Baldrick

It seems pretty clear that unless you have a 360 wrap around screen that some kind of non 1:1 view to head movement is essential for trackir, for single screen non trackir then snap views are a must. So it just makes sense some kind of exaggerated view in VR should be equally allowable for those that desire it, be it to overcome limitations of fov or limited mobility. Creating divides between VR and TrackIR users doesn’t really help IMHO

I was responding to your comment “There’s nothing stopping them from moving as much as the real pilots do except the effort.” and explaining why that comment was simply wrong.

It has been explained many times but most VR headsets lack the FOV and/or edge to edge clarity to equate to what real pilots do or indeed lesser mortal sim pilots do when they look behind them. I don’t have an issue turning around in my seat to look behind me in the real world, in a virtual environment I have to turn more, hence the desire to mimic what we can do in real life.

I can see behind me in the real world in my seat easier than in VR. The limited horizontal FOV of my Reverb robs me of my peripheral vision. My preference is a tuneable rotation increase, in my case I only want a small increase to recover the lost vision in VR.

For DCS I use a third party utility Joypro. I have a lot of aircraft and I often redesign my button box locations, so this works well as I can map a control once in Joypro and it applies across all aircraft or just some as I wish. Whilst it is brilliant I think it is a little daunting so I wouldn't suggest it as a standard method for all. I am not sure how different the controls are likely to be for the aircraft here and we shouldn't have the complexity of modern jets. What might be worthwhile is a generic controls mapping option which then is the default for all aircraft which can be overridden individually. At the very least we need to be able to map multiple buttons etc. to a control.

Given this is a thread on cockpit interaction it seems pretty clear to me that a cold start involves the player doing everything the real pilot and in some cases ground crew might do to get the aircraft started. Which requires the options for either clickable cockpit or mappable controls. My preference would be both. Mission designers can opt for what they want but the options need to be built in to sim. IMHO the player should have access to quick missions that don’t touch the mission builder to be able to start in the air, on the runway or do a full cold start with full interaction. It is a curious thing, MSFS leaves me cold (no pun intended) without the combat element, yet I can often find myself using DCS to fire up an aircraft and simply take off and land. I can get great enjoyment from doing that but it wouldn’t be what I would expect to be my requirement from a combat sim. Sometimes it seems I spend more time mapping controls than flying a new aircraft to get it perfect but although it might seem a chore the results are worth it.

Flying WW2 aircraft in combat is obviously a fantasy. Many of us want to feel like we were there, so it needs to be a realistic fantasy. I have no issue with that fantasy including a younger, fitter and more agile version of me!

I believe these discussions will mostly be with enthusiasts who have some kit to map buttons and levers to and also see multiplayer as the predominant game play. What we are are unlikely to hear from are all those who play DCS or IL2:BoX SP quick missions with either a basic joystick or dare I say it a keyboard and mouse. As a proportion of sales my guess is this is much higher than we might think. Hopefully the survey will help but even that won't pick up more casual guys who will pick it up after release seeing an ad on Steam or in a FB feed etc. Casual doesn't necessarily equate to arcade mode and clickable cockpits is a must IMHO. These guys may be what makes the games viable to make for the hardcore (pure speculation of course!) Personally I prefer to map as much as I can to my HOTAS, button boxes and quadrants so I want great flexibility in control mapping.

There is a typo in the forum ranks image - member is spelt memebr Tom would be proud of my contribution to this sim already!