I can't imagine that the image shown in CarPlay Ultra is still rendered on the phone. It's used to show all driving relevant things (speed etc.). Is a wireless connection to the phone reliable enough so this would be allowed by regulators?
I thought the main image would be rendered on the car using local data and only the entertainment stuff is transferred from the phone.
And also, how would you drive your car without the phone if everything is rendered on the phone? Would they implement an entire backup dashboard for this? I thought it would always show the CarPlay Ultra interface, even when no phone is connected.
> I can't imagine that the image shown in CarPlay Ultra is still rendered on the phone. It's used to show all driving relevant things (speed etc.). Is a wireless connection to the phone reliable enough so this would be allowed by regulators?
I have some understanding of this being someone who has installed way too many aftermarket head units, and as best I can tell, all the rendering indeed occurs on the phone. The CarPlay experience is virtually identical across all the units I've tested on, from my stock '18 Corvette unit, through 4 or 5 ones I've shuffled through in my F-150, and through 2 or 3 through my Chrysler 300. Apart from display size and density, there is no difference at all in all these CarPlay units. They function identically.
The phone also gets notably warm even just playing music which is part of why I strongly suspect all of that is phone-side activity at play with the dash just providing a resolution/density combo and touch inputs.
> Would they implement an entire backup dashboard for this?
Correct, if my research is to be believed. There's a stock OEM OS look to everything in line with each brand's visual designs, which is then swapped out to whatever degree they feel like exposing to CarPlay Ultra, at which point it's reskinned in Apple's look.
I don't own any vehicles new enough for this, but it's pretty cool if it works. That said I'm less a fan of everything being a display. For gauges and such I do prefer physical gauges.
I know that regular CarPlay works like this, but I thought they would change it for CarPlay Ultra. Normal CarPlay isn't really safety critical currently.
Honestly it's like TVs? They're all broadly the same thing, usually Android tablets stuffed into whatever form factor. All have quirks, many have things to troubleshoot in terms of getting them to play nice with your vehicle's CAN system. That said the one I just installed this month in my truck is great. Wireless CarPlay, all the time, quick bootup, good quality reverse camera image, and it was a fairly cheap amazon-sourced unit.
If you want a name brand, you're probably looking at Pioneer, though they only make double-din units which make for less transformative upgrades than my truck's which is an entire replacement center console. To each their own though.
> I can't imagine that the image shown in CarPlay Ultra is still rendered on the phone. It's used to show all driving relevant things (speed etc.). Is a wireless connection to the phone reliable enough so this would be allowed by regulators?
For efficiency's sake, I hope it's like a theme (in the style of Winamp, or well, Windows XP), so you can pick some theme on your phone, and the phone tells the car to use that theme while rendering the car's instruments. For UI elements needing data from the phone (like album cover image), the theme would tell the car computer to fetch it from the phone. Considering the state of the tech industry, it's probably HTML and CSS too. And Javascript. Goatse anyone?
By the way... who the hell thinks it's important that someone operating a 800+ horsepower car should be able to be distracted by what the album cover of the music currently playing looks like..?
I thought the main image would be rendered on the car using local data and only the entertainment stuff is transferred from the phone.
And also, how would you drive your car without the phone if everything is rendered on the phone? Would they implement an entire backup dashboard for this? I thought it would always show the CarPlay Ultra interface, even when no phone is connected.