[DBS]TH0R

That. I am mostly interested in.

Seconded. :thumbup:

Just throwing this in: http://www.avialogs.com/index.php/en/aircraft/usa/northamericanaviation/p-51mustang/nzap-2025h-pn-pilots-notes-for-mustang-p51d.html p. 34 ... Stalling speed, engine off: Case "C" at normal load 9472 lbs Undercarriage and flaps up: 86 knots I.A.S. Undercarriage and flaps down: 78 knots I.A.S. EDIT: "Canceled" section of the same paragraph is in mph, in favour of the kts. The only difference being 86 kts ~ 99 mph IAS.

On the contrary, I find DCS ground handling leaps and bounds above anything else available. Perhaps I am spoiled with my gear.

Having a déjà-vu here... In short, all this comes from different Cl values Hummingbird is arguing about. Hence Yo-Yo's last post. Please read again what SiThSpAwN posted. Unless I am mistaken, this is a class act sarcasm. :)

For starters, I would like to see moving clouds that change shape and size. Anything else would be a bonus.

Where did I say that? It goes without saying that teamwork beats solo dogfights, however this has nothing to do with being unable to see a plane at medium distance in this sim without heavily relying on zoom. Why doesn't this comment surprise me... I think I am done here, wasted enough energy and time as it is. Have a nice day. :)

And no one here is asking for such details on wide FOV. Simply to be able to spot something in comparison to being blinded as we are now. Throughout this whole thread you are either deliberately or unwillingly failing to make a note there is a difference between spotting and being able to ID the target. Now tell me please, what other method than manipulating with LODs would there be if we wanted to improve objects appearing at larger distances? If the object isn't visible in the first place, no glimmer or contrast improvement will help - as it is in DCS in it current engine. As for labels not showing in my earlier test - this was done offline for anyone else to replicate if needed. I mentioned it was possible and you posted how it is done, that you can set at which distance the 4 engined bomber will appear. IIRC maximum distance you can set it 25km. You mentioned default is 14km, while the information I have is people set it usually to 20km on MP servers. In IL21946 the dot is not simply a pixel. It is several pixels that enable you to spot the target, total size relative to target's size. Hence my test earlier. Unless we have been reading two different threads I saw no such demands. It is only you who are perceiving people here want an unrealistic feature that would help them spot and engage targets whilst the game drew them like a cartoon. I personally want a fix that would enable me to spot (not ID!) the target at normal and wide FOV thus enabling better situational awareness as one would have in real life. Every other sim features that, except DCS in its current form where drawing distance for planes and ground objects is abysmal unless using maximum zoom as SharpeXB demonstrated here several times already. If you are referring to the video from post #242, this is an example of how to solve this problem I would be happy to have in upcoming EDGE.

What zoom level was that at? IIRC civilian traffic uses very poor quality models and can be turned off completely. Thanks for the info. Whatever they are doing there it is working and is much better than what we have in DCS now. Clever LOD use, contrast or something completely different, whatever keeps the plane visible on wide view is good enough for me.

Just tested how far you can see planes in BOS. At exactly 9.5 km, be it a He-111 or a single engine plane, the plane disappears.

IL2 in its latest version. Italy Online map. TOD: 12:30h | weather: clear. Graphics maxed out, 4xAA forced through Nvidia control panel. Here we have three planes of different size: P-51B as a single engined plane, B-25J as a twin engined plane and B-24J as a heavy 4 engined bomber. Images were not modified. I deliberately left them in their original quality to be downloaded if needed. Taken as .tga then converted to .jpeg for online use. Side, top and front view: For this kind of zoom to work you need to edit confing.ini (mine is set to 50000). 9 images, each with narrow, normal and wide FOV and all planes are visible. Slowly zooming out in front of the planes. Here we can see all three planes, yet P-51 is barely visible: At this distance, you can see only two planes with B-25 being barely visible: And at the final stage, only B-24 becomes visible with the other two have completely disappeared: Trouble with IL21946 is, that lower you go with the resolution and graphic settings the easier it is to spot planes. My settings are maxed out with 4xAA. AA actually doesn't help in spotting. I do and single engined planes can be spotted at about 7-8km. Easy to tell if you have icons on. Which reminds me, I could have enabled them for the above IL21946 images lol... Oh well. :) I haven't tested how far you can spot He-111 in that sim, might do that later. As far as I can tell, BOS is using some kind of clever scaling like this combined with contrast to be able to spot a target. At the beginning BOS was almost as bad as DCS. Even if we do not get something like that at release, it is reasonable to expect something similar from DCS when EDGE arrives.

Now what would simple lines of text prove, and to whom? :) This was just me verifying if I remembered correctly when we tested dot ranges.

Agreed. Test chalked in on my TO-DO list. EDIT: Found the thread on our local forums when we were testing this, with comments about it, and I will happily reproduce the test confirming my statements from post #256. While I absolutely agree that expecting a fix for the current engine is pointless, and I doubt anyone else here is. The purpose of this thread is to show how important it is for the majority (or those who voted here, for your convenience) that we have this thing done right when EDGE arrives.

No I am talking about the dot appearing / disappearing. LOD switching to the second version (if there were just 3 of them) was at a much closer distance. LODs appeared for all objects at the same distance. Hence ships turning from simple dots to LODs looks so odd in that sim. For planes it wasn't noticeable and the transition was smooth. No, not any plane. A 4 engined plane or in this case a bomber. Better, a formation of bombers. And since you quoted me on this, please read that I said it applies to single engined planes. We tested this on Italy online map, with B-24s, B-25s and some fighters. IIRC B-24 could be seen from two grids out while a fighter just under a grid. EDIT: A grid in IL2 is 10km in width/height, for those that never tried IL2. I am happy to test it again if you'd like, but that will have to wait after Easter.

And I will repeat: with the dot range set at 20km (2 grids) you and anyone else is welcome to test it on our server. At first I thought it did too, but after some testing when we set it up for one of our missions we found it did not.

I set it up personally, and tested it with my squad over a year ago. The server is still running if you are interested in testing for yourself. Planes at different sizes appeared at different distances.

Again. If you can not understand what has been said here, simply fire up old IL2 and see for yourself. In MP there was an option to dial in at what distance one would like dots to appear. Most online servers had it set on 20km. This made it possible to see a 4 engined bomber at 20 km, while fighters and other single engined fighters appeared at 8-10km. The dot was just that, a visible black dot in the sky. You couldn't tell what it was until you got closer. Much closer. Even ships appeared as dots - but that part was badly done in that sim. When their LODs finally appeared, they were much much larger than the dot itself. As DavidRed said, no current available monitor size and resolution will fix something that can not be seen in the first place. Even if it could, then perhaps if we're talking about 20K resolution, and I don't see that arriving any time soon, let alone hardware that can run it. Smart scaling was used less than 10 years ago, and it still works. Is it realistic? No. Is what we have in DCS now realistic? Even less. It is a compromise that works. No, a terrible solution would be going to a super high resolution for today standards. Even if the dot was visible, the pixel size is much smaller than on a HD screen - and even there it is very difficult to spot it on default FOV. A pixel chasing sim, is even more unrealistic. :pilotfly: No, it prevents them from disappearing when they should normally still be visible. At that range, especially when we're talking about ground targets, everything else is more or less a pixel. For planes I strongly disagree with the above statement. And that is the reason why this poll has 90% people thinking it is important to be implemented. Bottom line is - smart scaling alone would probably fix what we have now in current DCS engine. A compromise of contrast, glimmer and smart scaling plus what ever else is possible would be something to expect from EDGE. Hopefully. :)

Emphasis on enthusiasts, and those who can afford it. I give it 5, closer to 10 more years before we even start to see it becoming close to what HD is nowadays. Try running any of the latest best selling games at 4K or 5K resolution and see what kind of hardware you need for that. Then add in extra requirement for flight sims that are usually a couple of years behind with graphics and other standards... +1

That is fine if you want to get your self shot down in dogfight. Spotting an enemy in time is half the fight. Agreed.

Apologies if I sounded too harsh. I believe we should be able to spot a single engine plane at distances between 5-8km, in ideal conditions. As for how to best simulate that on our monitors I would probably want a combination of what airdoc wrote - changes in contrast and color, combined with previously proven olutions from titles such as Falcon and IL21946. I haven't looked into it, but BOS does a relatively nice job in this aspect, in the beginning it was suffering from even worse spotting ability than what we have now in DCS. I would say it is closer to 70-80% less... Agreed.

Zooming in and out in-game changes how much you can and can not see on your monitor. That means it changes FOV. Perhaps peripheral vision isn't the best term here (Occulus rift could provide that, I presume). From IL2 to modern titles people use wide FOV just to have a better situational awareness. There are even mods for IL21946 focused on just that subject. In other titles objects do not disappear from screen when you zoom out, you just can't make out what they are. As such, in dogfights people tend to use normal or wide FOV to get a better feeling of what is happening around them. Normally, for aiming you would want to be zoomed in, albeit slightly if not fully. You are the only one seeing this as a "false notion". Judging by the poll, the majority here disagrees with you. Constantly having to use zoom in to see anything remotely far away from you is a very poor excuse for game not being able to draw objects in a normal or wide FOV that you would normally be able to see. There are others who can and have, and in this very thread.

I came to the same conclusion. And yet we are forced to in order to see anything in DCS. SharpeXB went to great length to prove show us his technique works. So how about that?

No one here is asking them not to be realistic. Normal FOV would be the default one. At which you can still see all cockpit instruments when looking forward. IL21946 did a great job at this. Dot size remained more or less the same size no matter the field of view. Thus enabling situational awareness with maximum FOV, i.e. peripheral vision. Objects didn't disappear when changing FOV like they do in DCS. That. :thumbup:

Unless I had a long range laser finder there is no way for me to give you accurate data, other than what you can already find here or elsewhere online. As I am sure many here will agree, so called "bad habits" are not a question here. Nor is "reasoning" which you are trying to point out to. TGP should still be used to ID the target and even spot at a very large / safe distance where you can not spot targets with a naked eye. As of now, we can spot targets that are very close with a normal FOV, while anything further away has to be done by using zoom with a very narrow FOV which prohibits peripheral view which we would have in real life. Best example is GAU8. Good luck hitting anything with it without using zoom. Some kind of compromise should be made. And that is what the majority of people who voted here are asking for.

I don't wear glasses so my vision is almost perfect. Still, I can not give you numbers if that is what you are asking for. Others have already posted some estimated numbers at which distances planes should be visible. Back to the TGP and zooming in. If some kind of smart scaling does get implemented, I would definitely be for applying it to ground units as well. Without TGP we are almost blind as bats in the air unless zoomed in to the max, which prohibits normal eye ball mk.I scanning due to very narrow FOV. At least, that is my experience.