A-10C TGP display: Targets hard to see

[scheffchen]

Everyday complains. But nowhere an official answer. Sad, isnt it?

[tintifaxl]

In one of the other threads about this topic, Sithspawn replied that ED is looking into it - no promises made, though.

[Aginor]

That would be great!

I hope they find a working solution soon, that fits for all FLIR systems (not only the A-10C is affected)

[Gliptal]

In one of the other threads about this topic, Sithspawn replied that ED is looking into it - no promises made, though.

This is probably me being pessimistic, but I highly doubt this will ever be solved.

 

It's pretty obvious the problem is deeply rooted in how the FLIR is modelled in the first place, it being highly dependant on the surrounding terrain. With 1.5.2 ED introduced a more noisy terrain for the Caucasus, that admittedly does look better but also completely messes up the texture contrast between an object and the terrain itself. The solution is there (reduce the gain back to 1.2.16 levels), but obviously ED would never push that into the official branch, since it would mean loosing a quite visible graphical fidelity enhancement for a secondary function of a single module.

 

DCS isn't mainly A-10C anymore, there are a lot more modules and a even more are in the works, and shiny ambient screenshots are clearly more marketable than a working FLIR implementation that is at best pretty limited ayways.

 

I'd bet their internal reasoning is to let people fix this on their own, and leave things as they are. Their final intent is probably to push 2.0 with Nevada, and eventually the Strait of Hormuz maps, and let the old Caucasus die off. I really don't think it's a coincidence that both the new maps are desert-like, that look very good and at the same time leave the FLIR implementation for the most part usable (although still realistically wrong).

 

Another possibility is that they are working (or intend to work) on a new implementation entirely (ome with actual dedicate texture maps would be nice), but if this is the case, it's way down the line.

 

I sincerely hope I'm wrong with this.

Edited January 13, 2016 by Gliptal

[Boberro]

I do hope you are wrong.

It is large have sea, mountains, flat fields. And don't forget about Crimea. Abandoned great piece of land.

 

Black Sea map is the core of the ED product.

It is like Saper game in Windows :D

[tintifaxl]

The current FLIR implementation will fail as miserably in Nevada and Hormuz as soon as the vehicles get desert camo. So something needs to be done about it.

[Fakum]

It would be a shame to loose the HOG!

[Ginaccio]

A10c is by far the best modern modelled Airplane in dcs. Flir and tgp use is common to many airplanes that use to ground bomb targets so I my opinion having a good ground targeting device is very important.

 

Inviato dal mio HTC One_M8 utilizzando Tapatalk

[sigmoul]

Same bug, same frustration :(

 

Any news from ED?

[EntropySG]

As someone pointed out in this thread, the one thing that helped me was to simply install Mustang's wonderful Desert 3.0 mod.

I installed just the ground textures, not the textures for ground units. BAM, instant fix. the targets now have a different camo as compared to the background (read: not green tank on totally gree grass with ZERO contrast), and now you see them again.

 

This one fix catapulted the sim from TOTALLY unusable to spot on again, at least for me.

 

and btw, Desert 3.0 looks gorgeous, thanks so much Mustang

[sigmoul]

Thank you for the information EnreopySG,

 

But I don't want to use a third party mod as a workaround. I just want to now know if ED is working on this issue.

 

Any information?

 

Regards.

[LeCuvier]

Work-around for TGP visibility issue

 

I found a work-around in this post:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2620174&postcount=70

In 1.5.2 it seems to get the TGP image back to what it was in 1.2

I have not tried it in Open Alpha 2.0

[snuffles]

As someone pointed out in this thread, the one thing that helped me was to simply install Mustang's wonderful Desert 3.0 mod.

I installed just the ground textures, not the textures for ground units. BAM, instant fix. the targets now have a different camo as compared to the background (read: not green tank on totally gree grass with ZERO contrast), and now you see them again.

 

This one fix catapulted the sim from TOTALLY unusable to spot on again, at least for me.

 

and btw, Desert 3.0 looks gorgeous, thanks so much Mustang

lol that is totally cheating if you don't remove that in MP.

 

For what it's worth gents, you're playing against an enemy force that employs camouflage.

 

Secondly, the hotspots of an operating vehicle are not the same as you see in games like ARMA. The problem you are facing is not a bug; you're lucky the FLIR is so clear to begin with. The problem here is that you're getting used to a more realistic representation of thermal camera limitations.

 

Sure it's difficult, but not impossible.

Edited January 24, 2016 by Tasselhoff
read the thread...

[Deezle]

lol that is totally cheating if you don't remove that in MP.

 

For what it's worth gents, you're playing against an enemy force that employs camouflage.

 

Secondly, the hotspots of an operating vehicle are not the same as you see in games like ARMA. The problem you are facing is not a bug; you're lucky the FLIR is so clear to begin with. The problem here is that you're getting used to a more realistic representation of thermal camera limitations.

 

Sure it's difficult, but not impossible.

lol "cheating"

 

For what it's worth, IR cameras don't care if something is camouflaged.

 

The DCS implementation is just a filter over the visible spectrum, nothing realistic about it.

[Gliptal]

lol that is totally cheating if you don't remove that in MP.

 

For what it's worth gents, you're playing against an enemy force that employs camouflage.

 

Secondly, the hotspots of an operating vehicle are not the same as you see in games like ARMA. The problem you are facing is not a bug; you're lucky the FLIR is so clear to begin with. The problem here is that you're getting used to a more realistic representation of thermal camera limitations.

 

Sure it's difficult, but not impossible.

Unless the vehicle is using some type of anti radiation tesselate armor (and I doubt any soviet vehicle used such a technology in 2010) the IR signature is more than visible on a TGP. Camouflage means nothing unless you're looking through a CCD.

 

Right now, in FLIR at night a moving tank has the same signature of the terrain.

[snuffles]

Think about the physics of it, though?

 

It's very likely the only hotspot of the tank you're looking at will be the exhaust and engine sections, and those are concealed as well.

 

In any case, it's just my two cents. Life is hard, Sims are supposed to be hard, too.

[Pipe]

moving tanks have heat radiating from the tracks and wheels as well engine/exhaust area

[Deezle]

Not a tank but you get the idea.

 

 

 

Also

 

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ37y0yeSgc[/ame]

[Enduro14]

I just switched back to the stock textures and now I really see what the fuss is about. Using barthteks ground texture mod you can see vehicles pretty decent. Stock even on gun runs with mark 1 eyeball it's a 50 50 chance of actually seeing the tgt. The noise level is to busy and more importantly we need a good or more enhanced Flir simulation.

[snuffles]

moving tanks have heat radiating from the tracks and wheels as well engine/exhaust area

That all depends on how long they've been moving, what they're moving over (friction generates heat) and also the temperature of the surrounding area. Contrast creates visibility. A standing vehicle that's just running off it's battery packs only cools down to a temperature close to that of the adjacent terrain.

 

I've seen the 1.2 screenshots, and if nothing else the contrast is that the vehicle is sharp and the land textures are blurry. DCS 1.5 added better texture filtering among other things, so your texture-based contrast is peanut butter, now.

[Enduro14]

That all depends on how long they've been moving, what they're moving over (friction generates heat) and also the temperature of the surrounding area. Contrast creates visibility. A standing vehicle that's just running off it's battery packs only cools down to a temperature close to that of the adjacent terrain.

 

I've seen the 1.2 screenshots, and if nothing else the contrast is that the vehicle is sharp and the land textures are blurry. DCS 1.5 added better texture filtering among other things, so your texture-based contrast is peanut butter, now.

 

Now that would be very nice if that was in game heat build up simulation on the thermal spectrum.

[Winston60]

same here

+ in Su-25T it is virtually impossible to spot targets it some light/weather conditions, they just blend in with terrain

Agreed! and also the A-10A on the TV guided maverick screen.

 

Guys, this visibility problem is NOT specific to the A-10C and it's TGP.

 

The Su-25T suffers from the same problem with it's TV guided weapons on the Shkval screen and the A-10A on the TV guided maverick and even the IR maverick screen.

 

On the Su-25T and A-10A TV guided weapons screens it seems the objects have nearly the same brightness and contrast as does the landscape, making them nearly impossible to see at distance.

 

Now with the IR weapons on the Su-25T and A-10A, I'm seeing exactly the problem that you A-10C drivers are seeing.

 

As this affects more than one module and seems to be a problem with the new textures on the old map, I would think the priority to fix this should be increased and expedited.

 

It would be a shame to loose the HOG!

Or the Su-25T. Or the A-10A.

[LeCuvier]

Work-around for TGP Issue

 

Agreed! and also the A-10A on the TV guided maverick screen.

 

Guys, this visibility problem is NOT specific to the A-10C and it's TGP. ...

 

I had posted this earlier this week:

I found a work-around in this post:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?...4&postcount=70

In 1.5.2 it seems to get the TGP image back to what it was in 1.2

I have not tried it in Open Alpha 2.0

For your convenience a little note:

The work-around is a simple correction in the LUA files under "C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Config\terrain". I only use the "Extreme" option so it's "Extreme.lua". The parameter set "land_noise" has a parameter "noisemax" which used to be around 0.4 but in 1.5 it's changed to 0.9. If you change this parameter to 0.5 the visibility of targets improves significantly. I tried this and it seems to get me back to what it used to be. I suspect even that the parameter change in the .lua file is the reason for the bad visibility in 1.5 and I wonder why ED doesn't simply change the .lua in an update so we don't have lots of users frustrated and reporting bugs.

[Enduro14]

I had posted this earlier this week:

I found a work-around in this post:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?...4&postcount=70

In 1.5.2 it seems to get the TGP image back to what it was in 1.2

I have not tried it in Open Alpha 2.0

For your convenience a little note:

The work-around is a simple correction in the LUA files under "C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Config\terrain". I only use the "Extreme" option so it's "Extreme.lua". The parameter set "land_noise" has a parameter "noisemax" which used to be around 0.4 but in 1.5 it's changed to 0.9. If you change this parameter to 0.5 the visibility of targets improves significantly. I tried this and it seems to get me back to what it used to be. I suspect even that the parameter change in the .lua file is the reason for the bad visibility in 1.5 and I wonder why ED doesn't simply change the .lua in an update so we don't have lots of users frustrated and reporting bugs.

Because it makes the textures look like crap hence why they are working on it

[Gliptal]

Working on it, sure.

 

The only way they can fix this is either retexturing everything from scratch, or downright changing the way the FLIR is simulated. I highly doubt they have the time to invest in any of these things, given how hard they're pushing the paywalled 2.0.

 

AFAIK there are still fixes for the A-10C that are in 2.0 but not in 1.5.2.