I agree with Eagler to some extent the engine failures are a curious thing to 'over-model'. In real life you'd feel vibrations, knocking, feel a roughness or hesitation on operating the throttle, all of those warning signs aren't replicated in DCS.
Look at most F1 games. They ghost out the central bar of the halo because in real life you have parallax vision. All games make concessions.
I believe all these kinds of things are server configurable. Icons, engine management, hot start, easy start, ect. Offline, I like all those complexities. Offline I like a good study sim to dig into. But I can also see a MP server relaxing some of that just for fun. I don't know if there are server like that already, but one could be set up.
I get the purity argument. But I'm old and my eyesight is getting worse. This argument has been going on for decades, but I still maintain that with current technology limits, not having icons available leads to less realistic outcome. The icons make up for the fact that a young 20 yo fighter pilots eyes are just going to be a lot more capable to picking out small objects than old dudes eye looking into a lowish res Quest II. Icons make up for the current tech limits and the fact that most of us are don't have 20 yo fighter pilot eyesight anymore.
