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

[Lucas_From_Hell]

One more thought about clickable cockpits:

They make it easier and more intuitive.

I'll use Lock On and DCS as criteria for this comparsion.

Lock On has somewhat simple systems, so less things to press and play with. DCS: Black Shark has lights, switches and buttons all over, with covers and everything else.

In Lock On, you don't have clickable cockpits. In DCS, you have.

I can't operate a single radar or any sort of system in Lock On properly. In DCS, it's the easiest thing in the world to start the aircraft manually, tune every system to like, set the big guns ready, acquire, shoot, evade, use counter-measures, land and shut down the Ka-50 after.

Even systems present in both simulators - and modelled in a simpler way in Lock On - are easier to use in DCS.

Why?

Very simple: you don't need to remember it. It's easy to click on all the switches necessary to start it up quickly and rush to battle, but try to remember the key assigned to each one and see how do you perform.

You just need to remember where are the buttons - that's all. Then it's just flick switch, press button, pull handle; the same you'd do when flying a real plane.

"Alright, but it isn't realistic to click! They didn't click!" True, but they also didn't have to remember 300 types of movements to press buttons. It was push, pull and turn, that's all. And they used their hands to do so, with the mouse you do it as well. You need to take one hand off stick and throttle and go for your button.

Judging from my experience with these two games and Il-2 as well, it's no big deal to use the joystick hat for view, for those who don't have TrackIR or any fancy device, leaving the mouse for the switches.