This is simply an idea for a new cockpit UI to make way for new features in the future like engine start up etc.
It’s basically just a new alignment of the buttons used during cockpit view. I tried to recreate the locations of these buttons from just being grouped into one side of the screen to their real life locations on the cockpit.
How this works is fairly simple. In cockpit view, the buttons are visible only if you are viewing the portion of the cockpit where the buttons are located. So if you are viewing the top deck, the lighting buttons are visible.
if you are viewing the front deck, the autopilot input buttons are visible
If you are viewing the bottom deck, you get all engine control settings and flaps and spoilers and such.
Therefore, if you were to view for example to the left side outside the windows from cockpit view, these buttons won’t be visible, because you can’t ‘see’ them. And their location is constant even if you are moving the cockpit view camera, sort of like a Virtual Reality style cockpit.
This in my opinion can make flying more realistic from cockpit view especially when new features like FMC, engine start up, individual engine control, emergency scenarios, or even when moving cockpit instruments are introduced.
Although working switches could be the ultimate goal, if directly implemented, would be difficult for the pilots to differentiate between the switches which function from the switches which don’t, especially on the mobile platform, because in PC you could just hover the mouse over the switch and know it’s a workable switch, which we can’t do in mobile (unless the functioning switches are made to have some sort of glow, which would be weird in terms of realism).
This definitely brings the topic of a messy layout in the long term. My suggestion for that is to have separate pages for the cockpit like the HUD has, like HUD-1, HUD-2 etc.
Cockpit view: this one has the buttons as it is currently placed. Quick access to most important buttons. Helpful when on final.
Cockpit-1: auto pilot controls, this has only buttons related to auto pilot settings in their respective places as shown in the picture. Can be meddled with during cruise.
Cockpit-2: FMC, if made available, this screen can be used to input data into the FMC
Cockpit-3: engine controls, allows for singular engine control, engine start up, APU etc.
And so on.
What do you guys think ?
P.S. I do understand that only one image is required per feature request, but I need more than one image to explain what I’m talking about here.