Airbus A380 - cockpit | Hacker News Reader

Airbus A380 - cockpit

gillesvidal.com

20 pointsnickb20 comments

I wonder if the throttle move. In almost all aircraft, excepting the A3[2|3|4|8]0 family, throttles move when in any automatic mode. If the autoflight system decides to go to full throttle, they'll slide all the way forward. This was definitely true on the B7[5|6]7 series, but I'm not certain about the B777.

There were a rash of concerns (though no incidents that I recall) because pilots often leave a hand on the throttle to have a sense of what the aircraft is doing. A sudden movement could mean a change in flight mode or a level off, or a stall.

By contrast Airbus's non-moving throttles are just shiny switches. They have detente settings for each mode. They could just as easily be a set of toggle switches.

Let me resize my own browser window, please.

Is it just me, or are the mouse gestures backwards?

first thing I thought too.

I think those gestures are pretty standard for panoramic images. Every QuickTime panorama I have seen used them.

OK, I guess I got confused because it's the opposite of Google Maps, which I use much more often.

Piper cub:

http://www.tradewind-aviation.com/images/cokpit/cockpit_cub_...

Meh, I'm not sure why they've got seats in there... it's not like the pilot actually flies the thing. :-)

But they could: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

Of course, the difference being that a 767 can land on most runways, an A380 can land on about what, 10 worldwide (exaggeration).

wow, nice job.

i hate that auto-full screen though.

gestures seem to work fine. not backwards for me.

anyone who changes the size of my browser window should be shot.

I'll lend you the gun

For some reason I imagined the cockpit of the world's largest commercial airliner would be much bigger.

I expected it would just be a keyboard where you could type in suggestions to the flight computer.

If all three fly-by-wire modules concur that you are not, in fact, a complete moron, the airplane will consider your request.

Then again, it would have been much cooler if there had been a "Kirk chair" right in the middle and scantily clad "ensigns" scurrying about.

drool.. so many buttons

First lesson of pilot training:

Do not, under any circumstances, drool on the buttons.

Hah! When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut...not really because they get to fly around in space, but because I saw a picture of some cockpit with tons of buttons and thought that was pretty cool.

Am I the only one that hates these flash-sites where you first have to figure out the interface, which is often ill conveived and sporadically working across different browsers?

I think the interface is quite intuitive. When I am using something as simple as this, I would rather learn by playing with it than read any instructions.

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