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Just as a fun fact, it’s actually quite common for industrial machinery and the like to be controlled with a gaming controller. Like, a hundred things wrong with the submarine trip - but the PlayStation controller is genuinely one of the more legitimate aspects.
They’re simply made well, easy to use, and typically extremely durable and long lasting.
It is also sort of like the WWII US grenade being modeled on a baseball because every young American knew how to throw a ball.
Everyone has used gaming controllers, so it is a familiar control system.
It wasn't actually a playstation controller though. It was a Logitech.
Yeah I know, it’s actually the same one I use on my CNC machine. The OP just said PlayStation as kind of a general purpose term
The Navy has some periscopes on subs that are controlled by an Xbox 360 controller. They cited familiarity with soldiers making training easier, and cost reduction vs the old hardware. It was an easy decision.
And with batteries and wired it has power redundancy
Yeah, they are good controllers.
But it shouldn't have been the wireless one.
And it shouldn't have been the only controls on board.
I bet all those industrial machines with controllers also have a physical emergency button build in.
I mean… most industrial machines have a stop button present on them (though not on the controller). I’m not sure that the sub having a “stop imploding” button on the inside of the hull would have done much good though
Sure...where the failure of the device does not lead to inevitable death.
In a situation where my life is 100% dependent on a device, said device must have gone through appropriate design and testing procedures.
I mean. Yeah. It does. The controller didn’t fail during the submarines trip lol. It was perfectly fine the whole time.
Trying to over engineer a specific entirely new device when incredibly developed options already exist is kind of an engineering mindset failure that would only lead to more problems.
Hundreds of millions of people using it daily isn’t enough for you?
Hundreds of millions of people is likely an overestimate given the PS5 has sold only 50m and while there are likely sometimes multiple users per device, and likely some PC users, it's unlikely there are anywhere near 200m. Additionally most of these users will be using Sony controllers - which I believe was not the case here.
Further: all of those users are not expecting to rely on this device for their personal safety and continued existance.
So just in the same way I don't use a straw for breathing underwater, I also don't get on deep sea submersibles controlled by a PlayStation controller that, at the point of design and manufacture, did not have life support anywhere near its specification.
So to answer your question - no, an imaginary "hundreds of millions" of users using a device for an entirely different purpose is certainly NOT enough for me to entrust my life to. But that's just me - you feel free to do you.
Yes they're used, but they're not THE ONLY method of control as it was in this disaster of a sub.
Don't forget, it's built out of materials which are more suitable for making airplanes than submarines, and is bound by no safety regulations
and the carbon fiber hull was cheap because it's shelf life had expired.
i think it was not the whole hull but one of the materials, the hull was made of that had expired. well, carbon fibre has its strenght when pulled, but when pushing it bends. but if one uses resin on the fibre, then it gets some strenght when pushed too. similar to steel and concrete, while steel can really be pulled a lot, concrete is way better when pushed than steel. steel is quite stable when pushed too, but thats not its main strength. i think the resin was what really held the pressure in the sub, not the carbon fibre, but with this i only have that dangerous type of half-knowledge i'ld have to bring to expert level before doing something stupid (like depending on that to be fully true without really knowing).
in general things often last longer than their expected "minimum" to be used without concern. but in practice one would have to test for damage or if its worn out (like its done with airplane parts at fixed intervals) even without using materials of bad quality. but that was AFAIK what oceangate's management decided to explicitly NOT check the sub for - despite internal demands to do so.
i would not say its not possible to build a secure pressure hull out of carbon fibre, or out of carbon fibre of not the best quality, or a hull of a different shape than a sphere, or a hull out of different materials with different bending behaviors under pressure, or when such components are "glued" together on the edges that do the different bending, but ALL of this at the same time and without even checking at least after a new maximum depth was reached? not to mention crackling sounds after which heared one would want to double check. Even the wright brothers seemed more cautious to me.
today one would at least get some wear level statistics with unmanned vehicles in a slightly deeper than intended depth to have security margins and afterwards throughout checks for the parts that are important, single points of failures or are one of the proudly new developed.
Phew, at least it’s not a Logitech controller
I, for one, welcome the bourgeoisie crushing machine.
It was a logitech controller, either an f310 or f710. The f310 is one of the best budget controllers ever, and I keep 4 at all times to play modded smash bros. There were a million things wrong with oceangate, but the controller wasn't one of them.
Logitech is the king of the budget device. I've had the same wireless mouse for almost 10 years give or take. Best 10 bucks I ever spent.
Counterpoint - I've had two Logitech mice, both dired with the same issue (dying RMB switch), and a Logitech keyboard which lost a key and you can't buy replacements.
It was the F710 wireless one. I only remember because I thought they should at least used the wired 310 to eliminate interference and/or lag since you're using the damn thing to steer a vehicle. I barely trust wireless controllers to save my life in Elden Ring; I sure as shit wouldn't put my actual life on the line with one.
Aww, I was really excited because I thought it was gonna turn into the intro text from Iron Lung.
No, just memeing about Oceangate again
In December 2023, Szymanski faced criticism online for increasing the price of the game by two dollars
???
Yeah? And? If a dev wants to increase the cost of their game, they can do that. It's a single dev, not a AAA studio. Don't like it? Don't buy it. Iirc he also released an update that added a bunch of lore stuff.
The game is an hour long, one time thrill and is excellent at it. However, there is no variation nor surprises after the first run, so it was reasonably priced for like a dollar or two. The criticism is the game became a meme game that caused the dev to double the price to capitalize on the fame. It's one of those situations which leaves no one happy.
It still befuddles me, especially since it's a specific format for a horror story: A bunch of rich people pay through the nose for a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and of course it kills them (though the final girl might escape). The Menu was a recent example. Maybe to get Stockton Rushed should now mean to buy a super expensive experience or trip or thing that kills you.
A drug named Stockton Rush would be super expensive, and the most amazing trip ever, and fatally toxic.
So if you're hiring someone to chart out your trip to Everest or the Titanic or the moon or something, it's good to get your legal team to do some due diligence and make sure the company knows what its doing. (For a deeper dive, check out Behind the Bastards' two-parter on Stockton Rush. All the warning signs were there he was doing mad science and not listening to his deep-sea experts.
Also, the door that only can be opened from the outside was total early foreshadowing.
The restaurant for The Menu would have checked out unless you had an inside man there for the previous few months before the events of the movie. They operated for years, right up until the final night, as one of the best restaurants in the world.
The problem wasn't the game controller.
The problem was using a composite construction for the pressure vessel that wasn't pressure tested before diving.
irrc it was pressure tested, just not stress tested.
a.k.a the first dive is almost guaranteed to go fine, but the next ones cause the material to gradually fail
According to Behind The Bastards they could hear the carbon fiber hull deteriorating below 4000' and Rush dismissed it as settling.
and the underrated acrylic dome used for the window
I would trust a PlayStation controller with my life. Not Logitech.
okay but how are you gonna fit an entire generation of humans into one tiny submersible?
I think deep underwater there is enough pressure to push them all it.
into a fine paste from the pressure
Woah there sir, this is factually incorrect. It was an Xbox controller. Even more frightening.
logitech*, even worse
I wouldn't really call that a Xbox controller
Based on the colors of A,B,X,Y I would say it was made with the intention of being used on an Xbox.