From my point of view, automatic padlock is anything but cheat. It should be designed just to simulate the movements of the head. You dont use fingers nor keys to move your head when visually tracking any moving object. Of course, you can lost track when the object is obscured by any obstacle, but in most of the cases you can predict where the object is due its actual displacement vector, this is true only for 1 - 3 seconds in air combat. If you loose your target crossing your six to the left, you probably will be expecting it to show up again by your left shoulder. If the target do not appears again by your left in (for example) 2 seconds, you lost the automatic track. While the target is "obscured" your atomatic track is lost temporally. In the previous example, when the target crosses to the left and is obscured by your seat, your head keeps looking at your right (unless any view key is pressed), but if the target is visible again in 2 seconds of less, it is readquired automatically (unless you deactivated the autopadlock). The key is: If you can follow an object with your head, and you want to, then why to use keys? just follow this automatically untill it is obscured by obstacles or is it out of visual range. For example, real mode padlocking in Falcon4 is just designed for this, not for cheating; if you can see the object, you can track it. Of course, it is important to take into accoung the limits of your head plus your body when looking backwards. You can not argue about cheating nor "arcading" a sim with padlock when extremely real simulations like Falcon4, Flanker2, F18E, etc use it in their most real modes. The real cheat is to use labels with id, side and range inditations. Visual ID of the target is a key in air combat. But to aliminate labels the AH team should create different artwork (nationality signs) for each side, and even different camouflage patterns, etc, etc.
