US Navy to go away from touchscreens

[Fortytwo]

I can tell you that when my coworkers and I drove November-Mike-Tango-Zulu from the west coast of the US to the PG with the group... in 95-96... we had no laptops or AIS. The GPS we used was off the shelf Furuno... not the military secret encrypted GPS, because the Furuno was more accurate.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by OneHullPaul

All the major manufacturers only sell chartplotters with both touchscreen and physical buttons presently so the discussion seems a bit moot. Use whichever you like when you like. If buying new, there is no decision to be made on cruising level hardware.

Raymarine's Axiom line of chart plotters has no buttons except for power. Only the "pro" version of the Axiom line has physical buttons.

[carstenb]

I have the new "Pro" versions and most of the time the touchscreen is deactivated.

Touchscreens are useless in heavy weather and if there is a choppy sea, forget using them.

My complaint with the buttons on the "Pro" is that they are almost an afterthought. They are not terribly efficient to use. Having said that most of the other manufacturers are even worse.

[s/v Jedi]

Still messed up to blame controls for the collision instead of lack of seamanship

[Dsanduril]

...after the fleet overwhelmingly said they prefer mechanical controls to touchscreen systems ....

The problem with this is that even before touchscreens they didn't have "mechanical controls". They may have physical levers for forward/astern and speed and/or physical buttons/knobs/dials for similar functions. They may seem "mechanical" but there's no Morse or Teleflex cable behind those controls, there's an electrical fly-by-wire signal that works its way down to the engine room.

I prefer physical controls myself in this scenario (just so intuitive to glance over, see a throttle lever at ~50% forward and know status), but it doesn't remove the programming and electrical risk from the equation on big ships.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by carstenb

I have the new "Pro" versions and most of the time the touchscreen is deactivated.

Touchscreens are useless in heavy weather and if there is a choppy sea, forget using them.

My complaint with the buttons on the "Pro" is that they are almost an afterthought. They are not terribly efficient to use. Having said that most of the other manufacturers are even worse.

Yeah, Ive been at sea w the non-pro version and we had to deactivate the touch screen. I does NOT like to get wet...esp sea water. That was inconvenient, but at least there was a second one down below. Fully protected areas are really the only practical place to install these things.

Ive still got my ancient old Pathfinder display with big clunky buttons...that work just fine in all conditions.

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by Dsanduril

The problem with this is ........... there's an electrical fly-by-wire signal that works its way down to the engine room.

Why is this a problem? I had this on my Land-Rover and it worked well. Also believe modern aircraft are fly by wire.

Pete

[Franziska]

Apparently the multi-touch capacitive touch screen do not like to be used with wet fingers.

The resistive ones without multi-touch need to be pressed a bit harder and do usually not allow pinch to zoom, but work better in wet environments.

[Dsanduril]

Originally Posted by Pete7

Why is this a problem? I had this on my Land-Rover and it worked well. Also believe modern aircraft are fly by wire.

Pete

The problem (I have) is that it is being described as a "mechanical" control system and it's not. No reason it can't work. I'm in the process of rebuilding such a system for a US Government ship right now. Physical throttle levers for control, but on the back side is a potentiometer putting out a -10/+10VDC signal that makes its way through I/O in the pilothouse down to the engine room where it gets processed by a controller and sent out as commands to the engine and propeller. Nothing "mechanical" about it, even though there are physical control elements (the throttle levers) rather than touchscreen control elements.

It gets down to training and expectations. A mechanical control system you call the engineer when you have problems, a fly-by-wire system you call the electrician and/or the computer technician. Knowing how it works and who can fix it can save critical time in critical situations.

The original article linked actually does a pretty good job of describing them as "physical" control elements, but then quotes the people who will be using them as describing them as "mechanical" and that they are not.