3 ms·

I would love this in cars one day. Getting into an unbearable hot car on a summer day would be a thing of the past.

mlindner 4y ago
That can be handled with pre-cooling your car.
bityard 4y ago
...a car without windows would get hotter than one without because windows are at least somewhat reflective (depending on the angle of the sun) and because they can be left cracked open to let the heat escape.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  The first half of your supposition is dead wrong, but the second half is correct. Opaque materials will always transmit less solar energy than transparent materials. The most effective insulated multi-pane windows available for homes today are still less efficient than a wall.
  - bityard 4y ago
    Yes, light travels through glass and not through metal and paint. But if the outside of the car gets hot, the inside will too.
- tppiotrowski 4y ago
  On a sunny day, why are the contents of my trunk cooler than the interior of my car?
elihu 4y ago
It's kind of a weird idea to get used to, but I think windowless cars could be pretty cool. Maybe the driver puts on a VR helmet and can see everything. (Obviously the technology would have to be extremely reliable.) It solves a bunch of problems: it gets rid of all the trade-offs between structural integrity and visibility. It reduces costs and makes manufacturing easier. The driver could be anywhere, even in the back seat if that makes sense for some reason. This seems like it would be extra useful for military vehicles. I wonder if you were to redesign something like the A-10 or F-16 from scratch and you could put the pilot anywhere you want because visibility isn't an issue, would you come up with the same design or would the cockpit end up somewhere strange, like in the back of the plane?
- numpad0 4y ago
  I did a napkin math a while back: the standard for 20/20 vision or 1.0 acuity scale equals to 1 arc minute resolution, or 1MOA, or an Euclidean angle of 1/60th degree. A spherical VR image that resolves to 20/20 acuity is as large as (60 x 360, 60 x 180) = (21600, 10800)px before requisite oversampling, and that’s kind of hard. Then of course those fighter guys has/need better visibility than 20/20 which only makes it harder. And by the way modern digital image pipelines buffer and delay transfers, sometimes as much as 200ms, which is absurd considering the CPU runs at literally millions of times better clock frequencies and latencies, but that’s what readily available implementations are. These mean that we are still some time away until such “local remote driving” not just complements but totally replace heat formed and dielectric coated pane of plexiglass. I guess it eventually will beyond upper edge of atmosphere as glasses don’t work well and vision required surpass human eyeballs, i.e. in interstellar settler’s carriages and planetary orbital fighter jets, but for now and for forward windscreen applications, it makes more sense to just put on panes of plain old transparent aluminum.

That can be handled with pre-cooling your car.

...a car without windows would get hotter than one without because windows are at least somewhat reflective (depending on the angle of the sun) and because they can be left cracked open to let the heat escape.

happyopossum 4y ago
The first half of your supposition is dead wrong, but the second half is correct. Opaque materials will always transmit less solar energy than transparent materials. The most effective insulated multi-pane windows available for homes today are still less efficient than a wall.
- bityard 4y ago
  Yes, light travels through glass and not through metal and paint. But if the outside of the car gets hot, the inside will too.
tppiotrowski 4y ago
On a sunny day, why are the contents of my trunk cooler than the interior of my car?

elihu 4y ago

It's kind of a weird idea to get used to, but I think windowless cars could be pretty cool. Maybe the driver puts on a VR helmet and can see everything. (Obviously the technology would have to be extremely reliable.) It solves a bunch of problems: it gets rid of all the trade-offs between structural integrity and visibility. It reduces costs and makes manufacturing easier. The driver could be anywhere, even in the back seat if that makes sense for some reason. This seems like it would be extra useful for military vehicles. I wonder if you were to redesign something like the A-10 or F-16 from scratch and you could put the pilot anywhere you want because visibility isn't an issue, would you come up with the same design or would the cockpit end up somewhere strange, like in the back of the plane?

numpad0 4y ago
I did a napkin math a while back: the standard for 20/20 vision or 1.0 acuity scale equals to 1 arc minute resolution, or 1MOA, or an Euclidean angle of 1/60th degree. A spherical VR image that resolves to 20/20 acuity is as large as (60 x 360, 60 x 180) = (21600, 10800)px before requisite oversampling, and that’s kind of hard. Then of course those fighter guys has/need better visibility than 20/20 which only makes it harder. And by the way modern digital image pipelines buffer and delay transfers, sometimes as much as 200ms, which is absurd considering the CPU runs at literally millions of times better clock frequencies and latencies, but that’s what readily available implementations are. These mean that we are still some time away until such “local remote driving” not just complements but totally replace heat formed and dielectric coated pane of plexiglass. I guess it eventually will beyond upper edge of atmosphere as glasses don’t work well and vision required surpass human eyeballs, i.e. in interstellar settler’s carriages and planetary orbital fighter jets, but for now and for forward windscreen applications, it makes more sense to just put on panes of plain old transparent aluminum.