In-flight graphics: a dearth of pizzazz
There are some corners of life in which—for no apparent reason other than that is how it has always been done—things are done very weirdly indeed. Having just been off on my holidays, I’ve been thinking about this in the context of aeroplane design.
I don’t mean all that nonsense with wind tunnels and aerodynamics and coefficients. Not the stuff that keeps the machine aloft. Not the physics. About that, I know bupkis. I mean the stuff that shapes your experience of flying—that gives commercial air travel its flavour. Isn’t it odd? Take the dynamic map: common to large aeroplanes everywhere. No matter how recently built the aircraft seems to be, no matter how sophisticated and interactive its entertainment system, the map still looks like someone knocked it up on an old BBC Micro.
Plop. Up comes a screen showing a close-up map. Well, kind of close-up. Greeny-yellow for land. Blue for water. Two features only are marked: a white square labelled “London” and a blocky white blob marked, incongruously, “Croydon.” Between London and Croydon is you, the intrepid traveller, represented by a blocky white aeroplane, pointing south-by-southeast. The aeroplane is approximately the size of Wolverhampton. As you watch, it jumps an awkward pixel or two closer to Croydon.
Plop. Up comes a screen showing a long-range map. This is what the Mercator projection might look like if you were wearing old-school 3D glasses and had been eating magic mushrooms all afternoon. Now three features are marked: the white square “London,” the blob called “Croydon,” and another white square somewhere in Africa labelled “Accra.” The icon representing the aeroplane has not scaled: it is now the size of Scotland. It jumps another awkward pixel, and rotates minutely in the direction of Accra, or “Accra,” as it should properly be called.
Plop. Up comes a screen even less sophisticated and informative than the previous two. It tells you the time at your point of arrival and the time at your destination, and how much longer it’s going to take you to get there.
Plop. Up comes a screen that tells you the altitude, air-speed, and the temperature outside the aeroplane. This is information that—if it has any effect on you whatsoever—will simply give you the fear. The figures, to the layman, simply translate to “scarily fast,” “scarily high up” and “brass monkeys.” Plop. And we’re back to the close-up again. “Croydon” is a pixel or two closer.
These four screens cycle blandly for the duration of the flight, tirelessly dispensing little or no meaningful information like some sort of high-altitude teletext. (Teletext? Younger readers: ask your parents. It was like a crap beta of the internets.) The maps, surely, are the design equivalent of a vestigial tail or an appendix. We are living in an age in which, thanks to Google Earth, I can see a cat sitting on the roof of my car, from outer space, on my mobile phone. It cannot be beyond the designers of aeroplanes to make the map a bit more detailed, or to represent a plane with a bit more pizzazz than this giant white fuzzy-felt schematic with one wing eclipsing “Croydon.” Its crapness must serve some sort of psychological purpose, mustn’t it? It must have been left there deliberately, in order to calm and reassure nervous travellers—part, perhaps, of the whole infantilising process, along with being strapped into a chair and given a bottle every few hours by someone in a starchy uniform.
It’s not just the map. A couple of years ago I reported on one of the Airbus A380’s maiden flights from Singapore to London. This new-built titan of the air had not only a full complement of no-smoking lights (redundant now nobody can smoke on any flights anywhere), but came fitted with ashtrays! It turned out they were included to comply with some obscure and outmoded regulation of America’s Federal Aviation Authority—but it was a key part of the whole retro-ness of the aviation experience.
With airline meals, it’s the same thing: 1940s-style formal dining, except out of plastic boxes. Aperitifs on doilies first, ice-and-a-slice punctiliously dispensed with tongs, and nibbles on the side. Followed by salad, meat-and-veg, roll-and-butter on the side, a cheese-and-biscuit course, and something hideous out of a Marguerite Patten book for pud. Coffee afterwards, natcherly.
Only by sending us back to childhood and bombarding us with useless information in primary colours can we stave off the dreadful, dreadful fear of death; only by invoking the jaunty quaintness of a bygone age can we distract ourselves from the likelihood of exploding in a fireball at 30,000 feet and being identified only by a handful of blackened teeth. That’s my theory. But then again, it could just be that the maps are a bit crap.
There are some corners of life in which—for no apparent reason other than that is how it has always been done—things are done very weirdly indeed. Having just been off on my holidays, I’ve been thinking about this in the context of aeroplane design.
I don’t mean all that nonsense with wind tunnels and aerodynamics and coefficients. Not the stuff that keeps the machine aloft. Not the physics. About that, I know bupkis. I mean the stuff that shapes your experience of flying—that gives commercial air travel its flavour. Isn’t it odd? Take the dynamic map: common to large aeroplanes everywhere. No matter how recently built the aircraft seems to be, no matter how sophisticated and interactive its entertainment system, the map still looks like someone knocked it up on an old BBC Micro.
Plop. Up comes a screen showing a close-up map. Well, kind of close-up. Greeny-yellow for land. Blue for water. Two features only are marked: a white square labelled “London” and a blocky white blob marked, incongruously, “Croydon.” Between London and Croydon is you, the intrepid traveller, represented by a blocky white aeroplane, pointing south-by-southeast. The aeroplane is approximately the size of Wolverhampton. As you watch, it jumps an awkward pixel or two closer to Croydon.
Plop. Up comes a screen showing a long-range map. This is what the Mercator projection might look like if you were wearing old-school 3D glasses and had been eating magic mushrooms all afternoon. Now three features are marked: the white square “London,” the blob called “Croydon,” and another white square somewhere in Africa labelled “Accra.” The icon representing the aeroplane has not scaled: it is now the size of Scotland. It jumps another awkward pixel, and rotates minutely in the direction of Accra, or “Accra,” as it should properly be called.
Plop. Up comes a screen even less sophisticated and informative than the previous two. It tells you the time at your point of arrival and the time at your destination, and how much longer it’s going to take you to get there.
Plop. Up comes a screen that tells you the altitude, air-speed, and the temperature outside the aeroplane. This is information that—if it has any effect on you whatsoever—will simply give you the fear. The figures, to the layman, simply translate to “scarily fast,” “scarily high up” and “brass monkeys.” Plop. And we’re back to the close-up again. “Croydon” is a pixel or two closer.
These four screens cycle blandly for the duration of the flight, tirelessly dispensing little or no meaningful information like some sort of high-altitude teletext. (Teletext? Younger readers: ask your parents. It was like a crap beta of the internets.) The maps, surely, are the design equivalent of a vestigial tail or an appendix. We are living in an age in which, thanks to Google Earth, I can see a cat sitting on the roof of my car, from outer space, on my mobile phone. It cannot be beyond the designers of aeroplanes to make the map a bit more detailed, or to represent a plane with a bit more pizzazz than this giant white fuzzy-felt schematic with one wing eclipsing “Croydon.” Its crapness must serve some sort of psychological purpose, mustn’t it? It must have been left there deliberately, in order to calm and reassure nervous travellers—part, perhaps, of the whole infantilising process, along with being strapped into a chair and given a bottle every few hours by someone in a starchy uniform.
It’s not just the map. A couple of years ago I reported on one of the Airbus A380’s maiden flights from Singapore to London. This new-built titan of the air had not only a full complement of no-smoking lights (redundant now nobody can smoke on any flights anywhere), but came fitted with ashtrays! It turned out they were included to comply with some obscure and outmoded regulation of America’s Federal Aviation Authority—but it was a key part of the whole retro-ness of the aviation experience.
With airline meals, it’s the same thing: 1940s-style formal dining, except out of plastic boxes. Aperitifs on doilies first, ice-and-a-slice punctiliously dispensed with tongs, and nibbles on the side. Followed by salad, meat-and-veg, roll-and-butter on the side, a cheese-and-biscuit course, and something hideous out of a Marguerite Patten book for pud. Coffee afterwards, natcherly.
Only by sending us back to childhood and bombarding us with useless information in primary colours can we stave off the dreadful, dreadful fear of death; only by invoking the jaunty quaintness of a bygone age can we distract ourselves from the likelihood of exploding in a fireball at 30,000 feet and being identified only by a handful of blackened teeth. That’s my theory. But then again, it could just be that the maps are a bit crap.
