Scott Draper wrote:

An airline pilot of my acquaintance related about accepting a charted
visual flight procedure into Reno, part of which involves intercepting
a localizer course. He said they were IMC at the time.

My understanding is that the aircraft must reporting seeing a landmark
or preceding aircraft before clearance for this charted visual flight
procedure will be given.

Any thoughts about whether my acquaintance acted properly?

ATC would love to make those CVFPs quasi-instrument approach procedures.
Nonetheless, they are a chart to help a pilot fly by reference to
landmarks and perhaps assisted by hav aids to visually navigate to the
landing runway.

If your aquaintance accepted a turn onto the localizer into a position
inconsistent with vectors-to-final for the ILS/LOC approach, he bought
into a practice that will further erode the system and is certainly not
"legal" (although what's legal with ATC moving traffic only comes to head
when there is either a documented loss of separation, a major incident, or
an accident.