I vote yes, at least as an option. One man's cheat is another man's tool. Going back to the original IL2 I've never used icons because it spoils any illusion of being real life to me. On the other hand I've always used the HUD and felt lost when it wasn't available online. I think we all see our version of "realism" as we want to.

That's pretty much my take on things. The throttle position sliders are acceptable because in reality a pilot can simply run his hand over the controls to see how they are set without having to look at them, this is a feature that simulates the interaction of knowing a cockpit layout and muscle memory on the pilot's part. We don't look at our controls when driving a car either, we can perfectly set the air-conditioning or change radio stations while still keeping our eyes on the road, because we know the car's layout. That's what the engine sliders represent and people who have better game controllers (throttle quadrants etc) that give them the same kind of physical feedback can then turn off the in-game sliders that simulate this effect.

The speedbar on the other hand should be an option that can be turned off by the server. Again, we can sense speed and judge engine RPMs by sound in a car, but to know exactly how much speed we're making or the precise engine RPMs we need to glance down at the dashboard. This is what the lack of speedbar simulates and we also have a "glance at dashboard" command that makes it very easy to take a quick look at the instruments. This makes it fully possible to fly by the gauges like it happens in real life in many regimes of flight.

As for the compass, all we need is a command similar to the "glance at dashboard" command we now have, but centered on the compass: keep the key pressed to look at the compass, release the key to return to the previous view.

Either that or the ability to save custom viewpoints like RoF does it and the compass issue is solved without the need for a speedbar.

Don't get me wrong, i'm all for options so if people want to use a speedbar they should have the option to do so. I just don't want to see it in full switch servers because i consider it a step of regression: much of the work done in CoD in regards to cockpits and systems modeling is taking us one step closer to how fights were managed by the pilots back then, it was a trade-off between SA and managing your airplane and that had been sorely missing for a long time from prop-sims. Now that we finally have it, it makes no sense to eliminate this feature globally.

If people can't handle it, don't like it, or just want to mess around in pure dogfight mode for a while they should certainly be able to sidestep it and the way to do it is already there: just add a speedbar option in the difficulty settings. However, the people who also like the new tactical challenges enforced by having to manage your aircraft should have a choice too, we can't just enforce speedbar globally, it would be robbing the game of one of its major improvements: the ability and need to finally fly by instruments and make the correct tactical choices to offset the diminishing of SA caused by "head down in the gauges" time.

As an option, sure, server enforced. As a blanket change for everyone, definitely not: those that want is should be able to use it, those that don't want it shouldn't be forced to use it ;)

Just wait till we get later in the war and have to read the fuel gauge on Hawk 87s or Yaks.

At least the American planes have a proper compass and 3 axis trim.

+1

I prefer the old Merlin cockpit sounds simply because I can no longer easily tell the rpm in the 2600-2900 range by sound. Whether realistic or not this should be changed (at least a little) to allow easier determination of rpm since we are missing a lot of other indicators that a real pilot would have for this like vibration.