Dozy, I appreciate your stubborn defense of this design decision, but do not accept from that side of the rooom, as it were, that the decision made for the proper balance between man and machine in the interface, given that an assumption in most design choices is that pilots retain piloting skills as a step zero in the process. Without feedback, tactile sense, your brain to muscle memory goes to hell.
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If one takes the tactile feel, which at this point in aircraft design has been "manufactured" out of the loop, you has robbed the pilot of a standard tool to use (working around a trimmed position, or a null position, using vestibular and tactile sense) in making sense of his situation -- hence the term situational awareness -- and making the plane fly as he or she wishes it to. That is what flying is. You make the plane (within its physical design capability and limit) do what you want it to do.
Well, I'd like to hear from "gums" on this one - the Viper has no feedback per se for the sidestick - it is a force sensor (for want of a better description).
Much of this discussion lately seems to operate on the assumption that the control 'stick' of the 50's is the 'right stuff' and any other way of doing it is somehow bound to fail.
However the
current generation have grown-up using joysticks and control inputs such the Wii controller, etc, and have 'learned' very differently from days of yore... Having been involved in a number of UAV programs, you only have to see the control stations for these aircraft to understand that the "pilots" (go with the flow...) are a different breed. Are they so different from the 'bus pilots?
If the slate were entirely blank and we were tasked with developing a control system for a new cockpit what would it look like? My guess is such a design would be rather different if you happened to be age 24 versus age 54.