Re:US Navy will replace touchscreen with mechanical controls...
by closeparen on Sunday August 11, 2019 @11:12PM
(#20672093)
Entertainment industry control consoles in audio, video, and lighting blend the two pretty well. Hardware faders and encoders for actually manipulating parameters. An LCD right next to each physical control showing its current assignment and meaning. Keyboard buttons for selecting pages and layers, playing back automation, and command-line programming. Touchscreens for situational awareness, drilldown to detailed views, configuration, routing, and navigation of complex hierarchies.
Yamaha has a nice idiom called "touch-and-turn" where there's an unassigned encoder right next the screen which manipulates whichever parameter you tap onscreen. Navigating the touchscreen is at least as nice as visually scanning a large format analog console to find the right handle, but a knob is the right way to actually tune it. It works well.
Your hands spend little if any time on the touchscreen during the show, but it helps you understand what's going on with the physical control surface and grab rarely accessed parameters, not worthy of dedicated console real estate, when needed.
Yamaha has a nice idiom called "touch-and-turn" where there's an unassigned encoder right next the screen which manipulates whichever parameter you tap onscreen. Navigating the touchscreen is at least as nice as visually scanning a large format analog console to find the right handle, but a knob is the right way to actually tune it. It works well.
Your hands spend little if any time on the touchscreen during the show, but it helps you understand what's going on with the physical control surface and grab rarely accessed parameters, not worthy of dedicated console real estate, when needed.