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Private pilot and military officer here (but not military pilot). On the military side, touchscreens suck horribly but are already being crammed into planes wh

Private pilot and military officer here (but not military pilot). On the military side, touchscreens suck horribly but are already being crammed into planes where soft buttons on the side of a display and controls on throttle and stick are already solutions that work fine. F-15s also have (depending on country) head tracking in the form of HMCS, so doing a gaze based interface is feasible and a better solution than touchscreens. Honestly, page-based systems that can be accessed with a castle/boat switch is fine for modern fighters and trained pilots. Hearing a trained Eagle driver rattle off how to get to a specific menu/page from any other page is pretty impressive- "You need to change missile mode but you're on the ECS page? Back, down, down, right, right. [or something like that]" And they aren't even sitting in the plane or looking at the screens, it's just muscle memory. Non-military specific, and the biggest con of touchscreens in a cockpit: - Turbulence makes it hard to hit the right places on the touchscreen. Traditionally you'd rest your hand or stabilize a few fingers on the outside of your radio/navigator before twirling the dials or pushing buttons, and there was enough resistance to keep from accidental presses. With stuff like the GTN 650 pushing the screen out to the edges, resting your hand on the bezel means you accidentally make touches to the edge of the screen. Competitors like Avidyne actually market old school buttons as a feature, and it's a compelling one. Military specific concerns: - Wearing gloves while flying means that button size needs to be huge and touchscreens aren't very precise. - High-G maneuvers make it really hard to touch the right part of the screen.

fapjacks 9y ago
All of the touchscreen UIs I used when I was in the infantry actually were mostly pretty good. The contractors seem to have been told explicitly that people will be wearing gloves or using knuckles in generally poor operating conditions. The sensitivity always seemed just right and it was almost impossible to accidentally send an unintentional input unless you hit the wrong button thinking you were hitting another. For example using the Blue Force Tracker inside a gun truck at night on shitty roads wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
- olympus 9y ago
  Grunts have to live with stuff because they have no other choice. Pilots are zipper suited gods whose complaints actually matter. All joking aside, they have human factors experts work on the UI, and it must go through operational testing- passing isn't a requirement though- systems have been fielded with failing UI evaluations because they were super effective. But pilots still hate touchscreens even though a lot of thought was put into making them suck less.
digi_owl 9y ago
> Honestly, page-based systems that can be accessed with a castle/boat switch is fine for modern fighters and trained pilots. Hearing a trained Eagle driver rattle off how to get to a specific menu/page from any other page is pretty impressive- "You need to change missile mode but you're on the ECS page? Back, down, down, right, right. [or something like that]" And they aren't even sitting in the plane or looking at the screens, it's just muscle memory. Reminds me of seeing cashiers operating ansi/tui POS without even looking because they had worked up the keyboard muscle memory. Then came the touch UIs and it all seemed to go to hell. Sitting here thinking about it, i wonder if what made it all work was that you used arrow keys to navigate the UI and then hit a specific button to activate the focused element. With mouse/touch oriented UIs there is no concept of activating a element. They are all "hot".
twic 9y ago
What's a castle/boat switch?
- olympus 9y ago
  They're separate things. They are multi-function buttons on a throttle or stick. Here's a castle picture in the link below- on the right side of the F-22's throttle you can see a large button that has angled sides and four tabs sticking out the top. The castle moves up/down/left/right and lets the pilot select targets and navigate menus. It's kind of like the eraser nub on ThinkPad computers, but bigger so you can use it with a gloved thumb : http://www.essexindustries.com/products/f-22-raptor-throttle-grip/ http://www.essexindustries.com/products/f-22-raptor-throttle... Here's a boat (switch #1 in the link below)- Boats are only forward/back, and are often used as a do/undo option. Imagine pushing forward on the boat to designate a target for a missile, then deciding you don't want to kill that target. You'd pull back on the boat to un-designate the target. They are curved like the bottom of a boat, which gives them their name and lets your finger push forward and back: http://www.f-15e.info/joomla/technology/cockpit/81-pilot-throttle#0-1-switch-functions http://www.f-15e.info/joomla/technology/cockpit/81-pilot-thr...
  - twic 9y ago
    Thanks! Now i know what i'm looking for, it's much easier to google. Here's a castle switch, with much smaller battlements, that you can buy: https://www.alliedelec.com/-t4-0122/70329688/ https://www.alliedelec.com/-t4-0122/70329688/ And here's one you can print (the plastic button of one, at least): https://i.materialise.com/shop/item/f16-flightstick-dms-castle-switch https://i.materialise.com/shop/item/f16-flightstick-dms-cast... Plus a boat switch button you can print: https://www.shapeways.com/product/KUZB6VZAM/f-15-boat-switch-knob?optionId=59064389&li=marketplace https://www.shapeways.com/product/KUZB6VZAM/f-15-boat-switch... I notice that on the F-15 throttle, there is a switch below the boat switch that is sort of its inverse - raised in the middle and sloping down at the ends. I would guess that it's different so that the pilot can easily tell which is which.

fapjacks 9y ago

All of the touchscreen UIs I used when I was in the infantry actually were mostly pretty good. The contractors seem to have been told explicitly that people will be wearing gloves or using knuckles in generally poor operating conditions. The sensitivity always seemed just right and it was almost impossible to accidentally send an unintentional input unless you hit the wrong button thinking you were hitting another. For example using the Blue Force Tracker inside a gun truck at night on shitty roads wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

olympus 9y ago
Grunts have to live with stuff because they have no other choice. Pilots are zipper suited gods whose complaints actually matter. All joking aside, they have human factors experts work on the UI, and it must go through operational testing- passing isn't a requirement though- systems have been fielded with failing UI evaluations because they were super effective. But pilots still hate touchscreens even though a lot of thought was put into making them suck less.

digi_owl 9y ago

> Honestly, page-based systems that can be accessed with a castle/boat switch is fine for modern fighters and trained pilots. Hearing a trained Eagle driver rattle off how to get to a specific menu/page from any other page is pretty impressive- "You need to change missile mode but you're on the ECS page? Back, down, down, right, right. [or something like that]" And they aren't even sitting in the plane or looking at the screens, it's just muscle memory. Reminds me of seeing cashiers operating ansi/tui POS without even looking because they had worked up the keyboard muscle memory. Then came the touch UIs and it all seemed to go to hell. Sitting here thinking about it, i wonder if what made it all work was that you used arrow keys to navigate the UI and then hit a specific button to activate the focused element. With mouse/touch oriented UIs there is no concept of activating a element. They are all "hot".

twic 9y ago

What's a castle/boat switch?

olympus 9y ago
They're separate things. They are multi-function buttons on a throttle or stick. Here's a castle picture in the link below- on the right side of the F-22's throttle you can see a large button that has angled sides and four tabs sticking out the top. The castle moves up/down/left/right and lets the pilot select targets and navigate menus. It's kind of like the eraser nub on ThinkPad computers, but bigger so you can use it with a gloved thumb : http://www.essexindustries.com/products/f-22-raptor-throttle-grip/ http://www.essexindustries.com/products/f-22-raptor-throttle... Here's a boat (switch #1 in the link below)- Boats are only forward/back, and are often used as a do/undo option. Imagine pushing forward on the boat to designate a target for a missile, then deciding you don't want to kill that target. You'd pull back on the boat to un-designate the target. They are curved like the bottom of a boat, which gives them their name and lets your finger push forward and back: http://www.f-15e.info/joomla/technology/cockpit/81-pilot-throttle#0-1-switch-functions http://www.f-15e.info/joomla/technology/cockpit/81-pilot-thr...
- twic 9y ago
  Thanks! Now i know what i'm looking for, it's much easier to google. Here's a castle switch, with much smaller battlements, that you can buy: https://www.alliedelec.com/-t4-0122/70329688/ https://www.alliedelec.com/-t4-0122/70329688/ And here's one you can print (the plastic button of one, at least): https://i.materialise.com/shop/item/f16-flightstick-dms-castle-switch https://i.materialise.com/shop/item/f16-flightstick-dms-cast... Plus a boat switch button you can print: https://www.shapeways.com/product/KUZB6VZAM/f-15-boat-switch-knob?optionId=59064389&li=marketplace https://www.shapeways.com/product/KUZB6VZAM/f-15-boat-switch... I notice that on the F-15 throttle, there is a switch below the boat switch that is sort of its inverse - raised in the middle and sloping down at the ends. I would guess that it's different so that the pilot can easily tell which is which.