Parabe11um

Same as above, lights didn't work for EWR until I installed the cockpit mod posted by OpticFlow.

I don't think it's intentional that clouds pop dots far beyond the max range dots are supposed to be visible according to the game files. Either way you shouldn't be putting stuff in front of clouds unless you are specifically trying show that the cloud effect on dots is bad (but again there's a bug thread for that already). If you are talking about general spotting it'd be better to focus on clear skies.

Clouds or partial clouds popping dots (completely or partially) is unrelated to the recent spotting changes and also reported.

Still need to run your tracks, but testing it live on HBCW and Contention, I suddenly see more dots appear when I set the LOD slider back to a 1 value. Really nice work/find as this is kinda of a crazy bug or issue.

Love your work, forgot to say I've been using it happily since you first posted your GitHub. Any chance we could see icons for the F1 and F-4 at some point?

Nice work! It's helpful to see this laid out in detail, as before we only had speculation and suspicions that this was happening.

This seems like a great way to get some biased data. Are we talking 2D or VR? If 2D what res? If VR what headset and what settings? What specific aspects of spotting are we talking about? Max range of spotting? Dot size? Dot size in terms of immersion? Dots in terms of the shift from dots to no dots?

Sir, this is a family friendly thread, please don't use the g word.

Bro, I literally posted a link showing updated smart scaling adjust for varying FOV. I get you dislike it but please read up before just saying it doesn't work. Every modeling approach has issues and requires compromises, but at least bring up issues that are actually issues. Modern approaches to smart scaling do adjust for varying FOV. So if that's your concern you can relax. People have worked beyond the original Serfoss paper. And it's not a waste, imo, ED have changed their mind on big things before, my goal is simply to advocate for realism over visuals (and you are of course free to do the opposite).

Doc dissertations are pretty baller, idk how that impacts his research and findings? A lot of classic leaps forward in science are doc dissertations, lol. I would focus on rebutting his findings if you think he is wrong. Just go ask some peeps working on modern mil sims in the US and you will be surprised what they say about smart scaling (spoiler: it is used). More to the point, I'm not sure why we'd reject real life spotting distance and visual information as criteria for judging spotting in games like DCS. You just gotta ask yourself if you care about performance that matches real life (realism) or pretty visuals (which are are cool, but idk, to me that's a different game).

Idk, I think it's pretty simple, if you care about realism you care about the distance people spot irl based and what information people can pick up on at what distance. I'm not overly concerned with what people post on a forum so much as actual military and research publications report concerning how to get realistic spotting and visual performance in sims (and games). And from a modeling point of view I care about results/performance. But again, I understand not all people care about getting players to perform like real life pilots.

Some people care about realism and realistic performance and some don't. Personally I am here for realism not visuals, but I suppose if visuals are your thing then this would be an issue.

People have resolved that, just Google it, yo. https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?28660-About-SmartScaling-and-future-high-res-monitors&p=463376&viewfull=1#post463376 Adjusts for FOV and res...

Smart scaling has advanced a lot too over the years to resolve some of the original approach issues. And as that paper points out aiming for 1:1 spotting in a game or sim is practically impossible given the many hardware and software limitations inherent to games/simulations. The goal with any sim or modeling is rarely 1:1 anyways (which is often impossible or inefficient), but rather to attain realistic performance.

I just want to spot things at 3-7 nautical miles (depending on things like aspect, speed, etc.), which falls well in line with reality.