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Yeah, that's true, I hadn't thought of it like that. This has actually been a relatively productive discussion, I'm impressed. Any iOS developers out there who wanna make some money and make my life easier?

Wow, that video is gold. Okay, how's this for an idea. Again, I'm not really the person to figure out exactly how to build a user interface, but I'll have a crack. Normally, you would operate an A-10 according to a defined checklist. So as a training aid / operating aid, have an on screen checklist that can be exported to an iPad screen as well. The difference is, the checklist is actionable just by clicking a button, either to cycle through the whole thing, or action it one item at a time. Which is to say, when you press the checklist button, or tap the line in you iPad, the model of the pilot on screen reaches out and performs the action on the checklist. You'd look through a menu for the thing that you want to do, open the checklist, then click through it. When you got to the end, it would suggest things that you might want to do next. Add in stuff like a button that explains what the step you just took actually does ("tell me more"), along with an optional reminder of how you can do the step yourself, and you've got yourself a great way to both learn DCS and to operate the aircraft if you're too lazy to do things properly. Honestly, this isn't even that far from how I operate a 737. I've got this idiots checklist to startup, takeoff, cruise, etc. that fits on 3 A5 pages. A cheat sheet if you will. I keep it in the clip on the control yoke. Single pilot aircraft are operated according to memorized checklists (do-lists, really), and we train for single-pilot ops in our first two years of flying, so this is what I'm more familiar with. The last aircraft I flew had an 18 page checklist that you would say out loud as you did the items (get a word wrong and you're going job hunting). However in multi-crew operations you have a philosophy of flows (the doing part) followed by checks, where both pilots check that the correct actions have been taken, always done by reading off a paper checklist. My idiots guide then covers the flows, and a laminated page A4 kept in a slot on top of the glareshield contains the checklist. The only things you have to memorize (called memory items under the Boeing philosophy) are emergency actions (or "non-normals") for time critical events like cabin depressurization or engine fire/failure. Even then, the philosophy is that if you spilled your coffee you're rushing too much. Shutting down the wrong engine will kill you a lot quicker than letting it burn. I've only got about 80 hours in 737s (300 hours total flying experience), so it's useful to have a prompt in case I forget what order to do things in. That's military aviation for ya! But no, we are very safe and competent, like actually, when I put it that way we sound like a bunch of retarded cowboys.

lol iPads are awesome, Apple can do user interface. That and all the aviation apps are ios only, so we don't have much choice. I've got two: my personal one and a work-issued one. Anyways, I mostly agree with you, but only up to a point. For people like us, DCS is fine. I got used to Blackshark, and even with an X52/Keyboard it was lots of fun. But there's a way bigger gaming market that's gonna get scared off by the user-unfriendliness of DCS. Watch a newbie try to get A10 installed, configured and flying without assistance and you'll see what I mean.

Yeah, just ordered a TM Warthog off amazon, should be good. Padlock view isn't the be all and end all, but my point is that ED should be more willing to experiment with UI. There aren't that many people willing to drop $1000+ on sim gear - they'd reach a much bigger market if they took the time to find intelligent ways to get the full functionality of an A-10 onto less specialized equipment. I do most of my 737 study by reading checklists and imagining how I would perform them in the jet. At our squadron, we have three levels of training: a piece of paper, a $50-million sim with full hydraulics, and the jet itself. There's a huge amount of space for something in between, something that still forces you to use the same procedures and mental processes but using general purpose computer gear. DCS is no different - there needs to be a happy medium between track ir with custom joysticks and boring, dumbed-down arcade mode. I think the best way to make that happen is through intelligent use of available screen space and I would say, by coupling it with an iPad in a well-thought out, user friendly way.

Yeah, that's true. The underlying problem is that in both cases you don't have an A-10 sim. Unless you've got a spare 20-million for a level 5 sim you'll either have surface accuracy without functional accuracy, or functional accuracy with a lack of surface fidelity. Falcon 4.0's dogfighting situational awareness mode is probably the best example of doing the functional side right. Doing combat formation flying on pilots course all I could think was "where is my padlock view? Trying to look behind me at 4g f&$&ing sucks". Sure, in a real F-16 you don't have a computer keeping your view slaved to the enemy fighters behind you, but you've got your neck and associated reflexes, so it's a different sort of problem. Unless you're gonna load up your head with 60lb weights and surround yourself with screens while you sit in your 1g armchair, AGSMing like a retard, you'll never get the real experience. Incidentally I never realized how underpowered the A-10 is in real life. A PC-21 has better performance, and it's a turboprop. Very eye-opening, I underestimated how hard it must have been to cram in all that armor and weaponry. No wonder fighter pilots looked down on it until desert storm, it's a heap of s&$& till it starts blowing up stuff.

Yeah, for sure. I don't disagree, there's some good stuff out there - the whole thing would be impossible without trackir, which I have. Still, I genuinely believe that ED can do better. Cockpits are laid out according to careful design, figuring out what data to present where in order to maximize data flow with the pilot. To simply present a 3d model of the original through a computer screen is kinda missing the point. Put it this way - if you asked the original interface engineers who designed the original A-10 to create a new cockpit that utilized only a computer screen, a joystick and maybe an iPad as well, what would it look like? Answer that question, and you've got a system that mimics the actual performance of using the original cockpit. Blindly copy the look of that cockpit in miniature and you're more like a cargo cult of military aviation.

No, seriously. Smart people can do complex stuff, but they're slow. I'm way smarter than most military pilots, but I get bogged down in details, the ex-football player types stay way ahead of the aircraft compared to me. There's a reason I didn't make fast jets. 90% of learning aircraft procedures in a real jet is knowing where your hands need to go to do certain things. When you're stuck staring down a 24" drinking straw / computer screen at a flat 3d render of a cockpit you lose that kinesthetic memory, and the whole thing gets painfully slow. I mean, sure, you can learn endless keyboard shortcuts, and I did that with DCS Blackshark, but it's not the same. Anyways, real aircraft need to be easier. Easy means fast and efficient. It also means safe. I could fly a 737 all day without automation, and it'd be a helluva lot of fun, especially with a good HUD, but LNAV/VNAV means the jet flies itself and I can sit back and monitor systems. In real life the penalties for ****ing up are much greater. No, tethered iPad is the way to go, but good UI is a tricky thing to get right. iControl is cool but its got a looooong way to go before it feels like a jet should in terms of ease of use. But if user interface was easy everybody would already be doing it: why do you think Apple is so successful?

Yeah, still can't figure out the joystick thing... What you guys probably don't realize is that military aviation is easy compared to DCS. Military pilots are dumb as shit, football players do well at our job. We're flying these things with years of training, awesome ergonomics (actually having all those switches around you is really nice), seat-of-the-pants feedback, procedures coming out our ears. I jumped out of a level 5 737 sim worth a few tens of millions today and into this and I'm just like, whaaaaa? This is really hard! Why is my screen so small? What are these tiny, unclickable, ergonomically useless switches with unreadable writing? iControl DCS is a start, but it's not very user friendly either. Aviation invented the science of human-computer interfaces because pilots are dumb and crash planes given half a chance. By copying all the complexity with none of the UI you've invented someone waaaay harder than a real A-10. I'll get there eventually...

I'll give that a go, thanks Nope, Hawk pilots

Wow, that is impressive. Working on installing it now. Request number two: make the goddamn sim more user friendly. I fly 737s for an unnamed Western military and I don't have a f*ing clue what I'm doing so far. I played Black Shark for a couple hundred hours and I still never figured out half of that thing. Just getting my X52 to work has been a nightmare, I still can't figure out how to make my throttle work (it uses the thumb-slider for thrust settings and ignores the main throttle body, I have no idea which of the 20 non-functional slider names represents what I want). Not complaining, just saying, I'm the nerdiest pilot I know, all my friends see A-10 and they go from "oh cool" to "f* this" within 5 minutes. And these are qualified fighter pilots. Make it easier to use and you'd ship a lot more units.

I love DCS Black Shark, and I'm currently downloading my new copy of DCS A-10, but there's one thing that I can't stand about either: the user interface. Basically, all flight sims have one thing in common. They're trying to model an aircraft cockpit, something that has awesome ergonomics and is well thought out, but they're doing it with a relatively tiny computer screen and a clickable mouse. The usual solution is that you memorize a ton of keyboard commands, and this is fine, but wouldn't it be cool if you could get something a bit more like the real thing? What I propose is an iPad app that tethers to the DCS game itself. At the top you would have a menu that would let you select various control panels, MFDs, etc. Once you selected the panel you wanted, it would appear on the iPad screen with touchable working buttons. No more looking around the cockpit trying to find the right button, now it's right there on your iPad. Thoughts?