F4AF NOOB Question

[CCIP]

Ah yeah, going from IL-2 to this has to be quite a trip (I went the other way, and even then it took a while for me to 'fix' my atrocious gunnery skills). I think F4 is doable on simplified, just that in the end I think you'll find more support and advice on the full-realism avionics, because that's what most of the community flies and most of the game documentation uses.

The toughest thing to learn with F4, in my experience, isn't the systems themselves but situational awareness. Whatever difficulty setting you use for radar etc., you're still going to be bombarded by a lot of information from different sources, and the only right way to manage it all is in your head - because systems still give you inaccurate and sometimes conflicting info, and you have to decide what info to trust yourself. It's extremely rewarding when you get it right, but going into it is tough. My advice is to move to the realistic systems as soon as you can, but play with all labels on. That way it'll at least take off some of the initial confusion and let you concentrate on learning weapons procedures etc. With labels you'll know where things actually are, so at least for a while you won't have to play the guessing game while trying to sort out weapon settings and radar modes at the same time. But the real rewarding part of the game starts when you take off those labels and start working out situational awareness in your head - that's where Falcon can't be matched by other sim, imho. It's where the immersion really hits you.