page_title: Vacuum fluorescent display
section_title: Use
hierarchical_section_title: Vacuum fluorescent display / Use
caption_attribution_description: English: Digital dashboard cluster of a Mercury Grand Marquis. The cluster features three VFD displays (left third, middle third and right third). Varying colors are emitted through color filters.
context_page_description: A vacuum fluorescent display is a display device once commonly used on consumer electronics equipment such as video cassette recorders, car radios, and microwave ovens. LCDs, OLED displays and LED segment displays have now largely replaced VFDs.
  A VFD operates on the principle of cathodoluminescence, roughly similar to a cathode ray tube, but operating at much lower voltages. Each tube in a VFD has a phosphor coated anode that is bombarded by electrons emitted from the cathode filament. In fact, each tube in a VFD is a triode vacuum tube because it also has a mesh control grid.
  Unlike liquid crystal displays, a VFD emits a very bright light with high contrast and can support display elements of various colors. Standard illumination figures for VFDs are around 640 cd/m² with high-brightness VFDs operating at 4,000 cd/m², and experimental units as high as 35,000 cd/m² depending on the drive voltage and its timing. The choice of color and display brightness significantly affect the lifetime of the tubes, which can range from as low as 1,500 hours for a vivid red VFD to 30,000 hours for the more common green ones.
context_section_description: Besides brightness, VFDs have the advantages of being rugged, inexpensive, and easily configured to display a wide variety of customized messages, and unlike LCDs, VFDs are not limited by the response time of rearranging liquid crystals and are thus able to function normally in cold, even sub-zero, temperatures, making them ideal for outdoor devices in cold climates. Early on, the main disadvantage of such displays was their use of significantly more power (0.2 watts) than a simple LCD. This was considered a significant drawback for battery-operated equipment like calculators, so VFDs ended up being used mainly in equipment powered by an AC supply or heavy-duty rechargeable batteries.
  During the 1980s, this display began to be used in automobiles, especially where car makers were experimenting with digital displays for vehicle instruments such as speedometers and odometers. A good example of these were the high-end Subaru cars made in the early 1980s (referred to by Subaru enthusiasts as a digi-dash, or digital dashboard). The brightness of VFDs makes them well suited for use in cars. The Renault Espace and older models of Scenic used VFD panels to show all functions on the dashboard including the radio and multi message panel. They are bright enough to read in full sunlight as well as dimmable for use at night. This panel uses four colors; the usual blue/green as well as deep blue, red and yellow/orange.
  This technology was also used from 1979 to the mid-1980s in portable electronic game units. These games featured bright, clear displays but the size of the largest vacuum tubes that could be manufactured inexpensively kept the size of the displays quite small, often requiring the use of magnifying Fresnel lenses.  While later games had sophisticated multi-color displays, early games achieved color effects using transparent filters to change the color of the (usually light blue) light emitted by the phosphors. High power consumption and high manufacturing cost contributed to the demise of the VFD as a videogame display. LCD games could be manufactured for a fraction of the price, did not require frequent changes of batteries (or AC adapters) and were much more portable. Since the late 1990s, backlit color active-matrix LCD displays have been able to cheaply reproduce arbitrary images in any color, a marked advantage over fixed-color, fixed-character VFDs. This is one of the main reasons for the decline in popularity of VFDs, although they continue to be made. Many low-cost DVD players still feature VFDs.
  From the mid-1980s onwards, VFDs were used for applications requiring smaller displays with high brightness specifications, though now the adoption of high-brightness organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) is pushing VFDs out of these markets.
  In addition to the widely used fixed character VFD, a graphic type made of an array of individually addressable pixels is also available. These more sophisticated displays offer the flexibility of displaying arbitrary images, and may still be a useful choice for some types of consumer equipment.
caption: A digital dashboard cluster in a 1980s Mercury Grand Marquis, an American automobile.
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