Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

autocar.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 770 posts

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#421

Post by joyj2nd »

mc32 wrote: post #334
CivBase wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for an avionics manufacturer and I can assure you most of our upcoming comercial systems (and even a healthy portion of government ones) feature touch screen inputs.

That’s too bad. Imagine unresponsive touchscreen due to dry skin or wearing gloves, or hands are too sweaty.... or the controller goes out, etc. Flight plans is one thing but controls are all together a different sort of thing. Why ask for trouble?

Touchpads can't even be operated by a cat https://ask.metafilter.com/91541/Why-cant-Godfrey-work-the-t...

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#422

Post by drewmol »

vwcx wrote: post #268
est31 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In airplanes touchscreens are less of an issue than in cars. In cars you have to have a hand on the wheel 99% of the time, and your gaze on the road. You can't afford interaction with a complicated non-haptic touch screen menu. In airplanes it's different. Here, outside of takeoff and landing, it's OK to look at a screen for 10 seconds while interacting with it with a hand.

Not necessarily. There are many moments during the operation of an aircraft where full attention is paramount. Yes, you see a pilot leaving the cockpit to use the lavatory while the co-pilot is monitoring the autopilot, but the margins are just as small as operating a motor vehicle.

Indian Road Congress specifications recommend 3.5m minimum lane width for multi lane roads, 1.06m minimum center margin. Airplanes complex enough for touchscreen interfaces would be awful tight in those margins ;)

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#423

Post by criley2 »

redis_mlc wrote: post #417
est31 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In airplanes touchscreens are less of an issue than in cars. In cars you have to have a hand on the wheel 99% of the time, and your gaze on the road. You can't afford interaction with a complicated non-haptic touch screen menu. In airplanes it's different. Here, outside of takeoff and landing, it's OK to look at a screen for 10 seconds while interacting with it with a hand.

> it's OK to look at a screen for 10 seconds Not really. Pilots are supposed to be visually looking for traffic 90% of the time, and the rest scanning instruments. So to be heads-down for 10 seconds, the non-flying pilot would have to arrange that with the flying pilot.

Under VFR sure, obviously under IFR they are looking at the instruments as much as 100% of the time, including the instruments which inform them if planes are nearby, and instruments which inform them of their location, direction, and all of the variables therein.

It would be madness if pilots had to rely solely on their eyes to locate other planes nearby. There is thankfully instruments which do this as well.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#424

Post by kube-system »

ardy42 wrote: post #363
kube-system wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation is more nuanced than "touchscreens are bad"; the number of controls has grown exponentially since touchscreens have made it easier to put literally hundreds of buzzers and whistles on modern vehicles. It's fairly common now for cars to have configuration settings like: the number of seconds that the courtesy lights stay on after locking the car. This is a feature that would never need to be operated whi…

> The situation is more nuanced than "touchscreens are bad"; the number of controls has grown exponentially since touchscreens have made it easier to put literally hundreds of buzzers and whistles on modern vehicles. Touchscreens aren't necessary for any of that, though. There are alternative, better UI interfaces. For instance: f-key driven soft menus. Those have tactile feedback, have reliable key-press detection,…

I do like key-driven soft menus (like the steering wheel controls commonly used for HUDs or gauge cluster menus), but they get a bit unwieldy with longer lists. Some automakers (GM) address this by nesting all the options in a bunch of sub-menus, but I find this frustrating because I end up just having to search through a bunch of menus to find what I want.

Some automakers (Mazda, BMW) use a knob instead, which makes it a bit quicker to scroll through a longer list, but I have found myself overshooting and then having to back track which is sometimes annoying.

There's really pros and cons to whatever implementation is used. While I completely agree that any function that might be operated while driving needs to be able to be operable with hard controls, I also don't think it's a good idea to clutter those menus with a bunch of junk that you don't want or need while driving.

I think there's a good case to be made for 3 levels of controls:

* Things that must have dedicated hard keys: anything that must be adjusted rapidly for driver attentiveness, control, or comfort -- HVAC, audio levels and basic tuning, all lighting and vehicle controls.

* Things that must have hard keys, but can live in a shared menu: anything that a driver may want to adjust while driving, but is not essential for immediate use -- trip data, infotainment, non-critical gauge monitoring etc.

* Things that don't need hard keys and should not clutter any of the above interfaces: odd-ball configuration settings that a driver would not need to operate while driving -- key fob configuration, entry-exit preference configuration, software updates, integrations with external services, maintenance logs, etc.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#425

Post by WalterBright »

raziel2p wrote: post #416
BrandonMarc wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... until something goes wrong. Then a touch screen is the last thing you want. An airliner moving uncontrollably is no time to try touching just the right spot of the screen, and avoid touching the wrong spot.

I can just as easily make the argument the other way around: An airliner moving uncontrollably is no time to try touching just the right knob (of which there are like a hundred), and avoid touching the wrong one.

You'd be wrong. The critical controls are uniquely shaped so that the pilot can put his hands quickly on the correct one and know it's correct.

Part of pilot training (at least in my dad's day in the AF) was blindfolding the pilot and the instructor names a control, and the student must put his hands on it. Or he flunks.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#426

Post by kenhwang »

woobar wrote: post #177
pentae wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, Mazda were the most vocal about rejecting the touch screen trend, and Honda and Toyota are losing a lot of customers to Mazda who have been producing the best cars in their class in the last several years so it makes sense that they are jumping on the bandwagon.

Since peaking in 2015 Mazda is not growing. They are steadily losing market share over the last 10 years. They make attractive cars, but they bet on pretending that they are a "premium" brand and priced themselves out. https://carsalesbase.com/us-mazda/ https://www.autonews.com/sales/mazdas-complicated-journey-pr...

In terms of sales volume in the US, you are correct: Mazda is not selling more cars. If you look at their financial reporting, they're making more money from car sales. Looks like ~60% more.

Anyone with a lick of business sense would happily trade -10% sales volume for +60% profit from higher margins. They didn't price themselves out, they just decided to not play the loss-leader volume game Ford/Honda/Toyota is playing.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#427

Post by WalterBright »

pc86 wrote: post #226
hnarn wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exact type of input is being grabbed by these screens? "Critical pilot systems"? Touchscreens already exist in airliners, for systems used by crew and passengers, but that's beside the point.

I fly recreationally and all the higher end gear has touch screens. Some of them are redundant with paths using hardware controls or not. But that's definitely the minority. There are a slew of critical operations that I simply cannot complete without interacting with a touch screen. Not saying it's right or wrong but your original post is 100% incorrect.

My iphone touch screen won't work if my fingers aren't clean and dry.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#428

Post by pascalxus »

hnarn wrote: post #138

Look at the cockpit of any modern airliner and you will see screens, but they are never interactive. There are hardware buttons, dials and lights all over the place. A tactile interface is both more obvious, sturdy and more stable, and therefore safer. The problem that touch interfaces solve, ever since the advent of the first smart phone, is that the interface is now dynamic. You can change it without having to repl…

well said. I for one don't like all those touchscreen buttons. Screens should be for maps and other non-interactive stuff.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#429

Post by olnluis »

raziel2p wrote: post #416
BrandonMarc wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... until something goes wrong. Then a touch screen is the last thing you want. An airliner moving uncontrollably is no time to try touching just the right spot of the screen, and avoid touching the wrong spot.

I can just as easily make the argument the other way around: An airliner moving uncontrollably is no time to try touching just the right knob (of which there are like a hundred), and avoid touching the wrong one.

I don't believe this is equivalent though. With hardware controls, most (if not all) of them are immediately accessible at all times. With proper training, body movement and tactile feedback will train your muscle memory which will help you find the right control without much of a hassle.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#430

Post by zig »

criley2 wrote: post #423
redis_mlc wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's OK to look at a screen for 10 seconds Not really. Pilots are supposed to be visually looking for traffic 90% of the time, and the rest scanning instruments. So to be heads-down for 10 seconds, the non-flying pilot would have to arrange that with the flying pilot.

Under VFR sure, obviously under IFR they are looking at the instruments as much as 100% of the time, including the instruments which inform them if planes are nearby, and instruments which inform them of their location, direction, and all of the variables therein. It would be madness if pilots had to rely solely on their eyes to locate other planes nearby. There is thankfully instruments which do this as well.

In VMC you still have a responsibility to see and avoid, regardless of whether you're on an instrument flight plan or not. (Ref: Regulation 14 CFR Part 91.113 (b))

Radar coverage has become ubiquitous in most places, but there's not universal coverage. Heads-up time is very important unless you're flying in actual IMC.

Post reply on HN