autowarefoundation / autoware

Autoware - the world's leading open-source software project for autonomous driving
https://www.autoware.org/
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Modernize the RViz2 overlay interface #3984

Closed xmfcx closed 9 months ago

xmfcx commented 11 months ago

Checklist

Description

The current RViz2 interface in Autoware is outdated, visually unappealing, and hard to read, particularly the cyan text on a white background. This not only makes it difficult for users to extract crucial information but also creates a negative first impression for new users. Improvements are needed, starting with the 2D overlay.

The existing 2D overlay shows:

Proposed additions:

A redesign of the 2D RViz2 overlay is proposed to address these issues.

Current Autoware RViz2: Screenshot from 2023-11-13 16-53-40

Proposed Design: Screenshot from 2023-11-13 15-58-41

Figma link:

Purpose

The purpose of this redesign is to modernize the RViz2 interface, making it more user-friendly, informative, and aesthetically pleasing. The updated interface will provide clearer and more comprehensive data at a glance, improving the overall user experience and utility of Autoware. This redesign aims to bring Autoware's interface in line with industry standards and user expectations, based on examples from other autonomous vehicle companies.

Possible approaches

Definition of done

The project will be considered complete when:

xmfcx commented 11 months ago

I've also done some short research on other autonomous vehicle company designs from their videos:

Tesla

I saw 2 different designs from Teslas, an old one and a new one, I might be wrong too, basically scraping from the videos I saw on YouTube.

Old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkSw2SZQENU&t=47s

Screenshot from 2023-11-13 16-43-41

New

https://youtu.be/RiFzcAlr8XE?t=262

Screenshot from 2023-11-13 16-44-09

AutoX

https://youtu.be/O69YEWpSacU?t=117

Screenshot from 2023-11-13 14-50-11

NVidia

https://youtu.be/qVyN_chiLeo?t=15

Screenshot from 2023-11-13 14-54-52

Pony.ai

https://youtu.be/VmpSOWFFcRk?t=158

Screenshot from 2023-11-13 15-00-15

Toyota Teammate

https://youtu.be/WUGjB9Anrkk?t=54

Screenshot from 2023-11-13 15-01-55

Mobileye

https://youtu.be/A1qNdHPyHu4?t=1809

Screenshot from 2023-11-13 16-45-11

Apollo

https://youtu.be/opqtckENIs8?t=13

Screenshot from 2023-11-13 17-06-18

xmfcx commented 11 months ago

To achieve this, we can use the following package as a base in the Universe repository:

And create a new package called:

yukkysaito commented 11 months ago

Very good! However, Rviz has its limitations, so if we are aiming more beautiful visualization, we may want to consider Game Engine as well.

https://github.com/yukkysaito/godot_rviz2

mitsudome-r commented 11 months ago

FYI: It seems like some developers were considering using color palettes for designing visualization markers. We might want to design the color palettes for overlays and other markers to have unified look. https://github.com/autowarefoundation/autoware_launch/pull/653 https://github.com/autowarefoundation/autoware.universe/issues/5584

xmfcx commented 11 months ago

@yukkysaito I know about your project in Godot, it looks really nice. And I agree that we should create a visualization tool in Unity or Godot.

But reality is that we don't have many developers who would work on getting these done, it'd be a big project.

Also every developer opens up rviz2 many times while developing Autoware. And even small improvements like these can make everyone's experiences much better.

I'm not aware of all the limitations of rviz2 just yet. I know that it uses Ogre for rendering and QtWidgets 5 for window management and overall gui. I think there is still some potential there.

@mitsudome-r thanks for letting me know about them. We plan to make it easy for people to define their own theme colors.

xmfcx commented 9 months ago

Closing this issue with both PRs are merged, thanks @KhalilSelyan !