Vote your choice - Clickable Cockpits or Not

[Lucas_From_Hell]

Why people keep insisting that it will be like Rise of Flight and FSX, anyway?

If I got it right, it will be just like in Il-2. Only difference is we won't get planes and maps for free with patches, only with upgrades.

And I wouldn't mind paying 5 or even 10 extra bucks for clickable cockpits and realistic start up (although the second one doesn't add much).

[Blackdog_kt]

I can understand the people saying they prefer to see development resources spent elsewhere. However, i think there's also a misunderstanding floating about.

After the discussions of the last few days i've given it some thought and i think i know why a part of the community advocates clickable cockpits.

For me at least and if get what other people say for them too, what we would want to see is to have the airframes modelled in more detail.
It's not about the procedures per se or the masochism of memorising operating limits, which you really never have to because all of the gauges in military cockpits of the time have markings to indicate what's the normal operating range of pretty much everything, from hydraulics to engine parameters.
I think it is more about the interesting complications that arise from a closer to life-like operation of an airplane. A by-the-book startup might not add much, but what about engine tolerances, oxygen system and so on?

Say you're in a fight at 20000ft in your brand new Bf109 and your oxygen lines get punctured by a hail of .303 fire. In most combat sims this is usually a non-event, something that's not even modelled, but imagine if it was. Let's say you break hard to evade the bouncing fighter, a wingman clears your tail and after a minute or so the fight ends.
However, in the frantic pace of combat you fail to notice the problem, until a little while later you can hear your pilot breathing heavily while not pulling any Gs at all.
A few more seconds pass and the screen is slowly but gradually getting blurry. You take a quick look around the cockpit and see that the O2 pressure gauge is giving a very low indication. Realising what happened, you announce your need to RTB and dive to altitudes below 10000ft.

Things like that will of course complicate flying but will also broaden the ways you can get kills, so in the end it will more or less even out. You might be forced out of a fight because of a tiny malfunction in an otherwise perfectly working airframe, you might do that to someone else and take an enemy out of the fight quick and easy, or you might even come against someone with such a problem and score an easy kill. I think it's not a question of "arcade" vs "artificially harder at any cost", as much as it is a matter of added variety through added realism.

The rest of the discussion springs forth from the need to somehow control all the new features your simulated aircraft comes with. Up till now, most of the sims that feature some sort of complex aircraft subsystems management use clickable pits and that's why there are people advocating it, out of a force of habit.

That doesn't mean it HAS to be this way or more accurately that it is the only way, there are other ways and they can all be combined. And while i understand that many consider a clickpit a waste of programming resources in a combat flight sim, i doubt that they all consider a closer to life operation of an aircraft with all the interesting and varied effects it could produce as an equal waste of time. Combat takes up not the entire flight but a big part of it, addition of certain realistic things to manage will simply give us something to do during the time that there's no combat going on.

I recently made a suggestion in another thread that could probably give us such features while at the same time reducing the time and effort needed to implement them by the developers. We already know from previous updates the airframe operation will be modelled to a greater level of detail. Allowing user input at certain levels of the design will give us the ability to manage things ourselves, without the need to rewrite massive amounts of code. So, assuming that happens, how do we control them? Again, the developing team doesn't have to do it all by themselves.

My suggestion was to keep it simple from this point on and give the community the tools to do the extra bits themselves. If systems mamagement makes it into the release, the easiest and fastest way to provide an interface for it is a branching pop-up menu with sub-options, like the one used for AI wingmen commands with TAB. This could not only be aircraft specific and thus retain a higher level of authenticity, it would also be a trivial affair to do compared to specifying clickable zones for every switch in every cockpit, because it would tie the pop-up commands directly to the switches (which we also know are probably fully animated already). If this is an immersion killer for some, they could use the old method of keyboard and HOTAS commands, or make a clickable cockpit on their own.

We know that there is built-in support for them, so if someone can't live without one he'd be able to make one.All that's needed is a 5-page pdf manual explaining how to add clickzones, which could be as simple as editing a .ini file with a text editor and specifying a set of coordinates with a "clickable" flag. To further simplify things, these coordinates could be the X.Y values for the top left and lower right corners of a rectangle.
For example, open the cockpit layout in an editor of your choice, select the area around the button and copy the coordinates in notepad. Then, go to c:\program files\SoW\interface, open the SpitMKI.ini file and add the following lines

[clickable]
(70,131),(92-155),title=master switch,type=on-off

...save the file and you just made a clickable on/off toggle switch by yourself with a "master switch" tooltip when you hover the mouse over it. You can still map it directly to HOTAS or keyboard, use the popup menu or knock yourself out and go amok on the entire cockpit if you want full clickability, but the best thing is that we get the most functionality and realism with the less amount of extra work for the developers.

With all the hints being dropped along the way about the modability of SoW, this kind of customization potential is something we can reasonably expect. One can build entirely new cockpits with different avionics for FSX by editing text files and resizing a few textures to match dimensions. Personally, i refuse to believe that Oleg, Ilya and their team can't provide customization features on par with a 2006 Microsoft title when they have emphatically stated that the new engine will be highly modable.

[SlipBall]

(quote)
For example, open the cockpit layout in an editor of your choice, select the area around the button and copy the coordinates in notepad. Then, go to c:\program files\SoW\interface, open the SpitMKI.ini file and add the following lines

[clickable]
(70,131),(92-155),title=master switch,type=on-off

...save the file and you just made a clickable on/off toggle switch by yourself with a "master switch" tooltip when you hover the mouse over it. You can still map it directly to HOTAS or keyboard, use the popup menu or knock yourself out and go amok on the entire cockpit if you want full clickability, but the best thing is that we get the most functionality and realism with the less amount of extra work for the developers.

With all the hints being dropped along the way about the modability of SoW, this kind of customization potential is something we can reasonably expect. One can build entirely new cockpits with different avionics for FSX by editing text files and resizing a few textures to match dimensions. Personally, i refuse to believe that Oleg, Ilya and their team can't provide customization features on par with a 2006 Microsoft title when they have emphatically stated that the new engine will be highly modable.



Very reasonable idea! seems like the best solution to please one and all, I also agree with your other point's

edit: send your ideas to Oleg, I'm not sure he is reading all of the threads

[ECV56_Lancelot]

I very much like your ideas Blackdog, and agree with your points. A little more insight from the developers of how clickpit cockpits will be handle by third party on SoW might help on releive this concern on those of us that like clickable cockpits, but i don't think it will happens since they are very busy.

[AndyJWest]

All that's needed is a 5-page pdf manual explaining how to add clickzones, which could be as simple as editing a .ini file with a text editor and specifying a set of coordinates with a "clickable" flag. To further simplify things, these coordinates could be the X.Y values for the top left and lower right corners of a rectangle.

Um, no. If you allow 6DOF head movement, a 'clickzone' needs to have 3-D coordinates. Simplest would be X, Y & Z plus a radius for a spherical zone. To position these correctly you'd need access to the 3-D cockpit model, and software to view it. Unless 1C:Maddox are going to provide the 3-D data, the whole thing is a non-starter for anyone but the most masochistic, or for those who are willing to 'hack' the source: not something the developers would want to encourage.

Once again though, this debate is getting sidetracked from how things are controlled to what controls are available - they are two different issues, and arguing one to support the other just confuses the whole debate.

[Blackdog_kt]

I was just giving a generic example, you're right that the end result would be a more complicated deal. Still, it's far from impossible and it's how companies like Aerosoft make a good deal of money.

As for hacking the source, i doubt it would be necessary. We've all read in interviews and other snippets of information that there will be tools for 3rd party developers released after the title hits the market.

My point is, that there are more ways than one to skin a cat. The reason people use FSX as an example is that modability is one of the things it does well. If you ever get the chance for some stick time on that, it's very interesting to compare a stock aircraft from the vanilla install with an aftermarket one. They are so far apart by leaps and bounds that the stock MS provided aircraft pale in comparison to certain 3rd party payware and even some freeware. The sounds are better, the graphics are sharper, the FM and systems modelling is better and on top of that all, they are not overly taxing the PC and frame rates are still reasonable despite the added detail. There are also freeware aircraft that are still better than the stock MS ones and nobody had to hack anything to make them. What it did involve was the release of an SDK and some talented hobbyists.

In any case, i think that the people who went through the trouble of modifying a closed engine like IL2 (and did it for free) will be more than willing and able to produce similar or better results with much more ease if they get their hands on officially sanctioned tools with built-in support. That's what i'm advocating in essence, giving the community access to certain tools will not only ease the workload of the development team and draw sales from the civilian sim crowd, it will make for a much more varied experience for all and result in better sales to fund the stream of future expansions.

Maybe i'm reading too much into it and being overly optimistic, but putting together what's been said from official sources during various stages i'm expecting something so modular that it will gradually evolve into a "flight simulator operating system" so to speak. That's pretty exciting if you think about it, especially if the engine is good enough to accomodate all of our possible simming needs as time goes by.

Plus, if there's lots of quality freeware around, competition will result in better and cheaper payware from 3rd parties as well. It's a win-win for everyone.