|
I'd say my screens are ~640x480. The screens are a good size, and yes you can see enough to see vehicles. The relative distances of how far away things are is a challenge, and something you have to adjust to. They work very well in situations when optical mirrors have a harder time: low light and in the rain. They work less well when optical mirrors are good: bright sunshine.
Video mirrors have advantages over optical mirrors:
They do not need to be adjusted for different drivers
They do not blind you with reflected headlights
In the rain, optical mirrors make you look through 2 layers of water drops and/or fog -- whereas on a video camera, only a drop right in the middle of the lens is an issue; and once you clear this, it stays clear when you are moving.
Rooster tails/mist clouds from other vehicles tires are not an issue -- the cameras may lose them due to lower resolution?
They work very well at dusk and near dark, as they are able to use infrared light (they have IR LED's that light up stuff withing 10-15' or so)
Of course, the whole reason that we want to use them is they have much less aero drag.
They have disadvantages, some of which could be minimized with technical improvements:
They are overwhelmed by bright sunshine -- could be helped with more "F-stops" and also finer adjustment steps
My screens get dimmer as they heat up; eventually they will go black if they get too hot -- more efficient backlights would go a long way to fixing this
They only work when the car is turned on, so can't help you open your door on a busy street
The backlight leaks out in darkness, and this causes a reflection on the window glass -- I positioned mine to avoid seeing this, and dynamic backlighting and better LCD screens would also help a lot
Perspective is distorted, and vehicles look much farther away than they really are -- this could be largely fixed with purpose made lenses for the left and right hand sides of the car
|