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BMW’s Panoramic Vision
BMW teases next-gen in-car tech with innovative full-width display and projected 3D driving info
Words by: Dan Trent
Published on 8 January 2025 | 0 min read
In-car tech has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, our smartphones and digital lives now fully embedded in our driving. With varying levels of success.
Screens, voice control and phone projection are all very well but the ditching of stalks, switches and physical buttons for touch-driven interaction isn’t universally popular, Tesla’s fundamentalist approach of putting everything up to and including gear selection on the screen a cost-saving bandwagon the rest of the industry seems all too happy to jump on.
Screens, voice control and phone projection are all very well but the ditching of stalks, switches and physical buttons for touch-driven interaction isn’t universally popular, Tesla’s fundamentalist approach of putting everything up to and including gear selection on the screen a cost-saving bandwagon the rest of the industry seems all too happy to jump on.
Those with longer memories may remember similar controversy when BMW ditched fiddly buttons for its innovative rotary wheel and screen powered iDrive system for its turn-of-the-millennium 7 Series. Over two decades on and now in its ninth iteration, iDrive has evolved into one of our favourite ways of interacting with the ever-improving tech, the snazzy graphics, logical menus and option of physical, touch, voice or gesture control meaning everyone is along for the ride. So, a preview for an all-new generation of iDrive with a Panoramic Vision powered by an all-new BMW Operating System X is big news, especially with the promise it will appear in all new models from the brand, starting with the much-hyped Neu Klasse.
While fully scalable and likely to appear in varying levels of fanciness and functionality according to the car, the fundamentals of Panoramic Vision are built around a full-width screen filling the top of the dash below the windscreen and visible to both driver and front-seat passenger. This works in conjunction with the central screen and, where fitted, a new 3D Head-Up Display projecting real-time info directly into your line of sight. It’s powered by a new operating system based on Android Open Source Project software BMW says is both backwards and forwards compatible, meaning it will be front and centre for generations of cars to come.
While fully scalable and likely to appear in varying levels of fanciness and functionality according to the car, the fundamentals of Panoramic Vision are built around a full-width screen filling the top of the dash below the windscreen and visible to both driver and front-seat passenger. This works in conjunction with the central screen and, where fitted, a new 3D Head-Up Display projecting real-time info directly into your line of sight. It’s powered by a new operating system based on Android Open Source Project software BMW says is both backwards and forwards compatible, meaning it will be front and centre for generations of cars to come.
If the idea of more screens and digitalisation sound triggering for technophobes we’re cautiously optimistic about BMW’s approach, given it’s held customer clinics where real-world drivers show the engineers how they actually interact with their cars. Something you feel wasn’t always the case before other systems hit the market. Yes, VW, we’re looking at you and your backtrack on your touch-sensitive steering wheel controls and multi-purposed window switches…
The theory with the Panoramic Vision display is that the driver can select the information they need in front of them while the passenger can also enjoy their own interaction with the system, favoured widgets and icons transferrable from central screen to the bar with a simple swipe. Navigation, phone calls and other information can also be relayed according to priority, BMW reassuring fans of physical switchgear with a promise of “an optimal combination of analogue and digital control through the use of switches, buttons, touch and voice control” for safety-critical systems like wipers, indicators and window demisters. The proof will, of course, be in the driving. But we like the idea of more inclusive tech that gives drivers options for how they want to use it. And the promise we get to keep our volume knobs.
The theory with the Panoramic Vision display is that the driver can select the information they need in front of them while the passenger can also enjoy their own interaction with the system, favoured widgets and icons transferrable from central screen to the bar with a simple swipe. Navigation, phone calls and other information can also be relayed according to priority, BMW reassuring fans of physical switchgear with a promise of “an optimal combination of analogue and digital control through the use of switches, buttons, touch and voice control” for safety-critical systems like wipers, indicators and window demisters. The proof will, of course, be in the driving. But we like the idea of more inclusive tech that gives drivers options for how they want to use it. And the promise we get to keep our volume knobs.
