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48.26 UI Changes - thumbs up or down?

Is the new UI in 48.26 an improvement or is it a retrograde step?

  • I like it

    Votes: 105 40.1%
  • It’s a retrograde step

    Votes: 135 51.5%
  • Neither

    Votes: 16 6.1%
  • Haven't even installed it yet

    Votes: 6 2.3%

  • Total voters
    262
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It seems to me that the key thing is to establish priority groups for both displays and things that need regular driver interaction.

The most important bit of information the driver needs to be able to acquire very quickly, with just the shortest of glances away from the road ahead is speed, so that must be clearly and unambiguously displayed in a position where anyone that fulfils the minimum eyesight requirements for holding a licence can see. The new, smaller, offset to the right, speed display fails that test, IMHO, especially as, in addition to being smaller, it is also now partially hidden behind my left hand - I need to either lean over, or move my hand away from the steering wheel, in order to see it.

The next most important bits of information the driver needs to be able to acquire at a glance, are things like light status, indicators, remaining battery capacity (or range), plus, perhaps, outside temperature (as that is a useful warning of possible ice on roads) and time.

Going down the list, the navigation display, route direction indications and perhaps information on things like music track playing, radio station etc, need to be clear and easy to read. When reversing, or manoeuvring at low speeds, camera views of hard to see areas need to be clear, along with the proximity to other objects information from the ultrasonic sensors. Having a close proximity alarm sound from the latter is useful at low speeds (I have to have this turned off as it sounds continuously when driving normally around the narrow lanes around here - it should only activate at very low speeds, for parking etc).

I'm not convinced there is any need to have any vehicle visualisations displayed at all when driving normally. It might be useful for additional situational awareness during low speed manoeuvring, but it seem to me that this is mainly just a toy feature at the moment, one that gets looked at initially as a bit of fun, then pretty much ignored when driving at normal speeds. The one exception to this might be having the visualisation pop up as a blind spot proximity warning when driving on multi-lane roads, or as a possible collision warning if the radar senses something out of sight ahead.

When it comes to controls, then there are clearly some that need very quick and easy access, like indicators, headlight dipping and wiper and washer controls. The last two might be less significant if the automatic system worked at least as well as it does on pretty much every other car with these features, but as implemented at the moment, both are pretty dysfunctional. Having to stop the car in order to turn the wipers on because of heavy rain, or turn them off because the screen has been smeared by the wipers operating flat out when the screen is dry, is neither safe nor acceptable, yet it's something I've had to do several times, often at night (for some reason the auto wipers seem far worse at night). The auto headlights also seem to be sluggish, and very easily get fooled by reflective road signs, often on parts of the road where main beam is most needed. A regular example around here is the lights dipping on approach to a sharp bend on the A30 (triggered by reflections from the bend warning chevrons), and then refusing to go to main beam for several seconds after clearing the bend, leaving the next bend in the sequence in darkness. What's even more irritating is that it often takes several movements of the dip switch stalk to get the lights to go to high beam - for some reason it seems not to respond to the first two or three movements, no idea why.

The really frustrating thing is that most of these issues look to be fairly easily resolved, perhaps without any hardware changes at all. The display could be greatly improved by just making the priority information clearly and easily visible at a glance. The control of the headlights seems something that again could be resolved by making the dip switch work as it does on other cars. The wipers present a slightly more difficult challenge, but there's already a wash/wipe button, and perhaps that could be used to trigger wiper control by the right scroll wheel for a few seconds after pressing it.
 
Although moving the speed to the right and placing it more in your eyeline while driving is a good thing. decreasing the font size wasn't.

Think Telsa forget that at a certain age 'old fart' vision kicks in and it's a bugger to read these micro font's.

Don't get me started on the battery indicator and remaining range.
 
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Reactions: DaminGJ
Have just seen the new UI after finally going from 48.12.1 to 48.35.5 this morning. After first short drive initial impression is no immediate concerns about font sizes or positions, but rather that there is now a lot of wasted white space where previously there was less so. A retrograde step for me, I have a very nice display that for whatever reason is not currently being used to anywhere near its potential.