I am more comfortable with steam gauges, I can scan quicker and more concisely at any given moment. I imagine this has much to do with experience, but, gauges are so much easier to jump into, even if theyâre arranged differently. The information is nice and BIG, with one purpose for each gauge (maybe two when it comes to engine gauges, which is fine, the needles are easy to discern).
Glass panels seem to be all over the place in setup, so âgetting used toâ a setup is really hard unless you fly one a lot. And, even so, itâs hard to scan when all the information is in one place and your brain has to switch how it sees that one thing to get different information. At least for me.
So, to that end, Iâm totally happy with a pop up tablet in my cockpit, itâs what I do in real life. I also prefer period specific layout. A 430 in my Mustang is just annoying. I can get over it, but I prefer not too. But if the plane comes with glass, yes, I want the glass to match what the plane comes with. Who knows, I might fly one someday!!
I gotta say I do feel spoiled when I have a flight path vector, whether civvie glass panel on synthetic terrain view or military jet HUD. Feels like cheating.
In general, for me itâs all about adapting myself to the plane and enjoying immersing yourself in its era of tech, imagining yourself flying one of these beasts âlike the real guys didâ. Sometimes thatâs old school, sometimes itâs modern beep-boop!
Iâm actually surprised by the high steam gauge percentage. With all the airline pilots and popularity of some of the newer birds I would have expected to vote to be more pro-glass.
Being a steam gauge guy myself this pleases me to no end
That said. IRL I always have SkyDemon running even if I know where Iâm going. Safety first.
Haha, for sure me. But maybe that category works. Define modern
The point for me is basically analog gauges presented on screens. Technically âglass,â maybe a few enhancements in presentation, but not what we think of today.
There are some significant differences between actual physical gauges and analog representations, the way actual analog gauges are more effected by vibration and have inertia comes to mind. Also some things like a rapid small oscillation on top of an otherwise steady reading are often picked up better by genuine analog.
I like grinding, but not enough to do IFR without GNS. Or I like the G1000 suite those would be my two personal favorites. No issues with handling VNAV manually or automatically.
For vintage or very light aircraft though donât mind all steam either, or the Proline, and G5 and G3 are okay. Not a huge fan of the G3000 or GTN. Any ship in a storm, so I guess itâs the âwhateverâ vote. Whatever its got I can get there.
The type of glass cockpit makes a difference for me. I like steam so long as I have a GTN750 in there. I also love the G3000 and G5000, but I despise the G1000, 530, 430, etc.
Yea valid point and thanks for commenting. We didnât want to break down the sub-list of glass / gps etc types that granularly for the answer options as I feel it would split the votes too much and have been over-complicated, but that is definitely something I considered and I too feel a similar way.
Itâs not just experience or habit. Itâs a known fact that analogical informations (needles) are directly understood by the brain with a simple glance. Like a drawing.
When reading digital informations (numbers on a glass cockpit) requires first to be read and then âdecodedâ to be understood by the brain.
Whatâs more, glass cockpit manufacturers have an annoying tendency to multiply different types of informations on the same instrument, which is not good for easy reading.
On a simulator panel, the result is a display with small numbers.
And nowadays many of us have both a high-resolution screen and eyes of a certain age !
Old stuff by miles. I think itâs because as a software guy myself programming aircraft to fly doesnât really interest me. Or maybe Iâm just old
One thing that is quite useful is the ability to âbodge things inâ, so AH C140 , you click on a knob and the Wright-Brothers level gauges are replaces by a modern system. This is quite useful if you have to leave your flight for a bit (if you are on multiplayer, pause is not good) or itâs a very boring flight (30+ mins in a straight line over water with no ATC âŠ)
I often wondered if there should be a âkeep flying this height, directionâ switch not for authenticity, but for convenience.
I prefer steam gauges as I can tell at a glance where the needle is. The time to interpret what it is I am seeing is lower than scanning a sometimes rapidly changing number on a glass panel.
I prefere steamgauge but i like what the taog Huey concearns where you can select
from the clipboard what you want steamgauge or glascockpit i think it is best of both worlds
Choose like this
