I just found out that Team Daidalos are not just giving throttle support, but also individual prop pitch, fuel mix, and radiator to axis with 12 settings instead of just 5 through keyboard cycling we have now, and that they somehow got everything to actually work 'right' (not like now, where you only select one engine at a time, then it's settings are cloned to any new engine to select, making everything totally messed up beyond only using the throttles, prop pitch especially).
It is amazing news. These things are not possible to do without access to the source code, although I did pretty well with most of the functions I think.
Problem is we have to wait until the end of march at the earliest. In these circles, I keep my head cool and accept that delays are a part of life.
I hope they can also get seperate wheel brakes on axis properly through the game, but I don't think that's going to happen. But I'm excited about the prop pitch support, beacuse that can't be made to work quite right without the source, and I do want that feature for myself.
Next project for me is to release G940 button color light support. It won't be using IL-2 info directly, but instead you just run it in the background, then tell it when you are starting a new flight (and if it's on the ground or in the air) and it'll reset to the assumed positions. When you click the 'gear up' button it will go from green to yellow, and then a timer will make it wait the average time gears take to rise in game - and then it will switch to red. IL-2 is very reliable in this respect.
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On the topic of building simpits/controllers etc. I am always seeking immersion, realism, these kind of things. Often thinking of these things, I have come to the realizations:
1. With today's display sizes, headtracking and quality cockpits/instruments inside the simulators; the aircraft instruments, levers, switches - everything - is large and instantly easily readable to us.
Consequence: Seperate screens, indicators, instruments, anything to look at, at all, is not only wasteful but even confusing, since we then get duplicate instruments, serving no purpose, in fact being unimmersive. See exception at the end before protesting.
2. While we can see everything just fine and in detail through our display, interacting with it is a different matter. Using a mouse to move a pointer on the screen to 'manipulate' something is unrealistic on so many levels - a strongly unimmersive, detaching experience. A minor exception is having modern jets with touch displays - having your own touch display displaying the same info to touch is more real and immersive than it is not.
Consequence: To have controls to manipulate and feel, in their relative correct position, is important and promotes immersion. Our rudder pedals, throttles, quadrants, and flightstick, are necessary for interacting with the aircraft and what a pilot would feel. But they don't need to look the same way - in fact, ideally we should not look at them at all when using them, instead keeping our eyes on the (virtual) cockpit alone. There's a gap there currently as there is no virtual representation of your hand moving.
3. The major exception. If one can have real sim cockpit detailed and complete enough to supply all the instrumentation and controls needed, and a display so encompassing and large that headtracking is no longer used, a virtual cockpit would be unrealistic (having two cockpits? Come on). Then one would turn off the cockpit rendering in game and position the mega display so one's own cockpit covers the same area in the field of vision. This is how commercial simulators operate.
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The future definitely will go in only one direction: Bringing displays onto our heads and miniaturized is the only logical course of development, with head tracking obviously being part of it. Then the rendering of the cockpit will be supremely realistic and all ratios and scales completely true to life. Wearing 'hand trackers' is the most likely add-on for that time, so we can see our hands move around.
When that time comes, simmers will attempt to put a stick with the same feeling as the one in the plane they fly, in the same position, and the same for the throttle. The rest of the controls of an aircraft will be virtual (i.e. no tactile feedback, you are pushing stuff in the air) - at least it will look like you are in a cockpit, and your hand is actually touching things without substance, flipping switches, etc.