The US Navy will replace its touchscreen controls with mechanical ones on its destroyers after a deadly 2017 crash between a destroyer and an oil tanker.
Do you expect to see an increased use of knobs and switches in all types of consumer merchandise due to this announcement?
Why would you?
Good god, I can only hope so!
I love that I still drive old-school vehicles with knobs and things so I can do things while driving without having to take my eyes off the road. I like tactile feedback.
Don’t get me wrong - I have no problem with my phone, tablet and kindle touch-screens. The difference is that I’m not driving a one-ton vehicle that could cause severe damage to either the landscape or, Og forbid, another human being if I get distracted, screw up a control motion, accidentally text “my hovercraft is full of eels” instead if answering a phone call, or whatever.
I see the Tesla 3 requires you to go into a sub-menu on the touch screen to open the glove box. Is that peak touch screen madness?
Urk.
My car not only still requires a key to turn it on and off, but also has little knobby things to lock/unlock the doors and to make the windows go up and down you use a hand crank.
Think that makes it pretty clear where I am in regards to electronic this-and-that in the car.
My car radio is all touch screen. I’ve seen other people on the internet have the same complaint that I’ve had about it, the touchscreen is fine, but we really need a physical volume knob. It’s too hard to quickly turn down the volume when you need to. The button on the steering wheel works fine, but it’s slow. The volume up/down and mute on the radio are on the touch screen so you have to actually look over at it, you can’t just blindly reach over and turn it down.
Similarly, changing the speed of the AC/heat blower. You hit a physical button labeled ‘climate’ and then the touch screen radio brings up the option to adjust the fan speed.
As someone who’s basically deaf when there’s any type of background noise, I’m always adjusting the radio and volume speed. If someone in the passenger seat is talking to me, I’m not going to hear anything they say until I get rid of the other noises in the car.
I don’t think a GQ answer is possible.
This seems like an anomaly, a knee-jerk response from a highly conservative organization. A well designed touchscreen can be far more user-friendly than mechanical controls. Most industries are switching to touchscreens. SpaceX uses it in their crew capsule. The F35 fighter jet uses it. Airbus and Boeing are both planning to introduce it to their airliner cockpits.
Yes, because two ships at sea collided, rotary dial cell phones are going to become popular.
Pretty sure my next destroyer will have knobs and switches. I don’t know about you, but I am stretching it just to afford the basic destroyer.
I’m making do with an old destroyer, saving up for a Death Star. Plenty of mechanical controls there, at least on the turbolaser.
Since the OP is asking for opinions, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Agreed; I’d pay extra for the privilege.
Amen.
The U.S. Navy is apparently planning to replace the touchscreen throttle and helm controls currently installed in its newest destroyers with mechanical ones. This is a good move, IMHO, as it seems crazy to me that these controls would ever be touchscreen in the first place, any more than you would want a touchscreen steering wheel in a car. Critical controls should never be touchscreen, IMHO. (They certainly weren’t when I was in the service back in the '90s.)
For another analogy, I have an iPhone with a physical mute button. I can mute it by feel in a dark movie theater or without looking at my phone in a meeting. My new iPad does not have a mute button, though. It is a noticeably slower process to remember where the mute button is, bring up the menu, and activate the control. It certainly can’t be done by feel.
You don’t want a sailor trying to remember on what screen the throttle and helm controls are located in an emergency, or how to switch control from one console to another (which was a contributing factor to the McCain collision).
The examples you named still have tactile switches for critical functions and physical control sticks. A physical control stick is a superior form of accepting analog input. The throttle and wheel are what they are replacing on the bridge - presumably you will still have to use a touchscreen if you want to change the bow thruster settings or something.
Also, a physical control stick isn’t really low tech, internally there are digital encoders that measure the angle of the various axes of control, and modern ones may have servo motors that can give force feedback. Also, the input goes to a computer and the system is as much fly by wire as it would be with a touchscreen.
It’s just a better interface for humans, and unlike a touchscreen, the critical throttle and helm controls are always open, ready to be used. And if the system design is good, the embedded controllers that actually connect those sticks on the bridge to the engine and rudder are real time systems that prioritize satisfying the control inputs.
I fly planes for a living, and goddam do I NOT want touch screens.
The jet I fly now has all the bells and whistles except touch screens, though I know people who fly planes that do have them. It’s only a sample of people I know, but so far I haven’t heard any pilots say they like them. What I have heard is that in turbulence they’ve sometimes had trouble with them and wished they had physical buttons or knobs.
In my job I also drive a lot of rental cars, so I’ve had a lot of exposure to cars with touch screens. I hate them all. The example of the volume knob is a good one, but to me it’s really about safety. It’s pretty much necessary to LOOK at a touch screen at least momentarily, which means in that moment you’re not looking where the car is going. I fail to see how this is a good idea in any moving vehicle.
Surely things like the navigation and the climate controls and other less time critical systems are compressed into MFD or touch screens, right?
I like things laid out ergonomically in my car. I value the ability to adjust the radio or climate controls without looking away from the road. I have no use for touch screens in automotive applications.
In an airplane it’s actually a different story. An Ipad greatly enhances GPS use over stand-alone units because it allows for many more “buttons”. Each menu allows a screen-full of buttons dedicated to that screen. It greatly reduces the learning curve and time spent making changes.
There are no integrated touch screens in my jet. The closest thing is a mouse-pad like pointer, and you know what? It’s a pain in the ass. Other planes I’ve flown use knobs and / or buttons and I think they’re better. The MFD has nested menus that we access through that pointer. But irrespective of the pointing device, the menus themselves aren’t great because they’re “compressed”, as you say. There are occasionally moments when I rue the time it takes to get to the page I want. That’s a slightly different issue, but it’s a problem common to cars too: frequently, it takes multiple steps to display what you want (and it can be very non-intuitive in a rental car with which I’m unfamiliar). I miss control displays that actually show you things without having to take actions first.
And there are definitely times fast action is required on the Flight Management System (FMS), so I sure as hell want actual buttons there, not a touch screen.
Also, not all touch screens are created equally. An iPad is a whole other animal than screens that are integrated into a vehicle, plane / car / boat / whatever. But even if those interfaces were improved, you still have to LOOK to operate them. The great thing about physical controls is they can be manipulated with your eyes elsewhere. Using an iPad to display charts is not that much different than using paper maps - you’d still be heads-down while using them, so I’m fine with those. But keep the touch screens away from my airplane controls.
That article referenced the ship’s engine controls being on some kind of a touch screen. That just sounds crazy to me. Physical controls make for better ergonomics in some cases. Me? I think in most cases.
Boeing is going to introduce touchscreens? Well, that’s certainly an endorsement. Maybe they can get them into their 737 MAX to make their pilots forget about that nose down stuff.
I’m adding AMTRAK to my bookmarks menu.