Originally Posted by
FlightDream111
In your original post you complained about the analogue gauges, how they weren't in very good positions, and you felt the gauges themselves don't present their information very well. As a point of reference you said the 777 PFD was much better. Well, all those GA glass cockpits, the G1000, Evolution 2000 etc, are the result of taking what people like about an airline cockpit and applying it to a GA cockpit. It is basically what you were asking for. The result is apparently more crashes (exactly why that is so is up for debate I guess.) What I take from that is that the old analogue gauges were just fine, or at least that upgrading what are mainly VFR aircraft with instrumentation with a strong IFR pedigree is not necessarily a step in the right direction.
Well yes, the point is no that it was found to be confusing in use, but that from the first day of use, and at the design stages, it should have been found to be confusing and an alternate design should have been adopted.
Even today, following a 'design for use' and 'user friendly' goals in designing instruments could reduce much confusion. My impression is that the automobile instruments have been improved not only due to customer demand but the frequent changes to the designs - with each year's model. Putting aside any user considerations, aircraft components tend to take longer to be redesigned and aircraft tend to stay in service longer.
At the design stages of the altimeter it was probably the best they could do with the technology they had at the time. And there have been continual improvements since then.
There have been general improvements to instrument presentation on GA aircraft. Like automotive instrumentation it has been driven by changes in technology and consumer demand. The Garmin 1000 style of GA glass cockpit is the result of that process.
Contrary to what you say (that I have bolded), these instruments do not display just speed. The automotive one does, but the airspeed indicator has airspeed in MPH, airspeed in knots, and a window for inputting temperature in order to calculate true airspeed which is displayed in its own scale for an appropriate portion of the instrument. There is also markings for the flap up stalling speed, the flap down stalling speed, the maximum flap extended speed, the normal operating speed range, the smooth air only speed range, and the never exceed speed.
It seems that while I was writing this, both links now go to slightly different pictures of instruments. To be clear I was referring to the Aston Martin GIF, and the ASI presented below:
Speedometer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Airspeed indicator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Go ahead and design an airspeed indicator that looks like the Aston Martin one but that has all of the information available on the air speed indicator. I think you will very quickly lose the simplicity of the Aston Martin design.
If you'd prefer to talk about the instruments currently linked from your post, first I disagree, there is nothing inherently better about the Ford Fondeo speedo compared to the ASI. Also it is easy enough to find simple ASI designs. The following is very easy to read and includes a Mach display, a dynamic max operating indicator, and an air speed indicator. It also includes adjustable bugs for setting the various reference speeds for a take-off and landing.
Airspeed indicator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
They all present different information and can't be compared. If you want to talk only about the speed tape part of the PFD, well there are pros and cons to the speed tape presentation as opposed to a traditional ASI. On the pro side, it displays a lot of information in a relatively uncluttered way, it can show a trend vector to show how much you are accelerating, and it can show a much more precise speed than a mechanical ASI. The downside is that it is more difficult to get an immediate sense of your approximate speed with a quick glance, it requires you to read and interpret the numbers, you also can't see all of the bugged speeds at once as some of them are off the scale at any one time, finally there is an issue with the speed tape and altimeter tape combination that can give the impression of pitch and roll movements based on the scrolling of the tapes.
That done, I may just design my own panel (on the sim) and put it up here for comments.
I'd be interested to see the results.
I regularly use the following types of air speed indicator. Which do you think I prefer, and why?
