MoleUK

Yes, that's why I would prefer it was done on the user side than the server side. But if that's all I can get i'll take it. I'll have to check out the spit, any idea if they work in VR or not?

Yep. While I might like having the option of real-time reflections in the canopy, I can already guess that I'd want to run with them disabled even if they weren't all that performance intensive. Which they probably would be. I do wonder if third party modules could have a "no canopy scratches" cockpit as an option in special options going forward as well.

Having real reflections in the canopy (and in mirrors for that matter) in VR would be a great feature if they added it. But at that point it would need to be a toggle for performance reasons regardless. While the clear canopy mod isn't perfect, I really did prefer that solution to the current visuals. And as ever I tend to err on the side of the user having more control over their graphical/visual settings as only being a good thing generally.

It would definitely be better if the modules themselves were touched up. While I would prefer it was done on the user side, I could live with it being a server side setting. This would create even more work on ED's end though, my initial suggestion was meant to involve as little time/effort involved from ED to increase the chances of this happening at all. Whitelisting the clear canopy mod or having it a toggle somewhere would be the simplest method atm.

It would not be an exploit if it were officially approved and whitelisted. If MP competitiveness is your concern: Those who fly modules without reflections and scratches that block their view so badly are at an unfair advantage. Having an option to remove them would level the playing field. If realism is your concern: The baked in reflections are not remotely realistic. Neither is having no reflections at all. These two unrealistic options are all we currently have to choose from, and I would rather choose no reflections personally.

If it's allowed then those who wish to use it will, and those who don't won't. It's personal preference, ultimately. ECW disabled IC for months just so people could use the spotting mod and this particular shader tweak. It was fine. I'd love to see the textures get fixed. It might never happen, at least for the older modules. In the meantime, it's two lines in a shader file. That's all that would require an on/off toggle.

The simple on/off option already exists. It's this file. More specifically it's commenting out or deleting these two lines of code in said file: if(!(Flags & F_DISABLE_SHADOWMAP)) shadow = min(shadow, applyShadow(float4(mp.pos, input.projPos.z/input.projPos.w), mp.normal, true, true, Flags & F_IN_COCKPIT)); That's it. glass.hlsl

Correct, but I am not in favor of making the perfect the enemy of the good. It could take months/years for an individual case by case fix to arrive. Something more universal/basic while we wait for those improvements in the meantime would be very welcome. Personally, I am generally more in favor or giving the customer more control over their cosmetic options. At heart this is a quality of life feature that is currently lacking. I used the clear canopy mod for a long time before the IC change banned it, as did many others, and it made a positive impact on my experience. While I'd welcome the Huey and Hip and other modules getting their canopy reflections individually fixed/updated, I don't expect that this would happen in a reasonable timeframe atm. And we had a working solution that did not require booking up the staff at ED who do texture work, whom I understand may have their scheduled booked up in up to a year in advance. While adjusting the shaders was not a perfect solution, it was a working one. Even just having that on/off option in the .lua files would be fantastic, as it would avoid having to schedule up any texture or UI work for now.

Some older modules like the Huey and Mi-8 have some baked in reflections on the canopy that really don't look good. Particularly in VR as they are right in your face. Other modules have some VERY scratched up canopies, and while this may or may not be realistic (it sometimes feels very overdone) it would be nice if this was also an optional cosmetic feature as opposed to the only option. This mod that now fails IC went some way to correcting some of these problems previously:

Ah, interesting.

Yep, a one size fits all approach might be extremely tricky given the variation in headsets, upscaling and sharpening. No idea how doable sliders would be, with caps at the higher end to prevent too much cheesing but allowing those with undersized dots to increase them a bit, and those with overscaled dots to tone it down manually. Regardless it's already been a net positive overall to say the least imo.

To further complicate matters, lots of VR users use techniques that render a slightly higher resolution image towards the centre of the headset and slightly lower res towards the edges. Not sure if that could be playing a part as well. But the zooming in creating a sudden appearance of big dots would suggest something else I guess. And i'm also not sure if all headsets are affected equally or if it varies from one to another.

This problem alongside potentially some LOD issues has been suggested as the root cause.

I HIGHLY recommend anyone on a Quest/Pico headset revisit VD now if they have tried it previously and not stuck with it. The performance implications are fairly significant. No link overhead. Other than reprojection, VD is now superior to link in just about every aspect, imo.

It will require some time/tweaking from ED for sure. I would very much prefer that it NOT be controlled on the server side however. Just give us the options to work from and go from there, as there are too many hardware combinations for a one size fits all approach. If worried about some players using it to seek an advantage: That is literally how it has been for years already. They played at 1080p to get that advantage.

Agreed there. Moving towards a slider or list of various pre-sets we could choose from would be ideal. Some will be more bothered by bigger dots, some by dots that are too small. So some flexibility would be good for users across various different resolutions/headsets and between flatscreen and VR.

Haven't had time to test it yet but looks similar to the old problem:

I will say the fact that ED gave us the option to enable the old engine system while the new stuff is being worked on deserves some praise. Might it have been nice to have it as a tickbox in special options? Sure. But the idea that the userbase isn't capable of opening stuff up in notepad and changing some basic values is nonsensical. I would LOVE for ED to take this approach with other stuff that is a WIP, letting us disable it without breaking IC while it's being worked on is much appreciated. Hopefully the second pass nails some stuff down, but i'm still very much enjoying the Huey in the meantime even with it's current oddities.

v2 proof of concept. Need to reshape the hands into spheres now to really make this viable:

Very rough visual idea of what i'm talking about. Because the DCS VR hand models have a fairly generic colour it's very hard to aim for it for targeted passthrough. A simple colour change to something vibrant would do wonders

Incase it's unclear, in the first video I am just displaying an MSPaint window in Openkneeboard painted bright red, then telling VD to key in for that colour and it uses the headset cameras to project RL footage over that colour. You can key in pretty much any colour you want to use as the target. Even changing the hands to different colours would work a little, but ideally you would want a larger space to have the camera images projected on. So changing them to a simple rectangle, square or circle that you could resize and choose the colour of would be ideal.

With Virtual Desktops new passthrough options, we can already use something like openkneeboard to create passthrough boxes as seen here: However, VD also currently lets VR users emulate hand tracking to a limited degree as seen here: If there were an option to replace the VR hand models with a flat coloured box of some sort (ideally resizeable and changeable colours) it would be fairly trivial to combine these two methods to create passthrough boxes that would follow your hands around in VR. At which point any of the simpit users could use it to better navigate their hardware/button boxes etc. And since there is already an in-game option to show/hide the VR hands, it could be toggled at will.