space engineers small lcd panel supplier

The various LCD Panel blocks are a great way to add a human touch to a ship or base by displaying useful images or text. For LCD configuration and usage, see LCD Surface Options.

Note: Some functional blocks, such as Cockpits, Programmable Blocks, Custom Turret Controllers, and Button Panels, have customizable LCD surfaces built in that work the same way as LCD Panel blocks, which are also discussed in detail under LCD Surface Options.

LCD Panels need to be built on a powered grid to work. Without power, they display an "Offline" text. While powered without having a text, image, or script set up, they display "Online".

LCD Panel blocks come in a variety of sizes from tiny to huge (see list below) and are available for large and small grid sizes. Note that LCD Panel blocks all have connections on their backs, and very few also on a second side.

All LCD Panels and LCD surfaces work with the same principle: They are capable of displaying dynamic scripts, or few inbuilt static images accompanied by editable text. Access the ship"s Control Panel Screen to configure LCD Panels or LCD surfaces; or face the LCD Panel block and press "K".

A Text Panel, despite its name, can also display images. On large grid, it is rectangular and does not fully cover the side of a 1x1x1 block. On small grid it is 1x1x1, the smallest possible LCD block in game.

On large grid, you choose the Text Panel when you need something that has rectangular dimensions that make it look like a wall-mounted TV or computer screen. If you want to display images, this one works best with the built-in posters whose names end in "H" or "V" (for horizontal or vertical rotation). On Small grid, you place these tiny display surfaces so you can see them well while seated in a cockpit or control seat, to create a custom display array of flight and status information around you.

Corner LCDs are much smaller display panels that typically hold a few lines of text. They don"t cover the block you place them on and are best suited as signage for doors, passages, or containers. They are less suitable for displaying images, even though it"s possible. If you enable the "Keep aspect ratio" option, the image will take up less than a third of the available space.

These huge Sci-Fi LCD Panels come in sizes of 5x5, 5x3, and 3x3 blocks, and can be built on large grids only. These panels are only available to build if you purchase the "Sparks of the Future" pack DLC.

They work the same as all other LCD Panels, the only difference is that they are very large. In the scenario that comes with the free "Sparks of the Future" update, they are used prominently as advertisement boards on an asteroid station.

This LCD panel can be built on large and small grids. The transparent LCD is basically a 1x1x1 framed window that displays images and text. It is part of the paid "Decorative Blocks Pack #2" DLC.

What is special about them is that if you set the background color to black, this panel becomes a transparent window with a built-in display. In contrast to other LCD Panels it has no solid backside, which makes it ideal to construct transparent cockpit HUDs, or simply as cosmetic decoration.

While configuring an LCD Panel, the GUI covers up the display in-world and you can"t see how the text or images comes out. In the UI Options, you can lower the UI Background opacity to be translucent, so you can watch what you are doing more easily.

After many requests, we have decided to release our internal Replay Tool that we use to create our trailers. It allows you to record the movement and actions of multiple characters in the same world. You can use your video recording software of choice to capture these moments for cinematic purposes! It’s also super useful for epic screenshot creation. The tool allows you to be the director of your own Space Engineers film where you can carefully position and time different engineers with their own specific roles. We are extremely excited to see what the community will create with this!

Important: because it’s an internal tool, it has a very basic user interface and required advanced users to be used. We believe this is OK, because most video creators who would want to use it to create epic cinematic Space Engineers videos are advanced users.

There are now Steam trading cards to collect for Space Engineers! Collect a full set of cards to earn items that help you customize your Steam profile including backgrounds and badges.

There are fourteen new decorative blocks for people who want to buy them and support the development of Space Engineers, which are available on the Space Engineers Steam Store page. Within the package you will get following new blocks:

Beds can preserve characters’ inventory and toolbar while they"re offline and keeps them alive as long as there is oxygen available. Is considered to be the same as the Cryo Chamber Block, except oxygen is used from the environment. Space Engineers don’t work from nine to five, they work whenever they’re needed: day or night, during peace and war. But when it’s time to call it a day, every engineer looks forward to resting in these beds.

Kitchens are purely decorative. The kitchens in Space Engineers come well-equipped and include stunning visual details. Space Engineers overcome challenges everyday when they’re working on new planets or among the stars.

Planters are purely decorative, but they make outer space a bit warmer by housing life in a special glass container. Build your own garden on the space station. Planters not only help to liven up spaces, but the flora housed inside these capsules also remind many engineers of the homes they’ve left behind in order to explore the universe.

Couchescan be used as seats, so take your time to relax and take a break. You don’t need to always run, fly or work, you can enjoy your cozy room and enjoy the view. The last thing anyone would ever call a Space Engineer is ‘couch potato’, but who wouldn’t like to relax after a hard day’s work on this comfy furniture?

Armory and Armory Lockers can be used to decorate interiors and store weapons, ammunition, tools and bottles; both are small storages (400L), where you can keep your equipment. Space Engineers use lockers in order to ensure that keepsakes from home, toiletries and other items are kept safe.

Toiletscan be used as a seat. The latest and greatest interstellar lavatory technology has made many earth dwellers jealous of the facilities enjoyed by Space Engineers.

Toilet Seat that can be used as a seat and is fit for the creator of the legendary Red Ship; most engineers don’t want to get up after ‘taking care of business’.

Industrial Cockpits are used to control your ships. This industrial cockpit in both small and large grid versions will make your creations look much better. Offering unmatched visibility, the industrial cockpit enables engineers to experience stunning vistas while traversing landscapes and space.

Console blocks project blueprints for downscaled ships and stations, as well as display pictograms or customizable text. They are fantastic functional LCD panels where you can project your creations and show them to your friends. The sleek and crystal clear picture offered by this console allows Space Engineers to display designs and other important information.

Keen Software House needs to stay profitable in order to continue development and support of Space Engineers, and to take risks, to invest into experiments that may not pay off in the short term, and to develop innovative concepts.

A:Actually, even this update isn’t paid. The major part of this update (LCD screens, Replay Tool, new music tracks, smaller improvements) is free for everyone. Only the smaller and not mandatory part is paid - Decorative Pack, which you can purchase here.

A: To support future development of Space Engineers and other leading-edge projects we plan to work on at Keen Software House. Players kept asking us for something they could buy to support the development of Space Engineers, and the Decorative Pack is a great option for them.

A: Right after Space Engineers left early access and all hot issues were resolved. Most of the work was done by the Art team, the rest of the developers is working on other long-term updates.

A: We want more people to play Space Engineers, which means we must lower the barrier of entry. When the Space Engineers community grows, everyone benefits from this - more content on Workshop, more mods, more new ideas, more people to play with. This means that all non-mandatory features should be optional, so only those who really want them can pay for them. That’s why we decreased the price of Space Engineers, and made the Decorative Pack an optional purchase.

The Space Engineers – Sparks of the Future includes the Sci-Fi LCD, the Neon Tubes, the Sci-Fi Ion Thrusters, the Sci-Fi Atmospheric Thrusters, the Sci-Fi Interior Wall, the Bar Counter, the Sci-Fi Control Panel, the Sci-Fi 1-Button Panel, the Sci-Fi 4-Button Panel, the Sci-Fi Sliding Door, the Sci-Fi Armor Skin, the 2 Neon Armor Skins, the 8 new character emotes.

Do you want your Arduino projects to display status messages or sensor readings? Then these LCD displays can be a perfect fit. They are extremely common and fast way to add a readable interface to your project.

This tutorial will help you get up and running with not only 16×2 Character LCD, but any Character LCD (16×4, 16×1, 20×4 etc.) that is based on Hitachi’s LCD Controller Chip – HD44780.

True to their name, these LCDs are ideal for displaying only text/characters. A 16×2 character LCD, for example, has an LED backlight and can display 32 ASCII characters in two rows of 16 characters each.

The good news is that all of these displays are ‘swappable’, which means if you build your project with one you can just unplug it and use another size/color LCD of your choice. Your code will have to change a bit but at least the wiring remains the same!

Vo (LCD Contrast) controls the contrast and brightness of the LCD. Using a simple voltage divider with a potentiometer, we can make fine adjustments to the contrast.

RS (Register Select) pin is set to LOW when sending commands to the LCD (such as setting the cursor to a specific location, clearing the display, etc.) and HIGH when sending data to the LCD. Basically this pin is used to separate the command from the data.

R/W (Read/Write) pin allows you to read data from the LCD or write data to the LCD. Since we are only using this LCD as an output device, we are going to set this pin LOW. This forces it into WRITE mode.

E (Enable) pin is used to enable the display. When this pin is set to LOW, the LCD does not care what is happening on the R/W, RS, and data bus lines. When this pin is set to HIGH, the LCD processes the incoming data.

Now we will power the LCD. The LCD has two separate power connections; One for the LCD (pin 1 and pin 2) and the other for the LCD backlight (pin 15 and pin 16). Connect pins 1 and 16 of the LCD to GND and 2 and 15 to 5V.

Most LCDs have a built-in series resistor for the LED backlight. You’ll find this near pin 15 on the back of the LCD. If your LCD does not include such a resistor or you are not sure if your LCD has one, you will need to add one between 5V and pin 15. It is safe to use a 220 ohm resistor, although a value this high may make the backlight a bit dim. For better results you can check the datasheet for maximum backlight current and select a suitable resistor value.

Next we will make the connection for pin 3 on the LCD which controls the contrast and brightness of the display. To adjust the contrast we will connect a 10K potentiometer between 5V and GND and connect the potentiometer’s center pin (wiper) to pin 3 on the LCD.

That’s it. Now turn on the Arduino. You will see the backlight lit up. Now as you turn the knob on the potentiometer, you will start to see the first row of rectangles. If that happens, Congratulations! Your LCD is working fine.

Let’s finish connecting the LCD to the Arduino. We have already made the connections to power the LCD, now all we have to do is make the necessary connections for communication.

We know that there are 8 data pins that carry data to the display. However, HD44780 based LCDs are designed in such a way that we can communicate with the LCD using only 4 data pins (4-bit mode) instead of 8 (8-bit mode). This saves us 4 pins!

The sketch begins by including the LiquidCrystal library. The Arduino community has a library called LiquidCrystal which makes programming of LCD modules less difficult. You can find more information about the library on Arduino’s official website.

First we create a LiquidCrystal object. This object uses 6 parameters and specifies which Arduino pins are connected to the LCD’s RS, EN, and four data pins.

In the ‘setup’ we call two functions. The first function is begin(). It is used to specify the dimensions (number of columns and rows) of the display. If you are using a 16×2 character LCD, pass the 16 and 2; If you’re using a 20×4 LCD, pass 20 and 4. You got the point!

After that we set the cursor position to the second row by calling the function setCursor(). The cursor position specifies the location where you want the new text to be displayed on the LCD. The upper left corner is assumed to be col=0, row=0.

There are some useful functions you can use with LiquidCrystal objects. Some of them are listed below:lcd.home() function is used to position the cursor in the upper-left of the LCD without clearing the display.

lcd.scrollDisplayRight() function scrolls the contents of the display one space to the right. If you want the text to scroll continuously, you have to use this function inside a for loop.

lcd.scrollDisplayLeft() function scrolls the contents of the display one space to the left. Similar to above function, use this inside a for loop for continuous scrolling.

If you find the characters on the display dull and boring, you can create your own custom characters (glyphs) and symbols for your LCD. They are extremely useful when you want to display a character that is not part of the standard ASCII character set.

CGROM is used to store all permanent fonts that are displayed using their ASCII codes. For example, if we send 0x41 to the LCD, the letter ‘A’ will be printed on the display.

CGRAM is another memory used to store user defined characters. This RAM is limited to 64 bytes. For a 5×8 pixel based LCD, only 8 user-defined characters can be stored in CGRAM. And for 5×10 pixel based LCD only 4 user-defined characters can be stored.

Creating custom characters has never been easier! We have created a small application called Custom Character Generator. Can you see the blue grid below? You can click on any 5×8 pixel to set/clear that particular pixel. And as you click, the code for the character is generated next to the grid. This code can be used directly in your Arduino sketch.

The LCD Panel is a thin panel that takes an entire block face and can display a variety of messages and textures that can be displayed constantly or triggered by the Programmable Block, Sensor, Timer Block, or any other block capable of triggering.

The "Color" sliders allow setting the text colour using RGB slider and "Backgr." allows setting background fill colours (default black). If using a transparent LCD then the text will be against transparency unless fill colour is added.

"Loaded Textures" has a list of the available default and modded (where applicable) images available for display on the screen. Select the desired image and select "Add to selection". The selected image will then show in the second "Selected textures" panel.

When multiple images are applied they can be set to cycle between with the duration between images being set by the "Image change interval" slider. To remove an image from display select it in the second panel and select "Remove selected".

The "Preserve aspect ratio" checkbox can be used to prevent the image being stretched if it does not fit the screen properly such as when using a wide LCD.

To set the LCD to display a script, choose "Script" from the dropdown. Choosing Script allows the display of information such as weather, artificial horizon for vehicles, Energy and Hydrogen level etc.

The panel"s title and text can be made public, private, or a combination of both. Textures applied can be selected from a list or custom textures can be selected. Textures can be set to rotate on a timer, changing from one to the next. GPS coordinates shown in the GPS format in the text panel will appear in the GPS and can be activated (=shown on HUD).

The LCD Panel could be accessed with the programmable block as IMyTextPanel. It could work in ´Texture Mode´ in which the selected textures are shown or the ´Text Mode´ in which the text is shown. The following methods are available:

Again, IPS is the clear winner here. The vertical viewing angles are very similar to the horizontal ones on both IPS and VA panels. Unfortunately, this is one area where TN panels are usually much, much worse. TN monitors degrade rapidly from below, and colors actually inverse - resulting in a negative image that can be distracting. For this reason, if you decide to buy a TN monitor, look for one with an excellent height adjustment, or consider buying a VESA mounting arm, as you should mount TN monitors at eye level. Even when mounted properly, larger TN displays can appear non-uniform at the edges.

There"s usually not much difference between VA and IPS panels in terms of gray uniformity. It"s rare for monitors to have uniformity issues, and even on monitors that perform worse than average, it"s usually not noticeable with regular content. TN monitors tend to perform a bit worse than usual, though, and the top half of the screen is almost always darker than the rest, but that"s an artifact of the bad vertical viewing angles.

Black uniformity tends to vary significantly, even between individual units of the same model, and there"s no single panel type that performs the best. It"s rare for monitors to have good black uniformity, and almost every monitor we"ve tested has some noticeable cloudiness or backlight bleed. IPS and TN panels can look slightly worse due to their low contrast ratios, as the screen can take on more of a bluish tint when displaying dark scenes. Like with contrast, black uniformity issues usually aren"t very noticeable unless you"re looking at dark content and you"re in a dark room. If you only use your monitor in a bright environment, generally speaking, you don"t need to worry about black uniformity.

Historically, TN panels used to have the worst colors, as many of them were cheaper models that only supported 6-bit colors or used techniques like dithering (FRC) to approximate 8-bit colors. Most displays today, including TN models, are at least 8 bit, and many of them are even able to approximate 10-bit colors through dithering. New technologies, like LG"s Nano IPS and Samsung"s Quantum Dot, add an extra layer to the LCD stack and have significantly improved the color gamut of modern IPS and VA displays, leaving TN a bit behind. Between them, NANO IPS is slightly better, as it tends to offer better coverage of the Adobe RGB color space. Although the difference is minor, IPS panels still have a slight edge over VA and TN displays.

Although TN panels have caught up a bit in the SDR color space, they"re far behind when it comes to HDR, so if you"re looking for a good HDR color gamut, avoid TN panels. Between VA and IPS panels, the difference isn"t as significant; however, IPS panels still have a slight edge. The best VA panels top out at around 90% coverage of the DCI P3 color space used by most current HDR content. IPS panels go as high as 98% coverage of DCI P3, rivaling even some of the best TVs on the market. Due to the very high coverage of DCI P3 on both VA and IPS, the difference isn"t that noticeable, though, as most content won"t use the entire color space anyway.

Although not necessarily as noticeable to everyone as the differences in picture quality, there can also be a difference in motion handling between IPS, VA, and TN displays. TN panels historically offered the best gaming performance, as they had the highest refresh rates and extremely fast response times. Manufacturers have found ways to drastically improve the motion handling of VA and IPS panels, though, and the difference isn"t as pronounced.

LCD panel technology has changed drastically over the last few years, and the historical expectations for response time performance don"t necessarily hold anymore. For years, TN monitors had the fastest response times by far, but that"s started to change. New high refresh-rate IPS monitors can be just as fast.

VA panels are a bit of a strange situation. They typically have slightly slower response times overall compared to similar TN or IPS models. It"s especially noticeable in near-black scenes, where they tend to be significantly slower, resulting in dark trails behind fast-moving objects in dark scenes, commonly known as black smear. Some recent VA panels, such as the Samsung Odyssey G7 LC32G75T, get around it by overdriving the pixels. It results in much better dark scene performance but a more noticeable overshoot in brighter areas.

Within each of the three types of LCD we mentioned, other related panel types use the same basic idea but with slight differences. For example, two popular variants of IPS panels include ADS (technically known as ADSDS, or Advanced Super Dimension Switch) and PLS (Plane to Line Switching). It can be hard to tell these panels apart simply based on the subpixel structure, so we"ll usually group them all as IPS, and in the text, we"ll usually refer to them as IPS-like or IPS family. There are slight differences in colors, viewing angles, and contrast, but generally speaking, they"re all very similar.

There"s another display technology that"s growing in popularity: OLED. OLED, or organic light-emitting diode, is very different from the conventional LCD technology we"ve explored above. OLED panels are electro-emissive, which means each pixel emits its own light when it receives an electric signal, eliminating the need for a backlight. Since OLED panels can turn off individual pixels, they have deep, inky blacks with no blooming around bright objects. They also have excellent wide viewing angles, a near-instantaneous response time, and excellent gray uniformity.

OLED panels aren"t perfect, though. There"s a risk of permanent burn-in, especially when there are lots of static elements on screen, like the UI elements of a PC. There aren"t many OLED monitors available, either, but they"ve started to gain popularity as laptop screens and for high-end monitors, but they"re very expensive and hard to find. They"re also not very bright in some cases, especially when large bright areas are visible on screen. The technology is still maturing, and advances in OLED technology, like Samsung"s highly-anticipated QD-OLED technology, are promising.

As you can probably tell by now, no one panel type works best for everyone; it all depends on your exact usage. Although there used to be some significant differences between panel types, as technology has improved, these differences aren"t as noticeable. The two exceptions to this are viewing angles and contrast. If you"re in a dark room, a VA panel that can display deep blacks is probably the best choice. If you"re not in a dark room, you should focus on the other features of the monitor and choose based on the features that appeal to your exact usage. IPS panels are generally preferred for office use, and TN typically offers the best gaming experience, but recent advancements in VA and IPS technology are starting to change those generalizations. For the most part, the differences between each panel type are so minor now that it doesn"t need to be directly factored into your buying decision.

:This award is granted for a novel component that significantly enhanced the performance of a display. A component is sold as a separate part destined to be incorporated into a display. A component may also include display-enhancing materials and/or parts fabricated with new processes, or display test equipment. Note: Display panels or modules should be nominated in the Display of the Year category rather than in the component category. Download here.

Eco2 OLED is a technology that removes the polarizer, which is used to reduce the reflection of external light and integrates its functionality into the OLED panel layer. The Eco2OLED display is eco-friendly by reducing the use of plastics. The technology improves energy efficiency and reduces power consumption.

compared with traditional leds, minileds have smaller particle size and higher brightness, which can bring better display effects to the lcd with a miniled back­light unit. meanwhile, it is more energy-efficient and supports accurate local dim­ming to avoid the uniformity problem that occurs with led backlight units. the active-matrix (am) driving glass substrate technology adopted by the chip-on-glass (cog) miniled backlight unit from boe is based on semiconductor technology and uses a glass substrate through boe’s lateral processing technology. glass is more suitable for making led backlight arrays with dense arrange­ment and heat concentration. the miniled unit is directly bonded to the glass substrate to realize the high-speed transfer of the led chips and can realize precise, independent dimming control of the back­light unit.

The xQDEF Diffuser Plate brings together the color and brightness performance of QDEF quantum-dot (QD) technology with the precise light diffusion necessary for perfect contrast levels in miniLED and full-array local-dimming LCDs. As a direct replacement for diffuser plate components in direct-lit LCDs, the xQDEF Diffuser Plate simplifies the display assembly process, allowing display makers to design and build the most cost-effective displays with the widest color gamut. Compared with other wide color gamut solutions, the xQDEF Diffuser Plate implementation results in close to no additional material costs. By the end of 2021, more than a million TVs with xQDEF Diffuser Plates inside shipped into the market.

With its 32‐inch LCD panel, 6K Retina resolution, and over 20 million pixels, Apple Pro Display XDR (Fig . 1) sets a new bar for the capabilities of a professional display. Designed for pro users who rely on color accuracy and true‐to‐life image reproduction, such as photographers, video editors, 3D animators, and colorists, Pro Display XDR delivers the most comprehensive set of features ever offered on a display in its price range.

Here"s how Pro Display XDR is engineered to produce industry‐leading imagery: Traditional LCD displays use edge‐lit backlight technology to diffuse light evenly across the display at the same brightness level. Instead, Pro Display XDR uses a locally dimmed backlight with 576 individual LEDs, controlled by an advanced algorithm in the timing controller chip. As a result, the display can exhibit incredibly bright, color‐accurate image areas and deep blacks simultaneously, delivering its 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and up to 1600 nits peak brightness. An advanced thermal management system supports the display to maintain peak brightness indefinitely in environments up to 25° C. With these features, Pro Display XDR introduces Extreme Dynamic Range (XDR), far outperforming typical HDR brightness specifications for desktop displays and enabling pros to work with true‐to‐life content.

Pro Display XDR also incorporates several innovations to optimize image quality compared to traditional LCD displays. First, to minimize “blooming,” a halo effect surrounding bright objects on dark backgrounds, an Apple‐designed cavity reflector is layered on top of the LEDs and optimized geometrically. Along with several additional custom lenses and reflective layers, it directs the light upward while reducing halo effects and preserving light uniformity.

The display industry has experimented with various technologies to better reflect natural images and a wide range of colors on screens, and with the emergence of LED local dimming and HDR, display performance has substantially improved. However, traditional LCD screens’ brightness has long been considered relatively high in low grayscale. In other words, it isn"t black enough, and it"s difficult to use local image technology to differentiate the sense of depth with a high‐contrast ratio.

As a breakthrough in thin‐film transistor (TFT)‐LCD technology, BOE"s dual‐cell panel (Fig . 2) — referred to as “BD Cell” for short—offers several important technical advancements that conventional LCD screens don"t. The display uses pixel‐level ultra‐fine backlight control technology and a brand‐new integrated circuit (IC) driving technology to make the million‐level contrast ratio rate and 12 bits’ color depth come true, accurately displaying more natural and true‐to‐life colors.

The contrast ratio of a conventional LCD screen is 3,000:1 with 0.2 nits as the lowest brightness. The BD Cell"s screen is capable of raising the contrast ratio up to 150,000:1 and decreasing brightness to 0.003 nit. In terms of combining LED local dimming with BD Cell technology, the contrast ratio can be as high as 2,000,000:1. Moreover, while a conventional LCD screen"s color depth is 8 bit, BD Cell is capable of boosting the color depth as high as 12 bit with an enhanced IC driving algorithm. On the other hand, BD Cell incorporates advantages of an LCD screen"s stableness and technological maturity, with no image sticking.

Equipped with an advanced dimension switch screen, BD Cell combines a main cell and subcell, which plays a key role in dividing the backlight into a million zones with the function of a liquid crystal light valve. According to the company, the process of combining the subcell and main cell was not without its challenges: BOE"s engineers had to troubleshoot problems such as Newton rings caused by packing, the Moire phenomenon, and image dislocation caused by pixel‐level alignment deviation along the way.

In the end, “the successful development of BD Cell substantially increases the lifespan and the competitiveness of LCD technology, bringing a better visual experience to consumers and more possibilities for the entire display industrial chain,” says Feng Yuan, vice president of BOE Technology Group.

To achieve those specifications, Samsung has developed highly effective electroluminescent material and highly durable components. To make an inward foldable display with a bending radius of 1.5 millimeters (mm), all the layers within the panel should be folded without causing any cracks. As a result, the foldable display employs a cover window made of flexible, hardened plastic. Samsung says that it successfully reduced the thickness by more than 50 percent by taking advantage of materials that enable ultra‐thin layers. Furthermore, the stress of various layers (including the TFT, light‐emitting layers, polarizing plate, and cover window) is appropriately dispersed, allowing the product to pass a strict bending test more than 200,000 cycles.

Though volumes for the foldable market are expected to be small for several years, Samsung considers its foldable display as a stepping stone in revolutionizing display form factors. Going forward, Samsung says the form‐factor revolution will be highly significant for enhancing mobile devices.

Nonvibrating surface haptic technology introduces new options for automotive manufacturers to reimagine the vehicle"s interior design and feel. Car manufacturers can create a uniform or harmonious touch experience across multiple surfaces—not just the display screen, but also the steering wheel, exterior door handle, and even upholstery. According to Tanvas, automotive manufacturers can implement its technology with a combination of a proprietary controller solution (which performs multitouch sensing and haptic control), supplied in various forms (including as an IC or as a module), and transform the multitouch sensor panel to a combined multitouch and haptic actuator for any surface.

Although quantum dot (QD) technology realizes a high color gamut for LCD, most QD materials are cadmium (Cd)‐based, raising concerns about their potential toxicity: Exposure to cadmium has been connected to cancer and other serious health issues, as well as environmental harms. As a result, Cd‐based QD materials are not widely accepted in the display market, and the industry has shifted its focus to finding nontoxic alternatives. Still, Cd‐free QD materials can bring their own challenges, including issues with low luminance and color purity.

Because one of Toray"s core offerings is organic emitting materials with high color purity for organic EL devices, the company wondered if they might be useful for a high color gamut LCD and began developing the SCO sheet (Fig . 6). In the beginning, the biggest issue with the organic emitting materials was their lifetime. However, Toray ultimately achieved a lifetime 1,400 times longer compared to the initial development stage.

According to the company, their SCO sheet is especially innovative for a few reasons. First, the high color purity of Toray"s organic emitting material is based on a full width at half maximum (FWHM) parameter that"s much narrower than any other organic emitting materials so far developed. So by using the SCO sheet, a high color gamut LCD can be realized. In particular, the sheet can cover both Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI)‐P3 and Adobe specifications.

Second, Toray says its original organic emitting material has a higher quantum efficiency than that of non‐Cd QDs. Therefore, an approximately 10 percent higher luminance can be realized with the sheet than with non‐Cd QDs. For that reason, the SCO sheet can contribute to lower power consumption of the LCD panel.

Because Toray"s SCO sheet is free of toxic elements, it"s not restricted by various environmental regulations, including the European Unions’ Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive. Finally, with the sheet, more than 99 percent of DCI and more than 99 percent of Adobe coverage can be achieved in one LCD panel. (According to the company, non‐Cd QDs can"t say the same.) Recently, in the PC monitor market, there has been a strong demand for compatibility of DCI and Adobe in one PC monitor. Toray believes that with the SCO sheet, it will be able to develop a new PC monitor market.

Although OLED is a well‐known way to apply organic electronics materials to the display industry, this is the first instance of applying organic emitting materials to the LCD industry, an achievement that expands the possibilities of organic electronics materials.

With this pivot from gas‐powered cars, the need for a virtual side mirror (Fig . 7)—consisting of small exterior side cameras and a door‐mounted interior display—became even more pronounced, according to Bernhard Senner, an engineer in Development Innovations User Experience/User Interface at Audi. The company debuted the mirror as an option in the all‐electric Audi e‐tron, and it"s currently available in Europe. (Because of regulations, the e‐tron is only available in the US without the virtual side mirrors.)

A 7‐inch OLED was selected for the virtual exterior mirror. In early test drives, Senner notes, Audi realized that the limited contrast of an LCD and especially the slow response time in low temperatures was a significant issue. “So it became clear very early, that we have to use an OLED display for this application, because with the dark black and the temperature, independent fast switching‐time OLED is the best solution,” he says.

The camera is integrated into the hexagonal end of the virtual mirror"s flat supports and its images are digitally processed and displayed on high‐contrast, 1,280 × 800‐pixel OLED displays in the transition between the instrument panel and door.