After 20+ years of using a wide variety of hardware mixers (and I still use mine for realtime monitoring as well as for its pres, which actually
like), and around 4 years of using a hybrid DAW/OTB setup, I moved to full ITB ~2001.
My DAW, like many, has a 'photorealistic' mixer interface complete with faders that look like sliders, trims and EQs that look like knobs, etc. I almost never use it because I just don't see any advantage... I can get more information in an easier to see and manipulate format by just zooming the track view -- my DAW can zoom a given track to take up the full track area, meaning you can quickly go from a collapsed or semi-collapsed view to one where you can see everything. In that view, I have easy access to both numerical values as well as easy-to-see and use graphic controls, typically in the form of sliders (I'm no fan of onscreen knobs... the whole up/down mouse gesture thing never made intuitive sense to me and then there's like one in ten that insist you use the more intuitive but nuttier still circular mouse gesture).
My favorite para EQ has two interface views, a 'virtual hardware' view with graphic sliders -- but it
also has a fully graphic rubber band and ball display (the balls are the center points of the EQ bands, the rubber band shows the cumulative effect as one switches the parametric channels in or out, adjusts, etc), and below
that is an animated spectral display, mapped against the linear display. A pic is probably better:
I've occasionally been accused of being a Luddite (I really don't think so but I have, nonetheless), and I've certainly got the whole hardware mixer thing pretty much in my DNA at this point (as they say), but I'm
all for using the computer in ways that
improve on previous practice -- not just
try to emulate it.