"How about an icon that was just a tiny little green or red dot above the aircraft?"
How about going outside once in awhile and looking around at how far you can actually SEE. Not only can the naked eye easily distinguish between a P-47 and an Me-109 at a distance of 3.5 miles (6000 yards), you can also determine whether they're comming or going and even tell how far away they are whithin a couple hundred yards. The human eye is a truly amazing thing.
Like it or not, you have a "lazer range finder" built into your head.
Heck, I can do all that with my crappy bad eyes. (roughly 25/40 vision) Someone with good eyes--like almost all fighter pilots--can probably do even better than I can, especially since they're TRAINED in aircraft recognition and practice it.
AH's graphics are almost the opposite of reality. In AH about the only way you have of telling aircraft apart at ranges of over a mile is color. In the REAL WORLD (something that a lot of computer players forget about), color greys out over distance and the SHAPE of an aircraft is the easiest means of identifying it. Not so in AH, the resolution and size on a computer screen just doesn't permit it.
A lot of people ask for greatly reduced ICONS or NO ICONS, but forget just how good the human eye actually is. The fact is, NO ICONS might be fun for some people, but it is artifically difficult almost to the point of being silly. Don't confuse difficulty with realism.
One thing about the ICONS in AH that I would like to see though, is for the ICONS to automatically switch to SHORT-RANGE (3000 yards) once you fly inside a storm. In a storm, with swirling rain, visibility should obviously be reduced. The naked eye can see pretty well through clear skies, but inside a raging storm is a different matter completely. Likewise, at night ICONS should be reduced.
J_A_B
