It's been raised before but Hey - I'll just do it again because I think it would be a good idea.
Most of the servers fly with no labels & no externals. I understand why - red & blue labels with aircraft type and distance undermines the need for IFF and learning to use your radar / RWR.
ALso a fifty metre high label growing out of an igla or stinger units head makes him a fair bit easier to pick out among the buildings.
Every time I see screenies of default labels I see why servers turn them off.
But - planes are designed to give the pilot good visability because the pilots eyes are a key part of his SA & the visibility in LO with no labels isn't as good as it is in real life (your eyes don't only sample at 14 time a second when you're low over a city for a start..)
So somewhere between no labels & some labels is probably nearer the truth.
Personaly I play with labels on about 1/2 the time now, but I've changed the labels so both sides have the same - fairly hard to see - colour & they don't show any range or type information (planes get a . at about the distance you can just see the flickering dot onscreen then _|_ from about 15km ( but at 1600x1200 these look a lot smaller). Ground units have a ' from about 8km but nothing else till 2km or so then unit type, cause I figure at 2km you could tell by eye.
You get the idea.
I think it would be a good idea for the servers to be able to set a customised label parameters at their end and force this on clients if they choose to enable labels.
The S-77th is presently running a mission for newbies with labels on, which means they don't need to IFF. customised, single colour labels would bump up their SA, but force good habits.
Anyone else see value in letting the server have the option of forcing label parameters (not use, so you could still turn them off if you wanted) on clients?