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A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

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Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#71

Post by rsynnott »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #55
bloomingeek wrote: post #22

I've operated in boiler room offices at large plants for almost 40 years, the mimic panel is a very valuable tool. With miles of piping carrying water and steam for various reasons, the panels help keep it all straight in your mind. These panels are in hospitals, chemical plants, data centers, Navy ships and subs and many other places similar to where I work. I can't imagine what it feels like to work in a nuke facil…

The recreation of the control room in HBO's Chernobyl drama was impressive. Presumably it was fairly accurate/authentic - but also it's simplicity and explicit use during shots in the drama as a filmic device to explain the quite technically complex plot was amazing. From the dials, meters and warning lights made it all come alive.

There are a few such plants still in operation, and others recently decommissioned. It wouldn’t have been hard to make a replica.

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#73

Post by earthscienceman »

I have posted this here before but I had the opportunity to live on Soviet/Russian icebreakers in the arctic for a period of time. Here's a small snippet of my photos, including of the control panels in the engine room and in the ship's bridge. Such an interesting perspective on utilitarianism:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/CL6Rc4TE7ddZd4Xo7

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#74

Post by midoridensha »

sbaiddn wrote: post #66
neilv wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially if the interface was designed for high performance (unlike most UX today). One of my favorite was when I spent years starting to learn photojournalism on the side: the mechanics of using a camera is only a small part of it (it's mostly about understanding and conveying a story), but even at my student/amateur level, the muscle memory with pro DSLR and lenses was crazy-effective. I even got a shot that happ…

By law a lot of motorcycle controls are standardized both to ensure sane controls (think suicide clutch) as well as standardization (1 down 4 up). Riding a motorcycle involves all four of your limbs having a dedicated control (left arm clutch; right arm throttle and front break; left leg shifter; right leg rear break). It is so satisfying having your body operate all of these controls without a conscious thought.

That's ridiculous and antiquated. They need to redesign it so that you need to use a touchscreen menu system to operate the brakes and gear changes.

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#75

Post by topspin »

RedShift1 wrote: post #27
yamtaddle wrote: post #16

Can you even imagine how relaxing it would be to have the same interface to your systems, every day, with all the parts in one physical location and never moving? Learn it once, then nothing changes for years and years, or if it does it's usually adding on, not replacing or re-arranging existing stuff? Man, that would be nice.

Use boring software. Software that releases every few months instead of weeks or even days. Software that is well documented and has an active supportive community.

I've had an experience like this recently in Java. One of the most storied and heinous areas of Java development: so-called "web services." This is the whole SOAP+WSDL hell that did incalculable damage to the Java language and can be credited with the rise of REST as a sane alternative.

I had a system I needed to integrate into a workflow engine. I looked at the available interfaces and, noticing that the SOAP API was the most feature complete of the bunch, I figured I'd give it a try.

Guess what; no one is iterating on this stuff anymore. The standards specifications quit changing years ago so the targets aren't moving. The libraries are feature complete, solid and efficient and only infrequent bug fixes are appearing now. It works wonderfully.

So now you can grab a WSDL, stick on the resource path, add a code generation step to the build and it all "just works." The endless backflips and somersaults it took to get this stuff working back in the day have been evolved out of the stack and we're left with simple, type-safe RPC over HTTP, which is all most people ever really wanted.

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#76

Post by klabb3 »

pram wrote: post #58

They’re amazing. I can’t imagine the process to ensure all the metrics are correct. Seems like you’d have to check every single little dial for accuracy. Insane considering there’s hundreds. I assume there was one of these rooms for every reactor too, crazy.

There was an experiment that I forgot the origin of, but interesting nonetheless:

A hospital used some standardized table on print papers as a medical journal summary. Doctors were apparently very quick at extracting relevant information. Some software engineers came along, and designed a computer system. Instead of this big table, they decided to put the most relevant information and display it first, like a list. This reduced visual clutter, and most non-doctors could now read it better. However, the doctors took longer to parse it than before, and didn’t like the new system. And they were the primary user after all. It turned out that the doctors had memorized were everything was supposed to be. With the new system, there was no way of finding a specific piece of information quickly, even though the total amount was reduced.

The interesting thing here is that all solutions have hidden features, that are useful but we don’t even know that it’s there even if (and perhaps especially if) we use it every day. It seems as if our brains are extremely capable of spatial memory. Of course, there are more such examples, for instance fine motor skills (how would you like a keyboard which rearranged the keys depending on their frequency of use?)

The reason why some of us find these control rooms almost soothing is precisely because modern technology have depraved us of these neglected features: things are in the same place, physical dials, everything is predictable.

This is closely related to my hate against anything “smart”. In adding features (sometimes for good reason) product managers and engineers don’t consider that they’re removing hidden features, often related to predictability, that are much more valuable than the features they added.

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#77

Post by cagenut »

sbaiddn wrote: post #66
neilv wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially if the interface was designed for high performance (unlike most UX today). One of my favorite was when I spent years starting to learn photojournalism on the side: the mechanics of using a camera is only a small part of it (it's mostly about understanding and conveying a story), but even at my student/amateur level, the muscle memory with pro DSLR and lenses was crazy-effective. I even got a shot that happ…

By law a lot of motorcycle controls are standardized both to ensure sane controls (think suicide clutch) as well as standardization (1 down 4 up). Riding a motorcycle involves all four of your limbs having a dedicated control (left arm clutch; right arm throttle and front break; left leg shifter; right leg rear break). It is so satisfying having your body operate all of these controls without a conscious thought.

Do you happen to know if electric motorcycles are meaningfully diverging on these? Like how many EVs adopted single-pedal driving, are there e-motorcycle analogues?

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#79

Post by jliptzin »

cagenut wrote: post #77
sbaiddn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By law a lot of motorcycle controls are standardized both to ensure sane controls (think suicide clutch) as well as standardization (1 down 4 up). Riding a motorcycle involves all four of your limbs having a dedicated control (left arm clutch; right arm throttle and front break; left leg shifter; right leg rear break). It is so satisfying having your body operate all of these controls without a conscious thought.

Do you happen to know if electric motorcycles are meaningfully diverging on these? Like how many EVs adopted single-pedal driving, are there e-motorcycle analogues?

There’s still 2 pedals, the only difference is lifting off the accelerator engages the generator, which can be disabled.
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