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

In-Flight Entertainment Challenge

blog.mand3l.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 84 posts

Re: In-Flight Entertainment Challenge

#41

Post by klondike_ »

meh8881 wrote: post #11
hypertexthero wrote: post #5

Here’s another challenge: Create fun games to play in these flights. The games available are usually poor and slow. Is it a technical limitation such as too many screens and not enough processing power to go around? Or maybe no good HID (Human Interface Device) controllers? Touch-screens should be okay, especially for turn-based games, but maybe continuously pushing your finger against the screen would make the perso…

I was on a Japan Air flight about 10 years ago that had Street Fighter 2. It was on a crappy remote controller with vaguely SNES colored buttons. It was alright but your finger would inevitably slip and hit a game exiting button by mistake. Still, it’s got to the be the most niche SF2 port ever made. Probably easy openings for the top spot.

It probably was a SNES: https://snescentral.com/article.php?id=1019

Re: In-Flight Entertainment Challenge

#42

Post by hayksaakian »

hypertexthero wrote: post #5

Here’s another challenge: Create fun games to play in these flights. The games available are usually poor and slow. Is it a technical limitation such as too many screens and not enough processing power to go around? Or maybe no good HID (Human Interface Device) controllers? Touch-screens should be okay, especially for turn-based games, but maybe continuously pushing your finger against the screen would make the perso…

played full on modern Tetris (probably an ipad port) on a flight recently, it was pretty decent

Re: In-Flight Entertainment Challenge

#43

Post by bluefirebrand »

hypertexthero wrote: post #5

Here’s another challenge: Create fun games to play in these flights. The games available are usually poor and slow. Is it a technical limitation such as too many screens and not enough processing power to go around? Or maybe no good HID (Human Interface Device) controllers? Touch-screens should be okay, especially for turn-based games, but maybe continuously pushing your finger against the screen would make the perso…

I think portable gaming has been available for so long that as far as airplanes are concerned, people who want to play games on the flight will bring their own.

Longest Flight I was ever on was Toronto to Munich, but my travelling was from Victoria.

I brought my 3DS with Zelda Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons installed. Beat one on the trip their, one on the trip back. It was great for keeping myself entertained on the flight.

Nowadays I travel with my Switch

Re: In-Flight Entertainment Challenge

#45

Post by joshvm »

hypertexthero wrote: post #5

Here’s another challenge: Create fun games to play in these flights. The games available are usually poor and slow. Is it a technical limitation such as too many screens and not enough processing power to go around? Or maybe no good HID (Human Interface Device) controllers? Touch-screens should be okay, especially for turn-based games, but maybe continuously pushing your finger against the screen would make the perso…

Back in the day Virgin Atlantic (and others?) hosted a version of the SNES. I played Link to the Past on a flight from London to Cape Town and, as the first long haul flight I'd been on, I thought it was normal. By far the best in-flight gaming experience I've had [0].

Pretty much all carriers have D-pad controllers, though the inputs tend to be very spongy. I don't think people use them much anyway because the touch screen is more intuitive and orienting the controller with respect to the screen is a surprisingly bad user experience (some are vertical, some are horizontal, wrapping never works well).

The games are improving a bit because the hardware is actually quite good now (some of the newer aircraft even have per-seat bluetooth). American has Plants vs Zombies, for example. I've played Luxor somwhere, and there are occasionally good puzzlers like Sokoban which I rarely play anywhere else. Annoying that the game has to cache and reload every time there's an announcement. The mid 00s systems are pretty terrible, but newer seat back displays are pretty great in terms of resolution/quality for what they are.

[0]https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_Gateway_System

Re: In-Flight Entertainment Challenge

#46

Post by gumby »

> Slick draggable scrolling is a key part of many screens in Delta’s in-flight entertainment system (complete with momentum-based flicks, over-scroll, page-snapping, etc).

Then I'm going to have to fly Delta next month -- all the systems I've used have had such terrible latency that none of that was possible. I assumed it was crappy hardware.

Re: In-Flight Entertainment Challenge

#47

Post by gumby »

chatmasta wrote: post #21
sayrer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trend is just to have you use an iPad or iPhone with local video and games available from the plane's Wifi. This pretty normal on US shorthaul US flights now, since those things are way better than anything built into the headrest.

The trend is to cut costs on domestic carriers; what you describe is just the excuse. When a flight has both IFE and this "iPad experience," I almost never see anyone using their own device. Even without the IFE, when people are entertaining themselves on their own devices, I'm skeptical that many of them are actually using whatever WiFi-driven entertainment monstrosity is available, as opposed to e.g. predownloaded…

> When a flight has both IFE and this "iPad experience," I almost never see anyone using their own device.

I don't like the IFE screens because of terrible hardware (unresponsive screens) and software. I always use my own device.

But you're right -- I generally don't even want to interface with the IFE and either leave it in map mode or off, if that's possible. Occasionally there's a film I'd like to watch, but never enough to watch on the seatback. On my ipad, OK.

Re: In-Flight Entertainment Challenge

#48

Post by Firmwarrior »

gumby wrote: post #46

> Slick draggable scrolling is a key part of many screens in Delta’s in-flight entertainment system (complete with momentum-based flicks, over-scroll, page-snapping, etc). Then I'm going to have to fly Delta next month -- all the systems I've used have had such terrible latency that none of that was possible. I assumed it was crappy hardware.

Don't get your hopes up too much..

Re: In-Flight Entertainment Challenge

#49

Post by spike021 »

gumby wrote: post #46

> Slick draggable scrolling is a key part of many screens in Delta’s in-flight entertainment system (complete with momentum-based flicks, over-scroll, page-snapping, etc). Then I'm going to have to fly Delta next month -- all the systems I've used have had such terrible latency that none of that was possible. I assumed it was crappy hardware.

The last time I flew Singapore Airlines (maybe 3 years ago?) for an LAX->NRT flight and back, their system felt smoother than anything else I'd used on a plane before. IIRC it seemed to be built with Android or similar. Thought that was a pretty decent UI considering how bad in-flight systems usually are.

Re: In-Flight Entertainment Challenge

#50

Post by madsbuch »

A thing I have ben pondering on is whether in-flight entertainment is dead.

I have not used it for several years. I get a much more consistent and higher quality experience using my phone and my Nintendo Switch along with my noise reducing headset.

i am sure it still has value for some, but the value must be diminishing as more and more people can supply this entertainment themselves.

And I believe it is not cheap to fit and maintain an entertainment system on an airplane.

Post reply on HN