MoleUK

Could be type dependant, but I want to narrow down some distances before I start trying that road as it could complicate things. Will try and get a few tracks done today so see if I can get something more concrete.

Disappearing infantry models here. I suspect it's unrelated (I assumed it was an optimisation step or a missing LOD) but thought I should mention it. Haven't tested if that is happening everywhere with infantry models or only on ECW/Heavy ground unit missions.

Good catch on the scintillation. There have been quite a few recent bug reports re: disappearing/flickering models, it may or may not be related. I know on ECW, the infantry flat out don't appear till you're within a very close range. Until then there's no dot and no model. On ED's discord there's a bug thread on the flickering models: https://discord.com/channels/542985647502393346/1296306319858597898 It would be interesting to see if on test 3, instead of spawning a second 100 in at once you went 10 by 10 to see if it was 1:1 progressive. I assume it would be, and hints at that 100 number problem popping up again. Could try a split with 100 on the left and 110 on the right to see if it's consistent. I should do a count on the number of air units I had in my mission, I'm not sure I even hit 100 air units there. So it's quite likely there's more than one problem, just to make things even harder to track down. ETA: Unless I miscounted, I only had about 60 F-5's even in the mission.

I am a lazy man, so I can't promise that I will spend too much further time on narrowing it down. I might tho lol. What others have discovered is that 100 may or may not be a magic number. Someone previously ran some tests and found that having anything over 100 ground units started to cull the air dots. I think there is another layer of complication relating to the actual proximity of the air dots to the ground dots, I may get around to doing some testing there as well. But there may be a universal 100 dot cap complicating things.

I missed it in his SS, he's running at 2560x1440. No AA.

You'd have to ask Why. Try both track replays if you can (just requires F-5 ownership), it's helpful to have any and all feedback re: the difference between the two.

Those dots are flatscreen dots, not VR dots.

I can't say for certain but I am fairly convinced that this bug has been present since day 1 of the improved spotting dot implementation, as I would have periods where dots would phase in and out as I turned my head on ECW which is very ground-unit heavy. This rather complicates pretty much all feedback that ED have been receiving re: spotting dots, especially in VR. As many users have been trying to point out that they're not getting massively oversized dots when they play, whereas others insist they have been. It looks like both groups were probably correct, depending on the mission you're playing some users could have been getting comically oversized dots while other users with the exact same hardware and on the same settings were borderline blind because they were playing ground-unit heavy missions.

Relevant thread:

Thread on it here now, with some helpful screenshots to illustrate how dramatic an impact it has.

Это с трассы с наземными юнитами и с трассы без.

For those who don't own WW2: dots start invis - no ww2.trk

This has been known about/speculated about for a good bit, but I have a decent track replay showcasing the problem. F-5 ownership required. The first track is with the ground units included, the second track is a copy of the first track but the ground assets have been removed. You can clearly see right from the beginning of the track that the ground units are causing the spotting dots to not properly render. Once the planes move away from the ground assets, they start to pop in. Later in the track you can see large formations of spotting dots completely disappear and re=appear as I move my head around. In the second track, dots are visible at all times. No dissappearing dots. It's unclear whether it's just the amount of ground units, the type of ground units, or the proximity of ground units to the air units that is causing the issue. As the spotting dots will phase in/out depending on viewing angle and distances here. dots start invis.trk dots start invis - ground units removed.trk initially invisible final.miz

Вот файл миссии, на случай, если он поможет сузить проблему. initially invisible final.miz

Compare and contrast, a short track with and without ground units. Need to own the F-5. Ground units will make dots disappear atm. dots start invis.trk dots start invis - ground units removed.trk

This is why the feedback on spotting dots can be so mixed. The ground units make them dissappear at times. These are two copies of the same short track, one with the ground units simply removed. Compare and contrast. You will immediately see the problem. This happens both in flatscreen and in VR. dots start invis.trk dots start invis - ground units removed.trk

Мне удалось воспроизвести проблему исчезающих точек в коротком треке. Именно наземные подразделения заставляют их исчезать. Затем я взял трек, скопировал его и удалил наземные юниты. Сравните и сопоставьте два повтора короткого трека, пожалуйста, спасибо. Эта ошибка существует уже давно и означает, что некоторые люди просто не видят то же самое. dots start invis.trk dots start invis - ground units removed.trk

Any idea if there is progress on the disappearing dots problem? (where in some missions they seem to disappear at certain angles maybe related to the number of ground units) I can try getting some tracks together to replicate it in SP if not.

Yeah HDR is a non-issue. I'd like to see the bugs that leads to dots disappearing/derendering or rendering incorrectly (pale instead of dark) fixed before any further tweaks to spotting arrive. It's going to be hard for ED to get accurate/consistent feedback when dots are not rendering the same for people even on the same hardware/settings.

I'm not necessarily arguing for disabling IC, just pointing out that one of the games biggest servers had it off for 5 months. The world didn't end. And why would disabling IC lead to more cheating, when we've already established that the IC doesn't seem to stop cheating? It just stops some forms of cheats but not others. Lots of games let you decide whether anticheat is enabled, that's not very unusual. This is not a ranked MP game or something, with any kind of ingame currency or progression to hack your way through. There are already people exploiting known bugs and mechanical quirks to their advantage. Like zooming in/out in track-IR to make the current dots pop much bigger. You won't stop that behavior, and you probably shouldn't base the entire MP experience around those people. At least imo.

I think I saw this bug listed as fixed in a changelog previously, could have reared it's head again. iirc last time it had to be ticked off in the special menu or it would render while invisible.

Unfortunately so. And some users regularly take advantage of known exploits that pass IC for as long as they possibly can (See: Viggen high altitude performance before it was fixed). Or the new chaff jammer toggle trick that's just been publicised. That'll likely be widely abused for weeks/months before it's fixed. There's always something. I just enjoy the game and do my thing.

God I miss the clear canopy mod as well. The baked in reflections on the Huey/Hip remain godawful, and it's been a year since the IC change made the fix to that problem no longer viable. ED really should have copied over some of the quicker autostarts for a tickbox option for each module as well.

When has the IC ever stopped cheaters? When IC was enabled I saw a couple hackers caught on ECW. One was teleport ramming while invulnerable, the other managed to hack the weaponry. They weren't flagged by IC, they had to be manually caught and banned. You'd have to ask the staff if they had a surge in cheaters when IC was disabled for those 5 months. From the outside nothing really looked any different, and from what I've heard the IC really isn't very sophisticated at all. It's just a small userbase so there's less people with the incentive to work around it. It's in the past tense because the moment ED added the spotting mod to the game, the IC was re-enabled. Disabling IC had no negative impact on the player numbers while it was in place.

ECW ran with the IC disabled for 5 months almost to the day so people could continue to use the spotting mod after it failed IC. It remained one of the most (if not literally the most) populated MP servers in DCS for that entire 5 month period. Players don't enjoy being blind, even in MP.