Tips for spotting aircraft

Do any of you have tips for adjusting graphical settings to better spot aircraft? Last night I was flying with Merlin in his WW2 server, and while scanning behind me to pick up a FW 190, the first thing I could see of the bandit were his tracers!:joystick:

I know that spotting an aircraft in real life can be very, very difficult. Short of buying a larger monitor, it would be good to share advice and see if anything helps. What seems to be especially tough is that there is little contrast between other aircraft and the ground or sky at certain ranges and lighting conditions. I've tried the different HDR settings but they seem to have no effect here.

Thanks for your help.:thumbup:

It would be nice to have some way to fix it. I have been able to spot crop dusters while looking outside the window of a jetliner at cruising altitude yet in flight sims I can't see squat from more than 6000ft away.

I say this in every thread, but zoom your FOV a bit when scanning. Default FOV is not realistic. Zooming more accurately represents what a human would be able to see unassisted in real life.

Its not even cheating because it creates such tunnel vision that its less efficient and a bit disorienting compared to normal human panoramic vision, but still better than seeing nothing.

I set my monitor to the highest contrast settings possible.

Brithness to an average setting - shouldn't be too bright.

It's ok when it looks quite awful for normal use.

But it works pretty well for gaming in general.

And I crank up the saturation. This will additionally let the opponent 'pop out' from the background.

Happy hunting! :thumbup:

Changing the FoV is something I already do. Konrad, where do you change the saturation?

My monitor has a setting for saturation.

But it should be possible with the Nvidia or AMD (what ever you use) settings menu.

For Nvidia it's called 'digital colormatching' or something.

You can also try to adjust 'gamma' by lowering it's value.

Make shure to remember the values - it's quite easy to mess the settings when you're not shure what you do ;)

Setting color temperature to a more cold setting (like 9300K) or changing color space to sRGB (if possible with your monitor) may help also to get a better contrast.

Got it. I wondered if you were referring to some kind of config file. I know where to find that in catalyst control center. I'll experiment a bit and report what I find, thanks!

Gav, I edited my DCS files so that my min and max FoV are approximately the same as the Rise of Flight default, and I also got rid of the "Exorcist head spin" effect. There's no way to get my pan speeds & acceleration to match my R.o.F. settings, but other than that, it feels about the same. With a higher min FoV than the default, I can quickly switch to max zoom while scanning and still retain a modicum of situational awareness. Aircraft are still harder to spot than in R.o.F., but not as much as with default DCS settings. Lemme know if you wanna try my settings.

Gav, I edited my DCS files so that my min and max FoV are approximately the same as the Rise of Flight default, and I also got rid of the "Exorcist head spin" effect. There's no way to get my pan speeds & acceleration to match my R.o.F. settings, but other than that, it feels about the same. With a higher min FoV than the default, I can quickly switch to max zoom while scanning and still retain a modicum of situational awareness. Aircraft are still harder to spot than in R.o.F., but not as much as with default DCS settings. Lemme know if you wanna try my settings.

Guys,

Can you possibly share the specifics? I'd like to try adjusting the FoV also. And I think I've searched it before, but is there a way to make the max zoom not so extreme? Maybe back it off a bit? When I use it, I tend to think it feels too much like a telescope and departs quite a ways from reality.

hey merlin, thats actually pretty easy!

and i think it got even easier with the latest patches since 124 if i remember correctly...

i think all you need to do now is, to go into your username/saved games/dcs/config/view/snapviews.lua file and edit the relevant lines...

scroll down until you are in the P51 part of the file,scroll further down until you see a paragraph called default view..

and edit the line viewangle

ive set it to 90, and im happy with it.

PS: to see if its really working that way, i suggest to firstly enter an extrem value like 120 or even higher, so that you clearly notice the difference if its working.

ähm excuse me, but whats the exorcist vision???

is it that you can rotate your head 360° in one direction???

if so, thats not longer the case for me since the last patch.....but only in the p51...to my surprise, in the a10c i can still do the exorcist move...

ähm excuse me, but whats the exorcist vision???

is it that you can rotate your head 360° in one direction???

if so, thats not longer the case for me since the last patch.....but only in the p51...to my surprise, in the a10c i can still do the exorcist move...

Yeah, the 360 thing. I've edited my files so that neither the P-51D nor the A-10C do it. I'll post my complete explanation after I finish writing it out.

Thanks Josh. I tried Konrad's suggestions but I'm not sure how much they help yet.

Guys,

Can you possibly share the specifics? I'd like to try adjusting the FoV also. And I think I've searched it before, but is there a way to make the max zoom not so extreme? Maybe back it off a bit? When I use it, I tend to think it feels too much like a telescope and departs quite a ways from reality.

Here we go! There's three things that I edited for each aircraft: the min & max FoV (i.e. the max & min zoom), the restrictions on how far back you can look on each

side (I can only see ~180 degrees behind me now, instead of being able to turn my virtual head past 180 and do a full 360 rotation), and the centered location

of the virtual camera (where my virtual head is located when I first spawn). Here's how, respectively.

Go to DCS World\Config\View. Make a backup copy of View.lua, then open the original View.lua with Notepad. Scroll down to the two lines that start with

the following:

CameraViewAngleLimits[A_10C]

CameraViewAngleLimits[P_51D]

This is the part where you change the min & max FoV, respectively, of these two aircraft. Replace the two entire lines with the following:

CameraViewAngleLimits[A_10C] = {30.0, 100.0}

CameraViewAngleLimits[P_51D] = {30.0, 100.0}

CameraAngleRestriction[A_10C]

CameraAngleRestriction[P_51D]

This is where you change your rotation angle restrictions. I don't know what the first value does, but the second value is the number of degrees you can rotate

horizontally, and the third value is how far you can rotate vertically (I think it's expressed as a fraction of 180 degrees, so that 0.5 equals 90 degrees, but I'm

not sure). Note that the degree value is how far the center of the camera can go, not how far you can see at the edge of the camera; depending on your zoom

level, you can see a bit farther past this degree value (at low zoom levels, quite a bit farther).

Replace the two entire lines with the following:

CameraAngleRestriction[A_10C] = {1,110,0.5}

CameraAngleRestriction[P_51D] = {1,110,0.5}

says: function p51_snap_views

Replace that entire section (from that first line, to the "end" line) with the following:

function p51_snap_views()

 

local index = 12

local default_trans_y = 0.059

local default_trans_x = 0.12

local default_vAngle = -5

local default_viewAngle = 75

 

local snaps = {}

for i = 1,13 do

local snap =

{

y_trans = default_trans_y,

x_trans = default_trans_x,

z_trans = 0,

hAngle = 0,

vAngle = default_vAngle,

rollAngle = 0,

viewAngle = default_viewAngle,

}

snaps = snap;

end

Replace that entire section (all of the lines that start with "Snap[11][13]" , minus the quotes) with the following:

Snap[11][13] = {}

Snap[11][13]["viewAngle"] = 75

Snap[11][13]["x_trans"] = 0.20

Snap[11][13]["hAngle"] = 0

Snap[11][13]["y_trans"] = -0.041336805555556

Snap[11][13]["rollAngle"] = 0

Snap[11][13]["vAngle"] = -4

Snap[11][13]["z_trans"] = 0

Let me know if something seems wrong; I wrote this post today without checking to make sure I grabbed the right lines, because checking each line would mean checking it in the sim, editing the next, restarting the mission, and repeating those three steps for each value. As this post has already taken me 45 minutes to write, I'm sure you'll forgive me for not spending another 45 minutes fiddling around in the sim. ; )

So--assuming I didn't screw up somewhere in this post--if you don't like my values, play with them and see what happens, until you're happy with them. I don't have any other modules, so these are the only two I've done. Note that every autoupdate to the sim will regenerate these files, so after you've gotten them the way you like them, back them up. Every little patch, you'll have to restore them from the backup. (The sim seems to automatically back them up and throw them in a new directory, but I like to be sure.)

in the view.lua file, i dont see any lines that say cameranglerestriction, nor any lines with cameraviewanglelimits....???

EDIT:

BUT:

first, in the game path, under config/view there is a readme...which more or less states, that you should not touch those original files stored, but rather copy and paste the files to your username/saved games/dcs/config/view folder...and adjust them from there...

this way, you should not have to adjust them with new patches again, since those folders are not touched by updates....

then, since i didnt find the lines in the view.lua i had a look in the server.lua which is located in config/view as well....

and there indeed there are those lines you mentioned above!and a view other ones as well, such as allow360degreerotation...

They might've changed the format again. My files still worked last time I spawned in the sim, which was one of the builds of 1.2.5, so the format in my post should still be supported. Try pasting those two pairs of lines directly onto the end of your file, in a new section for each one.

I would have said that he meant 'server.lua' but the current server.lua is structured differently so you will not find those exact lines in it either. Though server.lua is still the file where the changes will need to be made.

EDIT:

BUT:

first, in the game path, under config/view there is a readme...which more or less states, that you should not touch those original files stored, but rather copy and paste the files to your username/saved games/dcs/config/view folder...and adjust them from there...

this way, you should not have to adjust them with new patches again, since those folders are not touched by updates....

then, since i didnt find the lines in the view.lua i had a look in the server.lua which is located in config/view as well....

and there indeed there are those lines you mentioned above!and a view other ones as well, such as allow360degreerotation...

hey merlin, thats actually pretty easy!

and i think it got even easier with the latest patches since 124 if i remember correctly...

i think all you need to do now is, to go into your username/saved games/dcs/config/view/snapviews.lua file and edit the relevant lines...

 

scroll down until you are in the P51 part of the file,scroll further down until you see a paragraph called default view..

and edit the line viewangle

ive set it to 90, and im happy with it.

 

PS: to see if its really working that way, i suggest to firstly enter an extrem value like 120 or even higher, so that you clearly notice the difference if its working.

Thanks David!

Here we go!...

 

...Let me know if something seems wrong; I wrote this post today without checking to make sure I grabbed the right lines, because checking each line would mean checking it in the sim, editing the next, restarting the mission, and repeating those three steps for each value. As this post has already taken me 45 minutes to write, I'm sure you'll forgive me for not spending another 45 minutes fiddling around in the sim. ; )

Thank you for that write-up! The time and effort is appreciated. THAT is what makes the community so awesome. I'll be trying this out when I'm home.

Also, just as an FYI. In the TrackIR software there is a "limit" option that stops you at 180 degrees. I have had that enabled for the Yaw axis so my virtual neck doesn't snap right off.

Gav, I should probably point out that my changes aren't a magical solution to your problem; really, what I've done with the files is closer to my VHPGI for Rise of Flight than it is a solution to your problem. However, I do find that it makes spotting aircraft a bit easier with my changes, primarily because going to max zoom doesn't blind you as much to everything other than the tiny spot of sky you're looking at, and because my changes generally make it easier to look around. YRMV. (I still have a devil of a time with spotting aircraft, myself, if I don't already know where to look.)

I would have said that he meant 'server.lua' but the current server.lua is structured differently so you will not find those exact lines in it either. Though server.lua is still the file where the changes will need to be made.

Hmm. I used to have a Server.lua backup, which means at one point I did edit that file. However, since many versions ago, I haven't used that backup, and I don't even have it in my DCS directory anymore. So, unless I'm very mistaken, I'm using default values for my Server.lua, and yet my camera still uses my modified values. [Edit: yes, I see that the autoupdater is only creating backups of my View and SnapViewsDefault, which means that my Server must be default.]

If I remember aright, Server.lua is where you make changes that are applied to everyone on your server? Which would be why I reverted my changes to that file. Anyway, my View.lua and SnapViewsDefault.lua files are how I listed in my large explanation post--I copied & pasted those sections directly from the file.

I haven't flown the sim in many months, because of my hand injuries, but I've fired it up from time to time to watch other people, and each time I've been sitting on the tarmac, my camera's been my modified version. As I write this, I'm updating to the latest version of DCS to check a few things. I'll get back to you.

By the way, I think it was a post by PeterP that gave me tips on how to edit the files in the first place, so searching his posts with relevant terms could help a bunch. He's got more than a few extremely helpful explanations on the subject of virtual cameras and such.

Also, just as an FYI. In the TrackIR software there is a "limit" option that stops you at 180 degrees.

Ah, thanks. I don't use TrackIR, but it would certainly be easier for TrackIR users to use that limit than to edit one into the DCS files.

Huh. So I'm looking at my freshly-generated (by the autoupdater) default files, and as David has pointed out, the lines I originally edited aren't there anymore. One of the files has a description at the top stating that they use a new format: "reformatted per-unit data to be mod system friendly", and another says "this file is no longer should be edited for adding new flyable aircraft , DCS automatically check core database for this data(i.e. where you define your aircraft in aircraft table just define ViewSettings and SnapViews tables)

-- result of ingame editing is saved to Saved Games/<USER>/DCS/Config/View/SnapViews.lua"

So I opened up my "C:\Users\Echo38\Saved Games\DCS\Config", but there is no View directory there. I am now rather confused! It appears that there's been a major reworking of how the sim handles custom view files since the last time I worked on them, so lemme fire up the newly-patched sim and see how it likes my old files.

 

So I opened up my "C:\Users\Echo38\Saved Games\DCS\Config", but there is no View directory there.

Lots of things have been moved to Saved Games. The files/folders needed do not exist by default. You must create them (usually with little or no information about the format, syntax or structure).