@williang83
I’m just about finished with a replica cockpit and at the moment, I’m having to “feel” my way around some of the switches on the side consoles. However, once I’ve established my hand’s “location,” I can easily navigate to the switch or dial I want. The side consoles are new to me hence this issue.
For my ICP, I just need to establish where it is in the space in front of me and I can quickly use it due to a little bit of muscle memory forming. If ever I get “lost,” I just re-orient myself using the bumps on the ICP’s face.
Having the correctly-shaped switch cap does help a lot with confirming that I am in the right place holding the right switch; same thing with dials/rotaries.
Is it a better option? It depends. A lot of time has been spent making the cockpit, then a lot more time has to be spent building up muscle memory. Being able to see my hands via a passthrough would be great and remove the need for the majority of muscle memory requirement or “feeling around” to get orientated in the cockpit. If you’re not a rampstart-to-shutdown kind of guy, it might be less attractive to spend this much time and resources for stuff you won’t use all the time.
At the moment, my focus is more on finishing the cockpit and then integrating other bits of my sim gear so I’ve not looked into passthrough options just yet.