The MFD, useful?
The MFD, didn’t I mention this already?… yeah, there’s a Multi Function Display on the throttle, didn’t I mention that? Oops… how silly of me. Right, well, previously where Saitek had three LEDs to show what mode you were in, we’ve now got a lovely LCD panel, which displays what mode you’re in, whether the shift button is pushed and, if you have the clutch in, what key combo each button is mapped to.
Admittedly, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll want to keep checking out the MFD just to see what the buttons do, so Saitek have given it a much better and more useful function, something pilots love. See, us simmers have a serious side, and some games don’t give you all the help a programmer can when he codes a game. In real life, you fly by looking out the window and keeping a careful check on how fast you’re going and which way you’re headed. Knowing those two things, as well as where you started from mean you’ll be hard pressed to get lost.
In order to help sim pilots get the most from their games, Saitek have added a stopwatch function to the MFD, so you can time your legs before a turn… Yes, yes, this sounds incredibly dull, but try flying a mission in Pacific Fighters. Nothing but miles and miles and miles and miles of ocean. There are surprisingly few landmarks in the sea, but give me a stopwatch, a compass and an airspeed indicator and I could fly you around the ocean to within 5 miles accuracy, which’d be enough to spot the home carrier for me to spectacularly crash on when trying to land.
Ok, so the MFD is aimed at the really serious simmer, you know, the ones who have built a plywood cockpit in their lounge and have installed the PC in that, but even the semi-serious like myself will find it useful. Timing an outbound flight and then clocking you’re time as you fly back takes an awful lot of guesswork out of figuring out where you are, leading to more mission successes than my usual ditch in field due to lack of fuel mission ending.