I suppose there's more than one point to unpack here but I'll take the main one with a huge caveat up front: I am not an aircraft pilot and so I'm at a disadvantage and defer to you when it comes to your statement regarding in-cockpit VFR awareness.
That said, I don't need to be an aircraft pilot or need to sit inside a cockpit to know what the limitations of my drone's camera and monitor are. I know from direct experience that the radio tower and guylines I can readily see with my unaided vision are reduced to near invisibility when taking in the same view at the same distance from from my
Mavic 2's camera &
DJI Smart controller screen. I know from direct experience that there are obstacles I can clearly see with the naked eye that are are either not in my camera's field of view or indiscernible on the monitor until I get the drone much, much, much, closer.
Hence, learning that maintaining VFR & situational awareness in a real plane is even more difficult does little to overturn the necessity and wisdom of maintaining VLOS when piloting a drone in my opinion.
Don't get me wrong.....I'm not talking about flying one's drone across some expanse to get to some point of interest you can actually see while reducing your drone to small dot in the sky. I'm talking about flying one's drone so far out that you not only lose sight of the drone, but also lose any direct knowledge of the surrounding area that is not in the camera's field of view along with any objects beyond your monitor's resolution capability to display until danger close.
One example comes to mind: We were in Iceland and found a particularly interesting pullout about midway down this incredible glacial valley. Great drone shot in my opinion and so while I prepped for flight my wife took a short hike out to and along the cliff edge over which I intended to get a nice bit of "flyover then drop in" footage. As I fly out I see the little speck of pixels that is my wife on the
DJI Smart controller energetically waving. I assume she's just waving at the drone to be part of the shot......cool....let's keep her in frame. But then a bit of good sense overtakes me and I look up from the monitor and directly at my wife with my naked eye and I see not a friendly wave but a cautionary wave off. Turns out there were rows of high tension power lines just below the cliff wall I was about to drop over and into that I could not see from my position and which did not appear with sufficient resolution on the
smart controller monitor for me to have noticed perhaps until it was too late.
This for me was the concrete lesson on maintaining VLOS & properly scouting one's flight path....which is to say never relying exclusively upon the camera's POV to cover both.....which one is almost certainly doing when flying several miles out. I know part of the fun is to be able to project one's own vision over the horizon....I get it....that's cool and fun.....just like lane splitting on a motorcycle is sorta fun.......but neither practice seems wise and in many places both are illegal. And so as a community, I just wonder out loud whether we should promote or laud the practice when the topic arises.