http://garywachs.com/pages/dgcp1.htm#CompareShipControl
(btw, while I don't know much about cars, I do know a lot about submarines, since I am a board certified submariner, silver dolphins and all!
and I did stand the helm watch on the USS Florida)On the far left, you have the USS Virginia, which is a brand new class of submarine being built for the modern anti-terrorism missions in shallow water (she can still do the deep water missions). Notice it is ENTIRELY glass cockpit, which is unusual for the Navy but I guess it has local battery backup in addition to being on the Vital Bus (the vital bus gets powered even when the diesel and nuclear reactor are both down and the boat is going off batteries). Plus, they have a chief (paygrade E-7, like a sergeant in the army) at that watch, which tells me that it integrates the helm and the Chief of the Watch. That screen in the far left of the Virginia pic looks like a ballast control panel, where they control how much water is being stored on the boat for buoyancy (Archimedes law: if a given vessel takes on more water she will sink, if she has less mass than the water she displaces, she will float), as well as controlling when human waste storage and other storage tanks are discharged. On the florida it was all physical switches and digital/analog indicators.
I heard that on the Virginia, the control is fly by wire; you're giving digital commands to the computer which actually turns the boat as commanded. On my boat, you could control it without the computer, as the helm was hydraulically connected to the actual rudder.
We did have autopilot as well, but that was rarely used. The computer was considered too slow to be trusted if fast changes had to be made (this was 80s computer tech). I would guess that has changed on the Virginia, she is probably on autopilot most of the time.
Next to that you have two views of the USS Seawolf, it's one generation behind the USS Virginia, but only 3 seawolf class boats were built. Anyway, you can see it does have the large digital screens, but also large analog gages as backup. If the AC power on the boat fails, the analog gages will still work. on the left in that picture you can see a Ballast Control Panel, it's the panel with the series of 11 red lights.
Finally you have a picture of my boat, the USS Florida. Unfortunately you can't blow that one up because the link is bad. But our digital displays were smaller, and the analog was bigger.
When I was on the helm you were supposed to watch both. For example, if you are controlling course, you have to keep it within 1 degree of ordered course. You have an analog course indicator, and underneath that is a digital course indicator. under both of these is an analog indicator that shows you how much your rudder is shifted. It also has a digital indicator, red LEDs that tell you how far to the left or right.
What you don't want to do is "single stick" where one guy controls both course and depth, that's hard!
Point of showing all this is that KITT should have looked at least like the Seawolf, with analog as a backup.
btw -- the boats are a lot smaller than they make it look in the movies, huh? close quarters..
let me put it this way, on the helm, if Dive (the guy sitting behind the helm) has bad breath, you would know! I had some good times driving though, even though I sucked!!--Brian
