4 ms·
What’s the consensus on interfacing w/ glass vs physical, esp with respect to haptics and usability in various conditions (warm/cold hands, gloves on/off, brigh
by bch 6y ago
What’s the consensus on interfacing w/ glass vs physical, esp with respect to haptics and usability in various conditions (warm/cold hands, gloves on/off, bright/dim lighting, combat situations...)?
Edit: /ht `mulmen for “combat” hint!
- mulmen 6y agoThis is a great question but you forgot under (or on!) fire.
- stevehawk 6y agoTouchscreens are taking over General aviation. Everyone has an opinion on it. It’s really nice in smooth conditions and terrible in any kind of thermal, chop, or turbulence as far as I’m concerned.
- yutyut 6y agoI’ve flown birds with steam gauges and birds with glass cockpits. I’ve got about 800 hours in my current glass aircraft. Here’s a photo that I didn’t take: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b7/75/6f/b7756f8346efff30b2f6ed7fffa2d9ec.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b7/75/6f/b7756f8346efff30b2f6... You can see the MFD’s have buttons on the top and bottom used to navigate menus and sub menus. I found that after 100 or so hours I didn’t even have to read a menu’s title but rather through muscle memory knew the “keystrokes” required to get to it, even if it’s 3 or 4 sub-menus deep. All of our ordnance and critical aircraft systems (starting engines, putting out fires, arming weapons, hyds, etc) are controlled by the little square buttons you see on the left and right of the MFD’s and the controls themselves contain shortcut buttons to allow us to perform common tasks without taking hands off the controls. Glass is king but if something is coming off my aircraft or if I’m starting or shutting down an engine I want to touch a physical button. Coming from a software background, I’m fairly impressed with the UX of the cockpit.