MoleUK

No, it means those servers wish to allow their players the freedom to choose their own preference re: spotting. It will be a while before all the larger servers choose a new setting if that's what you were checking. I don't think many will choose to force spotting dots off, but some might.

Player controlled I think.

I believe ED have said they have something coming that will stop you having to essentially redownload the entire map when it gets a small patch. There's not too much you can do in the meantime, other than maybe splitting up the install across multiple drives.

I can't currently test it atm, can you try turning off the F-5E radar and see if that nixes it?

Luckily I actually recorded some footage of one of the tracks in the F5 yesterday and this morning. The radar was always on, so I would double check that nothing has gone wrong re: radar performance. I didn't see any listed radar changes in the patch notes.

Replacing the F5 I was sitting in with another aircraft appears to solve the problem, at least if that aircraft has no radar active. Either all the old tracks had the radar defaulted off, or this new performance drop is related to the F-5 radar (or any radar possibly) having to deal with excessive amounts of air units. At least at a guess.

I have been running spotting dot testing for a few days, typically with 200 aircraft at a time. Performance has been fine until this update just dropped, now it has cratered. Hundreds of non-moving ground units don't seem to cause the same performance drop, and facing away from the moving air units doesn't stop the CPU from getting clogged up. So I assume this is the AI pathfinding / AI thread clog bug again. Please try replaying this at 1080p. 200 F5 performance test new patch.trk 200 F5 performance test new patch.miz

100 remains the cap for dots atm. However by turning the spotting dots off, a huge amount of aircraft flickering is revealed here. Try this F-5 track at 1080p, spotting dots off, labels on, LOD at 1.0: disappearing F5 test 200.trk

Я только что попробовал повторы в новом патче, никаких изменений, независимо от того, какой режим споттинга установлен. 100 точек остается максимумом. Однако, если вы выключите точки обнаружения, вы увидите, что все самолеты фактически мерцают между видимыми и невидимыми.

I created a short track with 200 F5's to show the air dots being culled, and I noticed changing the LOD setting does affect the behavior a bit. At 0.3, the closest air dots are mostly entirely invisible as expected. While the rear 100 F5's are displayed correctly. At a LOD switch setting of 1.0 however, the closest air units flicker a lot. I don't know if the system is trying to create a dot and then deleting it, or trying to display a model and then deleting it. Almost looks like it's the model flickering in/out though, and I have seen reports of that issue elsewhere. Replay this at 1080p, labels on, LOD set to 1.0. disappearing F5 test 200.trk YT compression is doing a number on this so I recommend playing the track back with LOD at 1.0 if possible.

I might have reproduced the flicker in a short track, or it might be another type of flicker. If it is the same type of flicker, it's causes by having in excess of 100 air/ground units in your FOV with the LOD set to 1.0, at least in this particular track. Needs to be replayed in 1080p, need to own F5. disappearing F5 test 200.trk

Вот два трека только с самолетами, демонстрирующими одинаковое поведение. Их необходимо воспроизводить в разрешении 1080p, с включенными улучшенными точками выделения и полными метками. Всего в первом треке 100 F5, и все они отображаются правильно, независимо от настроек LOD. На второй трассе находится 200 F5, 100 из которых расположены дальше и на большей высоте от стартовой позиции. Отображаются только первые 100 точек, остальные либо не отображаются, либо вызывают некоторое мерцание. Мерцание на самом деле выглядит хуже при LOD 1,0, а при LOD 0,3 оно случается меньше. Я не уверен, является ли мерцание точкой, пытающейся появиться, или рендерингом и де-рендерингом физической модели. Независимо от того, какой уровень детализации установлен, правильно отображаются только 100 точек, причем приоритет отдается точкам, которые находятся дальше всего. disappearing F5 test 200.miz disappearing F5 test 100.trk disappearing F5 test 200.trk

This also affects ground units when the LOD slider is less than 1.0 There are 200 ground units here total. You can see the 100 ground units towards the back get their dots, and transition into their models as you get closer. But when the 100 in front try to transition to a dot they disappear completely, as the spotting system reaches the limit of dots it is able to display. With the number of spotting dots capped as low as it is (100), it's not hard to run into the bug. Especially as that number total is shared between ground and air units, and it tries to give a dot to every single air and ground unit in the direction you're facing for 80 kilometers by default. And then prioritises that the most distant units get those dots before the closest one's do.

Видео не очень хорошее, но должно служить достаточно хорошо. Это первый трек.

Some poor (but should be good enough) capture footage here of the first track.

Эти треки все надо переиграть в 1080р иначе камера уйдет под землю, не знаю почему.

Replaying the tracks at 1440p or 4k does not work correctly for some reason and you end up underground (that's a new one for me), it will replay fine at 1080p.

Кроме того, точки являются общими для земли и воздуха. Таким образом, размещение более 100 танков на расстоянии 70 км сделает все самолеты невидимыми до самого близкого расстояния, поскольку точек больше нет, а приоритет отдается самым дальним точкам. По крайней мере, лицом к танкам, а перед ними самолеты.

Шаг для воспроизведения: измените LOD на 0,3 и перезапустите игру, чтобы применить. И измените разрешение в игре на 1080p, иначе трек будет проигрываться в землю. На треке вы увидите, что при уровне детализации 0,3 ближайшие танки полностью исчезают, пока не приблизятся совсем близко. Задние танки корректно отображаются в виде точек, но поскольку может отображаться не более 100 точек, ближайшие танки превращаются из модели в ничто. По этой же причине исчезают точки воздушного пятна. Самые задние танки могут находиться на расстоянии до 80 км, и их точки по-прежнему будут иметь приоритет над более близкими танками. На первом треке в упор 200 танков. На втором пути 100 танков близко и 100 танков в 50 км севернее. Если смотреть от танков на север, ближайшие танки отображаются правильно. На третьем треке всего 100 танков. Они всегда правильно переключаются между моделью и точкой. disappearing abrams test.trk disappearing abrams test, 100 tanks moved 50km further away.trk disappearing abrams test, 100 tanks removed.trk

For anyone who hasn't seen the latest in that ^ thread, it looks like a LOD switch setting of less than 1.0 will also harm air spotting, as it leads to ground units transitioning from models to dots much quicker and therefore hitting the 100 dot cap much quicker. You should find setting LOD to 1.0 or above will help with air spotting, though not anywhere near as much as capping the object draw distance below 80km.

That's great to hear. Before these 3 tracks I thought there might be a relation between the LOD slider and dots, but now i'm pretty certain anything below 1.0 will exacerbate the air spotting problem with how aggressively it can switch the ground assets to spotting dots, and thus hit that 100 cap much quicker. I haven't personally tested if going above 1.0 will help, but i'm guessing it probably will. Though that will come with a performance tradeoff, so it may or may not be worth it.

For now, I would highly recommend not using the LOD switch slider at any setting less than 1.0 to avoid disappearing ground assets. This doesn't fix the dot cap obviously, but keeping LOD to 1 for ground units and object draw distance to 40k for air dots will partially work around the dot cap. In fact on thinking about it, if having the LOD slider less than 1.0 means the ground units transition from models to spotting dots at much closer ranges, keeping LOD at 1.0 or above may help with air spotting dots as well. At least a bit, as the ground units should be stealing less dots overall that way.

Here are three tracks that showcase the problem pretty quickly and explicitly. ALL of these tracks are calibrated to be replayed with the LOD switch slider at 0.3 to properly show the problem in action, so please set LOD to 0.3 and restart the game so that takes effect. And they only replay correctly at 1080p, at 1440 or 4k they go underground. In the first track, there are 200 abrams tanks total placed in four columns of 50. As you can see in the track, the models for the closest abrams are completely invisible until physically very close. The rear 100 abrams are represented by dots as opposed to models, and so are both visible at range and transition correctly to models when close. In the second track, there are only 100 abrams. They all correctly transition from model to spotting dot as you get closer and further away. In the third track, there are 100 abrams in front of me, and 100 abrams placed 50km away. The abrams placed 50km away to the north are effectively taking up all of the spotting dots when they are in the FOV. So the 100 abrams directly in front of me are not getting their spotting dots at distance and are completely disappearing. They only appear as physical models as you get very close. When facing away from the 100 abrams placed 50km away, the 100 abrams that are close all transition correctly. So this does confirm the 100 dot cap. There is only a limited number of dots that are available, and once more than 100 ground units are in your FOV (not actually technically visible, they can be up to 80km in the direction you're facing), the ground units the FURTHEST AWAY get priority re: dot rendering. So those closer ground units that are supposed to be represented by dots (until close enough to switch to models) become completely invisible. Not to mention the air dots, which don't seem to get priority at all. I think this shows that whatever system is set up to display dots 1: Shouldn't be limited to 100 as that is way way way too low, and 2: Is prioritising which units are given dots completely back to front. While I can see the logic in giving units further away dot priority, this completely falls apart in busy missions with lots of air/ground targets. And 3: If the dots must have a hard number limit, air units and ground units should NOT share that limit. They need to be seperated. Please let me know if these tracks do not behave the same way on your system, but afaik it should be universal. Particularly the first track should display it, at least with the LOD slider set correctly. disappearing abrams test.trk disappearing abrams test, 100 tanks removed.trk disappearing abrams test, 100 tanks moved 50km further away.trk

Yeah confirmed, ANY setting for the LOD slider below 1.0 results in disappearing ground units, but only when there are a certain amount (over 100 iirc) distant ground units behind them in the direction you're facing. That is a very specific bug and at least easy to work around, but I am fairly certain the LOD slider isn't supposed to be culling like this to begin with.

Переключение уровня детализации на 1,0 (у меня было 0,5) предотвращает полное исчезновение юнита. Я не понимаю, почему наземные юниты на расстоянии так влияют на уровень детализации, но, по крайней мере, это более поправимо, чем исчезающие точки.