Desireable level of realism in a comabt flightsim?

[Blackdog_kt]

So, i guess by the same line of reason the pop-up radio menu in IL2 should go as well? See, there's two sides of this coin. One is features and the others is how to manipulate them, which means interface/controls. We want the features, but we don't always have adequate hardware for all the controls, so we have to make "work-arounds". These can a lot of times be unrealistic or non-immersive, so the question becomes:

Would you rather have these features to the expense of having a not always ideal interface if the result was a simulated aircraft performing closer to the real one, ie a net result of increased realism? Or would you rather scrap these features altogether because of a dislike for the interface and have a net result of reduced realism?

I would choose the first one. Choosing the second is like a console player saying "my gamepad is not as accurate as a mouse, so i want to have aiming assist" and indeed most console FPS titles do. The thing is, flight simmers are primarily PC gamers and the PC is all about options. Sure, have your aiming assist, but what about the other guy who likes the challenge of hitting targets with a crappy gamepad? Make it an option, have your fun with aiming assist and don't drag down the challenge factor for the rest of the players who want manual aiming.

In the IL2 context, it would be like saying "I don't want pop-up menus. I want to give direct, non-standardized voice commands to AI wingmen that have an intelligent speech recognition routine. As long as i can't have that, let's disable the TAB menu and have the AI of my aircraft give commands on my behalf automatically to my AI wingmen".

Well, there were flight sims in the past that did this. In 1990 or earlier. There were also many sims (especially combat sims) that didn't model the intricacies of flying a real aircraft. They've started doing it during the last couple of years or more. Is there a trend developing here or is it just my idea?

By the way, sorry if i'm coming off a bit aggressive here as that's not my intention at all. I'm simply being a bit more blunt than usual to illustrate the point i'm trying to make.

I agree that we can't have everything. What does that tell us? We need compromises. Now i don't mean "include what i want and ommit a meaningful campaign experience" because i'm very interested in that as a primarily offline player. That's the same reason i'd like to see detailed working machinery. That's a part of immersion as well, at least for me.

Sorry, but being able to firewall the throttle in most planes and keep it there for all but a minure or two at most is neither realistic nor immersive for me, and it spoils the fun just as much as my AI wingmen not following orders or crashing one after the other on a hill during final approach. Not to mention the fact that some planes are built more or less to specs in that regard, while others can exceed them with impunity.

What happens is that there are 2-3 interconnected issues, which however can be debated separately as far as what they can offer to the new sim. The reason they all get tangled up is that they are co-dependent.
An aircraft is more than its shape, sounds, armamanent,FM and DM and a 2010 next-gen sim should reflect that.


So, if i may go out on a limb here and suppose that we will be able to manage such subsystems in the higher realism settings, please tell me how are we going to control them without a $300-$500 investment in extra hardware like CH button panels? This is the feature-interface co-dependency right there.

For someone who doesn't want pop-up menus and clickable pits for example, it will still be possible to map everything to keyboard and HOTAS. Heck, let's go the extra mile and make the control bindings aircraft specific. Make your favorite setup, save it as "BF109E", click a little checkmark that says "default control scheme for..." and choose the corresponding aircraft from the drop down menu. Copy it, rename it, change maybe 5 bindings that are different between a Spit and a 109, save it with a different name and assign it as default for the Spit, and so on.

The thing is, i hear a lot of "no it can't be done" opinions with little to back them up substantially (at least from my point of view), while I've given three possible solutions, neither of which is exclusive to the other two. In fact, they can pretty much be used simultaneously to suit everyone's taste.

I'm beginning to think someone was right when they said that a dislike for certain interfaces is being used as an excuse to ommit certain features that people don't want to deal with, to the detriment of overall realism in the sim.
And since i'm genuinely interested as to why, especially when everyone will be able to disable what they don't like to use, i simply don't accept that it "can't be done" until someone proves why in a satisfactory (that means technical) manner. Don't tell me it can't be done if you can't tell me why not, or do it anyway but i won't believe you.

I say that it can be done, but i've also given three interface options that if used in unison (which they can), they will be more than enough to manage a realistic pilot workload with the limited means we have in our disposal and without making it harder than it was in reality. If anyone wants to convince me of the contrary, it's time to put some solid, convincing arguments on the table that amount to more than a plain "no, i don't like this in combat sims", because it's not only about what some of us like.It's about including as much as possible of what everyone likes, make it optional and let each one of us choose.

If someone wants to lower the realism settings to suit his taste and get a better experience i'm just fine with it, as long as he does it in his personal realism settings screen and doesn't drag down my settings along with his.

So far, the ONLY convincing argument was that it will take up valuable development resources from other areas. That's not convincing because the other guy's opinion has more merit than mine or vice versa, it's convincing simply because our opinions have equal merit and naturally, if there's a limited amount of development resources we all "campaign" to have them allocated to the features we like most.

The thing is though, we already have information that hints at the possibility of enhanced systems management, so i guess there's no reason to say "do something else instead of it" if it's indeed already supported (ie coded). What's done is done (if it's indeed done). Let's see if we can get a confirmation of some sort, so we can discuss how we can make it work in way that will not tax the development team too much, while having enough options for us to tweak to our comfort. They won't have to build everything on their own if they give us some clever and easy to use tools to help them building.

There are more than one ways to skin a cat.