Some companies are better at building user interfaces than others. Nissan recognized this and hired Gran Turismo folk for the GT-R control screen. Then Futuremark strolls in with a dashboard concept that simply kick-ass. The system is a full, live dashboard environment all shown in 3D graphics. From the gauge cluster to the GPS screen, the entire thing can all change on the fly thanks to OpenGL graphics. The possibilities are literally endless with this type of a display. 

For example, if  you are driving on a high-way and wish to stop and grab a bite to eat or fill the car with gas, the GPS interface not only will point you to the nearest restaurant or gas station, but your dashboard will also adjust dynamically. 

According to TGDaily, Audi plans to implement this system in vehicles sometime soon in their SUVs. As more info becomes available — I’m looking for a video — we’ll post an update about this amazing system.

Futuremark Announces Groundbreaking Automotive Demo for Audi at NVISION

San Jose, California – Aug. 25th, 2008 – Futuremark, creators of the industry standard benchmarking software for graphics performance for OpenGL ES and DirectX APIs, has created a demonstration for Audi’s In-Car Graphics System future concept to be shown for the first time at NVISION in San Jose. It delivers a fully rendered car dashboard and all instruments shown in a 3D view, including 3D navigation using stunning and realistic effects and viewsas well as a 3D car infotainment system with vehicle info and cool 3D environmental controls rendered in real-time for on-road Automotive usage.

“We are delighted to work with Audi due to their professional expertise in the car industry,” said Petri Talala, Vice President and General Manager of the Handheld and Embedded Group at Futuremark Oy., “Audi is a leader in this field with sophisticated, real-time rendered and high quality content available for future infotainment systems, and being able to have our graphics engine experts and artists contribute to this effort is very special for Futuremark.”

In-Car graphics systems are evolving rapidly with an increasing amount of digital instrumentation used inside of automotive designs. Khronos APIs such as OpenGL and OpenGL ES will be widely adopted for rendering backend of digital instrumentation. With this new automotive demo, Futuremark is showing the flexibility of both its OpenGL ES engines and its art pipelines that were used to deliver this project on an entirely new platform to Audi’s delight. The Engines and Pipeline Tools used to create the demo are all available for licensing directly from Futuremark. Also offered are custom demo services for Automotive companies who want to show off tomorrows User Interface and Digital 3D designs for Automobiles today. Futuremark’s has an upcoming automotive benchmark that is in development which will utilize real-world use cases such as car dashboard, info-system, and navigation workloads based on OpenGL ES 1.x and ES 2.0.

For more information on having Futuremark create your Automotive vision or for more information concerning Futuremark’s Mobile and Embedded products, in Europe and Asia, contact Petri Talala. In North America contact Oliver Baltuch at the contact information below.

About Futuremark Corporation Futuremark Corporation serves the mobile industry with professional application performance analysis tools and workloads. Our world renowned product portfolio includes 3DMark®Mobile for OpenGL ES 1.x and OpenGL ES 2.0, VGMark™ for OpenVG 1.x, and SPMark™ for Symbian, Windows Mobile, Linux and mobile Java. In addition, we license digital content creation tool chain middleware to 3D application developers, chip vendors and handset manufacturers. For more information, please visit www.futuremark.com

© 2008 Futuremark® Corporation. 3DMark®, PCMark®, SPMark™, VGMark™ and YouGamers™ trademarks and logos, Futuremark® character names and distinctive likenesses, are the exclusive property of Futuremark Corporation.