If it is realistic and is acually used in real life yes, please provide info to show this.

It is realistic trust me, why do you think there are a lot of different buttons around these screens in real helicopter? Its to switch these screens into different modes and views. Look how Apache cockpit looks if you don't believe to me

Firstly there is no camera on the bottom of any helicopter, not even the sling loading chinook. They use the digital maps in combination with doppler radar equipment to create a heightmap that colorizes the terrain on a red,green or yellow to depict height to aircraft and likelyhood of collision.?

Even if the aircraft lacks equipment they still have access to the maps themselves if digitally capable..

http://www.mechmodels.com/mas/screenshots/a2/mission_pic6.jpg A feature such as this would be amazingly useful since you don't have to go into the map and thus risk missing something. However you then need a system to change the
displays back and forth. This can of course be something as simple as a key bind but it may be too much considering helicopters are still secondary.

All that said, if you want to see something really crazy and impressive, check out Synthetic Vision System http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-8xPI2kfkg which exists today on several civil aircraft https://www.google.com/search?q=rockwell+collins+synthetic+vision+system+video&safe=off&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.48705608,d.dmg&biw=1920&bih=890&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=0rbgUfeFB-Pl4AO544H4Cw#um=1&safe=off&hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=synthetic+vision+system&oq=synthetic+vision+system&gs_l=img.3..0j0i24l4.2953.3145.2.3337.2.2.0.0.0.0.119.214.1j1.2.0....0...1c.1.19.img.Ak_qJpbFH9Q&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.48705608,d.dmg&fp=83a7cc7b215d4e39&biw=1920&bih=890

Thumbs up NodUnit, good info out there!

Glad to help. As much as I would love to see more involving aircraft I'm not sure the majority of the playerbase are really ready for it..and many have conflicted opinions of realism versus convenience and information feedback.

Realism nuts such as myself would argue that it is far more challenging and immmersive to have the information displayed upon the cockpit. But I also understand the convenience arguement wherein having such a feature becomes supremely redundant in the case of a standard vehicle.

For example, say you have an aircraft with pages galore, and then you have a HUD on at all times regardless of the difficulty, are you going to reference your instruments or the far quicker, always there HUD instead?

I'd like to give a visual example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euo566iW6kU you can see here the only "HUD" is the overlay on the screen (which can be turned off and lost, leaving to rely on instruments only) It has a lot of nice features but how much would they be used with this layout http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u73t7hmESew

It may even be seen as impractical by some..you can have a page with a radar image that limits you to 90 degrees frontal that is blocked by terrain and only able to detect and track air or ground targets above or below at a certain height. Or you can have a radar that sees everything regardless of height, terrain, obstructions or orientation.

Many people would say they want more realism but just as many would then complain when faced with that hampering, and if BI is trying to be more accessible then I imagine they would rather go with the latter option.

Weapons are another big thing to consider. For analogue aircraft the only indication of weapon selection was a switch pressed in a certain direction to indicate the live action. Whereas the digital era allowed crewman to see in far more detail. Not only do they know what weapon is selected but they can know the type, total, fuse setting, range setting, burst count, tracking mode and even more. This creates a HUGE gap between digital and analogue aircraft, a gap that many might not appreciate from a game itself...sad to say.

Devs are lazy!