I've always thought it was silly that you could tell the specific plane at 5k. I don't care how good your eyes are, at 5k yards you'd be lucky to tell it was a Spit instead of a 109, or Yak, let alone tell which kind of Spit it is.
Fariz' idea is almost ideal. My only problem with it is could you really tell the difference between a Tempest and a Typh at 3k in RL? How about an La-5 and an La-7? Same goes for the different Zeros. I think that for very similar planes with completely different names like the above, it should do something like show Typhoon at 3k and at 1k either change to Tempest, or stay Typhoon. It should default to the most commonly used of the planes.
The only other thing that might be better would be some kind of code to indicate A/C type at long ranges. Something like F1 or F2 would indicate single-engined fighter and twin-engined fighters respectively. BL, BM, BH could indicate light, medium and heavy bombers respectively (C-47 would be medium). That might just be too complex and not really serve any purpose though. I'm just brainstorming.
I would like the option of turning on A/C type on friendly icons. It's not realistic, but it would save needless radio chatter.
