SOW: your thoughts on clickable cockpits and realistic start-up

[Mysticpuma]

Personally, I have no preference, but I WOULD like to have an avatar/actor in the cockpit, that I can see when sat in the seat.

So engine switch on would have my 'virtual' hand reachinf forward and pressing switches on the panel and then setting hand down on throttle and other onto stick.

That for me would be far more immersive than moving a pointer aorund a 2d image to click it on.

So give us a first-person POV actor in the cockpit that makes it look like it's not a ghost plane flying

Cheers, MP.

[tagTaken2]

I think Oleg's reasoning is correct... the number of people who will always use the full startup sequence is in inverse proportion to the effort required to make it more accurate.

As for clickable cockpits, the less said the better. I don't even use them in Falcon. Too fiddly, too slow, makes you a sitting duck in combat.

[PE_Tigar]

Originally Posted by tagTaken2

I think Oleg's reasoning is correct... the number of people who will always use the full startup sequence is in inverse proportion to the effort required to make it more accurate.

As for clickable cockpits, the less said the better. I don't even use them in Falcon. Too fiddly, too slow, makes you a sitting duck in combat.

Three things:

- at least the online dudes would use the clickable cockpit 100% of times if it was the server setting .

- touchscreens will probably begin to move into the meainstream 2010/2011. Win7 already has touchscreen interface support.

- realistic CEM (including startup and cooldown/shutdown) would add a lot of realism to the game ane open up new possibilities. Not to mention that it would give a lot more to the player even from the limited set of airplanes that we'd have at the beginning. Flying even a simple airplane like a C-150 in reality is infinitely more rewarding experience than flying a Corsair or another complicated airplane in Il-2 just because of the procedures you have to follow. Frankly, as for how much it does for the sim, check DCS forum - everybody has their socks blown off by the realism of the thing. It feels real, and serious - that's what's so good about it.

[robtek]

It seems that some people don´t get it that a clickable cockpit can also be used with mapped keys!!!
YOU DON´T HAVE TO USE THE MOUSE.
But you can if you want.
And a full real online server should use the most realistic cem thats possible.

[tagTaken2]

Originally Posted by PE_Tigar

Three things:

- at least the online dudes would use the clickable cockpit 100% of times if it was the server setting .

- touchscreens will probably begin to move into the meainstream 2010/2011. Win7 already has touchscreen interface support.

- realistic CEM (including startup and cooldown/shutdown) would add a lot of realism to the game ane open up new possibilities. Not to mention that it would give a lot more to the player even from the limited set of airplanes that we'd have at the beginning. Flying even a simple airplane like a C-150 in reality is infinitely more rewarding experience than flying a Corsair or another complicated airplane in Il-2 just because of the procedures you have to follow. Frankly, as for how much it does for the sim, check DCS forum - everybody has their socks blown off by the realism of the thing. It feels real, and serious - that's what's so good about it.

1. I don't know what fraction of servers would want to go with this. In the end, 'servers' are driven by what the players will fly in
2. Probably? Possibly, but at the moment it's just a novelty.
3. DCS is ONE cockpit, this has been said before, noone seems to be paying attention. If people want procedures, why aren't they flying MSFS? That's pretty much all it does.

In the end, I'd like it if everyone got what they want, but Oleg has indicated that it's too much work for too little return for complex startup, and he is not a fan of clickpits. It's his sim, he calls the shots.

One last thought, he has indicated the there might be offline mods available (haven't read much detail on this), so everyone might wind up happy.

[KG26_Alpha]

Was discussed before re start up procedure

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...=2039&page=151

[Chivas]

At the moment in IL-2 there is no drama hitting engine start...you know it will start. In BOB WOV I have the magnetos, fuel cocks, fuel primer, and start key mapped to my hotas. It only takes a second to flip both magnetos, fuel cocks on and varify visually as I'm hitting the keys that the switches are thrown to the proper positions. The only tricky part is having the patience to prime the engine enough times to allow for a successfull engine start. This is not a problem on normal flights, BUT when your in a hurry as in your field is under immenent attack things become dicy. In my panic I seldom seem to prime the engine enough to start the first time. Its usally a series of primes, start, cough, cough, sputter, die, prime, prime, prime, prime, start cough, cough, sputter, sputter, catch, roar. And off with a little sorrowly needed drama thats adds immensly to the immersion factor.

On some missions having run out of ammo attacking bombers I'll land at the nearest base and taxi to the hangers, turn off my magnetos and fuelcocks, to hear the engine sputter and die. Wait a minute or two {take whatever time you like} and hit the rearm key, turn on Magnetos, fuel cocks, prime and start, taxi to the runway and off to attack the same bomber stream coming back from the target. Great fun and something we will have in SOW maybe even with animated ground crew and option to set the turn around time that suits your personal game play, or the servers game play.

[un_loon]

There's no doubt at all I would enjoy the extra addon of clickpit. It would be nice for starting the engine once in a while. I would be discouraged by a release date delayed only for click pits ... most of the time in combat I would be wondering how much of an additional PERFORMANCE HIT clickpits would cause (MSFS/CFS clickpits seemed to slow things down). So without a question of doubt or any quibble at all, I say, If I have to reach out and touch something other than what can be programmed into my control inputs during simulated combat, I'd rather touch a key than a mouse. Clickpits won't help how I throw the wrong switch because I'm too busy tracking a bogie to look at what key I'm hitting.

I agree that clickpits are ergonomically unrealistic if you are trying to create a simulation rather than a teaching aid. It doesn't sound like you need clickpits to make further improvements to the engine start-up sequence, engine damage models, and perhaps things like fuel load balancing or whatever else is in store.

What would really impress me is if Oleg asked this question a few months AFTER releasing BOB:SOW.

[SlipBall]

Well since 1C has not the time or desire to give this to us. Maybe if they could take but one aircraft and make it "by the book". I think that their market would reach out to many of those that were into MS. The logical aircraft to choose would be the SU-26.
I think that Oleg should make the SU-26 full real as possible, by the owners manual use of. He may be surprised at the level of interest, if he was to do so.

[airmalik]

I'm all for (optional) added complexity to engine procedures but haven't played a sim with clickable cockpits so I'm not sure how realistic/viable that is. Based on my experience with IL2 though, I propose another option to those wanting more realism without Oleg having to build VCs for all planes.

I haven't played IL2 for a few years now but when I did, I spent days getting the keys on the Saitek joystick, throttle and the keyboard just right. But even with all that effort I found that I could only remember the most often used commands. Around then, I discovered a program which allowed me to use voice commands for various functions.

What a huge difference that made. I didn't have to memorise which keys did what and could focus on flying instead. I still got shot down just as frequently but at least now I could hold down a trigger on the Saitek and say things like "gear down" and "flaps up" without having to remember what I mapped those to. Especially gratifying was watching wingmen react to my spoken commands and having vectors to home base transmitted over the radio in response to my question "where's home?" in Lomac. By the time I finished configuring all the voice commands, the only things left on the stick were the fire buttons and not much else.

When I'm flying in real life, I follow checklists for different stages of flight and pre/post flight and I speak aloud each item as I perform it. Voice activated commands in IL2 would be very realistic in this sense even without actually performing the action. An avatar responding to spoken commands would probably be as close as possible to real life without building a simpit.