Prior to IL-2 4.11 you either had external views or you didn't. We used a mod that gave us some control over friendly externals, enemy externals, etc. But 4.11 (which HSFX 6 is based on) has introduced some interesting external view choices. The way the switches work together is a little confusing though. Here's the way I've had the views set up the past couple times I've hosted a squad mission with HSFX 6 that seems to give a good balance, and that I recommend we use for most of our squad nights:
No External View - OFF. If it's on, then you have NO external views of any kind regardless of how the other switches are set.
No Player's Own View - ON. This prevents you from switching to an outside view of your own aircraft. But there is an important exception...While you're on the ground, you can still switch to an outside of your aircraft even if this is switched on. Very useful for taxiing, especially on a carrier. As soon as you lift off, you get automatically switched back into your cockpit.
No Enemy Views - ON. This prevents you from cycling through enemy aircraft and carriers.
No Friendly Views - OFF. Leaving this OFF allows you to cycle through friendly aircraft and/or carriers, depending on the 'No Aircraft Views' and 'No Carrier Views' switches.
No Aircraft Views - ON. This prevents you from cycling through friendly aircraft even though you've turned off 'No Friendly Views'.
No Carrier Views - OFF. Since this is OFF and 'No Friendly Views' is OFF, you can cycle through friendly carriers.
Cockpit Always On - ON. No Wonder Woman view.
So...the end result of this setup is that while you're taxiing you can switch to an outside view of just your own aircraft. Once you're in the air you can no longer switch to an outside view of your aircraft. You can't cycle through friendly or enemy aircraft. You can cycle through friendly carriers, but not enemy carriers. You can also cycle through any friendly or neutral cameras you've set up.
The advantage of this setup for a squad night is that it makes it easier to maneuver on the carrier deck, but while we're flying we don't have any external views of any aircraft (which is how we should practice most of the time so we don't get lazy). And then once we're down, we can switch to the carrier view (LSO cam is optional) on the friendly carriers and watch our squad mates land.
And here are the Icons and Map settings I've been using. All switches to the left. It's supposed to a mini-map, not a magic-map.
