Universal Model Visibility Setting Mod

The current model visibility system is flawed. While 2.0.1 and soon 1.5.3 will fix the inconsistency issues that 1.5.2/2.0.0 introduced, ED has still only been making tweaks to a fundamentally flawed system. No matter what settings they find, they will always have shortcomings in certain scenarios, be it at extreme ranges, at certain resolutions, and so on.

I've long maintained that model visibility is one of the most important issues facing DCS. I'm very happy that ED has finally decided to address it, but I'm not satisfied with the solution. Ideally, it should be something that is robust enough that it works equally well across all platforms, and provides a realistic level of visibility. Prior to EDGE, this was an atrocious shortcoming of DCS, and while it's now significantly better, the system is hampered by its own flaws which in turn causes many servers to disable it for various understandable reasons.

Here are the two essential changes needed in order to make this the solution DCS needs:

1. Objects MUST become harder to see with distance.

When this doesn't happen, you get situations like the above picture where you see ground targets from ridiculous distances the size of football stadiums, and 200ft long F-15s taking off from runways 50km away. It's primarily a scaling problem. Not only is this unrealistic, but it also just looks strange and immersion breaking.

2. Resolution must NOT significantly impact the ability to see objects.

This is absolutely critical as if everybody is seeing something different, then nobody can even begin to discuss what's realistic or not. I'm also very adverse to the idea of punishing somebody in an area so important as seeing your target for reasons largely out of their control. In the current system, the lower your resolution the bigger your impostors. Before the model visibility setting in 1.2, the higher your resolution, the better you could see.

Additionally, if it were up to me, this would also be a system that is simply on or off, with the default being on. For those that would rather play with it off for one reason or another, they should have that option. However it should be designed so that everybody runs the same settings, everybody sees the same results, and servers default to running with it on.

Rather than continue to make threads about this topic and repeat myself ad nauseum about how and why this is so important, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I've made a mod that makes some very critical tweaks the model visibility setting to demonstrate that not only is it entirely possible for DCS to work like this, but it could be done with the information that was already there, but unused.

Download the mod here.

To install, just drop the Universal Visibility folder into your JSGME mod folder. If you'd rather do it the old fashioned way, you can extract the contents of the Universal Visibility folder into your DCS World folder. Although, I wouldn't recommend that as you'll just overwrite your files.

Here's a rundown of what this mod does, and what I think ED's model visibility system should be doing:

Impostors now reduce in size with distance.

Objects now reasonably fade into view versus always being the same pixel size at any distance. This prevents giant F-15s 50km away, and prevents SAM sites from being silly visible at extreme range.

Contrast of objects now increases with distance.

Bright spots on planes are much brighter, and dark spots are now darker. Being a bright white color is no longer a cloaking device, and the contrast makes things stick out at longer distances

All visibility settings are now the same.

For uniformity, and because this is meant to be a universal setting, there is no longer a difference between low/med/high. As long as it’s not off, the system is on and working.

Impostors scale with resolution.

Lowering your resolution no longer means you get larger planes and tanks, and a higher resolution no longer lets you see further than others. Everybody now has the about the same level of effectiveness when it comes to seeing things at a distance, regardless of resolution.

Alpha of the object adjusts depending on field of view.

Zooming into a distant object now lets you still easily see the object. In fact, the further you zoom in, the easier it is to pick out. Conversely, zooming way out (e.g. >120 degree FOVs) is no longer a “let me see everything magnified and huge” button.

Overall, the end result is objects that are very difficult to see >20km, but still there if you look really hard and get lucky with aspect. Between 10-20km is where things start to become more visible, and objects <10km are very visible.

Expect to see dots. Whereas before, it was always an F-15 of the same size no matter the distance, far objects will now turn into high contrast dots as they get further away. They only start to turn into discernible silhouettes as you get closer (usually around 10km) and they start to maneuver.

In terms of the actual values, I’ve been a bit conservative with how visible things should be as well. I'm actually expecting some to say they still can't see anything with this. However, I would rather under-do it than over-do it for a first run. This is no 1.5.1 where you could see everything with almost comical ease. As much fun as I had with that, it wasn’t right. This is fairly close to what I feel is realistic.

Under 10km you can see targets perfectly fine, but in that gray roughly between 10 and 20km, how visible something is can vary quite a bit. Sometimes you’ll spot them from further out, sometimes closer. It’ll depend on shape, background, and aspect.

It is certainly my hope that ED looks at the issues the visibility system has. Just about all of these features you mentioned are absolutely necessary for the visibility system to command the confidence of the community. Something it really doesn't at the moment.

Great work.

How are features like actual distance scaling and resolution independence not the default. I am seriously baffled. That's the bare minimum to even get a semblance of functioning, realistic visibility

I would like to try your mod but since I have never run any mods for DCS in the past, any suggestions on how to apply it?

JSGME maybe?

I would like to try your mod but since I have never run any mods for DCS in the past, any suggestions on how to apply it?

JSGME maybe?

My mistake. Just drop the Universal Visibility folder into your JSGME mod folder. It's already in a JSGME safe format.

If you'd rather do it the old fashioned way, you can extract the contents of the Universal Visibility folder into your DCS World folder. Although, I wouldn't recommend that as you'll just overwrite your files.

I'll update the OP with these instructions and throw a readme into the zip.

thanks!

Gonna try this later on, looks awesome tho Nice work

I have done just that and testing it as we speak.

Thank you!!

Amazing!

Nice Work, going to try it now!!

Thanks for this. I also hope ED will make one single size of "impostors" lockable and verifiable by server (for multiplayer sake) and maybe adopt your approach.

This is a great effort you've gone through but at my native resolution of 3440x1440 Have difficulty spotting fighters within 2 miles, even when I know exactly where to look there is no contrast between the background and the aircraft. There is a haze pervading the entire caucus and NTTR. Looking at your screenshot I see the same thing. In 4K the effect is what I imagine glaucoma would feel like.

I have tried every possible setting on my PC and monitor that I can think of and nothing helps. Do lower resolutions not have this problem? It's sad to say the enviornment still looked better in 1.2.6, and I made that same claim in November. I know I'm not the only person experiencing but it seems only those with greater resolutions are effected and more white noise is added. Maybe the full zoom is unfair at high resolution with the model scaling but all I want is the same visibility I had in 1.2.6.

Great work. Hope to check it out later.

Why485, I like your mod!! I have installed it in both standard 1.52 and alpha 2.0.

I have a hunch that the behavior is not identical. Is there a difference of interpretation of your changes among those two versions? It could be me or the lighting conditions. The two missions I tested are not identical as far as the weather and tod.

I tend to like the 1.52 look but overall I think this is an improvement on either.

DCS tends to crash when this mod is active, sadly.

DCS tends to crash when this mod is active, sadly.

If there's a specific mission where it's crashing, could you post it? I haven't had any problems with stability whatsoever.

Why485, I like your mod!! I have installed it in both standard 1.52 and alpha 2.0.

I have a hunch that the behavior is not identical. Is there a difference of interpretation of your changes among those two versions? It could be me or the lighting conditions. The two missions I tested are not identical as far as the weather and tod.

I tend to like the 1.52 look but overall I think this is an improvement on either.

Settings for this kind of thing have always been transferable between 2.0 and 1.5. There aren't any rendering differences (in terms of impostors anyway) between 2.0.1 and 1.5.2 as far as I'm aware. Though, I will say that things tend to be easier to see in NTTR because the backdrop is so featureless and bright relative to the Caucasus map.

You are probably right.

My observation though was on a certain aircraft angle (around frontal view) that in ~9-12 km the impostor of single engine plane looks like a twin engine plane in 2.0 where I don't seem to see that in 1.52. Heavier and darker areas on each side of a less bulky and lighter in color middle. That is from the default DCS setup. Your mod makes that behave a little less distracting.

It's a payware mission, I don't think I'm allowed to post it. The crash seems to happen at random while zoomed in on a distant A-10C.

Excellent work. If ED won't take a look at this, then I hope at least that this becomes a community standard mod. Realism is top priority.

This does not work in MP, right? (normal servers)

Thanks for the mod. As someone with a CPL, i can attest this behavior is much more realistic than the current one.

Nice mod! However it continues overdone for ground targets, mainly, when you zoom. ED should address this problem and get things separated.

Anyway, i am praizing your try.

Nice mod! However it continues overdone for ground targets, mainly, when you zoom. ED should address this problem and get things separated.

 

Anyway, i am praizing your try.

Unfortunately that's something ED will have to fix. I optimized the settings for air to air combat.

While ground targets are significantly less overdone than they are in the base game, I still think they're too visible. I spent a lot of time trying to find some hacky workaround to separating air from ground targets. I don't think the information is there for me to get something like an AGL and use that to determine if something is on the ground or not.

Who knows though. I thought I couldn't get distance way back when I made my first version of a visibility fix, but it turns out I was overlooking something that in hindsight was extremely obvious.

Unfortunately that's something ED will have to fix. I optimized the settings for air to air combat.

 

While ground targets are significantly less overdone than they are in the base game, I still think they're too visible. I spent a lot of time trying to find some hacky workaround to separating air from ground targets. I don't think the information is there for me to get something like an AGL and use that to determine if something is on the ground or not.

 

Who knows though. I thought I couldn't get distance way back when I made my first version of a visibility fix, but it turns out I was overlooking something that in hindsight was extremely obvious.

Not sure whether this is only for exports, but LoGetAltitude() will return the height of the terrain in meters at a given x:y point on the map. You can subtract this from the object's altitude MSL to give AGL, which should help with determining whether a unit is a plane or a tank.

Another filter to consider or combine would be airspeed. A slow moving helicopter will be invisible at long ranges because it won't result in a visible change to the seeking pilot.

Not sure whether this is only for exports, but LoGetAltitude() will return the height of the terrain in meters at a given x:y point on the map. You can subtract this from the object's altitude MSL to give AGL, which should help with determining whether a unit is a plane or a tank.

 

Another filter to consider or combine would be airspeed. A slow moving helicopter will be invisible at long ranges because it won't result in a visible change to the seeking pilot.

I don't have access to airspeed in the shader, and I can't store position to derive speed because shaders don't work that way. What do you mean by exports? Are you talking about Lua? This isn't Lua and I don't have any way to pass new information into the shaders without access to the C++ source code that interfaces the two.

If I had access to that layer, things would become significantly easier and I'd have a hell of a lot more control to make everything much better than making do with what little info I have in the shader.