I'm not quite sure where we're are going with this, but I'll just reply to some of the points anyway.
SIGF, agreed. But if you look at all the really competetive 4x4s they all have ABS, ASC, Traction Control, Active Steering Control, and many more systems are in development. I worked in the auto industry for on and off road vehicles.
Yes, but they are expensive at the moment. My point was that cars like Subaru aren't that much more expensive than an equivalent 2WD car since the extra components are negligible (in terms of extra weight, expense, maintenance) in the final product. Just like there are plenty of helis with 2 main rotors, despite that those components are more expensive when only compared to components of a single rotor equivalent.
There will always be room for experimental/homebuilt aircraft. What i am trying to say is that you cannot use competetive handling as the reason for a new configuration. The OEM will just call in a control specialist who will shrug his shoulders and ask: Why are you going for this expensive solution when i can design a nice cheap control system?
I'd tell that control specialist that he's better off working in the IT industry, where assumptions that things should only be done one way aren't so harmful.
It's also not just competitive handling, but reliability, and how it fits in with the rest of the design, among other things. Using a certain type of layout may allow for other requirements to be fulfilled. For example: The Ka-32 is well suited as a MedEvac heli.
What i believe is that there are many people who are not control experts, and thus try to find mechanical solutions to control problems. I generally count myself as one of them. But a control system does not need to be 10 supercomputers actively simulating the flight dynamics - indeed a simple mechanical gyroscope was all that was required for early rocketry...
And then there are people who have a good understanding of many things, and decide to sit back and take a fresh approach to problems. Whether that solution is in the form of something mechanical may not be simply because it's in the person's comfort zone -- sometimes even the opposite.
A control system can be a simple or as complicated as the design requirements dictate.
Much of the time i use software packages developed specifically to solve Finite Element problems or CAD problems. If i am trying to model something in more detail i have been known to write iterative code in Excel. I have written powertrain performance simulations in Pascal and test data processing in Fortran. I have even programmed 4 bit computers in machine code.
There is a big difference between writing non-critical software for R&D and writing critical software systems for controlling aircraft. How many lines of code did most of them have?
But my point is that a control system does not need to be complicated. When my old man was a rocket scientist at Hawker Siddely it was often done using gyros and analogue circuits. In fact the only real advantage of digital is very complex circuitry with no noise. As i say Lockheed did it mechanically.
No, they don't have to be, and it's best to keep them simply, of course. But sometimes it is necessary to archive a goal. Complexity is also relative to the how it fits in with the rest of the system/design; software is complex, but from the perspective of incorporating a FBW system into the aircraft, it can be simpler.
BTW. Reliability is one advantage of digital -- no moving parts. I've seen an old gyro and it's a pretty heavy, bulky, and mechanically complicated compared to modern solid-state sensors. Also, you don't get noise, but you can still get interference -- I've read that fibre-optics have been considered in FBW for that reason, but I'm not sure about the extent of the research -- it might have been intended for military aircraft.
But there are folk who specialise in this. It would be unrealistic to expect an experimental / homebuilt to perform as well as an OEM machine. If you used the config to get the same handling, the payload/machine ratio would suffer for both cost and weight.
Not necessarily, since a big part of designing an OEM machine is reducing material and manufacturing costs -- this often compromises other design aspects. Some costs may not even be relevant in a home-built/experimental as they may have no or low cost, or the cost is insignificant compared to other costs. And it's not like amateur designers can't find good info and get advice from specialists in the age of the internet. But now we're getting off topic.