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European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

arstechnica.com

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Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#481

Post by ainiriand »

sensanaty wrote: post #306
modeless wrote: post #207

> Now, Euro NCAP is not insisting on everything being its own button or switch. But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features This is much more reasonable than I assumed. Unlike seemingly most people here I have no problem whatsoever with fan controls or audio controls or whatever on the touchscreen, as long as it is responsive (…

Teslas don't have physical blinker switches?? That is pure lunacy, are you telling me they're touchscreen activated now?

It is even worse, because the buttons are placed on top of the steering wheel so when you turn they also turn in place and it is confusing.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#482

Post by ajuc »

magnetowasright wrote: post #479
trgn wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's honking helping the commute?

Using the horn to prevent myself from being squashed by yank tanks with a hood and tailgate height significantly taller than my car (and most adults) helps the commute. They'd have to shut down part of the road to clean the car bits and the red goo off the road otherwise. If my country legislated those absurd vehicles out of existence I wouldn't need to lay on the horn to make my existence known.

> yank tanks with a hood and tailgate height significantly taller than my car

Not a thing over here.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#483

Post by MyFirstSass »

modeless wrote: post #207

> Now, Euro NCAP is not insisting on everything being its own button or switch. But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features This is much more reasonable than I assumed. Unlike seemingly most people here I have no problem whatsoever with fan controls or audio controls or whatever on the touchscreen, as long as it is responsive (…

No just make buttons. Screens can hickup, scroll weird, etc. also you don't get any tactile feedback.

I don't wan't a touchscreen keyboard on my laptop, and the travel is already small enough - i say bring back tactility! The dead cold glass orb has destroyed so much.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#484

Post by techdmn »

modeless wrote: post #181
techdmn wrote: post #17

Touchscreen controls are the feature on my Tesla I dislike most. Try poking a small icon an arms length away while bouncing over typical Midwest roads and you'll see that it's impossible to do while keeping your eyes on the road. Physical controls would be fantastic, but at the very least they could: * Radically improve the ability to control the car with the scroll wheels on the steering wheel. I don't mean assignin…

> I mean having a cursor I could glance at, then put my eyes back on the road while I click right twice, up once, click again and then scroll to change whatever. They added a menu kind of like this in a recent update. Long press the left scroll wheel and then you can control a bunch of things using a menu that's controlled entirely by the wheel, no touchscreen.

On my car I can assign one specific function to the left scroll wheel, like the fan speed. What I want is something like the experience of using Windows without a mouse. I should be able to navigate the entire UI without touching the screen.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#485

Post by close04 »

mythhabit wrote: post #421
close04 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people call "real buttons" usually require a certain force and travel to activate. Capacitive buttons require little to no force or feedback, sometimes not even solid contact. I think the easiest way to understand the difference is to ask 2 questions: "can I put my finger on that button and not immediately trigger it" and "can I can physically tell that I am triggering it (ideally some physical travel)?" If the…

Apple has actually combined the two with their touchpads. When you press on them you get the "click" feedback. But its not actually a physical travel that activates, it's what they call "the haptic engine" that vibrates in a way that makes it feel like you've clicked a physical button. It works really well. However, I think that such buttons are far more expensive than a physically activated button, even if the latte…

> But its not actually a physical travel that activates

This was the little (to no) feedback of a press I was mentioning. Simulating the absolute bare minimum of travel. With the pressure sensors and the piezoelectric actuators it becomes a super-expensive, overengineered button simulator that works almost as well as the real thing.

Even Apple dropped the fancier 3D touch completely, and the less fancy Force touch is just for trackpads. Everything else is the cheaper Haptic touch doing away with pressure sensors entirely. It was fine for my iPhone 8 home button and old watch.

But a car is different. A hazard light button has ~5mm of travel. Blinker or wiper stalks have centimeters of travel. Same for rotary knobs. They're also well spaced from each other with hard to confuse actuation methods. In noisy and vibration prone environments, with time sensitive requirements, you want to have very clear and distinct ways to act and receive feedback that actions were performed, especially if critical for safety.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#486

Post by jojobas »

oblio wrote: post #442
tiagod wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-35 took like 25 years and a staggering amount of billions to develop...

Fly by wire has been a thing since the 80s, F-18 IIRC. At some point we'll have drive by wire, it just makes sense.

This doesn't necessarily follow. Planes became pressurized and got oxygen masks, it's very unlikely that cars ever do. Having steel cables and/or hydraulic lines for the 4-6 dimensions of aircraft controls adds up to some serious extra weight worth fighting for on a plane, while one steel rod might never be more problematic than the heap of problems its absence creates.

As long as the steering wheel is there it might as well be connected to the rack, forever.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#487

Post by jojobas »

rightbyte wrote: post #468
oblio wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the lack of redundancy is the issue. Redundant electrical connections can be very robust otherwise they wouldn't put them in F-35s.

Fighter jets are falling out of the sky quite often. Compare to airbus passanger jets instead.

Partial control failures on passenger jets are not that uncommon.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#488

Post by ricardobeat »

close04 wrote: post #383
mgoetzke wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

those 'haptic' buttons are real buttons. with a click feel and everything. they are great (tested in highland model 3)

What people call "real buttons" usually require a certain force and travel to activate. Capacitive buttons require little to no force or feedback, sometimes not even solid contact. I think the easiest way to understand the difference is to ask 2 questions: "can I put my finger on that button and not immediately trigger it" and "can I can physically tell that I am triggering it (ideally some physical travel)?" If the…

The parent commenter was making the point that the particular buttons on the latest Model 3 (Highland) actually feel almost like physical buttons. They require pressure and won’t activate just by being brushed against.

Still, as blinker controls they don’t have tactile markings and a stalk would be much better.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#489

Post by netsharc »

PcChip wrote: post #474
franga2000 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you have a more sensible car than many. I was recently in one with really dumb automatic AC that needed adjustment very often, the AC settings were in a menu behing two clicks, there was no convenient landmark to orient my hand without looking, the temperature slider was very small and dense needing high precision and the temperature text was rather small. And the steering wheel buttons are, of course,…

What is carsharing, and how does it work insurance-wise?

Like rental, but per minute. Look up car2go, although maybe they're no longer in business in the US, i. Europe they changed their brand name.

It's like those scooters you can hire and leave (almost) anywhere, the benefit with a car is, if you park it idiotically, they can check that you were the last driver and forward the parking ticket to you.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#490

Post by ryukoposting »

drc500free wrote: post #196
pwg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving. It is likely that neither safety nor ease of use were part of the automaker's "thought process". It is much more likely that a first misguided "designer" created the first touch panel control and somehow sold it to "management" as being "futuristic" and/or "ahead of the competition". And once the first ca…

My understanding is that the real driver is in being able to decouple the design of the controls from the rest of the interior design. I read somewhere that being able to design those in parallel with fewer dependencies makes a significant different in getting the car into production on time.

Yep. Putting as much of your UX as possible in one place makes product development a LOT more efficient. It doesn't always make the product better, though.
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