Thank for the help for those that posted. I got a chance to look at this and I'm very sorry but its just . . . wrong.
I can look behind my now. That is a relief! However, the way this works is you lean to the left to look out the right side of the canopy and vice versa. This isn't just counter intuitive, its just plain wrong. I've flown bubble canopied sailplanes in real life and that just plain isn't how it works. That is disorienting in the extreme. You should look and lean left to see down the left side all the way to the tail. Same for the right.
Then it is small amounts of turning, with massive amounts of lean to look to the side. The head box just seems very constricting. If you turn around far enough you just look at the headrest no matter how far you lean. That isn't right either. If you have leaned to the point of putting your head on the canopy and turn to see behind, you should see behind. There is just no two ways about it.
As to the forward view, it is impossible to lock your head forward. Keep in mind the differences between a real pilot and computer pilot. A real pilot is strapped into a non-moving chair and so looking forward is relatively constrained. A real pilot has limited movement and finding forward is easy. A computer pilot sits in a rolling and tilting chair and so having zero relative movement between the chair and the TIR sensor is a nice thought but not really achievable. Throw in rudder pedals and body English and keeping the forward view becomes its OWN game with shooting becoming secondary.
A computer pilot needs to be able to lock the view forward to shoot and KNOW that its in the exact right position for shooting right NOW, not hunting around to find the right place.
The aim point and bullet drop seem to be off, particularly compared to AH2. The bullets drop so far that high angle deflection shots are almost impossible since the relative position of the aim point and bullet impact are very disconnected.
I love the eye candy! But control of the view is the game issue. The graphics are beautiful but with these issues, air combat is more like rolling dice than it is about control. Throw in the fact that the game seems to lose the graphics drivers on a regular basis every 20 minutes or so and a person wonders what they are doing with trying to make this work. IMHO, air combat is about precision. The pilot needs to be able to KNOW exactly what they are doing with their computer body in the computer plane and not guess.
It seems very much like the simple solution is to look at the view keys locking the view. Its time honored, having been used for years and the pilot will always KNOW exactly what view they locked to, and not have it wavering around with random head movements. The update doesn't really add anything and actually subtracts from what a computer pilot has to do. You can work around it but it the same way you would work around flying while sitting on a basketball. It can be done but it doesn't really help the experience
.
Thanks!
