US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls on its destroyers

Re:US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls... by adestefan on Sunday August 11, 2019 @12:01PM (#20668704)

I have knobs on the climate control on my car, but I still need to look at the screen. The problem is the knobs have no stops so I still need to look down to figure out what they're set to after they update the electronic display. On my old vehicle I knew the whole way to the left was fan blowing on feet, whole way to the right was defroster, and the 2 or 3 clicks in between were different settings of those extremes. Now I have no idea where it ends up when I spin the dial.

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Re:US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls... by indigochill on Sunday August 11, 2019 @04:58PM (#20670460)

I'm not sure why dials have stopped clicking. Maybe it had some direct mechanical function at one point, but even if that's no longer necessary, the haptic feedback of the click seems just as important.

In fact, even on touchscreens there will often be some sort of audiovisual "click" effect, whether that's an icon lighting up, expanding, or making an audible click noise.

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Re:US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls... by baroffoos on Sunday August 11, 2019 @07:54PM (#20671309)

My method is to turn the knob back to when it stops moving and then it is now in a known state and I know how many clicks each setting is away.

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Re:US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls... by adestefan on Sunday August 11, 2019 @10:52PM (#20672029)

That’s the thing it doesn’t stop. It’s just a rotary dial with the lightest detents I’ve ever felt. You just spin it and it’s a circular buffer through every setting.

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