Windshield displays (WSDs) are information displays covering the entire windshield. Current WSD test setups place information at different distances, but always within the driver's foveal field of view. We built two WSD test setups, which present information not only at various distances within the driver's visual focus, but also in the peripheral field of view. Then we evaluated the display of information in the periphery on both WSD setups in a user study. While making sure the participants would look at the peripheral information, we measured the display's impact on driving performance. Subjects were also asked about their driving experience with the windshield displays and their preference among the two setups.

In our everyday life, the perception of thermal cues plays a crucial role for the identification and discrimination of materials. When touching an object, the change of temperature in the skin of our fingertips is characteristic for the touched material and can help to discriminate objects with the same texture or hardness. However, this useful perceptual channel is disregarded for interactive elements on standard touchscreens.In this paper, we present a study in which we compared the rate of object discrimination for stand-alone thermal stimuli as well as supplemental thermal stimuli characterizing virtual materials on a touchscreen. Our results show that five materials could be discriminated at a stable rate using either stand-alone or supplemental thermal stimuli. They suggest that thermal cues can enable material discrimination on touch surfaces, which gives way for expanded use of thermal stimuli on interactive surfaces.