SharpeXB

I think the other game where this “works” does a very subtle scaling at large distances so the effect isn’t so egregious. There’s another game that takes this to an extreme and applies a scaling factor of something like 2x at 3 miles. The former might work but the latter would look a bit ridiculous. The game with egregious scaling is probably why so many DCS players have trouble spotting as they’ve become accustomed to other aircraft being drawn so large.

Zoom view is actually there to replicate the reality of 20/20 eyesight. And a fighter pilot can actually turn to see their 6:00 IRL as well, not sure why you would think they can’t.

DCS doesn’t have a spotting problem. The problem is that other games draw aircraft 2-3 times the size they should be. And DCS gets compared to that. What other games do isn’t relevant here.

Dots have the same inherent problems when applied to either VR or 2D. In addition it seems VR has problems with how it renders things. That’s perhaps another issue entirely.

What makes the spotting dots issue so hard to resolve is that unlike every other aspect of the sim this feature isn’t based upon realism. It’s just trying to market the game to players based upon their impressions formed by other games. There’s not a logical solution going that route. That’s why this has been going in circles for 7-8 years with no solution. Simply turning to reality for an answer here will just yield a result some players aren't willing to accept.

The trouble is a dot can make something easily visible in the game that would be barely visible IRL. And DCS visibility without dots already equates quite well to the real world from what I see. Any dot solution will have this problem because at some range they will stop showing. Dots have this fundamental problem; if the dot is bigger than the aircraft/vehicle it will look unrealistic and be seen to vanish, if the dot is smaller there’s no purpose to using it. Spotting dots are a poor solution and should be abandoned IMO

A good solution should work for everyone, splitting up the community isn’t a great idea.

Yes there are already setting available for servers / missions but if you look at the reality there aren’t many options. Select any era etc and you’ll find maybe one server that’s actually attended. And that is most likely going to run the popular array of setting you typically see in CFS multiplayer. Icons off, “full real” style. So that’s your choice. I don’t think you’d find many of the admins willing to run two servers just to cater to VR or 2D. And since VR is probably the minority you’d find such a server underpopulated. That’s my guess. An already thinly populated game doesn’t need even more settings to divide it up. Who said it’s an advantage?

You can see the numbers of people online in this game. Both 2D and VR together aren’t very many at all. Not enough to split them up. The only real flight sim survey I’ve seen is Navigraph, that shows about 16% using VR. That seems about right. No matter what the percentage is again the player base isn’t large enough for such a divide.

Those are visible due to the contrast which is true for the aircraft models as well. I can easily make out very distant aircraft models or even missiles against dark terrain or the sea. And I’m pretty sure the stars appear “smaller” in 4K I imagine looking at my own screenshot above the game is simply putting 4 pixels as a dot in 2160p instead of the 1 pixel that it does for 1080p. The trouble is that even a single pixel for a distant aircraft or vehicle can be too large and there’s only so much finesse possible over all these different resolutions. Dots also can’t convey color or target aspect, they’re very limited as a solution. Plus they have this inherent problem that if they’re larger than the model they’re unrealistic and if they’re smaller there’s no point in using them. My vote is just turn on dot labels if you need help and if after 7-8 years of screwing around with these spotting dots hasn’t resulted in anything good, it’s time to get rid of them altogether.

There aren’t enough players online for that sort of thing to be feasible. You’d have a game with 2 people in it

Ground target dots look ridiculous too and they are quite visible without such enhancement.

How can dots ever be fair across resolutions? And the trouble with a “stand in” is that once introduced you’ll never be able to get rid of it even if the game had fantastic rendering otherwise. People would just howl if the spotting was akin to the real world because they’ve become accustomed to labels as such. The dot is just a label after all. PS I tried lowering my resolution and honestly couldn’t see much difference between the dots at 1080p vs 4K, there are screenshots a few pages back

And this is why dots can probably never be a good solution. Low resolutions make bigger dots. I thought v2.9 was supposed to mitigate this but that’s maybe not possible. Punishing higher resolutions is backwards thinking.

I have some screenshots earlier here with the dots “off” ie the 2.8 version where they are effectively invisible in 4K. What I see essentially matches the real world values. I’m not sure they are necessary at all. This is definitely awful, I think it’s the old 2.9 version. I don’t care if these disappear or not, they shouldn’t be there at all

I’ve tried VR headsets and used them for work. Honestly I can’t imagine flight simming with one due to the resolution. With a monitor you don’t need the dots for spotting or IDing at all.

Just saying that altering or deleting the liveries in MP could be a form of cheating. For some aircraft the default livery is bright metal.

If you mean liveries they are indeed a part of the core game. If DCS did have a way to let players manage these then there would have to be a way to enforce their use in multiplayer. That’s certainly possible but it makes things complicated. It’s better to manage your DCS install with the maps. They’re easy to add and remove plus they’re very large.

Allowing players to adjust the dot sizes for themselves would just end up as an exploit in multiplayer.

I always found Fast Vsync to work very well with DCS when using a fixed rate 60Hz screen.

I’ll bet JoyToKey can do this. https://joytokey.net/en/

I think DLSS will always add artifacts. I notice this too in flight sims with their displays and such. Probably just inevitable. Really the highest quality setting for DLSS is Off. I also detect that it works better at higher frame rates likely because then it has more information to work with. It seems better at turning 100 FPS into 120 than turning 30 into 60. I’m already at 100-120 without it and when I enable I can hardly notice (any performance increase would be beyond my monitor cap). In another flight sim with more demanding performance the quality degradation is very noticeable. Yes there’s a boost but it comes with a quality loss. If you aren’t seeing an fps boost then you’re probably CPU limited. DLSS 3.5 Frame Generation may be another thing. I’m using that in another game and it seems pretty good although in another flight sim the quality loss is still noticeable as flickers on the displays and some textures.

Turn off DLSS. Solved!