VersaTuner Demo

[MD1032]

Hello Steve. I have been playing with your software this afternoon because I tune all the time and of course always on the lookout for anything that could help me streamline the process more. I have been using ATR for about a year now and it is the only tuning software I am familiar with (performance cars are a new world for me).

Overall I think this software could represent a value for some tuners at $400 rather than the $650 Cobb asks for for their software and device. The interface is also somewhat refreshing coming from the old-school look of ATR. I fail to see what makes your cable worth $150 frankly. It looks like I can get something similar off Amazon for substantially less. That aside...

The software has some pretty serious space management issues in terms of the the display. I don't know why the visualization which takes up about 2/3 of the screen and is enabled by default. I hate having to minimize it every time. I also hate the fact that VT forgets which table I'm on when I "undock" the table list.

Bottom line, when I load this software up on my 1440x900 Thinkpad T61, which is one of the laptops I use for tuning (because it was $50 and it runs 64-bit Windows 10), my default view when I click on a table is this:



I can't even see a single value.

So yeah, I get it, minimize the visualization, undock the table view. Now we have something more manageable but there's still a ridiculous ratio of dead space to "information" in this screenshot:



This is what ATR does with the same amount of real estate, and all I did was drag the visualization down:



So much better. In fact, ATR is so efficient with how it displays tables that I can put two instances/tables side-by-side, like so:



This is amazing because it allows me to compare two entire tables side by side in one screen, and copy entire rows/columns from one to another. ATR vets will notice I intentionally used ignition tables, one of the biggest tables in ATR. Speaking of comparing tunes, the tune comparison tool in Versatune is a joke. I do not have time to hover over every single cell and see what the other tune's value is. I would rather just open another instance so I can see everything.

Finally, my biggest gripe is performance. On average VT uses an entire CPU core on its own on my T61:



It hovers around 50% CPU usage constantly and makes my computer very hot. ATR is open but doesn't even show up on the list there. It's even slow on my i7-920/GTX560 system I'm typing this post on. I haven't tried it on my i5-4670k gaming system, but that system should be totally overkill for doing things as basic as editing tables.

The interface needs some work. For one thing it's ridiculously laggy. Every time I click on any table, or almost anything, there is roughly a 0.75 second delay (my estimation). In ATR, everything is immediate. The keyboard functions need to be brought over from ATR as well. It's more useful than you think to be able to highlight an area and just press "M" to multiply or "E" to change the value, or "H" to horizontally interpolate, etc. You need to make your interface more keyboard oriented, even if it involves using different keyboard shortcuts...I don't care, I'll learn them.

The log viewer thing is pretty kickass. It just needs some kind of trim feature. I use DAFT for this usually with ATR. You can check it out here:

Datalog File Trimming Software!

I don't know what the "dashboard" (live data viewer) looks like really because I can't use it while the car is running but it seems slightly less ghetto than Cobb's and at the same time not as concise/easy to read as the good old AP V3 screen. One thing you could use to distinguish yourself BIG TIME from the competition is to add histograms to this screen like Torque has. That would be kickass.

Overall I am very thankful and grateful that someone is putting a lot of effort into making an alternative tuning software for our platform. I really hope to see your work continue to evolve and improve. Perhaps some day I will have the pleasure of tuning with it instead of ATR. For sure I will put some tickets in for the copy of VT you generously donated to ENM 2016. I would be happy to experiment with it in a real setting and see how I like it.

[Amnesiac]

Originally Posted by MD1032 So yeah, I get it, minimize the visualization, undock the table view. Now we have something more manageable but there's still a ridiculous ratio of dead space to "information" in this screenshot:

You probably know this but you can also shrink the ribbon area and the description of the table you're looking at. I don't see that in your screenshot, that would give you a little more visibility.

[Ugnius@VersaTune]

Originally Posted by MD1032 Hello Steve. I have been playing with your software this afternoon because I tune all the time and of course always on the lookout for anything that could help me streamline the process more. I have been using ATR for about a year now and it is the only tuning software I am familiar with (performance cars are a new world for me)...

Thank you for the feedback, you have some very good points there.
I admit that VersaTuner has some performance and usability problems, especially with regard to the tune editor. We have focused more on adding features to the ECU and support for different platforms, but it's time to refresh the app itself.
I would like to let you know that last week we started a project to rewrite most of the tune editor from the ground up with the goal to make it much faster, easier to use and consume less resources. Everybody, please voice your wishes and concerns and we will do our best to include them in our plans.

[Ugnius@VersaTune]

Originally Posted by MD1032 I fail to see what makes your cable worth $150 frankly. It looks like I can get something similar off Amazon for substantially less.

VersaLink USB vehicle interface is based on a DrewTech Mongoose Pro 2 that retails for around $400. DrewTech is a leading OEM diagnostics hardware manufacturer, based in the USA and those cables are of exceptionally high quality and are used by dealerships around the world. We have never heard of any failures from any of our customers, whereas there have been several cases with faulty Tactrix cables, let alone eBay stuff. There are cheaper alternatives on eBay/Amazon/Aliexpress, but most of them are counterfeit Chinese clones of expensive OEM hardware. While they might work perfectly fine for some people (who follow the instructions to use cracked drivers, disable auto update, etc.), quite a lot of them fail unexpectedly and you wouldn't want that to happen mid flash.
We regularly test alternative cables in our lab, but so far we have not found an alternative that would be cheaper, just as reliable and not violating someone's copyright.
Some might think that J2534 PassThru interface is just a USB cable in a fancy box that costs $5 to make, but it has a powerful microcontroller inside, drivers, software libaries and there is a lot of logic going on. Cars and PCs don't talk a common language.
However, when we find (or build) a cheaper and better cable, we will definitely let everyone know.