[TX-EcoDragon]

Rama, I'm not sure how many pilots you know who fly modern fighters that actually incorporate a HOTAS system, but if you do know any, ask them what functionality is on their HOTAS. Based on what you have stated, I think you might be surprised to learn what they have to look, and reach for. Certainly in WWII aircraft the design was very different, and pretty much everything but stick, rudder, and brakes requires a reach and removal of hands from the stick/throttle.

I'm fully aware of what proper procedure is in real aircraft, including the fact that grabbing/switching without looking first is frowned upon in the bulk of circumstances, despite what was done in WWII when blindfolded cockpit checks where employed as a component of transition training.

I also am the first to admit that when I'm flying in the middle of a formation of 6 aircraft in the real world that I hate having to put my left hand on the stick, and use my right hand to switch between fuel tanks, while maintaining position in an aircraft as twitchy as the Extra. . .but that is what happens *in real airplanes*. When I fly formation in sims, I have the luxury to not need to bother with a fuel selector in a sim with such a simplistic CEM model as in IL-2, and if I dont want to, I don't have to reach for anything given the rather arcade way in which I can put it all on the HOTAS if I wanted to (which has far more functionality than even that in the real F-16 which the stick is based on).

I also understand the differences that the poor interface we necessarily have with a computer mandates for those that don't build their own cockpits. It’s absurd to say that clicking with a mouse is unrealistic. . of course it is, but it's more accurate than having it all on a HOTAS, and staring at an INOP panel! I certainly don't argue that any of these methods is perfect, but I'll stand by all that I've said, and I base it on decades of simming, real world flying, and communicating and working with the sim community outside of IL-2, and the resulting awareness of the perception of the REST of the flight sim community, and how the lack of a more realistic cockpit interface impacts the reception of Olegs games within that community. Asking only those already in this community is to largelly invalidate the results since the audience is already pre-selected to not care about a lack of cockpit interface!

If anyone wants to argue that they don't see the value, fine go ahead, but that has nothing to do with the fact that it matters to many, many people, and that to overlook it is to make this potentially great sim that much less, and to make the audience which purchases it that much smaller.

It has nothing to do with “[my] satisfaction”. . .my intention is to support this game, and its evolution towards becoming a legitimate flight simulation when viewed through the eyes of the much larger flight sim community out there. . . not to convert anyone to anything, or to enforce anything on them.

As far as the Su-26, the challenge will be getting the flight physics to even remotely approach the fidelity required to do a decent job of modeling aerobatic flight. . .doing a clickable cockpit would be an hour long job in a sim that already incorporates realistic CEM and an animated cockpit. At least that's about how long it usually takes me on the cockpits I've built for X-Plane and MSFS.