I am a long time member over on the C6 forum. After driving my C6 for 9 years and 140,000 miles I am now looking at ordering a 2014 C7. I am looking for some feedback regarding the night vision and heads up display options and whether or not the people who have the option think it is worthwhile and what issues they have had. Thanks in advance and I am looking forward to joining the C7 family.

Kevin

 

Since I keep cars for several years as you do, I go for a fully optioned Car. I got all available options, except B &O, which I felt was way too overpriced for my older ears.

I really like the Heads-Up display, since it gives you speed and Navigation information right in front of your eyes without looking down. Consider full LED headlights--they're awesome and add a very high-tech look to the car. Also, now that I've used it I wouldn't be without the Adaptive Cruise Control, it's the most important and useful option. I like the Active Lane assist for longer trips. The Side-Assist option alerts you to someone in your blind-spot is also very helpful, and the other car doesn't just have to be in your blind spot. If it's coming up fast in the other lane, this option will alert you to not change lanes in front of that car.

The Night Vision option is really up to you. It will detect and alert you to persons at night, walking or on bicycles, and also detects animals. So if you drive a lot in unlighted areas as I do in the mountains, this option is very helpful to keep from hitting an animal. Even an animal as small as a squirrel will show up as a bright white spot on the display.

Here's a great description of these options: http://www.audiusanews.com/newsrelea...e-systems&mid=

 

The HUD is a must IMO. Once you have it in one car, you need to have it in others. And since I had it in other cars, it just feels like extra work to look down to see how fast I'm going. More info in it would be nice, but even as is, its not something I'd pass on.

Nightvision, not so much. I rarely use it. Its not positioned in a good spot, and again, requires looking down. Plus, I don't really like the black and white setting. If they were gonna do it, they should have done it right and offered multiple settings like the FLIR thermal cameras do. Color would have made it a lot more useful, though I still probably wouldn't use it.

 

"Color would have made it a lot more useful, though I still probably wouldn't use it."

Color often enhances the usability of a display, but not so with FLIR. All the different colors related to different temperatures of objects just confuses the image. All you really care about in the non-Color display are the very warm images, shown in bright-white, as opposed to the cooler images shown in various shades of a darker gray--So the white images really stand out with a quick glance at the display.

We have a large-screen FLIR display on a Search and Rescue boat that has Color available, and we never use it. That's because we've found it takes too much scrutinizing the image to try to pick out the one item we're interested in finding--a warm boat or a warm body floating in cool water.

 

If you are getting adaptive cruise + active lane assist and plan on using both features, the HUD IMO is a must have. It plasters the current state of ACC (e.g. on or off, does it see a car or not) and ALA (left, right, or no lane boundaries detected) right in front of you, so you know at any given moment in time whether the car is in "autopilot" or you need to intervene. Without this, ACC can sometimes be scary or dangerous to use, as it requires that you point your car towards what looks like an imminent rear-ending and hitting the brakes cancels adaptive cruise!

The Night Vision proves useful on occasions but isn't one of those features that you use every day (unless you live in the middle of nowhere). It's great at highlighting people, but even animals on the road show up in an obvious bright white that you'll notice during your periodic instrument cluster visual scans. It's actually also useful in driving on curvy roads at night, as the thermal imaging camera can pick up the contour of the road from beyond the reach of headlights (because the dirt or metal guard rail tends to be at a different temperature than the concrete road surface)

All in all, if you love tech gadgets in a car, I'd highly recommend getting the Innovation Package with HUD and night vision. The HUD perfectly complements the features in the Driver Assist package.

 

I agree with the others above. The HUD and ACC are very useful in day to day driving - I use the HUD every day and the ACC whenever I'm on the highway (not so much around town). The night vision seems like a novelty to me, especially since you need to look down in the display between the gauges to see it.

 

I like the color better because its easier to tell minor differences. Having to pick out between grays is harder for me than black, purples, blues, greens, yellows, orange, reds and pinks.

 

Another vote for the HUD and ACC being the most useful. I do like the side assist as well but since I still check blind spots it isn't all that useful. But if I ever need to do evasive maneuvers it could provide quick useful information. I'm not a fan of the lane assist. Half the time it can't recognize the lanes and even when it does work it can do screwy things.

 

I am probably one of the few who bought this car for the night vision. My wife has poor night vision so this and full LED are must have for me.

For me I find HUD very useful especially when you have ACC on. It tells you if it detects the car ahead, shows navigation and visual warning when night vision detects people in the car's path. That mitigates the need of looking down the IR display regularly.

ACC is helpful on highway and also in stop and go traffic.

All said, while these aids are helpful, it does not absolve driver's responsibility to check.

Hope that helps.

 

Agreed. In fact, I've found that the ACC takes the monotony out of dense highway driving, and allows me to be more aware of the big picture rather than occupying myself with carefully tracking speed limits and following distances.