Forum - View topic
INTEREST: Why Are Gundam Seed FREEDOM's Cockpits Full of Buttons? Blame the Designer's Touch-Screen




Note: this is the discussion thread for this article
Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
MFrontier



Joined: 13 Apr 2014
Posts: 20003
PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2025 9:03 am Reply with quote
A Mobile Suit that only a Coordinator could probably pilot...
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Tenchi



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4660
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2025 1:15 pm Reply with quote
Why shouldn't they have physical buttons? Physical buttons, knobs, levers, dials, and switches that you can easily distinguish by touch will always be at an advantage in cockpit-type situations where you don't always want to be glancing down at touchscreens.

It's one of the main reasons I still prefer taking pictures with proper cameras instead of phones, having tactile buttons that I don't need to look at directly. (The other main reasons are larger sensors and optical zoom but those are beyond the scope of this discussion.)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website My Anime My Manga
Fluwm
Moderator


Joined: 28 Jul 2009
Posts: 1620
PostPosted: Tue May 06, 2025 10:24 pm Reply with quote
Just from a creative standpoint, it's always going to be more visually interesting to have characters pushing buttons, flipping switches and pully levers than tapping on a touch screen. Gives the animator more interesting things to do and the audience more interesting things to watch.

On a semi-related note (live action is very different from animation, of course) this was a bit of an issue with Star Trek TNG, back in the 80s. For the set-design, they went with all touch screens, which basically meant glass panels with a bunch of lit-up buttons on them, none of which corresponded to anything or reacted in to what the actors would doing. (This was before Windows was a thing, so even GUIs weren't really a thing for anyone to be familiar with.) They had a fair amount of trouble getting the actors to figure out how to play with them in such a way that their characters looked like they knew what they were doing.

Which is a helluva lot easier with knobs, buttons and dials.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group