7.0 Buttonology Issue

[jc2da]

Great release and looking forward to all the new features!

Many of my recent posts have been about reducing the pilot work-load by minimizing the number of extraneous button pushes as much as possible. This is especially important when so much capability can be squeezed into a single box. From its initial release a few years ago, Skyview now has several times the initial features capabilities, but it has the same exact limited number of knobs and buttons to work with.

Thus, the challenge is to NOT allow the pilot work load to increase proportionally to the number of features, right? This would be counter-productive and a huge detriment to all the great work, if all the features got buried down into deeper menus or more button pushing, at least for the most common tasks.

With all that said, the new MAP info bubble feature i think took a step backwards in this regard. Once you move the cursor on the map, the info bubble appears automatically whether we want to see it or not. This can get pretty annoying.

However, the greater problem is that knob rotation now defaults to scrolling thru info bubble airspace instead of map RANGE. To use RANGE, you now have to move the cursor (to hide the info bubble) then rotate the knob to RANGE in and out. This is not good.

THE most used feature i use on any flight is probably scrolling around and zooming in and out on the MAP. I do this all the time, especially with my map in only the 40% screen mode. However, now in order to do what I do most, pan and zoom, i now have to do pan, move cursor (to hide info bubble and enable RANGE), then zoom in and out. Thus, on any flight, i am guaranteed to click the joystick an extra dozens and dozens of times on any flight. This increases pilot work load. This is not good.

Here are some possible solutions:

1. Retain the map RANGE knob for RANGE. I want to zoom in and out more than i want to scroll airspace info. This is especially important for us who use MAP in the 40% screen mode, where we are more likely to pan and zoom a lot more trying to get exactly what we want to display in the smaller screen area.

2. Make the info bubble user-selectable instead of automatically popping up. Thus, instead of automatically showing the info bubble, i should pan the cursor, click the joystick button if i want to view the info bubble. At least now, i am not forced to pan just to remove an unwanted info bubble that annoyingly keeps popping up over and over again whether i want to see it or not.

I'd appreciate any thoughts from others on this!

Jae

 

[GalinHdz]

I totally agree. I just flew with V7 today and also found this an issue. Pan and Zoom are the most used inputs on the MAP page. The automatic pop up bubble is extremely annoying since I use Pan/Zoom to see information that is on the MAP display but at a larger scale. The pop up bubble winds up covering the MAP information I was trying to see. This is especially critical for those of us with 7" screens displaying the 50/50 layout.

I think the best sequence would be:
Pan/Zoom to where you want.
Push the joystick IF you want the pop up bubble capability to appear.
Use the joystick as it currently works to get the information you need within the pop up bubble.
Push the button again and the pop up bubble goes away and you are back to regular Pan/Zoom.

My 2cents.

 

[preid]

I think jchang and GalinHdz have it right, the INFO should be an extra push IF needed, now its a few extras to remove it. I wont use, unfortunately, its great data but a hassle to do anything with it there when flying.
Please modify it to use the extra press for ON and another press off in the next release.

 

[jc2da]

Another issue i just noticed is that after installing 7.0, the normal airspace altitudes are no longer shown. I was worried there for a bit. However, if you go into Map Info Items, airspace was defaulted to off. You can turn them back on, which is a requirement for me.

 

[dynonsupport]

Thanks for the feedback. I think it's worth you understanding our restrictions in designing this feature and how we ended up with this method:

1) Assume we want it to work really well on a single screen system. I think you all want that too.

2) Pressing in on the center of the knob takes you in and out of panning. So we can't use that to select an item. Pressing and holding brings swaps to the chart, so we can't use that either.

3) You might be in another menu like autopilot, so we can't put things under the MAP menu for selection or they only work some of the time. We also don't want to pop up a menu just because you are panned, which would block you from doing anything else in the system

4) So, we ended up where we are. Pan like you always did, but if you stop the cursor, after 1.5 seconds, it selects what you are over. You can still pan, but yes, you can't zoom. If you want to zoom, pan just one click in any direction, then zoom. We did play with different times from 1.5 seconds in beta testing and anything longer was really annoying when you did want to see the info for the airspace or airport.

This only affects zooming when you are panning. Zooming when in normal mode and the map is centered on the plane is no different.

We think this allows you to do anything you want with the pointer all with one knob. Yes, it does make zooming one extra click in some cases, but then it saves tons of clicks in other cases, so it's a net win. Being able to look up airspace altitudes was a huge customer request for us, so we wanted it to work really simply and no matter what menu you are in. I realize some people were happy with the airspace altitudes on the map, but many were not.

Happy to hear any other suggestions, but keep in mind the above restrictions. I think if you give the feature some time, it will really grow on you. We've been using it for a few months in testing, and I find it pretty second nature to use now and really doesn't feel like a step backwards. We had hours and hours of conversation about how to do this.

 

[jc2da]

Thank you for the detailed response. Obviously, you guys have thought about this more than any others.

You are right. I forgot about the single button click to remove the cursor.

Is it possible to have a separate knob click from a knob click and hold? IE, similar to how we can SYNC the ALT bug by holding the joy stick to the left. This would allow for at least one more input type that might allow for a lot more flexibility.

 

[dynonsupport]

Holding the joystick any direction pans the map, so no single push nor push and hold can be used here, or you'll be complaining that you can't pan the map without a zillion clicks!

 

[GalinHdz]

Holding the joystick any direction pans the map, so no single push nor push and hold can be used here, or you'll be complaining that you can't pan the map without a zillion clicks!

What? Us complain about something? NEVER!

 

[jc2da]

No, not a pan. I mean a straight on click and hold.

IE, a knob click is used to get out of cursor mode. Can a knob click and hold be used for something else?

 

[dynonsupport]

As I mentioned, click and hold is used to toggle the map between charts and the standard vector map. Also, click and holds are also not a very "discoverable" mechanism. So they're not great for fundamental and routine operations like changing between the pointer/airplane, or between range/selection, but do work well for "power user" features that have a long way to get to them, like displaying charts.

The awesome thing about this is we figure out if you are on the ground. If you press and hold the knob once you land (even if you are still moving) we'll bring up the airport chart. No digging through menus.

If you're in flight you can toggle back and forth with your approach plate.

 

[preid]

"I think if you give the feature some time, it will really grow on you."
I went out and trained on this today. I spent 30 minutes and it has already grown on me.
I find that moving the cursor and being able to get the INFO for an airport is fantastic, being able to "tune com" and add it as a waypoint outstanding! I have to give this a try in the air but I really like this feature from what I have seen.

 

[bbtapb]

Please avoid unmaked operations. Otherwise pretty soon we have "double click for that" or "press and hold then spin the knob for this special feature.."

In turbulence, pressing the joystick is tricky without panning.

I like the auto popup of identifier for the map item and expected "INFO" button to show me info about it. Nope.

 

[bbtapb]

Maybe the INFO button only showed the Direct-To INFO because Direct-To was active. That didn't seem right, IMHO.

 

[dynonsupport]

INFO does give you info on the highlighed object if it's an airport, VOR, NDB, user waypoint, etc. It doesn't if it is an airspace, since we have no more information to give you that isn't on the screen already. If it's not giving you INFO for a selected item then that's a bug, but it is working for us here, even with a DTO active.

We do try and avoid things that are unlabeled, require weird operations, etc. You'll notice that we don't have any double clicks, press and turns, etc. We've had multi-hour long fights meetings about stuff like this, trust me. But there's only so much we can do with the hardware we have, so at some point we do end up with a knob that when clicked does something that is unlabeled.