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Model Scaling and Visibilty


skendzie

Model Scaling and Visibilty  

528 members have voted

  1. 1. Model Scaling and Visibilty

    • Extremely Important
      386
    • Important
      85
    • Indifferent
      27
    • Not important
      6
    • Totally unnecessary
      25


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As I play more and more with the Su-25T, I get more comfortable. I always used labels (small dots). I felt this way kind of cheating because they would go through my cockpit or cloud cover so I could see exactly when I was over a target.

 

I felt this was unrealistic so I turned off labels and have been trying to cope. It is extremely difficult to spot anything with modern monitors. Objects are rarely more than a pixel if not extremely zoomed in.

 

I feel scaling is very very necessary and I've heard others mention it as well. So let's bring it to some attention. How important is it to you for ED to implement scaling of ground and air units??

 

Thanks in advance!

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Years ago, I flew in international level inter-squadron A2A competitions. We flew training missions for months. Ninety percent of the time I would lose SA because I could not follow what the heck my flight lead was doing if he was padlocked engaged. I could not see anything. I chalked it up to my monitor being too small, a 22" at the time. Today, I have 27" monitors on either side of a 40" that I sit about 2 feet from. Even with these tremendous aids in visualization, I still can't see other aircraft until they reach out and tap me on my forehead.

 

What I discovered recently was, if F5 is allowed, I can check on relative position of the nearest a/c but, to my great delight, I could actually SEE it. I could see the hard bank continuing a scissors or vapes of a quick high yo-yo. In the cockpit, even though I know where the bandit is relative to me, I still can't see him. The adage, "Lose sight, lose the fight", is blatantly obvious.

 

Like you, I felt labels or F5 were a kind of cheating. But this does bring up the problem you are discussing here. Visualization in DCS, although the best sim for "spot the dot", still isn't even close to reality. That's why I don't like labels (even as dots) because it, too, is not close to reality. I wish there was a study that would show how capable human eyesight at 20/20 is in clear atmosphere. Then the scaling in DCS would more accurately allow for such realism. How that would be done is beyond me. But much desired.

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Very important to me. Both BoS and RoF use a modest scaling system and it works wonderfully. Honestly, it works so fluidly that if you didn't know it was there you likely wouldn't even notice. And yet planes in RoF/BoS are clearly visible from 4-5km typically at default FoV. Sadly it isn't a listed feature of DCS:W2, but it should be something that could be added post release. I remember in the EA of BoS it didn't initially have scaling. Spotting planes there was every bit as hard as it is here. Practically anything over 2km was literally invisible. Even with an icon around it and knowing exactly where it was, you still couldn't see it. But then the scaling system came and suddenly we could see stuff as we should.

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Scaling maybe an option or something in between.

Such as Unit far [ Grey ], Unit mid range [ black and 50%-80% of its size] .

Unit in closer proximity.,- would you rather see a simple triangle with the colour of the skin to bind together with contrast poly that turns to the camera and reflects grey or white or black… Or higher poly LOD that you can’t see?

It’s not meant to be a question, it’s more like a comment.

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Not sure that would work. The problem is a matter of resolution. Back when we all played on 1024x768 CRT's, seeing a single pixel wasn't terribly difficult. As we moved to higher resolutions, it got harder and harder. We reached a point 6-8 years back where seeing an individual pixel was no longer practical. I have a completely ordinary monitor I bought about 3 years ago, a 55cm 1920x1080 screen. A single pixel is simply too small to see on it. Now imagine trying to find one on one of the newer 4k monitors. There is no way finding a single pixel is going to work.

 

What is needed for scaling is a minimum size as a relative function of screen resolution. Anything that uses hard pixel counts or relative size to the original object isn't going to work. Color can play a role too of course and I like your idea on that. I'm not sure what the end result should be from a technical standpoint. But am convinced it will be tied to screen resolution directly.

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To me it's one of the most important aspects missing as I feel it is terrible done is game currently. As such, I rate it as very important.

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Not sure that would work. The problem is a matter of resolution. Back when we all played on 1024x768 CRT's, seeing a single pixel wasn't terribly difficult. As we moved to higher resolutions, it got harder and harder. We reached a point 6-8 years back where seeing an individual pixel was no longer practical. I have a completely ordinary monitor I bought about 3 years ago, a 55cm 1920x1080 screen. A single pixel is simply too small to see on it. Now imagine trying to find one on one of the newer 4k monitors. There is no way finding a single pixel is going to work.

 

What is needed for scaling is a minimum size as a relative function of screen resolution. Anything that uses hard pixel counts or relative size to the original object isn't going to work. Color can play a role too of course and I like your idea on that. I'm not sure what the end result should be from a technical standpoint. But am convinced it will be tied to screen resolution directly.

 

I see what you are saying and it makes sense but in an instance where you see a road or a highway from 2km and you know that a ground unit is there and plane is banking right above it’s not exactly 1 pixel.

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Aircraft visibility is a massive, massive concern of mine and has been from the very beginning. DCS is the only combat flight sim on the market that does neither dots nor scaling to compensate for the fact that we're looking through a monitor to view our game world.

 

I can tell you from experience that you can see aircraft very easily from further away in real life than you can in the game, especially so if they catch the sun's light and glint. Meanwhile, I can't tell you how many time's I've been following a plane that can't be more than a kilometer away, right in front of my nose, and have them completely disappear from sight because the pixels didn't line up right.

 

Don't get me wrong, spotting aircraft shouldn't exactly be easy, but in no way should it be as difficult as it is now. This wasn't as big of a deal before because with the FC3 jets you just find things with your radar, but now that DCS is pushing WWII, Korean, and early Cold War era planes spotting visually is becoming more and more important. The artificial difficulty in spotting will seriously hamper the experience in flying these planes in ways that are ultimately unrealistic.

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Not sure that would work. The problem is a matter of resolution. Back when we all played on 1024x768 CRT's, seeing a single pixel wasn't terribly difficult. As we moved to higher resolutions, it got harder and harder. We reached a point 6-8 years back where seeing an individual pixel was no longer practical. I have a completely ordinary monitor I bought about 3 years ago, a 55cm 1920x1080 screen. A single pixel is simply too small to see on it. Now imagine trying to find one on one of the newer 4k monitors. There is no way finding a single pixel is going to work.

 

What is needed for scaling is a minimum size as a relative function of screen resolution. Anything that uses hard pixel counts or relative size to the original object isn't going to work. Color can play a role too of course and I like your idea on that. I'm not sure what the end result should be from a technical standpoint. But am convinced it will be tied to screen resolution directly.

 

This is an interesting conversation. I think that we can all agree that (besides lighting) the initial problem is that you are flying with a screen door 3' in front of you that has 1920x1080 holes in it (assuming that's your res.). That's not the worst part. Even if you see an aircraft or tank that takes up part of one of those holes. The screen door will average the color of said vehicle with the average of the color of the background (anti-aliasing). So unfortunately a sim developer really has it working against them. You can, of course, try turning off anti-aliasing -that might help when it's more than half a pixle- but than your cockpit will look like it's built out of Lego's.

 

Scaling is a good option but with obvious inherent drawbacks. I will admit, I am putting a fair amount of stock in DCS 2.0 with the lighting. I think the image generator will give a lot more tools to the devs for reflectiveness.

 

I personally feel that it may be about even for me with the sim, as I am near-sighted. So focusing on a monitor is easier for me than focusing on an aircraft that is 5+ miles away. Although, when I drive I'm still surprised at how far away I see stuff, considering I can't read a speed limit sign more than about 400ft away. Real life is just so immersive :doh:!


Edited by JMasterFlash
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Using WQHD,

 

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT +1

 

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( ( ( Extremely Important ) ) )

 

all icons of the objects in the map should also be scaled.

I am having the biggest problems to position a road outpost and some soldiers, I have to open and close several times the mission , for position the soldiers.

edit mission without scale is very bad. . .

2015-02-24_00001.thumb.jpg.d9991cdf6f1d52ff709be30027a66bae.jpg

2015-02-24_00002.thumb.jpg.9d156e1f8ed7fc1b1589333e93fc06b2.jpg


Edited by paidapinga
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Thank you for this.

Voted Extremely Important, because i think it is one of the biggest issues left, in DCS.

 

:thumbup:

 

Unfortunately only aircraft are very cool beautiful , the rest is completely ugly outdated.

 

Beautiful aircrafts , in an outdated virtual world of the 1980s.

 

building , wind, trees, mountains, rivers , roads, electric wires, contrail, map, climate system, clouds, movement of ground units, graphics and effects outdated.

 

certainly in 1980 , the map of DCS WORLD should be pretty cool, but in 2015 is horrible , same graphics; mega drive, super nintendo.

 

Jesus is totally outdated.

 

I hope that DCS make version 2.0 with graphics and effects updated.

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I am quite shocked about the reaction of this thread. A big shoutout to r/hoggit because I think a lot of traffic was derived from there. I really hope someone from the development team sees that over 90% of its users (from the sample size) think it is an important system to be implemented in the game. I wonder if we could get some kind of response from them about it.

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Very important for another few years until 4K-6K Monitors hit standard, then it will be on us to find the sufficiently displayed pixel.

So long...yes we need a scaling!

But a reasonable one please and not BMS style.

Also a glare at appropriate angles in addition would be helpful and most likely possible with EDGE.

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Maybe a better rendering solution, and it will probably all improve when 4k gets more used. But I find it dumb, to make an object LARGER at a distance just so YOU can see it better which imo is just another selfish thought.... smh

 

I find it good as it is now, and yes, it is challenging but its not that bad...... Maybe, you need top vision to join the air force irl for a reason?? ;)

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It indeed is extremely important, especially now since we're getting more aircraft that rely on visual ID rather than sophisticated radar. Lets just wait and see til DCSW2 comes out and see if the graphics improve at all, if it doesn't it would need to be addressed immediately. I'm a Korea and WW2 fanatic so getting better visuals is number one fix in my books.

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Also voted "Extremely important". Poor visibility of targets in the environment is one of my most enduring frustrations with the DCS series. Scaling may or may not be the best solution, but I definitely feel as though the core issue needs to be addressed.

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