I've often wondered what the best way to deal with the icon issue myself.
One of the things that's a real problem is that in the real war, everyone already new what they were up against, and which direction they were coming from.
E.g. if you're flying a Spitfire East across the Channel, and see dots, you KNOW that they're FW190, 109s, or maybe JU-88s: not zekes, or unfriendly C-Hogs. You will set yourself for an angles fight on the LW fighters because that's the best way to do it. No worry about setting up for an angles fight and finding yourself toe-to-toe with a Ki-43 or another spitfire!
Visual acuity is better in real life as well. I can make out the difference between a 747, a twin-engine turboprop, or a piston single at 2-3 miles or more (that's over 5k yards!). I can even tell the difference between high and low wing aircraft. What I can't tell is the difference between a Cessna 172, 182, or 150 at that distance: and they all perform differently.
Then you have the color palette and finite pixel problem. In real life, I can clearly see a white airplane against a white cloud (even from 6 oclock). At 1024x768x65536: good luck.
AH has a zoom ability, which compensates well for the shrunk view area for our monitors, and 1.04 will bring in the controversial padlock ability (so I've heard). You could use the padlock to swing the focus on a dot, and zoom to ID, and take away the long range ID. Without padlock, this is impossible because you'd zoom in, miss the dot, and flail around looking around for it.
