One really neat thing about the old AW/WB static keypress views is that the position of the keys (or the movement of the hat switch) gives you a spatial feedback about where you're looking, and where the bandit is. As you cycle through the views tracking him, you aren't just dependent on being able to see parts of your plane to know where he is.
This is the big failing with padlock views. Once you reach a point where the bandit is in an area of "clear" canopy with no distinctive aircraft structure like the wing or tail in view, you rapidly lose SA on where you are looking, and how to move your controls to bring the bandit to the front view. You also lose SA on where the plane is going, since you are reluctant to "glance" forward and lose your padlock. This means you have to have a bogus "SA augmenter" like an attitude indicator in the corner of your screen or something similar.
VR headset would work like the key views, but only if it's sufficiently sensitive to track properly where your head is, and synched up to the sim enough that the proper view for head angle is displayed. I'm still a little leary of having those little screens 1/2 inch from my eyes for hours at a time too
I'm hoping for no padlock, but "panning" snap views instead that mimic head motion to the selected viewpoint. I'll track the bandit myself, thanks
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