only brings a huge visual shock, but also greatly reduces the learning cost of the car machine - just like children playing iPad games, without teaching at all.
On Lyriq's exaggerated 33-inch fish screen, the super cruise autopilot real-time road conditions rendered in real time by Unreal Engine almost completely reproduce the real scene in front of the car window, which is probably the most reassuring self-driving interface I have ever seen. After all, this is really convincing, the car really sees the road. Isn't this more practical than chasing dramas with a central control screen?
How did the game engine get into the car?
Such a cool technology, why is it only in the car now?
It's not that automakers don't make an effort, it's that in-vehicle chips don't allow it. At present, the latest generation of car machine chips represented by Qualcomm 8155 will bring the graphics computing power of the car machine to the level of mainstream mobile phones. Go forward for five or six years, the car machine at that time, not to mention the animation, cut an interface are stuck to people grumpy.
But in the computing power of the car research and development center, Unreal Engine has long been involved in the design and development of vehicles.
Every car needs to go through a complex design review before it goes into production. In the history of the automotive industry for more than a hundred years, this kind of review is based on flat drawings. Yes, it was the designer who drew one drawing after another and handed it to the jury to imagine, resulting in the appearance of the real car.
Is the shape imagined on the drawing reliable? Of course not! In order for the final real car to look good in the natural environment without dead angles, the manufacturers need to create a body clay mold to simulate the visual effects under various ambient lights. This is a high-end craft, requiring experienced teachers, knife by knife, real craftsman spirit, labor-intensive and time-consuming.
But it all ended with Unreal Engine's Path Tracing technology. It makes the design of the flat jump on the paper and become a "reality" visible to the naked eye. It can be easily flipped freely, simulating a variety of complex light effects without having to carve expensive and laborious sludge molds. All of its modifications and adjustments are presented in real time, greatly reducing design time. More importantly, its operation no longer requires experienced "big country craftsmen", as long as there is a basic foundation in computer animation design, it can be used. Hao Yongjun, senior manager of Ideal Automotive Vision, said they used Unreal Engine to build the design of a car in just one afternoon, viewing every aspect of the car without dead ends. It is precisely with such high technology that the era in which we live has rapidly emerged a large number of new car products with cool shapes and attractive appearances.
(Unreal Engine-based design tools)
It's not just cars that can be created by "illusions."
This is Volkswagen's new advertising film, pure electricity and zero emission ID.4 carrying a family to the forest covered with fallen leaves, showing the harmony between man and nature.
Wait, there's no forest at all, it's in the HYPERBOWL virtual studio in Munich, Germany. Unreal Engine generates and projects a wide variety of environments onto a huge surround LED screen, rendering the body photorealistic lighting, shadows, and reflections that look like the vehicle is in a real-world scene.
One second you're still in a deciduous forest, the next you're on a polar glacier
Or even a virtual cyber city
Due to the travel restrictions of the epidemic, the global release of ID.4 is in this studio, following the "guidance" of Unreal Engine and "traveling" all over the world. This kind of shooting method, which does not require large-scale transportation, does not occupy public transportation resources, and ignores natural light restrictions, is being used by more and more enterprises as a new choice to cut marketing costs and improve environmental friendliness.
Well, if the virtual scene can easily fool people's eyes. So let the computing power continue to increase, let the scene move?
That's right, this is the virtual cockpit!
VI-grade developed the VI-WorldSim system with Unreal Engine at its core:
Through the virtual road scenario, the car company has completed a large number of functional tests in the laboratory that were previously only implemented on the road. This allows more research and development and testing work to be carried out before the vehicle lands, effectively reducing the time to market of new cars; at the same time simulating driving in the laboratory, greatly reducing resource consumption, it can be said that it is safe and saves money!
From the earliest audi and Porsche racing divisions, to sports car manufacturers such as Ferrari, Mercedes-AMG and Maserati, to Volkswagen model manufacturers such as Volvo and Fiat, more and more car companies are shifting their R&D and testing efforts to the VI-WorldSim system.
Now, its bigger application scenario is in the testing of driverless cars. With only the parameters adjusted, the virtual cockpit can simulate a variety of "real" complex road conditions: it can be a big traffic jam on a smog day, it can be a cascading overpass, or a pedestrian electric donkey rampage intersection. All of this can be reproduced safely, realistically, and without pollution, and the AI is repeatedly trained to learn.
Many people's car enlightenment comes from racing games, who have thought that with the advancement of technology, real cars are also conceived from "unreal" game engines. In the future, our cars may eventually be like in the game, imaginative and imaginative. That kind of car, are you looking forward to?
(Image from the movie Ready Player One)