If they really meant for you to memorize the numbers, they wouldn’t have painted the green, yellow and red arcs on the engine gauges, the blue and red lines on the airspeed indicator, and so forth…just say’n 
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And then you have to remember the timing for needle in red, at red plus 20° and transient. For three different variants of the engine, in your fleet. Dispatch pressure for the O2 and HYD.
And all those gear operating speed. Gear down speed. Flap 5, 10, 15 etc. Rough air speed. And two fleet variants, of the above.
I wish the instruments told us all we needed to know.
And, on more modern and advanced aircraft, they do.
But hey, If I can remember this, anybody can. The question is, for how many variants can I keep this up?
So, in DCS, I can keep fairly up to speed on the Viggen. Mostly because of a life long love of that aircraft, learning everything about it since I was a kid.
The rest are treated with less respect.
I’m actually dreading the release of the Tomcat, because that’s a bird I’d like to get to know intimately…
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Yes sir, I’m one of those people. “Game effective” far better describes my level than proper use of the word proficient. Thanks for enlarging my dictionary with a very useful distinction!
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If I spend a few days away from the sim (I’m fairly new to this, less than a year), I need to refresh. My landings go from bad to worse, my timing in BFM gets worse, everything goes sour. But I get back to speed in a day or two.
I guess in real life you don’t have the luxury of spattering on the carrier deck twice just so you can remember stuff…
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Red is “get me home” power right?
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I am still fairly proficient with the A10c and the KA50. The hornet and av8 are coming together but choppers are my bag and I have over 1000 hours in both mi8 and huey. My 2ic from B company got his helicopter private license and swears all the flying in DCS and having been taught by real life helo pilots in-game gave him a huge headstart
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Reducing task saturation, to a certain extent, is a trained skill that come with time in type along with recency of experience in that airplane. I remember when I was put in the left seat of a King Air B200 for the first time with about 300 hours under my belt. Up to that point, I had not encountered any significant roadblocks with my flying. It had all been pretty easy for me. I had an aptitude for this flying thing and I had no reason to believe that I would have any real difficulties with any airplane I was likely to fly…
Well, the King Air was a humbling experience I can tell you!
The B200 was way faster than the airplanes I had been flying before… things happened quickly, and you had more to think about. It was like drinking from a firehose. There was more than one occasion where I came home after a flight feeling completely deflated and wondering if I had any business being in a cockpit. But, after awhile, you absorb enough knowledge and experience in the airplane that things become less overwhelming and you start feeling good about your performance.
Since then I have repeated the same process with the Citation (although I never really did get enough left seat time to be comfortable ), the Challenger, which was another big jump in performance, and finally the Global. I’m sure it will be no different when I (hopefully) get to fly the Global 7500.
So, I guess that was a long winded way of saying that task saturation is very dependent on a pilot’s experience and how much he or she has been flying the airplane recently.
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Bah…mere technicalities……if you can breath then obviously you have enough O2…hydraulics? Don’t they usually give you more than one system? You’ll be fine…if you fly a “Grumman Tank” with landing gear designed to land on a carrier, max gear speed is more of a suggestion…Flap speeds? On MFD planes they usually have a little number on the speed tape. On the steam gauge planes of yesteryear, there is usually a little placard attached on the control panel somewhere. Regardless, for most commercial aircraft you are probably safe holding off on flaps until 180 KIAS; GA planes 120-ish KIAS.
It is amazing the laissez-faire attitude you can take towards the finer points of airmanship when you have a “Pause Button” to push. 
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I suddenly realize the reason for the appaling loss rate of virtual Viggens…! 
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I’ve just had my first play with proper rudder pedals and a decent stick as my big box of goodies from NL arrived today
NIGHT AND DAY. I’m so gutted I didnt do a before and after video. I cannot believe the difference in my flying after only an hour.
I just did my most gentle landing in the f15c I’ve ever done. It was so soft I wasn’t sure it I was down or not.
Also retried the mission against the f5e aggressors I mentioned earlier in the thread. I dominated the fight. Utterly hammered them. Anyone in the fence about pedals. BUY THEM. especially if you fly in real life and are used to the feeling they give you. It was like everything clicked. Work load reduces. Stability and accuracy increased.
WOW.
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So after a brief work induced Hiatus, I got back into the Hornet, tried a couple of new
ordinance, did some refreshers on my carrier landings, and then I tried to refuel. And did it. For the first time. Two times out of two, so far. I couldn’t keep in formation long until the end of the process on both tries, but I went home with 4K pounds and 10K pounds on each. So, about a minute or more of formation flying with the tanker.
Head exploded like Keanu in the Matrix: I know kung-fu.
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