It would be better but I find the mouse thumb and using latch mode on one of my buttons is pretty well close to having a zoom slider. I would think that at some point it will be introduced as an assignable axis, but for the time being.....

Yes it is a good solution as long as your stick has a thumb mouse. I just meant that a slider would be a more broadly applicable solution.

There must be a way to assign a zoom axis or slider. I see it being done on this YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-R1W...e_gdata_player

This guy in YT video - Lobisomem - use JoyToKey to handle ZOOM.

Sokol1

Indeed, this should have been basic functionality from the start.

I just wish we had a toggle FOV key. I haven't been able to find one.

I used to have Toggle FOV on my joystick to switch between all three in IL-2 1946.

Now I have to map three keys for it. Track IR is great, but leaning forward towards the gunsight only zooms on the cockpit, not the actual target.

I've currently mapped the nearest and furthest FOV keys to my joystick, but I still want that toggle fov key back :/

I find this game or any flight simulator impossible to play without a zoom axis
and the workaround still involves using two buttons at once.

Snapping views in and out with the 30/70/90 fovs is absurd because you'll lose the target during the snap, what is needed is a way to zoom smoothly in and out like in every other flight sim game there is. Except Cliffs of Dover.

It's apparent the views systems and commands in this game were designed by someone with no experience in flight sims and were given no thought at all in regards to playability. Why on earth would a basic view command the zoom require two buttons to be held down at the same time and not be assignable in the menu?
Why was this issue not addressed in any of the patches?

It makes sense otherwise it would be like giving pilots binoculars. The TrackIR zoom is a nice trade off but because of how it works the enemy cannot be enlarged that much. The FOV is ok but I find I stay in FOV 90 all the time save for when I try to identify a contact. I don't lose contacts switching between FOVs.

All in all I'd say it's ok, but the LOD and pixellation of contacts is the problem.

Hood

Zoom is needed to make up for the lack of resolution on a PC screen compared to real life. If your eyesight was as bad as 1080p you would have a very short career as a fighter pilot. In a PC game you need the zoom just to be able to see your own cockpit.
All flight sim games have a zoom feature. CloD has one as well it's just terribly and awkwardly handled. I can't imagine why it is so badly done in this game.
It's not an excuse to say zoom isn't realistic. The game has the feature but why it requires two commands at once and why it's not mappable is a total mystery.
DCS and RoF are much better and more realistic simulators and they don't see the need to make the game more real by forcing the zoom feature to be awkwardly unusable.

Here I use a combination of mouse down with right mouse button to get smooth zooming, This is using joytokey which is a free program, you can change the speed too.