Away from Keyboard option/Database idea

[dohavik]

Ideas for the following version:

When Simacars is turned on and the flight  is progressing the pilot needs to press a key or solve a small sum in order to continue without critical warnings.
The airline itself can put this timer in (varying from  10 - 60 minutes).
The sum or key must be pressed within a normal amount of time (3 minutes). If the pilot fails, a critical error is being generated and a counter starts to run.

That way it is visible if a pilot is actually flying or non flying flights. I see the tendency with people to fly long haul flights and then after take off, walk away and then return and do
the landing and make it count as flying time.

My second idea is that the flights being made are put first in a temporarily database and when they are verified, they will be placed in the storage database.
That way if a pirep is rejected for whatever reason, the data is not polluting the database.

[lesmar]

'That way it is visible if a pilot is actually flying or non flying flights. I see the tendency with people to fly long haul flights and then after take off, walk away and then return and do
the landing and make it count as flying time.'
 
The problem is that in real life a pilot will not fly all of the time on a long haul flight as he will be working very long hours and possibly in violation of airline laws.  this is always a difficult subject for virtual airlines to deal with. Yes some insist that you are at the controls once every hour by making a keypress etc. a simple keypress is easy to break using a script running in the background.  some don't bother and then their forum is full of postings about pilots always being pilot of the month because they have over 500 hours for the month.

One option again has had critics on both sides in that you limit the number of hours a pilot can fly each month ,  some agree with that and others say why can I not fly xxx number of hours each month.

One has to be careful on any of these suggestions as you start to get carried away with realism after all this is a SIMULATION and for many thousands a piece of software to enjoy and have fun !!! 

Some aspects of realism might be true if you are trying to run LUFTHANSA or AIR FRANCE as a virtual airline but it is still not the real world so don't get hung up about long haul pilots etc. Enjoy your experience with flying an aircraft from your computer

[dohavik]

To add to Lesmar's comment:
-Flight simulation is a hobby...a simulation of a flight...VAM is meant to provide the environment for an airline....every airline is different from another. VAM gives us an enormous range of options. I think the "Away from keyboard" should be an option as well.
-Flight simulation is limited to flying the entire aircraft on your own...so yes it is different than in real life. And so not real aviation laws are applicable on that. Just the one's of the airline.
-Minimum or maximum amounts of hours a month is in my idea limiting the freedom of people. The freedom of doing your flightsim hobby.
-Sleeping is not enjoying your flight sim hobby....what has it for sense to count another occupation to a logbook ?
-Pressing a key can be evaded by bots...but a simple sum and a press on a key not.
So I still think the Away from Keyboard option, should be optional to the VAM system.