Originally Posted by
misd-agin
But nothing is as fast for a basic instrument scan as an altimeter pointing at 12 o'clock and the VSI at 9 o'clock. Instant awareness of your altitude and sink rate.
IMO the tape display, while nice with the low and high speed buffet tapes on the airspeed, cannot compare to the rapid awareness you have with round dials and moving needles.
Slightly O/T....
I agree with your basic remarks.... Not for nothing do glass engine instruments still show replicas of the original 'clocks'.
But the altimeter is a bad example, with the old "hours-minutes-seconds" clock scale (you know what I mean) not being all that fast and easy to read, and being implicated in several incidents (I don't remember accidents off-hand). Which is why the numerical 'drum' scale was added, even before we went to 'glass'.
Unfortunately, with the conversion to 'glass', just about all the moving pointers disappeared.
Humans are analog oriented.... For all the non-pilots on here.... just try to imagine playing a video game where all the game information is in the form of numbers on the screen.....