Practicing with a “partial panel” is a crucial part of IFR learning. It involves the “failure” of one or more instruments, usually by covering an instrument with a premade suction-cup blank or a post-it note, etc. This would be a fantastic, worthy, real-world enhancement for the sim.
Please allow the ability to obscure any number of instruments with blank covers. Blank decals that we can drag into place and resize, turn on and off by hiding them would work best for applying to any aircraft/instrument set. Or create an instructor panel that allows instant failures/covering/obscuration of particular instruments or systems.
Examples below:
Steam-gauge suction-cup style
G1000 “failure” cover (yes, I use these IRL)
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I like your idea. I’d argue however that being able to simulate a failure of any instrument (randomly or scheduled) is the best way to use the sim to its fullest (in which case you’d still want those covers handy to cover that “lying” gauge 
So yes, good idea.
BTW I was a CFII back in the days before glass cockpits were a thing and I’ve used all sorts of things as covers – including the rubber suction cup thingies.
Thanks for letting this stay up - I’d submit that this wish is somewhat related to the idea of “foggles” and other view-limiting devices, but entirely different because this is meant to limit the use of instruments inside the aircraft, not the view outside. The two are often used in concert with each other to simulate IMC conditions and partial-panel ops, but are separate.
I wonder if they can be disabled digitally, so they give no readout, but were still visible. External tools only, but maybe its possible. You can certainly do simple things like pop a CB, and have parts of the instrument panel switch off, but I’m not sure about individual six pack instruments.
It looks like they already thought of that. There is one for airspeed at least:
There are quite a few others as well.
I’ve tested a few of these. Airspeed, Altitude, Attitude, Heading, Turn Co-ordinator, and Vertical Velocity all work, and can disable each of the six pack as needed.
I tried a few others, but they seemed to have no effect.
ADF
Nav
Vacuum
Avionics
Electrical
Engine
Fuel indicator ( it updates when you add/remove fuel via the EFB but unsure about normal fuel burn over time)
Comms
Pitot
Transponder
The following extra ones do work:
Compass
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They can give false indications, be “failed” as it were, which is good. It would be nice to have an easy instructor panel that toggled failures easily. However, the failure mode here needs testing - there are multiple failure modes and what the sim outputs by simply changing the flag to a 1 or 0 might not be a realistic failure mode for a particular scenario. This is why instrument-rated pilots are taught to scan and cross-check several instruments in short order (even simultaneously).
Regardless, covering one up is a realistic part of IFR training - you can’t easily or safely fail certain instruments.
Further, I’ll go out on a limb and submit that covering a failed instrument is potentially a safety enhancement. For instance, if I have an attitude indicator that has tumbled or is otherwise failing - it will absolutely mess with my senses that are now trying to interpret multiple other instruments in it’s stead. In that case, as it’s very hard to omit scanning a visible, yet failed instrument, I’d much rather cover the attitude indicator as it’s potentially going to induce spatial disorientation and kill me if I continue incorporating it into my scan.
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That makes sense. But in an actual emergency situation would you have a pack of these blanks with you at all times ready to fit them? Or even have the time, or presence of mind, to fit them in an emergency? Again, depending on how the instrument failed it could be either off, or feeding false information.
Yes, that’s one of several reasons I carry post-its when I fly. At night, depending on the aircraft and whether the instrument is backlit or not, you can pop a light off the post to reduce the distraction of that instrument.
That said, most of my flying is done on a G1000 these days, which is an entirely different set of failure modalities.
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It’s an interesting idea for a mod where you attach a model that has the covers for each instrument location and they could be toggled via a control panel.
Are there enough people who would want something like that to make it worthwhile?
I think there a lot of people don’t know the value, don’t know why it’d be useful. The question is if they knew how to use it, would they consider it useful?
There’s only one way to find out. Someone makes a mod, puts it out there, and see how downloads or buys it.
