How do you see what the joystick is pointing at without looking at the screen it’s controlling.
Radio volume, climate controls, and drive/transmission controls are all necessary for safe operation and should be able to be used without taking eyes off the road if needed. There should be federal mandates to keep those controls off of gaze required touch screens. (I’m looking at you VW, of which I own 3 classic examples, but would never consider a current gen one).
I feel like not enough people realize how amazingly simple and tactile the rotating dial is for doing anything in a car. And especially the placement being down by your arm makes it so easy. I can feel where all those buttons are without taking my eyes off the road.
I suppose the advantage on aircraft and spacecraft is that they consolidate functions so you don't have to have 90,000 switches in the cockpit, half of which you won't ever need.
Anything you need to find in an emergency absolutely should be a physical switch but anything else can probably be a UI interface.
But in the car you need to keep your eyes on the road at all times, which isn't so much of a requirement in the air.
If you can consolidate the UI to make it with work with touchscreen, you can make it work with something like Keyboard + trackball mouse and you can get rid of that touchscreen. I know it’s not the same stake situation but have people forgotten how much functionality blackberry had with QWERTY and few more buttons. Shame that the company went out the way it did
So much this, it makes no sense for using a portable phone to be illegal while driving but yet my car stereo can be a full on entertainment system and require me to have zero feedback to change the channel or answer a call.
I'm pretty sure they are for safety critical controls, such as in an aircraft cockpit. In the automotive world, we like to keep it jazzy and smooth, like my romantic life.
They aren't. Light ircraft now use touchscreens that you are supposed to use while bouncing around. They had a knob for a while but then it seemed touchscreens took over. With the knob you still had to look, it at least you didn't have to aim at a bouncing spot on the screen.