What the.....?

Obviouosly this was hypothetical... Relax guys.. sheesshhhh..

It sounds like you just need more exposure to the tape style airspeed. I never saw any issues with it, especially with the trend vector right on it. For your slow flight example, you shouldn't really be looking at the airspeed indicator much anyway depending on how you were taught. Keep working at it, you'll get the hang of it sooner or later.

With all the desktop trainers Garmin puts out, it hardly makes sense not to have one on your PC and make use of it to build proficiency with the system. Garmin knew there would be a massive culture shock for GA pilots using such an advanced panel. Early on, they poured money into product support and training. They made clearly written user manuals and inexpensive, quality PC trainers for this very reason. When I read about people having trouble with the system, I always wonder how many hours of desktop time they log. If you fly the desktop an hour a day for a month you will be a master of the system. The training CDs run $25, each is a working replica of an existing airframe installation. In addition, many of the PC flight sims now have G1000 panels, although in my experience they are not as useful for learning.

LOL! Awesome response!

Or he's a freight dog headed home on his "Part 91 return home leg":cool: The real question is do you have an alarm clock loud enough, or drained a tank out which woke you up?

What I'm trying to say, but didn't phrase very well earlier, is just look at the trend (or direction) the numbers are going. This will help you more easily react to changes. The same you would look at a standard airspeed indicator, you don't try to figure out the exact airspeed your at right? ;) Does that make more sense?

The tape metaphor of the interface is bad
 

Yes, for me the problems are 1) the tape is moving up when the air speed is decreasing and the tape is moving down when the air speed is increasing, and 2) the tape hides the range, and only shows the current value.

With a traditional gage the needle goes down when the airspeed goes down and the needle goes up when the speed goes up. I can see the needle position relative to the entire range of speed. It’s very easy to read..

Those are great ergonomics observations. You get "used to it", but that doesn't mean it's optimal. It's likely more that with the tape you can pack more info in closer together, which also has issues, but allows for more things to be displayed at once or selected.

You have to retrain your brain to “accept” 77-83 G1000 being the “same” as 80kts analog.
Understand that an anolog instrument has hysteresis. Look it up.
Your speed is fluctuating just as much as it is with the G1000, it’s just within the error of the instrument which makes it look like you’re at constant speed.
Im taking a couple of intellectual shortcuts here for simplicity sake.
The G1000 speed tape has the same color indications.
With an analog instrument you glance at the angle of the needle. Straight down 6 o’clock position is close to 100-110kts in a C172.
so without reading the number on the scale you can determine if your speed is safe.
5 o’clock too slow, 7 o’clock too fast and 6’ o’clock is good.
Stop staring at the numbers, look at the relative position of the speed bug.
Flying is dynamic not static.

Pick a random number and keep dividing it by 10, for practical purposes you’ll reach zero, mathematically you don’t and never will.