Yes, one system gathers information from everywhere to do its own thing, that is different from one system tells another system what to do. For example, in a go-around, thrust levers don’t tell the autobrake to deactivate because it knows the plane is doing a go-around, the autobrake senses the thrust lever is at a high power setting position, which makes no sense to burn the brakes, so the autobrake responds accordingly. If there’s a high degree of overlap/coordination (e.g. flight profiles, flight routes), they fold into one system, like the FMS. The FMS is quite special on modern aircrafts because it knows a lot more, but it still doesn’t do stuff for you without your input: lower the flaps (fact check: the FMS only advices flap settings), lower the landing gear, arm the brakes, etc., and you have to monitor what the computer is doing. Multiple systems contribute to one goal (deceleration for example), that’s redundancy, and redundancy doesn’t mean these systems can self-organize and self-cooperate, right under the pilot’s nose.
If assumptions can be made, just imagine: whenever you are using full flaps, the plane assumes that you are definitely going to land, so landing gear is automatically lowered for you, with no input necessary. If you don’t want to land, you can retract the gears back up. If you want to land with other flaps settings, no problem, just lower the gears manually, so versatile! The plane can be a lot “smarter” if it’s designed like this, is this what we want? Why does anyone have the authority to decide/pick, that lowering the landing gear is an important part of the piloting experience, so you do it on your own, while as for the spoilers, if it extends when the airplane touches the ground, it’s good enough so whatever?
I completely agree with you that compromises had to be made on a common interface for a simulation game on a mobile device, but that has nothing to do with this issue. If there’s a lack of features due to limitations, we cope with that. But this is an unnecessary extra feature that the developers thought was such a great idea and they put work into it. Do they need more screen real estate to put another button so I can arm the spoilers on my own? No, the buttons are already here. Do they need more computational power to de-couple the autobrake and spoilers? No, it’s less work. The core of this debate is pilot-oriented design, the Airbus vs Boeing automation style argument doesn’t apply here either, because the essential value of a flight simulator is pilot control.
In terms of realism, that is a no-fruition topic here on this forum. “If you are not happy, why don’t you go to another simulator, why don’t you go into a real plane? Why bother to play this game at all? Why bother to play any games at all? If what we have is what the developers offer us, why bother to have this forum to gather people’s feedback?” The conversation goes nowhere.
