In article , Fox Hound
wrote:

Many man-centuries of effort has been expended in the research of
flight instrument presentation

Indeed.

Your instrument scan is smaller with tapes, but its harder to see
trend movement.

That's true, although that issue can be somewhat overcome.

For instance, the B744 PFD displays a speed tape, but also has a green
trending arrow to show both magnitude and direction for a prediction of
the speed in 10 seconds from now based on current rate of change.

Obviously, it's not always perfect -- will always be some situations
where you have a sudden large displacement that isn't indicative of
where you will be in 10 seconds from now. But as a whole, it's generally
very accurate.

In use, it seems to be pretty effective for dampening some of the PIO
issues, though I'm sure that more experienced flight crew members won't
even need to see the trending information to anticipate appropriate
flight control response for any given situation.

It won't ever replace the VSI, but it'll give a reasonable off-the-cuff
quick and visual look at trending data without having to spend much time
mentally number-crunching things. Very useful in high workload situations.

If I recall correctly, Airbus EFIS displays takes Human Factors (HF)
design to the next level and presents the data very darned well. Makes
even greater use of colo[u]rs but to good User Interface (UI) effect.

I'm more familiar with the Boeing EFIS design, so I had to pay more
attention to various seemingly subtle (but really important) features of
the Airbus EFIS displays.

Anyway, I can certainly see the pros and cons for both style of gauges.

Just saying that the issues with tapes can be overcome effectively.

-Dan