LowRider88

Really, got a link to the earlier post with the diagram, which Fri13 duplicates? Even if you find it, the purpose of this thread is to talk about that as I had did some tests and still see a discrepancy. You just want to shut me up because you like arcade and think plane aspect should be discernible for multiplayer at 30 nm, when I keep saying what I suggest should not affect your game play if what I suggest is an option disabled by default. Holy crap, why not let others play another way?

I never said I was a DCS developer. What’s your point? Who’s slapping anyone in the face? As I just asked, did anyone post Fri13’s diagram before? No? Then why am I getting chewed out for talking about it? Feel free to open a new thread. Believe me, if support did not direct me here for my suggestions, why bother interacting with closed minded folks. Please keep in mind, as I have mentioned early on, I am suggesting what I am suggesting as an option, where what you experience now is default, and what I am suggesting, which is based on reputable data is an option for others like me. Why so sensitive?

Okay, that’s fair. In the preceding threads, was there ever a post that contained Fri13’s diagram?

I don’t think you answered my question, about whether you are a developer or not. If you are not part of ED, how can you know for certain the scope of what they know? And if they know everything, does that mean I am not allowed to express myself? When you have been expressing yourself all over the place for 4 years, and may have even out posted me in this thread? To try to devalue research by saying someone has already looked at it but you provide no proof to that.

If there is nothing new to add, why do you and the other guy still battle it out for years? What is the point of a wishlist forum if I can’t have my say because it conflicts with your needs? There apparently is something to add as Draconus already said there is work in place for the future. Are you a developer?

Yes, I am aware they have good first hand accounts. I believe they have the Fighter Collection for the wwii planes. It doesn’t take a genius, or your reminder to know this, when just browsing the site may show this. Did they have jet pilots? Did they ask the world of questions to those pilots? What if there are additional findings? These have to brushed under the rug because from your perspective, new resources and data are not allowed? Thanks for your closed mindedness..

Dynamic Formations too Cool ideas. I like the idea of custom formations. I would also like to suggest dynamic formations as well. E.g. The Thach Weave requires a pair in abreast formation turning in to each other for mutual rear attack support. To implement this, this could start as abreast formation, and only becomes a weave when the player banks towards the AI wingman, who will match the maneuver by turning in also, crossing over or under, and would stop only after the player flies level, and the AI wingman achieve line abreast again. But the AI would be smart enough to shoot bogeys at the player’s rear without the need for the player to explicitly order the wingman to shoot. Another example may be the Wagon Wheel, which is the go to option for more agile but less powered, numerous planes vs energy fighters.

You are entitled to your opinion nighthawk, however, without further details this statement seems to me like just that, another subjective opinion. You have noted plane classes/sizes, and resolutions, but no distances or provided example screenshots and comparative photos of real life. Although, if you provide real life photos, I might question how you can be certain what you see in the photo is in fact the class/size you are referring to, and how you can be certain what the distance is. Without that data, I don’t see why ED could not refer to the hard military facts Fri13 provided. Are you also attempting to discern target orientation at distance? Do you have more evidence that real pilots are able to make out the attitude of a plane over 5 nm away? I am a bit disappointed after joining this forum. It seems there are a large number of users who, as mentioned in one of the earlier posts of this thread, would rather to be able to see a plane reference all the time even if it is outside of WVR, even if it is not realistic, just for more multiplayer satisfaction. I get the impression some of the user base may have come from free to play multiplayer arcade games, where everyone spawns at the same time, fliesto a central location to join a free for all, every man for himself fireball, where everyone looks for dots and drives to each like a heat seeking missile, with less appreciation for team tactics. This kind of battle seems more like a wwii type fur ball. In Vietnam jet combat, there were Kuban Tactics, Wagon Wheels, Loose Dueces. All of these formations were necessary for mutual support because it was so easy to lose sight of your wing, and because it was so easy to be ambushed. Is the DCS community really that scared for losing visibility? If a sub simmer were to read this they may find it amusing. Those guys even complain that simulated water is not murkier enough, as they live for the hide and seek, cat and mouse game play, which requires more pilot skill in detection tactics.

That sounds like commendable experimentation nighthawk. Sorry but by 'not accurate' do you mean higher res is to harder or easier to see?

Thanks Draconus for your feedback and perspective. That's fair, I don't disagree with you. Although, the scenario I tested was rather specific i.e. clear day, noon time, no weather, F-5E head on, with a result of 15 nm, 7 x over the 2 nm from the military documents. Some of those differences in variables you mentioned such as eyes, training, weather, etc. I am assuming are accounted for in the military documents Fri13 referenced, and the light fighter article. The research nighthawk provided is also good. If I try to correlated that to Fri13's source and the light fighter wiki article, it suggests to me that the two latter could be "rounding off" of the findings in the former. So low probabilities are considered in some military sources as near invisible. So e.g. they round to 2 nm. However with my test the impression I get is that the target sticks out too far, too early, that it may represent a different probability region. As you say this may get fixed in later releases, and I can wait for that. In the meantime, I may try to find a cheap 4K monitor some time and give it another test, and confirm if this makes my personal experience of the 15 nm vs 2 nm more congruent. On top of this I am hoping to confirm to be able to see a difference between a MiG-21 and an F-14, with all other variables held constant. Thanks always for your efforts to provide a balanced perspective.

Thanks nighthawk2174 for these research details. I am a bit confused though. Your first screenshot shows Figure 6, but the second makes reference to Figure 3. Also in neither of these is there any mention of averages vs maximums, or fovea. It is hard to correlate. Are you able to share the source PDF? Please note the video you sourced is an F-16 pilot calling tallyho on an F-14, which is signficantly larger than the F-16, and further still than a MiG-21 and F-5E, respectively. This correlates to the light fighter wiki article I mentioned that says and F-15 is detectable at 11 nm. Also, it the first table, are they being spotted head on? Planform on? Causing extended vapour trails from height or weather? It says empirical, but how much of it was interpolated/extrapolated/calculated from available data points? So at least someone was able to see a T-38 from 20 nm away head on? The part you mention about hearing from someone from a pilot sounds a bit like the grapvine. More hard numbers would be less subjective.

Please excuse me if this has been suggested before. Currently when fighting AI enemies, they act more or less like missiles. They always see the player unless they go out of range or are behind terrain or weather. The AI pilot is able to yaw and pitch down to track and maneuver towards the player even if the player is under its nose, as if the AI pilot can look through their cockpit floor. But even an ace of aces would lose sight of their opponents in the air space during a battle. Would it be possible to add different blind spots to all planes (depending on the plane) that the AI can respect? I image it could be implemented using quadraspheres, or cones of visibility, with some of them missing, or blocked out depending on blind spots from canopy frames, or fuselage spines flush with the canopy, or just the floor or sides of the cockpit. And if the line of sight is not within these quads or cones, then the AI has lost sight, and will continue on its current course, do a break turn, or go towards some random part of a sphere representing all the possibilities of where the player could be based on when the player was last seen. Maybe higher skilled AI could be able to have more predictive abilities than a novice, rather than have limits on acceleration or speed loss relaxed. Maybe some cones could have greater probability, e.g. the front view of an F-5 is less cluttered than a MiG-19, but the rear view advantage goes the other way. This could further add new character to each plane type too. Making some harder/easier to kill, using interesting new ways to discover defeating them.

Thanks Sirrah! :thumbup: Just trying to do my part as a fan to help make the sim we know and love better. I completely agree, it adds more to the relevance to the NTTR map. Although I hope it won`t be constrained to only that map as I could imagine DACT taking place elsewhere as well. E.g. if we wanted to relive the initial encounter in Top Gun, with the MiG-28, we could use the Persian or Caucus map. I hope there would be options where the bogey would bug out because of a electronic trigger pull (not sure if a trigger pull is required in DACT), or just by painting the radar on them (like in the movie).

How old are these French and US pilots? Did they say what their setup is like? What kind of labels are they using? Dots or Full blown labels with side and situational details? It may be the rendering of the size of the target aircraft in the game is correct with the scale of the artificial user cockpit, which itself may be too small given his config. What if this guy has the FOV default, eg. the terrible fish eye after the initial zoom out? What ever the case, we had good solid research material on visibility earlier in the thread and so this post is to negate all of that? I think we need more measurements and less subjective anecdotes.

I don`t know about that, I heard the MiG-19 will have an earlier version once the current one in established. Given that it seems so easy to do, I don`t understand why it can`t be done. I would pay for a delta, whether old or new version.

Okay, this for some reason is one of your more enjoyable posts to read. Thanks for these details.

Really, that is not just text labels? Man, all this time I was wasting time fussing around with the imposters.lua which did nothing. That’s for these details. I will try it tonight.

This sounds to me somewhat like the imposters mechanism, why I personally feel should still be an option. It could be off by default if that offends people less. From other threads, it seems like there is a large, sizeable portion of the community that appreciated it, and perhaps an equally size group who opposed it. To make everyone happy as you suggest, it seems to make good sense to bring that back only as an option. ED already committed time, money and effort, so why does it sit dormant when there is a large partial user base who want to leverage it? But if there is something better coming down the pipe that may be better, I suppose there is nothing to do but wait.

Just to add to your comments Fri13, 30 nm seems way too far for visual spotting. 30 nm is about 55 km. I drive from one end of a major city to the other for my work commute, and that takes 42 km. Is it really possible to see a tiny BF-109, beyond the opposite end of a major city? Seems quite far fetched to me. From my tests in DCS, the roughly 2 nm range when an F-5 or Mig-21 appears head on Is roughly when the AWACS or GCI calls “merge”. That makes sense to me. I should need their help to tell me they are coming in visual range, not see him coming from 15 nm out. If that’s the case, why bother call merge? Still not sure why people are refuting your accurately sourced data.

By all means, if you want to broaden the scope and feature creep, you can open a brand new thread, rather than confuse what I am asking for. Please stop telling me what I am asking for.

It’s great to hear that there is something coming from DCS for spotting. I was starting to give up on this thread since it seemed to be hijacked for broader topics that I don’t really care about. I don’t really care so much about the jump from dot to 3D in mid visual range. That to me is esthetics, and is not an immersion killer for me because I’ve gotten used to that playing flight sims since 1994. I play DCS to relive historical battles, not to watch a movie. My main concern was the head on visibility of the small jet fighters, which only Fri13 and Draconus seemed to pick up on. That detail may scare some multiplayer users who fear they can’t see anything. But for me it adds the next level of challenge I am looking for. And it is supported by reputable military reports, and not commentary from youtubers.

Whoohoo! Yes! Thanks Draconus for your assessment!

This sounds like something I would want to try. Maybe then we just need to create a new missile slot with no 3D and no smoke trail, or explosion. Got a link to that script/mod? But I assume the bogey won't bug out after the kill? Or is there some mission object task that says go home if you are partially damaged?

Maybe I haven't found it yet. Please excuse me if this has been suggested or actually already exists. Are there electronic kills in DCS? I.e. when I pull the trigger, I still hear tones etc., but no weapon is fired, no target is destroyed. But the target then knocks it off and RTBs. Does this exist today? If not could this be added?

100% agree with you :thumbup: