I've been flying the Airbus 320 for almost 15 years, get simulator training every six months, know that plane literally inside and out, and still could not do my job safely without EVERY SINGLE button and switch being labelled. Unless human brains are 3x larger in the future, I'm afraid you couldn't be more wrong here. Starships have more than 6 gears.
Modernized TOS Enterprise
- Thread starter JJohnson
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I've been flying the Airbus 320 for almost 15 years, get simulator training every six months, know that plane literally inside and out, and still could not do my job safely without EVERY SINGLE button and switch being labelled. Unless human brains are 3x larger in the future, I'm afraid you couldn't be more wrong here. Starships have more than 6 gears.
Any reason why the gel buttons couldn't have labels on the light up bits themselves?
I heard that they tried just this when building the set for IAMD and found (to their surprise) that the labels didn't show up on camera, despite being quite visible for the actors to use.
I heard that they tried just this when building the set for IAMD and found (to their surprise) that the labels didn't show up on camera, despite being quite visible for the actors to use.
The labels might have been directional/polarized to be visible to the officer, but not to people off axis. I have a little lcd alarm clock you have to hold a certain angle to see the numbers and they're very dark. Turn it, and next to invisible. That could have practical reasons in universe, and make them not show up unless a "camera" were looking straight at them (as they generally don't).
I think the labels are less of an issue than the controls themselves... The helm seems to have maybe 40 pushy buttons arranged in a grid and a few rocker switches. The controls aren't grouped according to function, there's no logical organization, and at least some of them do really arcane things like open/close the hanger bay doors! There are no readouts anywhere - pitch/roll/yaw angles (TMP fixed this, at least) velocity, power settings, rate info... Some of that might come from the round display thing between the seats, but there's nowhere near enough there to maneuver a Starship in three dimensions, considering he's got at least three different propulsion systems (warp, impulse, and thrusters). AND all the weapons functions - tracking/locking targets, arming/firing phasers and torpedoes, shield control, etc etc etc... The helm, for me, has always beggared belief.
The rest of the bridge may be somewhat better, but all the flashing lights are a ridiculous touch if they are meant to convey any useable information. I know older computers had banks of flashing lights, but in an aircraft or the Space Shuttle or ISS (or in factories or even cars for that matter) lights normally only blink to get your attention to indicate an abnormal condition. "Hey! Something's wrong!!" It looks cool and space-shippy on the screen, but from a human factors standpoint it's a huge mistake that even the later LCARS is guilty of.
The rest of the bridge may be somewhat better, but all the flashing lights are a ridiculous touch if they are meant to convey any useable information. I know older computers had banks of flashing lights, but in an aircraft or the Space Shuttle or ISS (or in factories or even cars for that matter) lights normally only blink to get your attention to indicate an abnormal condition. "Hey! Something's wrong!!" It looks cool and space-shippy on the screen, but from a human factors standpoint it's a huge mistake that even the later LCARS is guilty of.
The McMaster bridge blueprints gave the helmsman the ability to cycle between different sets of operations for the buttons (i.e. could switch between having them represent flight or fire controls), while non-canon it does provide for a much broader range of control than having each button only represent a single function.
And if the button functions can change, the text of the labels on the buttons must be able to change as well. And if the labels can change, then that points to a miniature multi-display on the surface of each and every gel button; might that system not also be used to show pitch, yaw, speed information etc to the operator?
Hmm. I guess that could explain having no fixed labels, or segregated control clusters, but it seems like you'd have a hard time in combat if you couldn't fire and maneuver at the same time without re-configuring your console. Plausible, I suppose, but not at all user friendly... I like how they addressed this on the refit by having a dedicated weapons station. Though Sulu still locked phasers from helm in TWOK, so there must still be redundant controls.
Still doesn't explain away the problem of information display, as the individual buttons are too small, as Mytran suggests. In TWOK we saw some nav info on the viewer, but you'd still need a better dedicated presentation right at the helm somewhere.
Still doesn't explain away the problem of information display, as the individual buttons are too small, as Mytran suggests. In TWOK we saw some nav info on the viewer, but you'd still need a better dedicated presentation right at the helm somewhere.
Don't forget that Sulu eventually receied his own separate "pop-up" viewer in the series.
There is a computer keyboard out now that does that with OLED key caps- very expensive but the labels/functions/colors can be changed on the fly to work with whatever program or function needed.
