For those of you who drive HUD-less, what methods/tips/tricks do you use to manage and manipulate the throttle and brake? When the HUD is off, the tool-tips that confirm control inputs are also disabled. Since the keyboard often doesn't work as expected (one often has to either press a key multiple times or keep it held-down for a time in order to get the control to respond), I find it difficult to confirm that my input has been registered. Are there ways of keeping track of the throttle/brake settings without using raildriver and without needing to look down at the controls? I find it distracting and somewhat unrealistic to look down at the controls. IRL you'd be able to tell by the feel of the lever what position it's in. Also, you wouldn't have to turn your head in such an exaggerated way; you'd simply be able to move your eyes. How do you deal with keeping track of time and passenger loading?
I simply tilt the view so I can see the controls as well as the route. If the controls are way down, I can judge the position and make relative adjustments based on train's behavior (this also applies to thyristor regulation aka the steering wheel). Of course I sometimes need to quickly look at the position like when setting throttle to idle but that's pretty rare. As for passenger loading, I don't think there is an answer to that other than bringing up the HUD every once in a while. Arrival time isn't all that relevant as I'm driving at my own pace anyway and knowing when I'm late won't affect that.
I get an instinctive feeling of how long is right, I then use either the brake/traction indicator or sound feedback (for notched controls) to make sure it's right. I also visually check the lever position if I forget where it is or if I feel like I did something wrong. I usually bring the HUD up for pax loading, but a few times I don't, mainly on the German trains that have a clock in the cab - generally I just see the time at which I open the door and round up the seconds and add +20/30/60s depending on the service. So let's say I arrive at 11:35:47 and have to stay still for 30s I just round up 47 to 50 and close the doors at ~11:36:20. I write all the arrival times on a blank notepad page on my second monitor while waiting for the first boarding task to complete.
Not neccessarily. If you hide the HUD with F1, then yes. But if you simply turn it off piece by piece in the options, then the input display should remain, so you should still be able to see what percentage throttle you are using, for example.
Keyboard works fine for hudless driving. Beside a speed chart, i dont need to look at the controls usually, but the braking pressure gauge and amp gauge is very important. Sometimes i memorize the 0 position of the throttle. If things are busy on the lu bakerloo i can visually back ckeck the camshaft position.