7 ms·
Later in the video at 4:48 approx he demonstrates the nav computer GUI in the cockpit and I cringed when he used the touchscreen and there was a lag of about 2-
by l33tman 5y ago
Later in the video at 4:48 approx he demonstrates the nav computer GUI in the cockpit and I cringed when he used the touchscreen and there was a lag of about 2-5 (!) seconds after every interaction. My... god.... I kind of almost heard the mechanical drive seeking and reading and searching the heavily fragmented map data...
- tibbydudeza 5y agoProbably because it is 10 year old older hardware but thoroughly tested. Using Chrome/JS/CSS on the latest Ryzen might be neat but when you need to transport 300 passengers daily around there is other sort of concerns then taking up 3 folks to the ISS every 6 months.
- rbanffy 5y agoIt was certified as testes, so the lag has been there for the whole 10 years.
- sslayer 5y agoDependability and reliability override responsiveness
- netr0ute 5y agoIronic, because responsiveness might inherently make it undependable because if you really needed to know where you are right now, that multiple-second delay isn't going to help.
- p_l 5y agoAviate, Navigate, Communicate, in this order. And the map isn't even part of the primary navigation method, plus with multi pilot crew usually you can offload slower, less time critical tasks to copilot.
- jeltz 5y agoThat is no excuse. It was possible to create almost instantly responsive UIs more than 20 years ago.
- qayxc 5y agoSince we don't know anything about the internals, it's safe to say the goal was "good enough and certified" vs. "snappy but no guarantees it works correctly 100% of the time". This is an airplane after all, not a consumer-grade gadget.
- paavohtl 5y agoThey might have different standards and I'm not a pilot, but in my opinion having multiple seconds of UI lag in vitally important interfaces is not good enough nor deserves certification.
- p_l 5y agoit's not considered vitally important interface, that's probably even the reason for the lag - higher priority tasks preempting it.
- justsid 5y agoThis. The PFD and ND, the displays showing actually important data like the plane attitude, altitude and also another map responds immediately to changes. But the map shown in the video just isn’t safety critical and simply doesn’t matter in the worst case.
- xnyan 5y agoThe safety record for commercial airlines is extremely good per mile traveled as compared to pretty much any other form of powered transportation. At some level I share your concerns about UI lag, but it would seem not to negatively affect safety of flights in any detectable way.
- curryst 5y ago
- demarq 5y agospacex already disproved this myth have a look at the last manned mission they did. Glorious touch screen displays with all the bells and whistles.
- alistairSH 5y agoSpaceX's crewed capsule is 5-10 years newer than the A350. I imagine SpaceX has a different set of certification requirements (ie Airbus has stronger financial incentives to use existing, approved designs for components).
- benhurmarcel 5y agoSpaceX doesn't certify to FAA/EASA, and also doesn't have to work for 30 years.
- mrweasel 5y agoDidn’ someone later confirm that there is in fact physical buttons below the touch screen, because you can’t actually use the touch screen with cloves on anyway.
- crakenzak 5y agothe touch screens work with gloves they confirmed, the physical buttons are for backup.
- mastax 5y agoIn an emergency situation, an unresponsive and unintuitive GUI may be very dangerous. Especially if pilots forget how to use it because they're using the iPad day to day but right now it's rebooting to install an update. Like, I get the argument for certification but maybe the requirements should have a minimum level of performance. If that's not possible maybe we should find a different equilibrium.
- j16sdiz 5y agoThat's why pilot are mandated to do simulation tests every few months
- p_l 5y agoThere are requirements for performance - appropriate to the function. The electronic flight bag interface is not used in emergencies, one of its main uses is in planning and submitting flight plans before takeoff, and it's generally not used for actively flying the plane.
- 7952 5y agoExactly. In an emergency the last thing the pilot wants to do is navigate a map interface for anything. Better to just select the alternate flight plan that was setup hours ago during flight planning.
- 7952 5y agoThat assumes that deep navigation of a UI is necessary or desirable in an emergency. I think most of the important stuff is done with the main controls, dedicated switches, and screens/dials that are always on and ready.
- durnygbur 5y agoYoutube interrupted the video with an ad for me exactly at that timestamp, airplanes still need to catch up. So much monetization left on the table. Pilots must be among the most valuable target audience.
- will_asouka 5y agoWhere's the commercial benefit though? The cost of certification is huge so upgrades after initial certification don't happen unless the tech has big cost benefit (or safety, which is also cost at second order). Hence A320 still running on Motorola 68000 of Sega Genesis etc fame. And 737max having a top panel from the 60s.
- durnygbur 5y agoI was joking obviously but that would the the answer to the marketing manager.
- will_asouka 5y agoAh you were saying serve ads on the flightdeck displays! Ok that's innovative- I'd recommend featuring big watches, mirrored sunglasses and divorce lawyers.
- plebianRube 5y agoWhy not just promote ads based on their conversations like everyone else?
- jfrunyon 5y agoThe lag looks more to me like waiting for network response with the imagery...
- notyou2 5y agoThis screen (Onboard Information System) is run from from a laptop that is behind the seat, that's not directly part of the aircraft systems
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- FearlessNebula 5y agoSeriously, for $329 you can get an iPad with Foreflight that’s 100x smoother.
- durnygbur 5y agoProfessional Garmin equipment is already orders of magnitude more expensive though.
- FearlessNebula 5y agoForeflight on an iPad is fully certified
- brunooo 5y agoAs a flight bag / printed material replacement. Try tapping on Belfast Muni airport (KBST in ICAO) in Maine in ForeFlight, and the dataset consolidation will pull Bost airbase (BST in IATA) in Afghanistan. While it’s fairly obvious that you’re not going to Central Asia in your Piper, imagine pulling the 3x longer runway into your FMS and have it compute landing settings or add it as emergency alternate for your A350 into Boston. It’s still completely different levels of reliability.
- ericpauley 5y agoWow, just tried this and can confirm it pulls the wrong airport info. Interestingly searching KBST directly does not have this issue.
- alfalfasprout 5y agoNot for instrument flight it's not. You can view charts on it. You cannot use it as your primary instrument (except in an emergency). That said... in practice it's a FAR better experience than crappy built-in avionics.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoYou would imagine the software and hardware should be several levels above what we would expect to get from even premium brands such as Apple M1 etc. Because it's hard to imagine the pilot trying to restart a piece of equipment in an emergency and getting a blank white screen and a "do you want to send an error report" message coming up.
- Voloskaya 5y ago> You would imagine the software and hardware should be several levels above what we would expect to get from even premium brands such as Apple M1 etc You would actually expect it to be several levels below, but extremely well tested, just like spacecraft hardware/software.
- brunooo 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178C https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178C is a good starting point to understand certification requirements, and Wind River has a lot of documentation around VxWorks, which is actually quite modern supporting Rust etc. The issue is that even a slight overlap with other cockpit functions puts you in a much stricter regime, and thus a simple modern map rendering framework doesn’t work, because its components and dependencies have never been sufficiently dissected - you rather have a 5 second lag, terrible as it sounds from a pragmatic safety perspective, than having anything, especially your own position, misplaced only once in a billion map redraws. The practical solution is that most airlines by now fly with iPads, Jeppesen Flight Deck Pro but even GA stuff like ForeFlight, which is also owned by Boeing, is popular for quick lookups like taxi instructions etc.
- fatnoah 5y ago>Wind River has a lot of documentation around VxWorks, which is actually quite modern supporting Rust etc. Wow. I remember spending 3 weeks in Alameda CA to get trained and certified on VxWorks for a project...in 1999!
- wolverine876 5y agoThe use of iPads always surprises me. What happens if they run out of power? Do they bring a redundant iPad? BTW, are you a pilot or in the airline industry? > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178C https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178C is a good starting point to understand certification requirements OT: People's faith in Wikipedia seems to be increasing on HN, which is odd for a sophisticated audience in the era of misinformation.
- dekhn 5y agoOn a flight once I saw the person next to me was looking at topo maps on an ipad and we started a conversation. They were a pilot for United and said all the training and much of the data is on ipads, if one breaks you just get handed a new preloaded one, and it's not used for anything flight critical.
- brunooo 5y ago
- benhurmarcel 5y agoAs you can see in other videos, it's not usually that terrible. Apparently it's a screen showing the laptop's view (electronic flight bag), so it depends on the laptop and application. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyctm0as-Eg&t=118 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyctm0as-Eg&t=118
- dekhn 5y agoYes, and the correct response is: of all the flights that have crashed and killed people in the last 10 years: was the slowness of the UI for flight operations the root cause? The answer to that is: "almost certainly a very tiny one". Aviation computing, while externally quite boring, is exciting in the sense that tremendous effort is put into making a computing system that ensures a flight makes it from its source to its destination without killing people. It's amazing how just a few accidents in the 50s, 60s, and 70s led to an unbelievable improvement in safety, consider that the IT systems are really constrained. Makes you wonder what you could do with a modern PC if you really tried.
- laurent92 5y agoA few accidents? There are 20 seasons of Air Crash Investigation, and 20 episodes each. Total 400+ accidents (probably a quarter of which with the DC-10). There are only 480 submarines in the world, and the 400 episodes exclude General Aviation accidents (non-planned routes) so there are definitely more planes than submarines which dived into water…