[HN Gopher] Fighter pilot breaks down every button in an F-15 co...
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Fighter pilot breaks down every button in an F-15 cockpit [video]
Author : Giorgi
Score : 111 points
Date : 2020-07-01 15:31 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Video walk-through of the front (pilot) seat of the SR-71:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj9UwKQKE3A
| ceocoder wrote:
| That was awesome! Fighter planes are just so so cool as machines,
| being able to fly an F-22 would be a dream come true.
|
| Col. Themely did a spectacular job explaining all the subsystems
| and how they worth together. I found this quote by her[0] rather
| inspiring,
|
| _What are you most important daily habits?
|
| My vice wing commander, command chief, and I all subscribe to the
| "2-10-5-7 philosophy", which is two hours of alone time, 10 hours
| of work, five hours of family time, and seven hours of sleep_
|
| That must require so much discipline - something to aspire to.
|
| [0] https://www.sheppard.af.mil/News/Article-
| Display/Article/146...
| netvarun wrote:
| The accompanying ArsTechnica article was posted yesterday[0] but
| didn't get much traction.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23690990
| ardy42 wrote:
| The video says the displays are classified, but this link shows
| the PAD display showing some information:
|
| https://www.aviationtoday.com/2016/12/12/iee-to-upgrade-f-15...
|
| And this link looks like it shows some F-15 displays that a
| training simulator company makes":
|
| http://www.dotwizards.net/dt/index.php/simulated-flat-panel-...
| tomonocle wrote:
| The Omega Tau podcast often does similarly detailed examinations
| of planes (as well as almost anything and everything else):
| https://pca.st/episode/05c91470-2f6f-0135-52f9-452518e2d253)
| errantspark wrote:
| That podcast is absolutely amazing. I love getting engrossed in
| it on long car drives.
| ecf wrote:
| I'm trying not to think about how many resources were wasted to
| design an aircraft that only saw a little over 100 combat
| encounters.
| zokier wrote:
| Its all about deterrence and control of airspace. Enemies are
| not stupid, if they know that F-15s are in the air then they
| are very likely to stay the hell away. No combat encounter, but
| mission success and other assets protected. If the F-15s
| weren't there then the enemy aircraft would have been free to
| wreak havoc.
| avalys wrote:
| How much money have you wasted on home and auto insurance?
| larrywright wrote:
| That's only air combat (plane vs plane). These planes regularly
| engage in plane to ground combat. Dropping bombs, firing
| missiles.
|
| Also, not every engagement is a combat engagement. Example:
| https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22807/oregon-f-15s-scr...
| chiph wrote:
| You've probably heard the term "Force Multiplier" via bad
| Hollywood movies. Well, a fighter-bomber is that in spades. You
| are able to project force into the 3rd dimension, flying above
| the enemy troops almost with impunity in order to kill them and
| destroy their infrastructure. So that they don't do it to you.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication
| snarf21 wrote:
| One could argue that is a measure of success. How many
| resources were wasted building tactical nukes during the cold
| war? In this sense, I'm glad they were wasted. Sometimes the
| threat is effective without execution.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| What a masterpiece of UX/UI. Holyshit.
|
| So many amazing details. Notice how the texture of the trim knob
| is different than other controls. When cost is no barrier, you
| can have mechanical switches, toggles, flip-off guards, various
| shapes and sizes of knobs, levers, color coding, hazard markings,
| etc. - all made from top notch materials and you bet, the haptics
| were totally engineered for best possible way to reduce
| ambiguity. Aesthetics take a back seat.
|
| Also, props to the narrator. She was to the point and well
| informed.
|
| I hope UI/UX designers (even for web design), industrial
| designers, architects, ergonomicists, HMI designers be inspired
| from this with one major take away - stop putting personal taste,
| aesthetics, decoration, marketing, etc. before functionality and
| pragmatism. Especially those working in vehicle interior design -
| people need to realize we drive a deadly 2-ton machine on our
| roads. Make no mistake, modern regression of UI in cars is
| because of bean counters - touchscreens are vastly cheaper than
| physical encoders/switches/toggles, especially automotive grade
| ones. [1]
|
| Can you imagine if you had to flip a toggle switch to turn
| bluetooth on in your car? I know you're smiling from just the
| thought of it. People make the case that UI needs to be simple
| for people to use at the expense of density, but remember - we
| already look at the world which is very messy and navigate it
| without a problem. Millions navigate through airports. People
| knew how to use Yellow Pages (extreme density) and telephone
| books. Making UI more understandable is orthogonal to information
| density.
|
| Unrelated: It is a shame that SpaceX's dragon crew cockpit design
| ditched all this in favor of a more sexier (arguable) looking
| sci-fi aesthetics. IMO it looks like a cheap movie set including
| the space suits.
|
| [1]
| https://www.mouser.com/ALPS/Electromechanical/Encoders/_/N-3...
| trynewideas wrote:
| > Also, props to the narrator. She was to the point and well
| informed.
|
| For context, in addition to her career as a fighter pilot and
| squadron commander, Col. Themely was commander of the 80th
| Flying Training Wing in 2017 and 2018, which encompassed the
| Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program (ENJJPT),[1] "the
| world's only multi-nationally manned and managed flying
| training program chartered to produce combat pilots for
| NATO".[2] She retired in October 2018.
|
| [1] https://www.sheppard.af.mil/News/Article-
| Display/Article/156...
|
| [2] https://www.sheppard.af.mil/Library/Fact-
| Sheets/Display/Arti...
| dvt wrote:
| Keep in mind that cockpit "user interfaces" have also been
| refined for more than a century now (which is kind of crazy to
| think about). For example, as the Colonel mentions, the "pickle
| switch" has remained more or less unchanged for 75 years.
|
| Web design is merely in its infancy compared to aviation :)
| baddox wrote:
| More importantly, they require a lot of intense training to
| use. Most people doing web design do not have the luxury of
| putting a vast area of functionality flat on the page and
| knowing that your users will be trained and intimately aware
| of each and every function.
| starpilot wrote:
| SpaceX said Dragon would probably be safer if it were fully
| automated, but they added more opportunities for human control
| to appease NASA/astronauts.
| avalys wrote:
| > Especially those working in vehicle interior design - people
| need to realize we drive a deadly 2-ton machine on our roads.
|
| This sounds very smart and serious, which must be why someone
| makes the same point in literally every discussion of a control
| interface for some kind of vehicle - but I challenge you to
| provide evidence that fixable UX problems in modern automobiles
| have led to an increase in accident rates.
|
| In fact, most modern vehicles use touchscreens to solve the
| very problem that you are supposedly concerned about. Rather
| than a complicated cockpit full of individual buttons and
| switches to control every single function, most modern cars
| have a few easy-to-find buttons and switches for functions you
| might want to access while driving (i.e. radio volume, climate
| temperature, fan speed), and use the touchscreen to hide all
| the more complicated and lesser-used settings out of the way!
|
| Do you really think that putting your grandmother into a car
| that resembled that F-15 cockpit would be a safer option? What
| happens if she forgets where the button is to, say, turn on the
| A/C compressor? Is she going to read every single label while
| cruising down the highway at 75 mph?
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _What happens if she forgets where the button is to, say,
| turn on the A /C compressor? Is she going to read every
| single label while cruising down the highway at 75 mph?_
|
| How are either of these things solved by hiding features
| behind touch screen menus? Have you ever seen a 75 year old
| use a computer? I think physical switches are more intuitive
| to someone that age.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I have about 104 physical switches at my disposal that I
| use to type this comment.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > hide all the more complicated and lesser-used settings out
| of the way!
|
| Why? Just looking at more stuff makes you nervous? Ever been
| to a library? Ever cooked a meal? Ever walked outside your
| house? The world is full of complex "UI". This is a total
| bullshit minimalism case designers make to satiate their own
| personal taste.
|
| I would like to see data that proves that "seeing" more stuff
| impedes the ability to operate something. Hiding stuff is
| detrimental, I would argue. The hierarchy of menus is equally
| as complicated as a dashboard of logically laid out
| "containers", each box decidated to a specific group of
| functions. It is _exactly_ the same! Your vision system scans
| through the top level hierachy (Climate Control, Radio,
| Vehicle Settings, Navigation), then focusing in on individual
| controls (akin to sub-menu items). The benefits are massive -
| immediate control, haptics feedback, muscle memory, etc.
| Negatives a minor and can be addressed - cost, reliability
| and durability (wearing off labels for example). The problem
| is - if you look at ALPS catalog of encoders, they are
| rapidly going _up_ in prices because automotive manufacturers
| are ditching them and they don 't have enough volume to
| sustain production and keep costs down. If we had invested in
| this industry, we would have kept the costs down too. The sad
| thing is, they are discontinuining a lot of physical
| controls.
|
| > Do you really think that putting your grandmother into a
| car that resembled that F-15 cockpit would be a safer option?
| What happens if she forgets where the button is to, say, turn
| on the A/C compressor? Is she going to read every single
| label while cruising down the highway at 75 mph?
|
| Actually yes. Thank god we have knobs and buttons left for
| A/C controls. Why didn't hide that in the menus? Apart from a
| few cars, most cars have physical controls for climate and
| radio.
|
| Grandma's kitchen is probably 10x complicated than car UI.
| She does just fine.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _I would like to see data that proves that "seeing" more
| stuff impedes the ability to operate something._
|
| Edward Tufte made a career out of writing books that
| essentially argue this for data design: information density
| is _good_. Low information density means you 're wasting
| people's time.
|
| Our visual systems are extremely good at creating and
| navigating hierarchies, at rapidly switching between levels
| of detail, and at actively filtering irrelevant
| information. You don't have to hide stuff, you just have to
| make the user determine it's irrelevant for the task at
| hand, and their brain will just filter it out.
|
| (See also: banner blindness.)
| avalys wrote:
| Quick, look at a picture of the F-15 cockpit, and find
| the switch to set the LANTIRN pod from Day mode to Night
| mode. Now imagine you're in a car and you can't take your
| eyes off the road for more than a few seconds.
|
| Airplanes are much easier than cars in that regard - once
| you're airborne there's not much to hit!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| We're comparing it to cars with touchscreens, and I
| guarantee you that the first time I find that switch
| (parked in the garage), I'll remember where it is later.
| With a touchscreen, I'll always have to look.
|
| Also, neither a car nor a fighter jet assumes an
| untrained operator. We can't forget that you get a few
| dozen hours of practical training before you're allowed
| to drive unsupervised, and that's more than enough to
| familiarize yourself with the user interface.
|
| So the question boils down to: does the interface
| facilitate operating without looking at it, or not?
| Physical buttons do. Non-shit touchscreen UIs could, but
| they don't exist. Touchscreens used in practice don't.
| avalys wrote:
| "Seeing more stuff" makes it harder to find the one thing
| you want without taking your eyes off the road. A
| touchscreen or similar interface in a car allows you to
| maintain a minimal set of buttons and controls for access
| to essential functionality while driving, while keeping the
| complex and infrequently-used stuff hidden in the
| touchscreen for access while stopped (when you have as much
| time as you need to search through the interface finding
| the thing you want).
|
| I agree that putting controls which you need to use while
| driving behind a touchscreen is not an optimal choice.
| Dahoon wrote:
| Excuse me if I misread your post but it sounds to me as if
| what you are saying is that touchscreens are safer? Tests
| have been made that show that even using Apple carplay with
| voice is worse than old buttons. It has also been shown to be
| worse than the drunk driving limit.
|
| Here is one: https://www.driving.co.uk/news/apple-carplay-
| android-auto-wo...
| avalys wrote:
| The point I'm making is that touchscreens can lead to a
| safer _system_ because they allow you to optimize and
| simplify the layout of the buttons that remain after you've
| moved the infrequently-used functionality into the
| touchscreen.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| Physical switches also seem to require more deliberate action,
| unlike the touch controls, where the the act of touching is not
| much different from an accidental touch.
|
| It's interesting to learn that F-22 side-stick had to be modded
| to add more physical deflection movement vs. a sensitive but
| nearly monolith handle. This was requested by the pilots
| accustomed to effort feedback common to earlier gen of the
| planes.
| zokier wrote:
| I do point out that the F-15 cockpit is from the 70s and it
| shows. Modern pits are far less physical, more glass:
|
| https://fighterjetsworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/F-35...
| trynewideas wrote:
| Broader angles show there are still plenty of physical
| controls in that F-35 cockpit, including on the HOTAS, which
| remains the primary control surface. https://youtu.be/hmnkcP-
| sJHk?t=521
| bch wrote:
| What's the consensus on interfacing w/ glass vs physical, esp
| with respect to haptics and usability in various conditions
| (warm/cold hands, gloves on/off, bright/dim lighting, ...)?
| scott_s wrote:
| > When cost is no barrier,
|
| _And_ when operator training time and effort is extremely
| high.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Pushing back on this a little bit :) - A semi-truck's UI
| (dashboard) is only a tad bit more complex than a car. The
| operator training part has to do more with the domain of
| knowledge (how to back up the trailer, for e.g.) than with
| the UI. IMO UI can be "complex" and yet understandable if the
| layout is logical, everything is labelled and the _domain is
| already understood_. We all know what _Turn on bluetooth_
| means. Whether it is hidden in 4 level deep menu in a
| touchscreen or immediately accessible with a toggle switch
| makes no difference IMO. In fact, I would argue that a toggle
| switch is _easier_ than digging into Menu > Vehicle Settings
| > Entertainment > Phone > Bluetooth. More importantly, it is
| discoverable.
|
| Please don't dig too much into the bluetooth thing, it is
| just a example that I want to use to make the more general
| point.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Not UI, but you mentioned one part where software could
| really shine: instead of getting the feel of the "inverted
| pendulum" driving in reverse with a trailer, what if I
| could just turn the wheel where I want to go and let the
| computer figure out how to keep the back in line without
| jackknifing on itself.
|
| (I am also sure such software exists, and it fares poorly,
| otherwise it would be a standard accessory on trucks and
| everyone would have forgotten how to do it "by ear" by
| now.)
| scott_s wrote:
| I don't disagree with your response, but I disagree with
| what I understand to be your initial point: the primary
| reason that the F-15's interface is this particular way is
| because cost was not a barrier. While that is part of it, I
| don't think it's most of it. I pointed out operator
| training time, which is assumed to be huge.
|
| But there's also a fundamental difference between a fighter
| pilot and someone driving a car. For a fighter pilot,
| everything they have to be able to do has to be at a hand's
| reach in a second. This is an operational requirement for
| both the "fighter" and "pilot" sides. Driving a car is
| different; there are many tasks that normal car drivers
| don't need to do _while driving_. It 's okay for them to do
| them parked, after fiddling with a bunch of other stuff.
|
| My point: it's not just cost which determines the
| difference, but training and task requirements.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > It's okay for them to do them parked, after fiddling
| with a bunch of other stuff.
|
| Point noted. Commercial airplanes also have that in the
| form a FMS:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_management_system
|
| A menu system just like cars except no touchscreens,
| although I heard that's changing.
| technothrasher wrote:
| Anybody who enjoyed this would likely enjoy the Fighter Jet
| Podcast by ex-Navy pilot Vincent Aiello. Each episode is an
| approximately 45 minute interview with a fighter jet pilot or
| other support crew, going step by step over pretty much any and
| every topic that relates.
|
| https://www.fighterpilotpodcast.com/
| thatwasunusual wrote:
| Well, she can ride my tail anytime! Great lecturing! Are there
| equivalent videos of tanks etc.?
| tome wrote:
| What does she mean about the VMAX? They're "technically
| forbidden" to use it, but it's understood that in a combat
| situation they may well need it to escape an aggressor?
| zokier wrote:
| I'd guess only situation where you'd use it is when you'd lose
| the aircraft otherwise. In normal conditions escaping an
| aggressor would not be such situation.
|
| Think it as redline in a car; take away the limit and the
| engine can rev higher and possibly get few hp more, but the
| engine won't be in any good shape after that.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| VMAX adds 2% to the max RPM of the engines, giving a bit of
| extra performance for when it is really needed. In the process
| it increases wear and tear on the engine, necessitating an
| expensive very thorough inspection and possibly repair of the
| engines.
|
| If your life depends on it, by all means use it. In all other
| circumstances, save the maintenance crew the extra work and the
| taxpayer the extra costs.
| dpe82 wrote:
| A lot of fighters have "emergency power" controls that will
| push the engine past its normally rated power band for a short
| time at the cost of drastically shortening the life of the
| engine. I would guess that's what this is and why pilots are
| normally forbidden from using it.
| evgen wrote:
| As a more historical example of this, a lot of WWII fighters
| had a max power setting on the throttle that had a wire
| strung across it, but the pilot could break past the wire to
| go to 'War Emergency Power' and gain anywhere from 15-50%+
| more horsepower from the engine. The use had to be logged and
| after a few hours of this the engine would need to get a
| complete tear-down and rebuild.
|
| It is basically a 'you are trading away this engine to save
| your life' setting, but sometimes that was a necessary thing
| to do.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's very interesting that engineers can compute this
| threshold to a 2% error.
| kens wrote:
| This extra boost of power is also known as "War Emergency
| Power", and goes back to World War II planes. In the P51
| Mustang, WEP increased the horsepower by 61%. But after using
| WEP, the engines needed to be inspected before flying again, so
| it was only used when necessary.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_emergency_power
|
| Related is the "Battle short" switch on Navy computers, which
| shorts the fuses with copper bars and disables over-temperature
| faults, so you can keep the computer running during a battle
| even if things are going bad.
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(page generated 2020-07-01 23:00 UTC)