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  • Aerosoft

This week I will work mostly on user interface.

Now I got a few basic ideas on this. First off all that almost no game/sim I know got a user interface I like. FSx is perhaps the worst with at least three user interface mixed. In fact FS4 was more logical. I also know I like to default to a very standard Windows interface. So if you like to load a weather file, aircraft or situation you use the File drop down menu. Any more suggestions?

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I have thought for the longest time that a tabbed UI similar to the one like REx is a good way to manage the sim. It would give the user the ability to enable and disable features on the main page and then on the following tabs manage addons, fuel, flight planning and weather. As you purchase and install the addons the interface for that program is reflected in the one AFS2012 GUI.

I rarely use the dropdown menu because I plan the flight using FSBuild, fuel, select ASA/REx weather and go to the departure airport and fly. If I was in the mood for a casual flight without any particular plans I would use the dropdown menu because I would most likely change aircraft, location etc. while in the sim.

Best regards,

Robert Halmich

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Hi !

I think also that the UI should load instantly, without any (or just a very short) loading... (unlike the very disturbing loading of FSX...)

And, i would be great to have button like fsx to change the 'classic' parameters as aircraft, place etc... to be 'user friendly' and the other 'advanced' options should be in a drop down menu as you say.

Or a another idea is to have two different UI, one very user friendly like FSX, and a other very classic for 'power user' (more light (? if it's make sense in english language ?) etc...).

Ludo

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I can only tell you the worst user interface I have ever seen, as an example of how to NOT do it: REX (Real Environment Extreme). It is so beautiful, but so utterly unusable :-)

REX doesn't tell you when you should do what or why. It gives no feedback, it has no flow and it is a frustrating nuisance to use. It might be the most mindless go at a tabbed interface.

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I kind of like the X-Plane UI. When you start the sim, it loads the situation from the last time you used it. You are sitting on the runway at the airport to which you were nearest the last time you closed it, and you are in the same aircraft with the same weather and time of day (unless you have it set to follow system time) as the last time you closed it. If you want to change anything, you move your cursor to the top of the screen and a toolbar appears. This seems faster than the FSX UI does. It may not be, but it seems that way. Sometimes I'll start up X-Plane instead of FSX, because it's faster and easier to use X-Plane. The FSX UI is just a hassle. You have to wait forever for it to open. Then you have to select your aircraft, airport, weather, and time (And each menu takes forever to open.). Then you press "Fly Now" and wait forever for it to load. I think AFS2012 needs a simpler, faster UI than FSX.

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Simple but flexible.

Let the user configure what UI elements are easy to get to and which ones take an extra step.

I agree with an earlier poster about NOT making sequence-based items ambiguous in any way (as in REX).

On the same note, don't make the user do things in a predefined order when it is not required.

Instead, give the user a checklist of what has/has not been done (aircraft selected, loading, etc.).

Additionally, it might be nice to have different startup scenarios, default to user configurable.

Also, make this part of a plugin architecture. An external addon should be able to inject or alter the UI elements, sequence, etc. when necessary.

Done this way, a user can tailor the UI experience, including controlling when or if lists of aircraft info are loaded, etc.

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It would be nice to create scenarios which can be started as a shortcut from the desktop.

What I mean is you create a flight, set up if the weather should be predefined or online, where, when, which aircraft and this could be saved as a shortcut to the desktop.

For example: I want to begin my flight in cold & dark at a ramp at Vienna, online weather, system time. Like flying for a VA, I want to enter my flightdeck without clicking everything together, would be more "real".

Finally I click the shortcut and the simulator loads directly into the scenario.

Example 2: I want to train ILS, I preconfigured already where, which altitude, radios and systems, weather is also already given. Clicked on the shortcut, I'am landing.

I think this could be interesting for cockpit builders too but I'am not sure.

I hope you have a idea of what I'am thinking.

Best regards,

Emmanuel

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The Userinterface should be accessable without pausing FSX. For Example If I want to take a look on the map, FSX pauses the sim - question is here why? I only take a look on the map to check out vor VOR'S NDB's, etc

On the otherhand, I really like the way FSX allows you to configure your Plane or the Environment with only 2 drop down menu's

What really is a mess for me is the menu about views - I mean this menu is soooo overloaded, I really can't use it. ( I only work with the keys a and s)

What should be better is also the start screen of FSX - too many unlogical configuration groups in my opinion.

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The Userinterface should be accessable without pausing FSX. For Example If I want to take a look on the map, FSX pauses the sim - question is here why? I only take a look on the map to check out vor VOR'S NDB's, etc

It still works in FSX. Go to the options and disable the checkbox "Pause if window is inactive" (Or something like that, sorry, but i use the german version of fsx).

Now to the Userinterface:

I think the GUI of FSX isn't bad. Personally I do well with it. But I think it's still too far away of getting the right feeling of "starting a flight". What I mean ist the pre flight procedure. Ok, Professionals simply want to define the aircraft, weather and the route. But I think its too dry.

Image, you could start at the doors of the airport. Either you can start an arcade flight with a minimum of pre flight doings or you could walk through the airport as an pilot and have to reach some checkpoints, where you have to manage the pre flight things. A typical procedure could be:

1. Start at the doors of the airport

2. Looking at the airport flightplan panel, which is your main panel for starting a flight / mainpanel of ASFS2012.

3. Click on Arcade Entry and simply choose an aircraft, startposition and go on.

4. Or take one of the random flight shown on the panel.

5. Or take the professional way and start to walk to through the airport.

5.1 One checkpoint for choosing the aircraft (Good for simulating an airline career)

5.2 One checkpoint for choosing the weather options

5.3 One checkpoint (Breefingroom) for setting up the route, starttime, start gate ...

5.4 Walking to the gate, where your machine is waiting for you

5.5 Walking on the gateway to the aircraft and entering the plain -> The flight can start.

I hope you know what I mean. There should be a nice way to start a flight earlier than sitting in a cold&dark cockpit. So the user will become more pilot as yet.

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Personnally, I like only the Main menu in FSX. It is the best Flight Simulator menu I've ever seen. It's impossible to compare it to an another one, like the awful Lock On or IL-2 menus.

The in-flight UI is not at all what I expected. I wrote already lots of things about it in another post (http://www.forum.aer...91&#entry188291), especially about the virtual kneeboard. Now, thinking about it, I have an another idea: why to not add an interactive map in it?

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This week I will work mostly on user interface.

Now I got a few basic ideas on this. First off all that almost no game/sim I know got a user interface I like. FSx is perhaps the worst with at least three user interface mixed. In fact FS4 was more logical. I also know I like to default to a very standard Windows interface. So if you like to load a weather file, aircraft or situation you use the File drop down menu. Any more suggestions?

There are definitely bad things about the FSX user interface but I think there are some good things as well. If you ignore the massive waiting times, the method of getting started is actually pretty good. If you want to just take the default situation and dive in you can, if you want to change plane, location or weather you can pretty easily.

And unless you can figure out a way of loading scenery, weather, traffic etc. very quickly, it makes a lot of sense to be able to choose your scenario before you start loading. On the other hand if you can load quickly then jumping straight into the sim might be better. Or you could even load the currently selected scenario in the background rather than wait for the user to click "Fly Now". Once loaded it could be displayed in the background, perhaps with the camera high above the airplane, with the startup dialog overlaid on top, maybe with transparency to make it look shiny and modern. When the user clicks "Fly Now" (or whatever) the dialog disappears and the camera zooms into the cockpit.

With regard to Windows file dialogs, I agree if you actually need to load arbitrary files, but for less computer-savvy users there's a lot to be said for a flat list rather than letting them browse anywhere on their hard disk and get hopelessly lost...

Colin

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Much depends on what the options of the sim are and if you want few options or lots options to choose from.

For Free Flight I would like to start a flight with a map, instead of selecting country, state, city, airfield, place. It think you could do that in Flight Unlimited. You could also see if the airfield was suitable for a seaplane.

It should be more easy to start where your last flight ended. It should be more simple to start a flight somewhere in the air so you can practice landing with a new airplane or certain circumstances like flight ceiling and weather. And remember this, so you could select this flight later on.

The interface should remember your last aircraft, location, etc, because often I use the same airport to start my flights.

It should be easier to select an aircraft, location, weather, time and season. A drop down menu would be better indeed. The sim could perhaps give a hint. In winter I mostly fly in winterlike conditions, in summer I mostly fly in sunny weather. When I fly in the afternoon I mostly like to fly in the afternoon.

Less views or more meaningful views.

The Settings menu could be easier too. Many items are easy to understand, but there are also many items that are not that easy to understand and should be more self explaining. I always took if for granted that taxying was difficult, till I found out how easy it was to set the pedals.

The Learning Center has too many items under Key Topics, while there are only a few things you want. You either want to know how FS works, or you want to learn flying. The Sitemap is much more useful.

Regards,

Jan

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Well, what I really dont like in FS is the menu bar and how the full screen mode works. I would suggest to forget this overhead menu, because it is limiting the displayable screen size. A right click menu would manage this problem. (optionally the simulation should not pause itself when you use the menu). The big problem with the full screen mode is, if you are running other programs is the background (maps, manuals etc.) then you are not able to use the full screen and you always have the taskbar alive, which is also limiting the usable display size and very annoying during a night time approach.

Also, supporting widescreen and multiscreen environments would be important, but it is not exactly user interface I guess.

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Well, what I really dont like in FS is the menu bar and how the full screen mode works. I would suggest to forget this overhead menu, because it is limiting the displayable screen size. A right click menu would manage this problem. (optionally the simulation should not pause itself when you use the menu). The big problem with the full screen mode is, if you are running other programs is the background (maps, manuals etc.) then you are not able to use the full screen and you always have the taskbar alive, which is also limiting the usable display size and very annoying during a night time approach.

I disagree with a right click menu, because it's really convenient to use this click for cockpit button (like in PMDG BAe, where you use left and right click to press the button)

Another idea is to hide the menu as you can do with the windows bar...

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I propose a concept: One user interface for the all. (simulator, plugins, options, etc.)

Maybe like Apple does, a Tab-Interface (like in the nowadays browsers) where the plugins can show their own GUI on a new tab.

Do you see ? Like that:

tempv.jpg

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Nice one PianoPariss that looks good!:)

I think the REX's GUI looks really slick and cutting edge, but I agree with others that its functionality isn't perfect.

X-plane has suffered from a very poor interface, but that is only on the surface. If you dig deeper X-plane has quite a clever, often bewildering number of options that seems to suit the enthusiast, but is practically no good for beginners. I was having a chat to a retired aircraft mechanic and he loved Austin meyers approach to the GUI, because he was seeing it from an engineers point of view. The difficulty is getting a balance between the two. I still think that Microsoft's FS GUI looks dated and quite clunky at times.

Rhydian

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Regarding the functionality of the user interface, I think that real-time changes in certain modes or types of operation could be very useful.

For instance, I want to start tracking more information at a selected point in the flight, so that I can playback or otherwise use more recorded information for only a certain portion of my flight.

So I might be about to go into final approach and I want detailed analysis or playback from this point in time until I stop the flight, so I select an option on the fly (sorry!).

Someone mentioned being able to start a flight on approach (like X-Plane already does), and this is a specific instance of a more general capability which would be very useful - starting with pre-configured states beyond somewhere on the ground.

Put these together (sort of) and imagine selecting a point in time of a high-data-recorded flight segment, and reflying from that point, starting with the original states, and then comparing the recorded data from these multiple attempts.

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hey lets make this simulator the one that will get alot of people but not alot of people mad cuase many people cant afford good gpu and computers so can we make it like better than fsx but were its frames friendly and not have to have a monster computer to play it please think about the fsx community thanks

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I thought more about my previous post and thought of a better idea. As I said, I kind of like the way X-Plane loads your last flight at start-up, and then you can make changes. But I think the following would be a better way to do it. AFS2012 could load your flight the same way X-Plane does, but it could place your aircraft on the ramp and have you standing on the ramp looking at it. It could have buttons placed around the edges of the screen allowing you to change things (which could appear live as you change them), and then it could have a "Done" button to save the changes and make the buttons disappear. Then you could walk up to the plane and perform your pre-flight, etc. (See my post here.)

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I, for one, am not in favor of having the sim load the last flight at startup. Since I would not want to fly again the same flight it would mean end the flight eveytime to get back to the main menu and a waste of "clicks" and time. I think this would better be a settings option for anyone to choose what suits one better. This is already possible in FSX with the default flight loading or not at startup.

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