Fix for difficulty seeing red arrows on Energy Monitor Screen in daylight (2010 Prius II)?

I concord with adrianblack. I got my prius iv las night and today I drove around LA (K-town to Rowland Heights then to Fullerton) wearing oakley polarized sun glasses. I had very minor problem reading the dashboard. The red is really a grey orange, but I can see it fine when it starts to flow or in the eco meter when 'goosing'. And when I switch the dimmer from night mode to day mode it was a huge difference in the amount of light coming through. perhaps the day mode malfunction?

But of course I'd like to see the red being a real red...

 

Inside the driver door jamb is a plate with the VIN, month and year of manufacture, and other data.

 

Turning the headlights on changes the display to "night" (dim) mode. If you watch carefully on mine (mfg'd 7/09) the white dims a LOT, but the red arrows stay the same. Also, the "white" arrows (inbound, charging) can also be "light green" (driving, outbound) ... but both appear white when bright.

It seems to me that the program is using the incorrect "bright" colors when the headlights are off.

I will have to do some more checking, on newer production, and with the "intensity" control.

If the later production units are "fixed", then we can ...

 

I'm assuming when you say "white" you just mean really bright light green?

I just looked at my car (Man. 09/09) and the red colors do dim when going from bright to dim. They actually becomes less red when on bright mode -- as if more of the green pixels are being mixed in with the red pixels to brighten them up. Maybe this was their fix to make them more readable in the daylight?

But besides the red things like the arrows, PRW and the dot, everything else on my display is various shades of light green.

I keep the brightness know turned down to almost minimum (without it going off) for nighttime driving....

 

I noticed today driving with my polarized glasses on that the NAV screen was hard to see without tilting my head to the side. Everything else (including the red arrorws) were visible.

 

If you look carefully, you might see the same effect I saw.

There are actually four different displays on the car: the left dashboard (including the speedometer, fuel meter, and fuel economy meter), the multi-information display (the right side of the dashboard), the navigation screen, and the AC display. The left dashboard, MID, and AC displays are all polarized in different directions. You have to tilt your head (or rotate your polarized sunglasses) at different angles to see each of the displays at their brightest. The MID doesn't seem to be polarized at all.

I would have expected Toyota to use non-polarized displays or, at least, have them all polarized at the same angle.

 

I did notice a very slight change on the gauges but it was very hard to notice -- and certainly when looking at the road I could read all of the gauges without issue. It is strange that there are slight differences ... though some of that could be due to the reflected light of the speedo cluster?

If, when looking ahead, I directed my eyes to that screen, it was almost black. Luckily I keep the display turned off most of the time anyway. I wish there was a way to keep the audio screen up all the time.......

 

The basic tenet behind the functionality of a liquid crystal display is the manipulation of polarized light. It is not possible to create an LCD without having the emitted light be polarized.

As for the angle of polarization, I suspect that is dictated by the application and the manufacturer, so consistency across the board would be difficult.

My solution's going to be acquiring non-polarized sunglasses at my next visit to the opthamologist.

 

You can set the nav screen not to automatically go back to the map in the settings, I think in the general settings. I changed mine because I wanted the audio screen to stay up all the time. You have to hit the map button if you want to go back to the map then.

 

Hmm, I thought I looked through all the settings and didn't see that. But since you did it, it must be there. I will check it out

 

That's true, but the polarizer on LCD screens in cars should be oriented the same way sunglasses are. (I think vertical or are sunglasses 45deg?) I can read the climate control fine (albiet it has some rainbow effects on it)

It seems the NAV polarizer is off from my sunglasses by 45deg because you merely have to turn your hear on an angle to see it...

I remember reading a review of the previous gen Corolla and the reviews complained the radio LCD had horizontal polarization rendering it black when wearing sunglasses.

 

Try the plus 2 setting. That will work.

 

In the Prius-III the darkening seems to be only done when the headlights are manually switched ON.

Is the Prius-V different, with some auto-dimming?

 

Adrian, you can keep the audio screen up all the time! Just switch the settings from "automatically change" - call me, I can walk you thru this.

 

Is it possible that the folks having difficulty seeing the red have defective color vision? This is more prevalent in males, up to 2% or so of the population.

Would be interesting to know if the complainers fail the color vision test.
Test for Colorblindness On-line

 

Well that theory is shot to hell. I am not colour blind and I have extreme difficulty seeing the red arrows. Anyway, most colour blind people should be able to see the arrows, they would appear brown.
Here is a better theory.
If you are blind you won't see the red arrows.
Toyota does not make many mistakes but with red arrows they have.

 

I find the red to be very low in saturation, and I have no colorblindness. Not only did I successfully take that test but have taken other tests recently.

 

I'm red/green colorblind, but can see the red section fine, it's just not red.

 

So, I've read the thread, and don't really get the outcome - can someone give first hand accounts of +2 and -2???

TIA

 

In my 2010 owners manual, page 583 refers to tires, nothing about nav or intrument panel info. I wonder if there is onother owners maunal for these cars? Also, you mention 'auto light', as does the manual. I was told the AL feature was not available for any models in the U.S. Do you think that is just for the ones shipped to Canada? tks