Fast Glance keyboard commands

Gentlemen,

To those of us who don’t have a TrackIR, the absence in DCS of specific keyboard commands which allow for a quick scan of the sky puts us in great disadvantage.

Without such keys we struggle to maintain situation awareness and it’s almost impossible to spot heat seekers heading our way.

I use flight simulators and combat flight simulators since 1989, and I remember well titles like The Red Baron and the Aces series, where there were no missiles involved but even without TrackIR we always had full situation awareness, tanks to specific keyboard commands.

In DCS we have 8 (eight) glance functions, but these are almost useless.

Without prejudice to the existing functions, a few more should be added:

• Glance up – allowing the pilot to truly look up vertically, at an angle of 90º, maybe even with some degree of zooming;
  
• Glance forward – this one would be equivalent on zooming in on the HUD;
  
• Glance left – this one would allow the pilot to look left, at an angle of 270º horizontally, maybe even with some degree of zooming;
  
• Glance right – this one would allow the pilot to look right, at an angle of 90º horizontally, maybe even with some degree of zooming;
  
• Glance back-left – allowing the pilot to look behind the plane to the left, maybe even with some degree of zooming; this would be equivalent to pressing the hat switch on the joystick left all the way until the panning stops; this would mean a rotation of around 170º left, to an angle of 190º horizontally;
  
• Glance back-right – allowing the pilot to look behind the plane to the right, maybe even with some degree of zooming; this would be equivalent to pressing the hat switch on the joystick right all the way until the panning stops; this would mean a rotation of around 170º right, to an angle of 170º horizontally.
  

From all these, the two last ones are the most important. In fact, their importance is critical.

Therefore, I would like to humbly request that ED implements what I have suggested or similar.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Best regards

The NightMan

P.S. – I am tired of being shot down by ETs (R-27ET)!