Tippis

What are your graphics settings? As shown above, they're not black boxes, nor the size of small buildings, nor visible out to 40 miles. This sounds more like you're running some kind of overlay. e: In fact, I changed my test setup to really fill the sky with them out to 50nm, and the result was… not that.

What are your graphics setting and at what point do they disappear and reappaer? Are you running any kind of AA or resolution scaling? This is what it looks like at 10nm — nothing huge, nothing particularly dark (they appear a bit sooner but very faint and at 10nm is where they start to stick out against the background properly). I'm not sure exactly what FoV the F12 camera is supposed to have, but if it's in the 70° range, the 1.5–2.5px width of the spotting dots is pretty much spot on, and the range is about right as far as how faded in they should be.

Nice.

I think I managed to capture the oddball decoration zoom-in issue in a track (and on video) using the regular F16+Syria free flight mission. Note the ship that appears at 10s(ish) and grows faster than ground movement and perspective would suggest until it stabilises at the proper size. It's subtle, but that's in part because of the angle — if you manage to catch the effect more obliquely, it will be far more pronounced. boatwarp.trk Options.lua

Given which ships (and other objects, but ships are most noticeable since they sit against a clean and clear background), this is probably a combination of the new LoD threshold setting and decoration rendering rages. It's as if the game determines that, oh, there needs to be decorative civilian traffic here, and oh, you're well within spawn range, and oh, it needs to scale up the LoD rapidly to match your actual range. In the past, this was handled by fading stuff in, which also looked a bit silly but you didn't notice it as much as the visual of a ship suddenly coming at you as if it was warping in from Elite Dangerous. The tricky bit about replicating this, and especially catching it on a track, is that these are largely randomised — it's the game determining that it needs to paint the world a little, and there's no telling whether it will do that on playback or even on running it live again.

…hence why simulating perception cannot rely on naive trigonometry: because it's not just what the hardware in the eyes are capable of, but also what the wetware processing behind it can do. It's also why you'll achieve better and more realistic results with proxy objects and non-linear scaling curves than just making a simplistic mapping of “size X at distance Y = Z pixels”.

You should expect it, because no, it's not up to you. This isn't the 1980s – competent software makers cater to the client, because anything else is self-defeating folly.

Because dot labels are UI element and are handled as such. Of course, this new feature also has the option to toggle them off so it's a moot point. And at least it's client-authoritative so you have a say in the matter. Only the ones who haven't turned it off. Oh, and turning labels on or off isn't always your choice, btw… And while it takes a lot of work, it's entirely possible to make dot labels far more realistic than any of the pre-2.9 spotting mechanics.

No, in this aspect they're striving for realism by starting to getting rid of the ridiculous and nonsensical spotting limitations and the equally ridiculous ease with which things can be spotted at long distances. If they were pandering to an audience, they'd listen to the people who want those unrealistic advantages to remain. It does. They didn't ask players to vote. They attempt to make the sim match reality. The data says that the spotting distances we used to be able to achieve were ridiculous, and that closer in, it is actually easier to identify cues for what other planes are doing than simple trigonometry would suggest. All of this has been brewing for quite some time, and ED have been quite open about that something needed to, and was going to, be done about it. And here we are — they're starting to shed those unrealistic aspects of spotting and working towards making it match the data more. No, that would not be the most realistic result. We already know that because we already have that and it is not realistic. Everyone and anyone without an agenda to protect their precious precious advantages knows this. You can try your usual “but muh realism” argument here, but you need to realise that in doing so, you are arguing for the thing you are against. Put it to rest because it will not serve you well in your quest to keep DCS from improving. You recall incorrectly. They were a thing back then — they just went by a different name. Then they briefly went away and were brought gradually brought back in a couple of different ways because of how bad it was without them. Now we're getting a better version — not the best solution out there, because for a while, ED pandered to the audience and made a firm commitment to not go for tried and tested and scientifically backed solutions because some people in the community disliked it for no coherently explained reason. Now that you mention it, that's a pretty clever methodology for figuring out sensible upper limits. Statics and decorations are treated very differently than actual live units, but should for spotting purposes yield very similar results. One problem might occur depending on your graphics settings where decorations are culled sooner because they depend on detail settings that don't apply (at all, or to the same extent) to real units.

No. Hence the answer “no”. It's not difficult. No more than yours was. So again, take your own advice. Just because people find progress in the area of simulation good, and you don't understand why this change qualifies as progress, doesn't mean they all want to “cheat”. What they want is a better game and they see this as providing that. If this opinion confuses you, maybe ask before calling people cheater, hmm…?

Nope. One is UI, and its intent is to provide UI-based information. One is a stab at simulating perception, and its intent is to provide visual cuing and to improve party in gameplay. Intent matters. Also, one is a small varying-opacity player-controllable character overlaid on top of various types of units and objects and vastly overblown ranges; the other is a small game controlled unit proxy, replacing units out to more sensible distances. One is doing is thing as intended. The other is being tweaked as we speak — that is why this thread exists, after all — to achieve a very different result. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, so maybe take your own advice.

Maybe on some VR headset in specific aircraft, but in not in standard pancake mode no. The default FoVs can be seen in the main install snapviews.lua file (entry 13 for each aircraft), and they tend to be set to somewhere in the 70–85° range, going as low as 60° for some FC3 aircraft. As such, the defaults certainly let your pixels go beyond 20/20 vision on higher-resolution displays, or only require the slightest nudge to get there. Whether it matches up with your real-world field of view will always depend on how you position your screen. …or if you have modified your views to match your physical setup. For instance, just picking the first one in the pile (which admittedly is the by now pretty ancient A-10A, and thus not all that representative for how everything works): [13] = {--default view viewAngle = 75.000000,--FOV hAngle = 0.000000, vAngle = -23.000000, x_trans = 0.360000, y_trans = -0.041337, z_trans = 0.000000, rollAngle = 0.000000, }, [14] = {--default view VR viewAngle = 75.000000,--FOV hAngle = 0.000000, vAngle = -23.000000, x_trans = A_10_VR_x, y_trans = A_10_VR_y, z_trans = 0.000000, rollAngle = 0.000000, }, It's well worth going in and adjusting these to taste so when you sit down, you end up in the right position in the cockpit and with zoom levels that make a bit more sense. Speaking of defaults, before suggesting that they're the same, let's check the definition for the dot labels and their behaviour: local function NEUTRAL_DOT(hundred_percent_dist,five_percent_dist,cutoff_dist) local res = { [500] = EMPTY, } local points = (five_percent_dist - hundred_percent_dist)/2000 local last_x = 0 for i = 1,points,1 do last_x = hundred_percent_dist + (i - 1) * 2000 local opacity = 0.95 * (1 - math.sqrt(last_x/five_percent_dist)) + 0.05 res[last_x] = {"·","CenterCenter",0,opacity,0,2} end res[last_x + 2000] = EMPTY return res end local baseNeutralDotColor = {75,75,75} This is rendered using Deja Vu LGC Sans at 11pt, with a 100% distance of 1km and a 5% distance of 30km, divided into 2km steps of opacity changes. If you change the dot character, then obviously the dot changes to become larger or smaller or differently shaped. Now, do the spotting dots behave that way? As to why people say it's a good change, the reasons have been given earlier: because it's a massive improvement, even by just being a foundation for future functionality, compared to the hugely unrealistic, imbalanced, backwards way of doing it that we had before. I can't think of a good reason why anyone would want to keep that old thing other than that they have become reliant on the advantages — some might even go so far as to say “cheats” — it provided them, and don't want that to go away or don't want others to suddenly be afforded the same kind of advantage. See how that works? If only. But surely, if they ever made such a thing, even using a system that's not fully scientifically backed, they wouldn't make the same mistake twice and end up making a lesser version. Surely…

No. Having an actual model scale with distance the way it always does means that at higher resolutions in particular, it will let you see them too far out, especially with zoom, since you can quite easily arrive at a situation where 0.3 mils (which is where the limit should be) comes out to more than 1 pixel. In fact, you go past that threshold on a 4k screen that shows a pretty sedate 60° FoV, never mind higher zoom levels. 60° = 1.047 rad -> 1.047 rad / 3840px = 0.000272 rad/px or 0.272 mil per pxiel — already 10% better than 20/20l visual acuity. Whether you as a player actually sees this will then obviously depend on how close you're sitting to your monitor. This should be compared against a situation where, above a certain distance, airplanes — or perhaps more accurately, specific target sizes — simply aren't rendered. Because they shouldn't be, because you simply can't see them, and it shouldn't matter whether or not your monitor is able to display them. The tricky part then becomes one of how to fade in from that situation to where they're shown at a perceptually accurate size without causing horrible pop-in. The double-tricky part is to make sure this works the same regardless of resolution and display type. One way of doing that, which these dots opens up for (and it's just that so far — I'm not saying we're there yet), is to stop drawing the aircraft sooner than you otherwise would, and use a separate and distinctly tweakable markers to fade in and expand to the point where regular model rendering can take over. The tweaking needed here comes down to figuring out when the model should no longer be used, and how quickly, and at what ranges, the marker should change its size, alpha and possibly also colouring. Making zoom work sensibly in all of that adds another wrinkle since you might accidentally be zoomed in to the right spot where a marker starts growing at an alarming rate out of nowhere. Another way to do it, that is arguably more elegant, is to employ a smooth scaling curve that quickly clamps to zero once you reach maximum visible range. It's essentially the same thing, except it always uses the unit model (at some appropriate LoD), and you can more easily counteract zoom effects since it's all in the same function. Unfortunately, ED have historically and quite adamantly stated that they will not go down that route. So that leaves the less elegant solution with a separate marker. Either way, the important bit is that max-range clamping, and having it apply even with middling-to-high zoom levels. And covering up the potential pop-in in some equitable way. It's not unavoidable. It is tricky — maybe even impossible — to achieve full parity, but at least there's a way to make the extremes… well… less extreme so the differences are smaller by applying this kind of solution to everyone. Some will lose their over-range spotting capabilities. Others will lose their mid-range target size advantage. Others still will just get easier spotting across the board. All of that is good if it brings everyone closer together to seeing roughly the same thing (and more importantly, not seeing things the same way). Only if you don't look it what's actually in the picture, and ignore the arrows.

I'm not implying anything. I'm saying that your screen shots are labelled as showing two versions of the game, and then you come along and state that they show one. Whether this is because you've lost track of what you said and of what the images come from, or whether you made it up one way or another (or both), I can't say. This is why I keep referring back to what the images say and what they show: to get you to clarify where they're from and that you have actually looked at them. No matter what, you've shown with your images that there is a distinct difference; that the two things do not look the same, in spite of you saying they do; that the limitations you said exist don't actually exist or even apply to at least one (but in reality both) the types we're talking about. Just because you were hoping to show something else doesn't change the fact that this is what your images show and I'm sorry (lol not really) that they ended up working against you. Your intent — be it accidental, wilful, malicious, naïve or otherwise — is almost besides the point by now. Suck it up as yet another instance of stumbling over yourself because you didn't pay attention to what you were saying and showing.

Just because you failed to spot the difference and distinction between to different types of dots doing different thing doesn't mean the difference is pointless. It merely means that your whinging about how things look rests on false presumptions because you quite simply haven't noticed how they actually look. You know, the thing you're complaining about. Again, that is not what the respective screen shots say. This is yet another one of those moments where you need to stop, read, take in what is actually written, and think about what it means and how it relates to what you say. Otherwise, you will end up accidentally admitting that you faked the whole thing and that nothing you show can be trusted. Whether this is actually the case or not almost becomes moot at that point. It may not have been your intent to deceive, and you may not have changed anything, but that is what it will look like because you keep contradicting what pictures say.

Not if you look closely. Which is kind of fitting since we're talking about spotting… It may have been what you were trying to show. What you actually showed was something different, namely how turning on dot labels (which were supposed to look exactly like spotting dots according to you) ended up showing something that was different from spotting dots, and that your earlier claims about the supposed appearance and limitations of “dots” were not actually true. So, again, that's not what I'm indicating. What I'm showing as “no dots” is the lack of dots. Look at the images again. Look closely. Spot the difference. It matters. This contradicts what it says in the respective screen shots. (Yes, I know what you're trying to say but that's not the comparison we're making here, if you remember…). It helps when you're this confused about what different dots we're talking about and comparing, and why and how the two differ. Especially when you then come along and falsely — as your own screenshots prove — try to argue that one of the most important changes to the game in a very long time wasn't necessary, and it turns out that this argument entirely rests on your confusion about the two.

…and yet, they're not actually identical. They function very differently. They solve very different problems. I'm sorry that you ruined your own argument. Or, well, no I'm not, nor am I surprised because you always end up doing this. That's not what I'm indicating. What I'm showing as “no dots” is the lack of dots, as demonstrated by your comparison image where the dots in question are present. This shows that spotting dots and dot labels look nothing alike, and that most likely, you're confused about what you're looking at. That, or you're faking your shots to try to show something else, but accidentally end up disproving your claim anyway… Look at them again. Spot the difference. It matters. Dot labels attack the problem that, out of the box, the other label presets offer far too much information — including things like coalition, unit category, unit type, unit name, range etc etc etc. They're a new preset for something that has been available ever since editable labels were introduced, and that's so long ago that the exact details are lost in the mists of time. They were co-opted to solve spotting issues because ED dragged their heels as far as fixing the problems with spotting. It's a UI element that can be made to compensate for lacking simulation. It's not very good at it, but when it's all you have, it will be used that way. Spotting dots attack the problem of lacking simulation. It is not a UI element and does not offer the user customisation of one, because that would defeat the purpose of it being part of the simulation. I suppose it could conceivably be co-opted to solve some other problem, but definitely not the UI one that dot labels deal with. Two different problems with two different solutions. One being able to poorly substitute for the other does not change this. Having an arbitrary starting point for your tweaking doesn't preclude the ability to arrive at a fully working solution. You have to start somewhere, and as any converging function will show you, you can start with most amazingly bad guesses and still work your way to where you want to be. This approach can quite trivially be a solution to the problem at hand. That is not actually the only actual solution. The problem you get with what you're suggesting is exactly what we have now: you end up with a very naïve geometric function that results in planes being far too visible far too far out, and with ease of spotting being a function of how bad your settings are — the worse the graphics, the better the spotting. What this solution allows for is a transitional stage that can be adjusted independently so planes no longer appear at long distances, no matter what your settings, and where they show up (reasonably) the same size at the same distance, also no matter your settings. It's all about that transitional state and not relying on simple trigonometry, but rather using various soft and hard caps related to actual perception. This is particularly important since we have to account for the inherently unrealistic, but almost equally inherently necessary, zoom function: something that alters what “a pixel” represents at a given distance. It must be able to tell the render that, no, it doesn't matter that this plane would mathematically take up 10 pixels at this zoom level — it cannot be seen at this distance, period. There are various ways to deal with the pop-in that this will create, and using various proxies and overlays that can be faded in or out independently of the model is one way of doing that. A different solution is to use range-scale functions (that can also compensate for FoV settings), such as Serfoss. The other argument against it is that it lets you see stuff at unrealistic ranges. And that it doesn't solve the problem where lower-resolution screens offer an advantage. And the aforementioned zoom problem. And that other and better solutions are available. No, zoom does not do that. That's just a function of setting a given FoV at a given monitor size at a given distance from the player. Zoom as a function lets you set that perfect match, yes, but that doesn't make zoom realistic — only that very specific setting (which you don't even need zoom to get to). But no, zoom is not realistic because eyes don't work that way.

Right now, they do not look exactly the same, no, as you accidentally demonstrated with your screenshots.

…and so the goalpost-moving begins. Note how they're not the same. Exactly or otherwise. Note how they're not just dots, nor not (just) squares. Note that the spotting dot is something separate from the dot label. Note that you're increasingly confused about what you're even looking at (or for) and discussing. That wasn't the point at all, now was it. The point is that spotting dots — since not even remotely are they visually, functionally, or systemically the same as dot labels — can reflect target sizes, aspect, lighting conditions etc and do so with some form of parity across different systems. Whether they should or not, and consequently whether ED should put the effort into making them fully behave like that, is a slightly different conversation. Even more to the point, at the ranges where spotting dot is meant to really provide the patch between low-LoD models and seeing nothing at all, being aircraft-shaped is almost inherently out of the question. But that doesn't mean they can't reflect other details, and provide the cues you need to figure out what you're looking at. Perception is funny that way. Granted, a Serfoss solution would be superior to all of this, but ED have unfortunately painted themselves into a corner on that one and made it politically unacceptable to go for the best methodology.

…but that wasn't what I was saying, now was it. Let's repeat and see how many times it takes for you to read: They're not just dots. Dots are not just squares. Aside from them not looking the same, as proven by your screenshots, sure… Note what the arrows are actually pointing towards (or not towards, since it's not there in your supposed 2.9 screenshot). Either your label settings are confusing you, or you're not looking very closely (which, I suppose, tells us a lot about why you think the way you do about spotting). Or you've tried to capture two very different scenarios just to try to fake a point. Also note how your screenshots show that they're not pixel-sized, and how only one of the two elements would look different on different systems.

Your screenshots tell a different story. You should probably look at them a bit closer… Oops. Welcome. You just arrived at the point where you realise why the UI element of dot labels was not a solution to the simulation problem of perception. Nope. You see, by spending so many years arguing against realism, improved simulation, and better spotting systems, you have dug in so hard in your position where spotting must be very very hard, so any and all improvements will come out as “excessively easy” and “ugly”. In actual fact, what you feel trips that line is quite likely to still be too difficult to be realistic, as demonstrated by your vociferous and adamant arguing that scientifically proven outcomes for those two reasons even though that's actually what pilots see. So no. Excessively easy spotting may actually be the perfect simulation, and look as good as it ever can. Your aesthetic sensibilities are in every way absolutely worthless, pointless, and utterly irrelevant to the topic at hand.

They're not just dots. Dots are not just squares. You should probably stay away from doctors, if that's how your “real world” works for you, since you're liable to picked up in a black van and subjected to all kinds of biological inquiry and experimentation. Zoom is unrealistic. Eyes don't work that way. It's just as reasonable to imagine that it becomes somewhat device dependent so that when it's toned down for devices where you get 22px/degree, that has no effect on devices that give you 40px/degree. I know that you never managed to get your head around the trivial concept of pixel density, but here, as always, it matters (and isn't very difficult to deal with). That would be a laughably futile and pointless exercise since no-one wants that. Labels are working perfectly for their purpose and no replacement is necessary — maybe some more programmability and options, but that's an expansion, not a fix. The only fix that is needed has nothing to do with labels and more to do with how DCS forces settings in multiplayer. Labels are just one of many unfortunate victims of that bug/design flaw. Spotting, on the other hand, does need a new system — or, perhaps more accurately, it needs a system — that very specifically does not yield the same result. Otherwise it wouldn't fix the numerous and well-documented flaws with spotting, now would it? Labels are UI. Spotting is simulation. The two are not the same and cannot be sensibly served by the same system.

Not really, no. That has been answered in full and has been known for, oh, a decade or so. The benefit of dots over the previous options available are that: They can be larger than a single pixel and also sub-pixel sized, making contacts look the same on all systems. They can reflect target sizes, aspect, lighting conditions etc and do so with some form of parity across different systems. They can accurately mimic realistic detection ranges, which means they will simply not be visible above certain ranges. Because of all of the above, they can actually integrate reasonably well with the highly unrealistic zoom ability (which we simply can't get rid of) — since they can linearly compensate for how small a contact should be (if visible at all) at any given range and FoV. The real problem with 2.8 was that spotting was too difficult when it shouldn't be, and too easy when it shouldn't be. Fortunately, the new system opens up for a solution where everyone gets the same thing, whether they're 1080 or 1440 or 2160 or whatever the future may hold. This must happen at some point or DCS is (some would say remains) obsolete. That is not the same thing as “making everyone like 1080 used to” for the simple reason that this wasn't accurate either — it suffered from the “too difficult when it shouldn't be” issue. Nor will it make everyone like 2160 used to be because it suffered at the other end of the spectrum. Instead, it's about making everyone like everyone else, irrespective of resolution. That is the only valid and even remotely intelligent solution — all others are catastrophically stupid. …oh, and if it turns out that what 1080p had was actually the most realistic outcome, then everyone should indeed get that. Because that's the end goal here, after all. But that has nothing to do with where that solution originates and everything to do with what it actually is. Good news: nothing of the sort is happening. Dot labels suffer from all the flaws you listed. The new spotting dots do not. Dot labels are customisable UI labels to provide meta-game information about aircraft. The spotting dots are a part of the actual simulation, specifically of aspects of perception. They're not the same thing; they do not replace each other; they have very different purposes to solve very different problems.

Some of the people in our community also saw this, but only in certain aircraft (Harrier being a semi-common culprit), so while almost entirely anecdotal, maybe that's a factor too?

Because dot labels are hugely problematic as far as providing sensible spotting (until/unless you tweak the heck out of them). For one, they're in the UI layer so they render on top of everything — never mind being able to see planes at 40nm; you can see them at 40nm through the airplane body and mountains. They're what it says on the in: labels. The fact that they had to do secondary work to make up for DCS' wonky and lacklustre distance rendering and spotting was more of an ugly bodge than anything. This change is about something else: a stab at making that distance rendering and spotting actually work and make any sense. There is still quite some ways to go, but it's a start since it introduces a number of options and capabilities that simply didn't exist before. It is now possible to work at creating an equitable and comparable outcome across all kinds of resolutions and display systems. It is possible to hard-cap how far you can see things and not make it look weird. It is possible to adjust both of those depending on aircraft size. Above all, it opens up the possibility to do something DCS has never done or been able to do before: simulating perception. They added it because it attacks a different problem, and provides a foundation for an actual solution, than anything we've previously had (well… in the v2.0 era at least).