Author Topic: Ask a crew member  (Read 279679 times)

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Offline -Norbert-

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The biggest issue for Terran pilots in CSA fighter craft is the large amount of data the ship throws at you along with the senitivity of the controls. The Terran mind is just incapable of the level of multi tasking required to effectively pilot a CSA fighter.
Does that mean the main reason why (most) Terrans can't fly CSA fighters is a badly designed interface?
What about Dawn? Did her genetic enhancements make her capable of effectively piloting an Aestival?

 

Offline Ravenholme

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The biggest issue for Terran pilots in CSA fighter craft is the large amount of data the ship throws at you along with the senitivity of the controls. The Terran mind is just incapable of the level of multi tasking required to effectively pilot a CSA fighter.
Does that mean the main reason why (most) Terrans can't fly CSA fighters is a badly designed interface?
What about Dawn? Did her genetic enhancements make her capable of effectively piloting an Aestival?

That's not a badly designed interface, it's just one that is bad for humans. It's probably the optimal interface for Cyrvans.

It's actually offensive to Cyrvans to say that it's badly designed just because it doesn't interface well with us Terrans
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Offline -Norbert-

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Only offensive to those who designed the interface. Surely I'm not offending the entire USA by saying a certain Crysler car is badly designed!
And it's not offensive if it's true, though I guess I could rephrase it into "not fully optimized" to make sure the engineers don't feel offended, despite the Cyrvans not being overly concerned about offending Humans judging from Crystals behaviour (who is really the only Cyrvan featured in the campaign.... Luna just has too few lines).

In my opinion there is a difference between "sufficient" and "good". The Cyrvan cockpits certainly are sufficient for their pilots, but are they really good? In an effective user interface you don't put out as much data as the user can handle, you try to only put out the data the user really needs. As long as nothing important is missing, the less information given out the better.
If the pilot can configure what is shown and what not, all the better (with some bare necessities being impossible to disable perhaps).

Since I don't see why a Cyrvan fighter would have to put out more data than a Terran fighter (except in "Mech-mode"), why would they throw so much more data at the pilot than LSF fighters?
Considering how intelligent Cyrvans are supposed to be, I'm sure they could improve those interfaces a lot. But apperently they are satisfied with it just being sufficient, were we Humans seem to have a stronger streak to make everything we build perfect.

Unless of course the CSA fighters have many functions on manual that are handled automatically in LSF craft. But why would they want to do that?
Each little bit of distraction can be a pilots death in combat (and even out of combat), no matter how good that pilot is at multi-tasking.

Imagine CSA pilots that only had to handle as much data as LSF cockpits put out and them putting all the attention and mental abilities they usually need just to keep their fighters going on the fight instead!

 

Offline General Battuta

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Norbert, I'm not sure that makes sense. Modern fighter planes put out more information than the pilot can handle; today's jet pilots train extensively to keep track of everything they need to without flying into the ground. And, believe it or not, they still fly into the ground; several US aircraft were lost in Iraq (probably) due to task overload.

 

Offline Dilmah G

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This is (usually) to do with what's known in the RAAF and RAF at least as 'spare mental capacity', something you are assessed on during your time at BFTS and 2FTS, and subsequently onto your OCU days. It's not something trainable, but rather a pilot's innate skill that separates pilots streamed to the fast-jet breed from the others.

Issues like flying into the ground/other aircraft due to your mental capacity being stretched to the limit is why in the RAAF, one of the aircrew work cycles is ALAP, Attitude, Lookout, Attitude, Performance. Basically, 80% of your time should be spent on lookout and attitude (both done by looking outside the aircraft, attitude is determined by the horizon rather than by the instruments).

Maintaining a good lookout and selecting pilots with larger spare mental capacities for the Fast-Jet pipeline ensures you don't run into issues like flying planes into the ground, etc. In fact one of the issues identified as to why US pilots tended to fare worse during the merge during multinational exercises a few years earlier was that they're being deployed so often that they don't have the time to train as much as other Air Forces, who tend to spend most of their time at home doing block training and the like.

[/aviationrelatedrant]

 

Offline General Battuta

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Maintaining a good lookout and selecting pilots with larger spare mental capacities for the Fast-Jet pipeline ensures you don't run into issues like flying planes into the ground, etc.

I agree with all of this except the word 'ensure'. Murphy will have his way with brains and behavior as much as bombs and bullets.

 

Offline Dilmah G

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Well, makes it dramatically less likely.

 

Offline -Norbert-

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Norbert, I'm not sure that makes sense. Modern fighter planes put out more information than the pilot can handle; today's jet pilots train extensively to keep track of everything they need to without flying into the ground. And, believe it or not, they still fly into the ground; several US aircraft were lost in Iraq (probably) due to task overload.
I know that, and that it caused death' both in military and civilian aviation, but how does that matter for a discussion about WoD?

Since LSF fighters don't crash due to the pilots being overloaded with data, they apperently overcame the problems we struggle with today. Maybe with better designed interfaces, maybe with better automation probably due to the use of AI, better screening and/or training of pilots or just with plenty of handwavium.... whatever the reason, the problem seems to have been solved.

Which brings be back the my point:

Unless CSA fighters have plenty of functions that the LSF fighters don't have (apart from "mech-mode" non have been mentioned in either the techroom or the campaign) or they require the pilot to do things that run on automatic in LSF craft, the only explenation for the additional data would be and inefficient (though still sufficient for Cyrvans) interface.
Which of those is it? Or is there another possibility I overlooked?

  

Offline General Battuta

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Sure: the LSF interfaces present as much data as the human pilot can handle, the CSA interfaces present as much data as a Cyrva can handle, which is more.

 

Offline Ravenholme

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Sure: the LSF interfaces present as much data as the human pilot can handle, the CSA interfaces present as much data as a Cyrva can handle, which is more.

The point I was trying to make.

Thanks Battuta :)

Norbert, you're making the mistake of equating Cyrvan mental faculties to our own, which just doesn't make sense.
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Offline General Battuta

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Yeah. My feeling is, let's say both LSF and CSA interfaces are optimized to the point of arbitrarily high efficiency: if there exists a gap in the pilots' abilities there will still be a difference in how much info they can present.

 

Offline -Norbert-

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Norbert, you're making the mistake of equating Cyrvan mental faculties to our own, which just doesn't make sense.
No I don't. If you really read my posts you'd know that....
The only thing I am assuming is, that while they are capable of handling more matters at the same time than a Human, they too have more cencentration to spare for each task, the fewer of them there are.

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Sure: the LSF interfaces present as much data as the human pilot can handle, the CSA interfaces present as much data as a Cyrva can handle, which is more.
I think you're missing my point here yet again.

When you build an interface you don't try to display every shred of information the user can handle by default. You put out the important stuff first and add only what's necessary or requested.
For example why would the pilot need to know the exact temperature in the cockpit as long as it is within a certain margin? When the temperature goes out of bound, the pilot gets an alarm and the exact value. If not, simply don't show it, since it doesn't help one bit to pilot the craft.

Since LSF fighters run fine with the information they display, that must mean that CSA fighters either have additional functions, or that they display information that is unnecessary for flying the fighter.

So even if Cyrvans pilots can handle being shown every little shred of data about their fighters, it's still not fully optimized.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Norbert, you're making the mistake of equating Cyrvan mental faculties to our own, which just doesn't make sense.
No I don't. If you really read my posts you'd know that....
The only thing I am assuming is, that while they are capable of handling more matters at the same time than a Human, they can too have more cencentration to spare for each task, the fewer of them there are.

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Sure: the LSF interfaces present as much data as the human pilot can handle, the CSA interfaces present as much data as a Cyrva can handle, which is more.
I think you're missing my point here yet again.

When you build an interface you don't try to display every shred of information the user can handle by default. You put out the important stuff first and add only what's necessary or requested.
For example why would the pilot need to know the exact temperature in the cockpit as long as it is within a certain margin? When the temperature goes out of bound, the pilot gets an alarm and the exact value. If not, simply don't show it, since it doesn't help one bit to pilot the craft.

Since LSF fighters run fine with the information they display, that must mean that CSA fighters either have additional functions, or that they display information that is unnecessary for flying the fighter.

But again, modern fighter jets supply more information than the pilot can possibly keep track of, which suggests that there is more information than the pilot can possibly keep track of - there certainly was when I flew in Falcon 4.0, which is painfully realistic.

I mean look at a picture of a modern cockpit.

And if that's true for us, it's true for the LSF and CSA, which means they're both probably presenting more than the pilot can handle, the CSA ships to an unsafe degree.

 

Offline -Norbert-

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So what? We are talking about a scienece fiction setting set several hundred years in the future. Figthers that don't have any translucant cockpits!
Why would it matter one bit how a modern cockpit looks or handles?

If it's true for us it's true for them? Do you really beliefe that? Because if everyone would think that way, nothing would ever change and no new technologies would ever be invented.

 

Offline Dilmah G

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Well there's too much to assess at a single glance. There are work cycles for how you're meant to assess all the information given to you in a rational manner whilst flying, rather than going into cardiac arrest from trying to comprehend all the information in your head at once and expend your mental capacity.

In addition to this, pilots are also selected on their ability to allocate priorities among competing sources of information. In this case, it's how you divide your time up in the cockpit and which display you pay attention to first. Generally in a modern fighter aircraft, the majority of your necessary info is displayed on your HUD, and the remainder generally fall under the category of 'Performance/Other Instruments', which are checked 20% of the time whilst flying.

I don't know exactly what you're talking about, as I haven't the time to try out WoD, but I'm guessing CSA aircraft have instrument panels and displays which run counterintuitive to attempts to prioritise the information coming at you.

 

Offline Scotty

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[quote author]
So what? We are talking about a scienece fiction setting set several hundred years in the future. Figthers that don't have any translucant cockpits!
Why would it matter one bit how a modern cockpit looks or handles?
[/quote]

...

It's still humans flying human spacecraft.  If there's information overload today in a then-primitive craft, imagine how much greater the overload will be in a spacecraft.  Then multiply that by five or six, because you're going to be wrong.


Quote from: -Norbert- link=topic=71527.msg1424670#msg1424670 date=1287164948
If it's true for us it's true for them? Do you really beliefe that? Because if everyone would think that way, nothing would ever change and no new technologies would ever be invented.

Unless I'm very much confused, this is exactly the point Battuta is not making.  It's true for us.  They can handle more information, with consequently less severe overflow.  That means their craft can display more information and responses before overload becomes a very serious problem.  Humans can't handle it.

Plese lrn2readingcomprehension.

 

Offline -Norbert-

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It's still humans flying human spacecraft.  If there's information overload today in a then-primitive craft, imagine how much greater the overload will be in a spacecraft.
Even in modern airplanes (at least the big passanger maschines) they are moving away from having one element for each input. Instead they have several monitors on which you can select which data to display.
That is how I imagine it is in the future too, which means you can just not display certain things untill you need them.
And that leads to far less information being shown at one time, while still having everything available if needed, even without super advanced future computers and AIs.

The trend already started in reality.

Quote
Plese lrn2readingcomprehension.
Please listen to your own advice and also please stop being insulting.

 

Offline General Battuta

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So what? We are talking about a scienece fiction setting set several hundred years in the future. Figthers that don't have any translucant cockpits!
Why would it matter one bit how a modern cockpit looks or handles?

If it's true for us it's true for them? Do you really beliefe that? Because if everyone would think that way, nothing would ever change and no new technologies would ever be invented.

I don't think any of your statements here follow from my argument. Spacecraft are going to be incredibly complex; humans in WoD have not (mostly) been augmented to handle that increased complexity.

It is in general good to have as much information as you can possibly present up to the point where the pilot becomes overloaded (but not past it). If the Cyrvan information buffer is bigger than the Human one on the cognitive level, their interfaces will present more data. That's all you need to know.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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They do mention that there are humans who can handle piloting an Aestival...just not many. However I'm curious how the data breaks down; much of what a modern pilot has to monitor concerns his own aircraft. By the time we're talking WoD, I suspect a lot of this has been eliminated or automated to allow the pilot to concentrate more on his surrounding. (The minimalistic FS interface makes a lot of sense, if you can get away with it.)

Yet there is a fixed amount of data that can come in from either source, and it's primarily the intermingling of the two that causes problems for human pilots. If you accept that one of them has been largely eliminated, does that mean the Cyrva haven't automated to the same degree? Do their ships append more information on other craft than Terran ones? What exactly causes the overload?

And can it be eliminated with a software patch?
« Last Edit: October 15, 2010, 02:32:24 pm by NGTM-1R »
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Offline headdie

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They do mention that there are humans who can handle piloting an Aestival...just not many. However I'm curious how the data breaks down; much of what a modern pilot has to monitor concerns his own aircraft. By the time we're talking WoD, I suspect a lot of this has been eliminated or automated to allow the pilot to concentrate more on his surrounding. (The minimalistic FS interface makes a lot of sense, if you can get away with it.)

Yet there is a fixed amount of data that can come in from either source, and it's primarily the intermingling of the two that causes problems for human pilots. If you accept that one of them has been largely eliminated, does that mean the Cyrva haven't automated to the same degree? Do their ships append more information on other craft than Terran ones? What exactly causes the overload?

And can it be eliminated with a software patch?

I suspect the answers lay with the fact the Cyrva fighters have robot modes and intermediate settings
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