Tippis

That's because the current spotting system ensures that it doesn't happen. If you just let the 3D model do its thing, like you suggest, there would be no limit to how far out aircraft could or would be rendered, so the range at which you'd be able to spot those planes would be completely disconnected from any sense or semblance of realism. Iwould only be your graphics setup rather than any part of the simulation that said that, actually, planes can be seen just fine from across the entire map. Or worse, you wouldn't be able to spot them at those ranges, but they will be able to spot you just fine. Essentially the problem we had with the old system, except your suggestion just changes the unequal dot for an unequal 3D model. The end result is the same, and we'd be right back where we started where the spotting system has to be revamped. This is a VR discussion, yes, but what is rendered in VR relates to and has to consider what is shown on monitors, or VR will end up with some serious disadvantages (or advantages, which is just as bad). And without dots, there is no way to control that point, equalise it across hardware, and make that single dot of an equitable visibility. We are already at the point where our displays can (and will) render details that the pilot should not be able to see. That needs to go. In addition, this ability differs with settings and hardware. That also needs to go. If realism is a core goal, what the hardware is able to generate is no longer a viable limit. We must introduce and enforce artificial ones. If equitability is a core goal, we must not let higher-resolution displays show targets before they can show up on lower-resolution ones. We must introduce and enforce artificial sizes. In both cases, we end up having to make sure a single dot is rendered at some given distance, in many cases long before it is actually 1px large on the screen, and we have to make sure that single dot fades into the background in a controllable way. What better way is there to display a single dot with its size and colour tied to strict in-game parameters, than to have a dot-based system that use in-game parameters to dictate its colour and size rather than some arbitrary out-of-game factors? Are you serious with this question?!

Which is why you need to put something in its place and why cannot allow the LoD to run free. If you do, you get the situation we had before where you saw aircraft at potentially infinite range, because that's what the rendering will do if you don't tell it otherwise. So. Back to the same question: if we don't use dots to hide the transition from a hard cap on rendering distance to where the 3D model can start to be rendered at what is an appropriate size for the distance, what else should we use? Should the 3D model just pop in? Should we add klaxons to try to divert the player's attention from the obvious jarring effect that appears on the screen?

Good thing that they're not doing that, then. In fact, the system you were so much in favour of was doing exactly that, and now you are upset that it's gone. But more to the point, the game should also not favour high-spec hardware. If you want P2W, go play Warthunder.

Have you tried reading the meany reasons given and responding to them? How do you make sure the 3D model is only visible at realistic ranges? How do you avoid pop-in? How do you make sure it is shown equitably across different display types? This is exactly the problem relying on the 3D model alone causes and that the dots solve.

They're also completely separate and largely irrelevant to the thing that dots are meant to represent in simulation. If you want to get rid of the dot system, you first need to come up with a better idea for how to represent what they're meant to show. Getting rid of dots without any replacement would have the exact opposite effect to what you're asking for. If you want the level of unrealism a dotless spotting system would create, go play Afterburner Climax.

That should worry you. The rest are talking about it — they just don't want to acknowledge the consequence of what they're asking for. Yup. Only way to equitable compensate for different resolutions. And it works. Success, until someone can figure out something better. Do you have any suggestions?

Good to hear. Yay for Bohr bugs.

That's not the point of confusion, really. The fact that it works like this is pretty much well understood and at the heart of the discussion of how to make the dots VR-adapted, most likely by realising that the game is being played in VR and using a different resolution scaling factor than you'd get in pancake. It's not necessarily the dot that is 10x larger — you get multi-pixel dots in 2D as well — it's the visual size of the pixels is that much larger so the dot itself should be smaller to compensate. After all, this kind of compensation between higher and lower resolutions is part of what the dot is supposed to solve. Adding a similar compensation for larger or smaller visual size of pixels should be pretty obvious. No, the “confusion” is rather between the two positions of “we should fix the dots so they take the display system into account” and “we should remove dots so that planes are rendered at infinite range if you pay enough cash for it”. A bit unfair a characterisation, perhaps, but ultimately, that is what the latter side is effectively campaigning for.

So, provide a solution. Don't just whinge and dig your heels in and demand the return of an infinitely worse solution. Provide the data and feedback needed to make the problem go away. They won't be. In fact, it shouldn't even be a choice. It should just be equal, to everyone. Again, this was the problem with the old system, where you could choose to have an advantage. Worse still, you could pay to have an advantage. It was truly an abomination, and the new systems, for all the work that still needs to go into it, has rightfully gotten rid of it. Maybe …to you. On your setup. That is not as good of an argument as you wish it to be. In fact, it harkens back to exactly why we had to get rid of the old system — it was also fine on your system, and you demonstrated this by seeing how easy targets were to see. Unfortunately, you did this at ranges where they should have been impossible to see so you only defeated your own argument. But more to the point, at that range the issue to solve isn't one of seeing the aircraft, but of aspect identification. That is exactly what scaling is intended to solve. You are confusing the issue with something wholly unrelated, and are essentially demanding that a workable, realistic, and equitable solution should not be put into place because “it's fine for you”. But you and your system are both irrelevant, and your one argument against this solution that you have explicitly admitted you don't understand, to a problem you have admitted you don't know anything about, is just unfounded guesswork because you have also admitted you have never seen it in action. It's pure argument from incredulity: because you believe it can't possibly be good — having no actual experience with it — it therefore must actually be bad, and must therefore not be used to solve the one problem it is exceedingly good at solving. Not at the sizes we're talking about here. So you got that one backwards. The model isn't needed here and is indeed a huge waste of rendering time to use just to create a single speck, especially when the dot that needs to be there can do it instead. Additionally, funnily enough, if you want it to be the model that reports all that, then we're in a range band where we should be using scaling to correctly convey those cues. So now you're in favour of that in spite of your protestations. Oops. Oh, and since you don't even play in VR, your wish for a system where out-of-game factors are the only thing that determine spotting distances and in-close aspect and target recognition isn't even relevant to the discussion at hand.

Not in any sense of the word, nor in any of the functionality, no.

Can you offer a good idea for how to replicate the (very necessary) functionality and not make it inherently exploitable?

Darn. Next guess would be that it's basically the opposite: that something else is trying to steal focus for whatever reason, and DCS is flighting back since you've set it up that way. Are you running any external tools or mods that might react to what you do in-game, or which have their own overlays that might be of the mistaken impression that they're being called for? I know it's a bit of a shot in the dark, but I hade a very similar problem once and I tracked it down to — of all things — the fan controller software trying to tell me that, onoz, demand for cooling just rose and would I like to adjust my profile to something more aggressive? So it might not even be DCS that's annoying here.

Absolutely agreed. Well, maybe apart from the WT bit, since I think the aim has always been one of realism more than anything, but they haven't got it (even nearly) dialled in yet. Hence why I think what is needed most of all is data — how it appears compared to how it should appear — with a whole bunch parameters taken into account.

…aside from the whole “crazy and obtuse” and now “arrogant” bit. Good news: no such presumption is made. I am simply explaining how your sense of immersiveness relates to the notion of having a “false dot system”, namely that the one you prefer is just as — and actually in many ways more — “false” than the one you feel is less immersive. I'm not saying that you're not finding it immersive. I'm saying that whether you do or not is not a factor as far as determining which is better from a realism and simulation standpoint. It may very well be that you feel a bad solution is more immersive than a good one, and that's fine, I suppose. But you need to realise that the end goal is probably more skewed towards a good and more realistic solution than one that satisfies your sense of immersion. Your preferences are not universal, nor are they by necessity the guiding factor in determining what the spotting dot solution should generate. If you want to offer an argument why we should have a system that shows contacts at highly unrealistic (and arbitrary) ranges, then do so. If you want to offer an argument why we should have a system that is inherently unbalanced, then do so. If you want to offer an argument why we should have a system that lets out-of-game factors rather than in-game simulation determine performance, then do so. Just don't expect “my immersion” to be a particularly convincing one. Alternatively, offer an argument for a solution: at what ranges should what targets be what size and/or faded into the background to what degree. Discuss solutions for how to achieve that across a multitude of displays and settings so we don't have the current problem of VR being burdened with inappropriate 2D rendering calculations. Then your immersion may end up being served without reverting back to an old and demonstrably bad solution.

That sounds an awful lot like it's trying to change focus and show the desktop because you have clicked something else. Are you running true fullscreen or borderless? Do you have the “confine mouse to game window” option checked?

You're not offering much in the way of argumentation, just abuse. So no, I don't suppose I must do anything of the kind. The probably do. That's why the old system had to go, with how exploitable and hackable it was, and with how it made it see all other aircraft at absurd ranges, regardless of whether it's realistic or not. That's also probably why they're not bowing to the pressure of gamers who want their old exploits and imbalances back.

I do. I just look at the problem differently. …and this is the actual problem. The one that the new dots are set up to solve. You have now chosen the old issue of targets appearing at utterly ridiculous levels, but only unreliably, and if you use specific settings. This is far more exploitable — deliberately or accidentally — than what we currently have. It is also much less realistic than what we have now. With your choice, are still getting a “false dot option”, just one that is much worse from a simulation perspective. And from a balance perspective. And from a situational awareness perspective (and I don't mean in the sense of “I can see them” but rather, “I have no idea whether they can see me or not because we're not seeing the same thing even though we should”). What you assume is more immersive is actually a fare falser dot solution, in just about every way, than the new one. You're just used to it and more comfortable with it, that's all. Yes there is. It is more realistic. You may not like how and why it is more realistic, but it is. Unquestionably. Because it much more closely simulates the limitations of the human eye. Not all the way, granted. Hell, maybe not even close to all the way. But still much more closely than what we had before. The old dots were ridiculously false in how far out they would let you spot a target. It is more equitable. This may not seem important if you only play in SP, but it is. Because it means we are actually simulating a critical component in the whole flying thing: the pilot. Previously, we didn't. We just let people choose their setting how, through that, how superhumanly good their pilot's eyesight was. And it was always superhuman. The old dots were ridiculously false in how differently they portrayed the pilot. It is more tweakable. This may not seem like it matters, but it does. Because now ED can control, pretty much universally, what players see at specified ranges, whereas previously they had no control. This means it can be further developed and enhanced into an actual spotting system that the game has been lacking for… oh, roughly… ever. The old dots were ridiculously false in how it was a one-size-fits-all solution that actually didn't fit anything. The only non-bright side is that development seems to be slow and that we're currently stuck with a naive solution that doesn't take into account what kind of display the player is using when figuring out how large the dot should be. I suppose you might want to add the visibility ranges as well, but since those can be tweaked more easily, it's actually a bright side even if the fact that you can't see as far as you could before didn't already make it so. I and DCS have a mutual understanding of what the ‘S’ stands for. It is crucial in understanding why the pilot's limitations can't be left to the player to arbitrarily choose, or their hardware to arbitrarily dictate. It should be a part of the core simulation. Now it is. This can only ever be a good thing. Do you understand how problematic and frustrating the old spotting dot solution was in MP, where some people could see targets at well beyond even BVR missile engagement ranges, whereas others couldn't could barely see targets in WVR ranges? And that some people lost their targets when they entered realistic visible ranges, whereas others would suddenly see them clear as day at that range, but not before? And that the old system was wholly decided by hardware and settings, rather than anything that was actually part of the world simulation? Because that was the reality with the old dots. They were horrid, especially in MP. Especially in a competitive setting. An apparent reason why ED seems to be slow to rectify any problems with the new dots is that there is so much effort being sent on saying “no, give us the old crap one” as opposed to having a constructive discussion on how the new — vastly better — ones should be tweaked to provide sensible visibility across the entire range of devices and resolutions the players use. They can't really act on data that isn't made available to them.

Just in general, think how vibrant the game could be if all map assets were available as placeable static. There are so many bits and bobs floating around in the terrain packs and in the bazaar that could see use as decoration for other places than where they show up now, and the amount of work to make that happen should be pretty darn negligible on ED:s end.

Look at the bright side: at least you are under no illusion that you can't be seen just because you can't see them. If you stand out like a beacon then so do they, as opposed to the olden days, where you would stand out like a beacon but they didn't.

Why would anyone apologise for something that never happened?

It's not impossible. It's just very very hard, especially if you want to add in other parameters. But being very very hard isn't a good reason to just throw up your hands and do nothing. An attempt at an equitable solution is better than leaving it laughably exploitable. It's only self-limiting if your physical setup makes it so, and if you don't adjust your settings. But more to the point, it isn't self-limiting in the simulation unless you actively put that limit in. The hardware is now more than capable of exceeding those limits so you need to make sure to tell it not to. Of course not, but you have to adjust your simulation to match, so that it doesn't create an unrealistic result. That is the end goal here, after all: as accurate a simulation as possible. The development of new displays and graphics card and CPUs and storage solutions to feed more and more detail at long and longer distances means we now can't just rely on trigonometry to decide how small or large a target should appear. It means we must also start simulating the wetware sensor system that actually interprets all that trigonometry into something we can see. Just because your display system can accurately render a CE2 at 50nm doesn't mean it should. Because you can't see a CE2 at 50nm. Instead, that processing oomph should, or at least could, be spent on increasing the accuracy of that simulation — maybe adding in all that glare and contrast and all that fun stuff. Giving your pilot superhuman vision just because the hardware allows it completely removes any pretence of being a simulation. Imagine suddenly giving the F-5 an 250nm 360° AWACS radar and over-the-shoulder launched datalinked Phoenix missiles. You could — our hardware allows for it — but it would be wrong because that is not a capability the platform has. The virtual pilot is no different. It needs to be accurately simulated too.

How old are we speaking? Because the old method let you see things 50 miles away, and the old old method was only slightly better than that but not better than what we have now.

There's a very good reason to have them larger, and it's the reason we have arrived at where we are. In fact, there are several. Some of this you'll know, obviously, but I like to be thorough. The first is to make them equitable and resolution-independent. If someone sees the target at a given size at a given distance, everyone should see the target at that size at that distance. If it goes beyond the point where it can no longer be represented as an entire single pixel, it needs to fade out and at some point, it just needs to go away, again for everyone. The problem here becomes one of lowest common denominator. Arguably, yes, at higher resolution “the smallest” thing should still be a single pixel that fades out over distance, but the problem is that this visibility needs to be replicated the same at the lower resolution. So we need to figure out a rock-solid way of representing a single high-res pixel as an equally visible low-res subpixel. On top of this, on the high-res end, as that single pixel approaches the limit of visibility, it also needs to go into subpixel territory, effectively fading it into the background… and then we still need to figure out a way to reliably translate that back to the lowres realm, where it now a sub-subpixel, double-faded into the background. The results will start to diverge very quickly, and that's no good. It is probably possible to experimentally figure out a good parametrisation for a fading curve based on resolution and range and maybe throw in some of that lighting and glinting and variable target size as well. That would be really neat, but it also risks being completely wasted effort. Because on top of that, there's the problem that we now have high-res displays that can show finer detail than the eye can resolve. It's a problem because this means that the single pixel on the high-res screen might actually represent a level of detail that our simulated pilot should not be able to see, and not just what the player can. In the other big thread on the topic, I have some calculations to show how shockingly quickly and easily we get to that point on modern systems. So realistically, when we are at the very edge of visibility, the target may actually still have to be rendered as larger than a single pixel on some displays. If we go into the single-pixel or sub-pixel domain, we are already breaking the simulation and offering unrealistic visibility. At those resolutions, the target needs to start fading into the background when it's still an entire block of pixels on the screen. So having this neat function that translates a high-res pixel into a low-res subpixel doesn't matter — the high-res screen should still show the target as a block, and that block is very likely to be about single-pixel sized on the low-res display. The translation only needs to happen at a point where neither display should be showing anything anyway. We still need to figure out what size high-res dot is equivalent to a lonely low-res pixel, but probably not the other way around. And the less said about what happens when we throw variable zoom into the mix, the better. A second/third/howeveryouwanttocountthem problem is one of physical setup and screen distance. This one is trickier to generalise, but is essentially why we have these big VR blocks. It is the out-of-game version of where the display can show too fine detail: how large a single or a blob of pixels are to me as a player will obviously vary not jut with the resolution but with the distance from the screen. If I completely rearrange my desk and move some of these darned sim peripherals out of the way, I can pixel-peep single pixels all day while barely looking (indeed, that's part of what I do all day). But if I move it back give more rooms to all the toys, the exact same screen is now “retina”, to use that loathsome advertising term — the individual pixels are below what my eye can resolve. VR goes in the opposite direction: since the screen is right up against the eye, the pixels are inherently huge… well, relative to the screen resolution at least, and from a perceptual standpoint. To combat this you add more resolution and/or supersampling (i.e. virtually more resolution) and get into the whole subpixel detail disscussion again. The question then becomes one of, should this be our reference point? That the goal is to make it 1px on a “normal” VR screen, and then we extrapolate the equivalent sizes in pancake mode from there? Or do we try to translate from some kind of normalised pancake target size into the VR realm and hope we get it right? Maybe that parametrisation function will come in handy after all…? What we certainly shouldn't do — and probably the reason why this thread exists — is to assume that a VR resolution is the same as a pancake resolution, and so we apply the same dot size on both. There's a pretty significant difference in having 2k vertical pixels an inch away from your eye, and having it 40 inches away. And of course, then we could get into a whole technical debate about the feasibility of also adjusting for monitor distance, but omg, the headache of trying to figure out, not just how far away the player sits (without cheating) but also adjusting for “should I sit at 90cm or 75? You know what, 84.3 seems about perfect… on and then I adjust my zoom cruve”. And then (I've lose count now) there's the issue of what should happen at that very edge of visibility. And I'm talking about what the pilot is capable of seeing here, not rendering visibility. At some point, the target needs to start blending into the background. Much sooner than many would expect, but at the same time much later than some would suggest. And let me just be clear here: I'm not saying that the current dots are good at this — targets are still far too visible, far too far out — but it's a massive improvement over the old system and for that reason alone any notion of going back is laughable. But as mentioned, this may still be at a point where the target is — or at least could be, given its size on the screen — still rendered as a full 3D model. How do you fade out a 3D model in a good way? We don't want pop-in (or pop-out, which is arguably even more distracting). We want something that can be faded out easily, reliably, and equitably on all displays at all resolutions. Something that covers up the transition from no perceivable colour difference from the background to clearly visible, but unidentifiable blob, to fully rendered 3D model, and which can (at least in some kind of fantastical dream world) be colour-matched to how that 3D model will appear when it takes over. And what something will be is a dot – maybe even a dot that isn't just a single pixel. Preferably, yes, that dot should be coloured in a way to represent… well… colour, and aspect and size and and lighting and a hole bunch of other things, but that's unfortunately a luxury compared to the basic functionality of covering up the range segment where the target becomes visible, but doesn't suddenly pop in because its “minimum visible size” actually turns out to be a whole bunch of pixels. …and then, of course, there's another transition that needs to happen that dots most definitely aren't a solution for, but that's a separate discussion. This is just to illustrate that they are indeed needed as a solution, and that they may indeed have to be much larger than a single pixel. Oh, and that we shouldn't naively think that we can treat VR as if it were pancake, because duh. But everyone agrees on that last point. Oh, don't worry, they're not aimed at you. There is a very specific segment of wishy-washy posters who are adamantly against any improvement to the game, and especially to spotting, and especially especially when they realise that those spotting improvement would make them lose their artificial advantages. Once upon a time, they said that spotting should not be addressed because there was no problem — after all, they could see targets at 50nm and therefore, any complaint about the spotting system making targets hard to see was invalid and any and all improvements were unnecessary. Then they realised that others had a different advantage: that closer in, they could see the target much more easily because of how the spotting system interacted with lower resolution. Suddenly, the previously perfectly working system was broken beyond repair and needed to go. Then they realised that the new system didn't do away with the other guy's advantage — it just made it universal so everyone saw larger targets, and their old absurd-distance advantage had been removed. Now they shifted foot again and suddenly the old system had make a return, or better yet, make an even newer one that would return to them that advantage, but with unlimited range. All retention of their advantage and removal of the other guy's equal advantage in the name of “realism”, of course. There's a reason why I can only laugh at the utter lack of logical consistency and blatant desire to cheat emanating from this particular segment. You can actually articulate a rational argument, even if I don't fully agree with where it leads you.

The thing is, the compensation method is what makes it realistic. Same with the radar, except it's not there to compensate for anything. It's its own system. Granted, to hear some speak, you'd almost expect them to suddenly want their radars to be granted supernatural powers because they bought extra hardware for that purpose. And if there was a server option to force anything, it would have to be to force the new system on rather than let players fall back on the nonsensical and unrealistic old system, or worse yet, one where there is no restriction on target spotting range at all. Ultimately, we'll all end up with the same system anyway so providing a server option is a bit of a waste.

Just witness the upset when the old dots went away, and with them the absurd ranges at which planes could be spotted previously, causing people to demand that the old dots were retained as an option. Not to mention those who are now clamouring for the removal of dots entirely, to allow for infinite range, limited only by video resolution and the game's max simulation distance. Coincidentally, no, that's not a problem with old games, and as such can't have convinced players of anything. Dots are a pretty new entry since up until recently, this kind of long distance spotting wasn't a problem — the hardware wasn't there to make it one. Now that we have to put hard caps on how far out the hardware renders things, and to create a method for letting contacts fade in, spotting has arisen as pretty much the only viable solution to that.