What "gives" a clickable cockpit?

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

16 minutes ago, Wolf8312 said:

-snip-

There is no denying that it can be very convenient and it does make things feel more genuine and authentic from a historical point of view at least IMO.   

-snip-

 

Actually, it's pretty easy to deny: clicky mouse pits are in no way convenient (have you ever actually played DCS..? ?) and don't provide a sense of authenticity or genuineness from a historical or gameplay perspective.

[LuftManu]

I am okay with the clickable pits discussion but as soon as it enters the "But DCS has them! and if you deny they are better you are just a Il-2 fanboy" this should be closed. We are not getting anything from here.

[=gRiJ=Roman-]

Despite all the opposition, I really would love this feature.

But I do not think we'll ever get it though. 

Edited June 7, 2018 by PA_Spartan-

[Wolf8312]

36 minutes ago, Space_Ghost said:

 

Actually, it's pretty easy to deny: clicky mouse pits are in no way convenient (have you ever actually played DCS..? ?) and don't provide a sense of authenticity or genuineness from a historical or gameplay perspective.

 

Well thats your opinion enjoy it!

[Uufflakke]

17 hours ago, 6./ZG26_Custard said:

But we don't have the ground crew to crank the engine over for the other 3 minutes ?

 

10 hours ago, InProgress said:

You have to use your imagination, just like unloading cargo and cargo puff disappears.

 

Just like the great philosopher Spongebob said: 'Use Your Imagination'.

 

 

 

But the whole sim is based on imagination. 

I mean it is not ninetheen forty something and we are not in a cockpit. But in a lazy chair with a bottle of cold beer within reach.

 

 

 

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

I love how triggering of a discussion clickpits are for people.

 

Oh the mirth.

[Wolf8312]

2 hours ago, LF_ManuV said:

I am okay with the clickable pits discussion but as soon as it enters the "But DCS has them! and if you deny they are better you are just a Il-2 fanboy" this should be closed. We are not getting anything from here.

 

You want the thread closed? ?

 

Quote

 

But DCS has them! and if you deny they are better you are just a Il-2 fanboy

 

 

Who said that?

[Leon_Portier]

I liked the clickable cockpit in BMS, but its a lot of work to memorize what do you need to do.

In BoX I feel content on how things are.

 

[Trooper117]

4 hours ago, MaxVonDayGlow said:

but I would hate to see that become a development focus derailing resources to make a small minority of simmers happy.

 

It won't derail anything... and no matter how many times people keep asking for it, jason has said they will not go there, it is not that type of sim ...

[AnKor]

Sorry for a bit of necro-posting, didn't want to create a new thread since this topic is not welcome here, but couldn't resist a little bragging

 

A group of modders is working on Spitfire Mk. II for CFS3, and recently I helped them make cockpit controls clickable (the controls were already well beyond the standard CFS3 stuff).

It is not released yet, but here is an overview video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MuHL1zL1TY

I think it turned out quite good. Too bad there are maybe 100 people in the whole world who still play CFS3.

 

While I agree that usefulness of this feature in a WW1/2 combat sim is very limited, the engine startup procedure gets old after Nth repeat, and even this video shows that it may be easier to just push a joystick button than reach for a control -- I have to say there's a certain satisfaction of curiosity in seeing, learning and using "actual" controls rather than simply pressing a button. I never had much interest in WW2 aircrafts, but this feature made me read more about their development and operations.

 

The irony is that back in Rise of Flight days I had a thought about making a clickable cockpit mod with the available UI SDK (like I made the photo recon mod), but there wasn't enough data available in the UI layer and flash based UI is not a good tool for this anyway. I'm actually glad I didn't attempt it back then when I think about it now

[Lusekofte]

Hi Ancor

I enjoyed CFS 3 very much, but only offline. Clickpits is no disadvantage, it give people a choice.

I use DCS click pits when the module I am flying is very complex. Like MI 8, KA 50 and modern jets

For WW2 Huey and easier stuff I find my switches much easier to use.

 

How can one fly CFS 3 these days, I do not think my CD work, and for that matter I do not think I have a CD reader either. 

But I really would like the CFS 2 

[=gRiJ=Roman-]

I have always wondered about the technical difficulties of such an option. Honestly, I have no idea how difficult it would be to implement the clickable cockpits. I have tried the VR two times and .... would be an asset to have it to get more immersion and make it easier to use the VR? I would like to hear some opinions about it.

[Gambit21]

20 minutes ago, 15[Span.]/JG51Spartan said:

...would be an asset to have it to get more immersion and make it easier to use the VR? I would like to hear some opinions about it.

 

...when you hit the radio button in your car do you carefully move a mouse and see a floating white arrow in the air in front of your face?

Or is it a quick, precise muscle memory/movement/button push that you hardly think about? Analogous to hitting a button on the keyboard? 

 

This is why click-pits for many of us are less immersive, not more.

[AnKor]

6 minutes ago, 15[Span.]/JG51Spartan said:

I have tried the VR two times and .... would be an asset to have it to get more immersion and make it easier to use the VR? I would like to hear some opinions about it.

Honestly I don't think it will be good in VR. I have HTC Vive and while its tracking is quite precise, it occasionally becomes very unstable. It won't be fun trying to hit a small switch with "shaking" hands. And the original Vive wands are not suitable for this kind of fine controls anyway, although newer headsets seem to have better input devices.

 

Technically making something "clickable" is very straightforward. The real work is modelling enough systems to have something to click on. And IL2 just isn't going this way by design.

 

Gambit21, yeah, I agree about muscle memory. But on the other hand, clicking a rarely needed switch you already see on the screen is easier than remembering a specific CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+Whatever keybinding for it

 

[Enceladus828]

I feel that there are times when a clickable cockpit are worth it and not really worth it.

 

Not really Worth it:

1. Flaps and Landing gear. Can easily push buttons on the keyboard which is much shorter than clicking on the switches.

2. Dropping ordnances

3. When you want to do something very quickly.

 

Worth it:

1. Starting the engine manually.

2. Aileron, Rudder, and Elevator trim

3. Leaning mixture/propeller pitch

4. Magnetos.

5. If you wanted to see how the pilots and bombardiers actually did things back in the day. E.g turning on gunsight crosshairs, lights, operating bombsight, etc.

 

Most importantly: If you were going to fly the plane in real life (e.g. airshow)  then you would want to know where everything is and how everything operates.

 

When I was a kid I would frequently play FSX. Whenever I would fly a Cessna 172 I would just press Ctrl+E and the engine would start. Now that I have my PPL I do it realistically on the sim such as, Throttle slightly forward, Mixture rich, Magnetos on Start.

 

In ALL, if not, almost all real world flight sims like FSX, Prepar, X-Plane, and DCS and IL-2 Cliffs of Dover there are clickable cockpits, but there aren’t in IL-2 1946 and IL-2 Great Battles. The disadvantage is that you have to assign key commands to do everything in flight.

Like, Ctrl+F1 to do this, Shift+F1 to do this, Ctrl+Shift+F1 to do this, etc.

 

In both FSX and CloD I may occasionally do both. For example operating the landing gear I may click on it, or I may just press G. 

 

I think that clickable cockpits should be added to IL-2 GBs because if we look at it:

IL-2 1946 (2006) First generation: No clickable cockpit

Rise of Flight (2009): No clickable cockpit 

IL-2 Cliffs of Dover (2011) Second Generation: Clickable Cockpits

IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad (2014) Third Generation: No clickable cockpits

 

IMO, I thought clickable cockpits in CloD was great because it gives me a sense of how the pilot operated the airplane/systems back then, and that is why I think they should be added to IL-2 GBs. But it doesn’t have to be Immediately and it can be in stages.

 

IL-2 GBs has done well without lots of things in the past, but when they’re added, people really like them.

 

 

[AndyJWest]

Combat pilots are expected to be able to operate major flight controls (engine settings, trim...) without looking at them.  

[Lusekofte]

Dcs got clickpits for highfidelity modules. They would be impossible to operate if clickpits was not there. We would fly flaming cliffs without them. And I like fc modules like su 25

The ww2 modules could do just fine without it. 

It is not realism mouse clicking. 

I reccomend people to build a switchboard instead. That adds to realism. 

And we will not get it no matter what

Edited July 23, 2019 by LuseKofte

[LukeFF]

On 6/6/2018 at 10:17 AM, LukeFF said:

 

 

 

 

[AnKor]

LukeFF,

 

Everyone has a point, I didn't really want to start this discussion again, I know everything has been said already.

I just wanted to show what I thought was curious - how I made possible and then someone implemented a clickable cockpit for a game from 2003

[simfan2015]

This of course was most probably a design decision from the start of the BOX development.

No way can they change it now because planes are all so very different to operate and fly.

But I also hope I am very wrong ! 

One for the Dead Horse ?

 

[InProgress]

14 hours ago, 15[Span.]/JG51Spartan said:

I have always wondered about the technical difficulties of such an option. Honestly, I have no idea how difficult it would be to implement the clickable cockpits. I have tried the VR two times and .... would be an asset to have it to get more immersion and make it easier to use the VR? I would like to hear some opinions about it.

Everyone says it's super hard and takes a lot of time but then there is one guy doing "Steel Gears Stalingrad" tank game with fully clickable tank interior where there is much much more stuff to click than any ww2 plane. So i guess it's not that hard.  It's probably just more work but not something hard to do.

[Feathered_IV]

The only thing I'd want from clickable cockpits is a way to disable it.

[Herne]

right now in Il2, I can jump into any plane, single engine or dual engine, and fly it in VR because all the things I need are mapped to the hotas. (Forgot Ju52) 

If this was a click pit start, I would have to learn and memorise where stuff is in each individual plane.  If I did not fly an airframe for a few weeks, I would most likely forget where stuff was and find the manual start to be an extremely frustrating experience.

 

If Dev's made full click pits but were only able to then churn out one or two planes a year, would it really be worth it ? Maybe it would to some, but I am already Feeling the need to jump into the P51, the Tempest, and the P38 and hopefully maybe even the B25, and I don't want to wait any longer than I have to for any of them lol

[Jaws2002]

On 6/7/2018 at 10:54 AM, LF_Gallahad said:

Clickable cockpits aren't neccesary for a WW2 combat flight sim. I would take Inmersive enviorement over clickable things all day.

 

 

Clickpits help in any sim.

 We have so many different planes and in many of them controls work different. Then there are some controls that are right in your face, in the cockpit and don't need to remember keys for them. I usually map all the things i need for combat on the HOTAS and many of the controls that i have to use once or twice a flight and can easily access with the mouse, i just click them.  It's easier and more natural  to learn the cockpit layout then the key mapping for every plane.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 23, 2019 by Jaws2002

[56RAF_Roblex]

I  dont have VR yet but I believe it will soon become as ubiquitous as TrackIR is now. It seems to me that having a clickable cockpit is very useful for people who cannot see their keyboards and especially so if you have hand tracking of some sort.   You don't even need anything sophisticated,  just a glove that allows you to point and click.   

 

Yes you can put a lot on a HOTAS but most have a limit to how many buttons they have.   Not many of us have enough HOTAS buttons to dedicate one each to things like bomb mode, rocket mode,  bomb delay, bomb safety, auto radiator, emergency gear release, all the lighting modes etc.  and even if we did it would be tricky to remember which button they were on for things we only use in an emergency.   With a glove in VR we just need to remember roughly where it is (or read the actual cockpit labels if in a language you speak)  then use the popup label to find it and click. 

 

Even if you ignore the benefits for VR users, I see people complain that a clickable cockpit does not add realism but surely reaching towards the Formation Light switch is more realistic than typing 'RightAlt-L'  (and that option will probably remain) and if you think pop-ups ruin your immersion then how do you cope with pressing Esc and looking at the setup menu to find a rarely used function?   I remember being very grateful DCS used clickable cockpits when my jet lost its hydraulics and I had to release and manually wind down the gear and again when I had to find the buttons only used when restarting the engine in the air.   That was without the complication of being in VR.

Edited July 23, 2019 by 56RAF_Roblex

[WheelwrightPL]

I don't think such a "glove in VR" exists on the market.

[56RAF_Roblex]

Just now, WheelwrightPL said:

I don't think such a "glove in VR" exists on the market.

 

It has existed for years.  you can fly a jet in DCS without even owning a joystick just by making a fist round a virtual joystick and using a second glove to operate the throttle and all switches (not that I would recommend it ? )      To be fair,  I have not actually seen a 'Cheap Basic VR Glove' that just points and replicates a mouse click when you curl a finger or similar but it is certainly very easily done considering you can already track all ten finger positions accurately with more expensive ones.    .

[simfan2015]

My main objection to clickable cockpits is the fact that all switches, knows and handles are all over the airplanes or choppers (in DCS).

That OK if one tries to fly just one or two birds, but otherwise it gets really (too) hard.

But that's maybe only ... in my case ?

[Lusekofte]

26 minutes ago, simfan2015 said:

My main objection to clickable cockpits is the fact that all switches, knows and handles are all over the airplanes or choppers (in DCS).

That OK if one tries to fly just one or two birds, but otherwise it gets really (too) hard.

But that's maybe only ... in my case ?

 

I can use the MI 8, KA 50 ,Huey, Harrier and A10 c even if it take a while. But I struggle remember keybindings on SU 25 T after two weeks. 

The switches in pit give you a routine. 

They could not be used without clickpits. 

But for ww 2 I find it a bit odd. Never used clickpits in cod

[Sokol1]

One thing for sure: endless useless discussions about the pros and cons. ?

[simfan2015]

@3I can use the MI 8, KA 50 ,Huey, Harrier and A10 c even if it take a while. But I struggle remember keybindings on SU 25 T after two weeks. ..."

Fully agree with that.

But I was in fact comparing it to the almost unified/equalized key-combos of BOX.

DCS for me is 1-plane-at-the-time and even then ... oh my !

People who are into aviation is most probably a different matter (many DCS users are ex ...) but DCS clickable cockpits and flight-models to a NON-flyboy ...

 

Regards

 

[AnKor]

30 minutes ago, Jaws2002 said:

He's been doing this since forever.

Oh, it is ok, I know him since Rise of Flight forums. And I haven't said I disagree with him

I'm already embarrassed about digging out this thread.

[Trooper117]

AnKor, I liked the video, it just shows what is possible with an old game that people are still interested in and enjoy playing.

 

[DD_Crash]

There is always this for DCS

 

[Enceladus828]

To me, I’d want clickable cockpits, but only things regarding engine(s) like Mixture, Propellor pitch, water radiator, oil radiator.

[TheWarsimmer]

On 7/22/2019 at 3:03 PM, Gambit21 said:

 

...when you hit the radio button in your car do you carefully move a mouse and see a floating white arrow in the air in front of your face?

Or is it a quick, precise muscle memory/movement/button push that you hardly think about? Analogous to hitting a button on the keyboard? 

 

This is why click-pits for many of us are less immersive, not more.

 

This is a very fair parallel and you're right. However, a lot of it is negated with proper VR controls. Have you had the chance to play something like X-plane in VR? Sims are going through an evolution, and it may only be a couple more years before real gloves with haptic feedback are dominant. In that case, those legitimate drawbacks you mention will be completely wiped away, and the sim market and Il2 will need to evolve or be left behind. Even now, without haptic feedback, I find something like X-Plane in VR with touch controls and click pits more intuitive and natural than memorizing buttons on a stick. But yes, on a 2d monitor with a mouse you're 100% right. That era is dying, however. 

 

Also, like everyone says, it is pointless bringing it all up considering the devs won't implement it for the foreseeable future, but I just can't help myself. I'm a sucker for clickies and it's a real problem I have?

Edited August 5, 2019 by TheWarsimmer

[19//Moach]

Click-Pits make sense for sims like DCS, where there are just so many controls to operate, that mapping each and every one of them to a key combination just isn't practical.

 

For sims like this, or even Cliffs of Dover, where a certain degree of convenient simplification is present, (mostly removing excess complexity from trivial operations that add little or nothing to the experience)  there really is no need to have such a feature installed. It would add indeed, very little.  

 

 

Edited August 5, 2019 by 19//Moach

[simfan2015]

Click-Pits are, IMHO, always great.

 

But indeed no need to map every single instrument.

Something like 5, up to 10 that are (mostly) about the same objects (but in different positions of course!) would suffice.

IL-2 type planes would be perfect for such a simplified implementation (taking into account something like that superb IL-2 default keyboard assgnment)

Making it even easier to operate than say, the CloD clickable cockpits.

For non 'true-experienced-pilots' making every single instrument clickable is making it impossible (for me and in DCS, thinking of a.o. F18 and F14) to learn to fly (as intended) more than 1 or maybe 2 different planes/helis at the time.

The few instruments that would be clickable could even be constantly illuminated (as an option of course) if so desired !?

 

YMMV.

 

Edited August 5, 2019 by simfan2015

[Aap]

I, on the other hand, don't understand the point of 5 clickable objects, when probably everyone is capable of memorizing 5 keystrokes to operate these 5 objects. 

For fully simulated planes, like DCS, on the other hand, clickable cockpits make sense, because few people are capable of memorizing hundreds of key combinations, that vary from plane to plane. So you would memorize the frequently used buttons and have these on you HOTAS or keyboard, but can operate the secondary systems with your mouse.

[simfan2015]

Indeed, JG77_Kemp ... that's for a realistic mode. I did learn how to e.g. start the DCS P-51D by looking at Youtube vids. The Cheat OTOH (RWIN-Home key) is what I personally believe some/most people use after their own clicking-fest-novelty wears out (?). 

With the 5-10 clickable areas I meant Arcade-like-gaming stuff such as Start-Engine, Close Canopy, Propellor, Eject, Cockpit lights, Stop-Engine ... not increase left engine torque, throttle by 5% or dealing with even more in-depth engine specific features.

I like to take off manually (not that hard compared to DCS), but wonder how many people would even like to use the Autopilot for takeoff instead ???

So ... "What "gives" a clikable cockpit?".

Edited August 5, 2019 by simfan2015