Not sure if it’s been said before but having to use the allocated controller or keyboard buttons to contact the signaller in cabs can be a little immersion breaking, I know that at least on sehs some of the trackside telephones allow you to contact the signaller from there but I think having a physical thing to press in the cabs adds to the immersion especially on freight or shunting where contacting the signaller is a regular occurrence. I think at least having the ‘sg’ button available if nothing else would be nice as well the power up self test at least adds functionality to both the other wise empty screen and an in cab contact signaller button, but other features would be nice to such as inputting headcodes or the DSD alarms as well of course the infamous red button(sometimes casually sabotaging your game can be fun) But just having the screen functioning would add a little less blandness to the cabs In that area and I know most of Europe use at least gsmr based systems seen as its part of ERTMS, so it doesn’t just apply to uk routes (don’t know about the US) but moral of the story just having an in cab button for contacting the signaller would be a nice extra.
I think this should be part of a large rework of onboard systems including PIS. The problem with the current PIS system is that you have to scrolls through a long list to set your destination. In the real train, you have to enter your train number and the system gets its destination from the onboard database. This same train number is used to log in on GSM-R. The german EBuLa system (electronic timetable) would also be nice. Other functions, like Emergency Calls, would be nice to see for random events in Timetable (Link below).
Those features would be the immersion upgrade that I need. I hear a lot of complaints about sounds, but those are currently (generally speaking) good enough for me. EBuLa, GSM-R and PIS that are more realistic are way more important IMO. I just wonder what technical challenges prevent these features.