[REPORTED] Model Visibility Issues

[Talisman_VR]

Me, my squad and many others I fly with who are WWII hard core on-line MP fans are still waiting for DCS to deliver regarding something more like real world air-to-air aircraft visibility. DCS will never be the combat simulator of first choice for enough WWII enthusiasts to make it viable if this issue is not overcome. Maybe its fine for modern fast jets using computer targeting systems and missiles, or pilots who like to fly off-line against AI, or pilots who just want to ground pound.

However, for pilots who enjoy team fighting and tactics on MP competitive combat servers against other human pilots in the air DCS is severely restrictive.

I fly DCS just enough to keep my hand in just in case it starts to improve and deliver WWII and give us decent air-to-visibility. I am not purchasing more aircraft models until I feel confident DCS can deliver; although I will make an exception for the Spitfire. The visibility issue is the main thing that makes DCS a less than satisfactory experience for me, others I fly with on other flight sims and, I suspect, the many silent majority who never post on these forums.

It seems such a waste of an opportunity for DCS. I think that it is likely that many pilots attracted purely for WWII will start to drift further and further away from DCS if something is not done soon. Many are feeling disillusioned as far as this issue is concerned.

 

P.S. The imposter system is a non-starter for me in terms of anything approaching a proper solution for simulated real life air-to-air visibility of aircraft.

 

Happy landings,

 

Talisman

[Why485]

Lightning/shadows, contrast, color representation, reflections, sense of depth... DCS developers are taking steps, small at a time but eventually each time we are closer to the reality but you will never get what you are asking for until we will have true VR engine with double precision lightning and shadowing.

 

This is something we can hope for in 20 years maybe.

 

The main problem with it is the computing power needed for true double precision computing.

 

What? There are plenty of ways to make aircraft stand out more, and none of them have to do with VR or whatever you're calling "double precision lighting."

 

I think a better question to be asked here is if ED is aware of this issue, or if they think there is an issue at all. The messaging has been extremely unclear, and with their past actions I'm inclined to think they don't think there's an issue at all.

[Why485]

sometimes they do seem to disappear irl, maybe under different conditions but the criteria of expecting to "always be able to see your target within x miles" is not a valid argument here.

 

large impostors ruins f5 vs migs for me, marginalizes dealing with gci and onboard radar. there's too many things in flux with the engine to ask ed to be immediately implementing changes though, for all we know they might be already iterating on better solutions that aren't ready for public release.

 

please have some patience people

 

I've "had patience" for years on end. My patience has run out.

 

While I appreciate that they did something in the form of impostors, the fact that they treat it as a gameplay realism option in the same vein as labels or unlimited weapons means that they believe it is an assist and inherently unrealistic.

 

If ED decides to go with the approach of "is realistic)))" then they should just come out and say it already. There has been precisely no messaging on this issue ever since the release of impostors, and at that point all we got was Wags giving a description of what it does.

 

Is ED working on improving the situation? I don't know. I don't even know if ED thinks there is an issue, and therein lies my biggest problem with this whole thing. Their actions seem to indicate that everything is working as intended and is exactly as it should be, but until they say something I don't know if there's anything for me to even have patience for.

[Solty]

If you do not like the big impostors setting, you can always switch it to small or none. But it seems that many hosts of servers actually like them and that is why they are present.

 

To me it is not perfect, but Large is the best setting for WW2 MP. And I actually think that how visible they are at long range is fine. It is the medium and short range that I find harder to find them, because the contrast between the airplane and the ground is not enough and they blend too well into the ground.

 

But to me, and I say that with quite a lot of experience on the ACG server, they are just fine and need just a bit more tweaking, nothing major.

 

Maybe just ask your server hosts to change the settings for jets? But I assume they set those large settings because they actually like them.

[bbrz]

Strange request. One reason why I like DCS so much is that the aircraft do already look very realistic in their natural environment.

Much closer to reality than any other sim. Hope ED doesn't change it too much from the way it is now.

Maybe the GPU/game graphic settings of the OP are set incorrectly.

[Talisman_VR]

Strange request. One reason why I like DCS so much is that the aircraft do already look very realistic in their natural environment.

Much closer to reality than any other sim. Hope ED doesn't change it too much from the way it is now.

Maybe the GPU/game graphic settings of the OP are set incorrectly.

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=157129

[bbrz]

? the link you provided is about plane size. Something totally different.

I always fly with a camera view angle of 90deg and no magnification at all. For me this setting is closest to reality.

Edited July 31, 2016 by bbrz

[hollywoodvillain]

? the link you provided is about plane size. Something totally different.

I always fly with a camera view angle of 90deg and no magnification at all. For me this setting is closest to reality.

 

IMO its not something totally different. I believe these 2 issues are directly related. bbrz do you actually do any dogfighting in dcs?

Edited July 31, 2016 by hollywoodvillain

[112th_Rossi]

Model enlargement just looks weird to me. Funny sprites appear and twist and contort oddly. Wouldn't it be better to have something like an occasional glint reflection off the sun or something like that to make it stand out?

[Shahdoh]

Model enlargement with the small setting provides just a dot out at the extreme ranges of 20 plus miles and smoothest transition from imposter to normal LOD. Its drawback is that it can still be hard to see (sometimes even simply disappears) around the transition point.

[bbrz]

... bbrz do you actually do any dogfighting in dcs?

yes of course.

[MBot]

I would like to suggest seperate model enlargement settings for air and ground units. As a VR user I think high enlargement is perfect for aircraft, but ground units are ridiculously large at long range.

[Why485]

I would like to suggest seperate model enlargement settings for air and ground units. As a VR user I think high enlargement is perfect for aircraft, but ground units are ridiculously large at long range.

 

This has been one of the suggestions to make the setting work better since the setting was added.

 

Even in this very thread, 7 months ago.

Edited August 2, 2016 by Why485

[NineLine]

I would expect more tweaking on this once the merge is done, I know it gets some sniffs from time to time, but they are quite busy trying to get to 2.5 right now.

[Jagr]

M1 eyeballs are massively better at picking up movement, color, shape, contrast etc in real life that can be represented on the best monitors. Its not even close. Because of the shortcomings of monitors you need to compensate. I really think that the contrast and color pallete of the objects are too close to the background when they are fading and longer ranges. Obviously you don't want jet black dots that are visible for a hundred miles but with more shading/contrast the motion would be more visible against eh terrain

[CoBlue]

I would expect more tweaking on this once the merge is done, I know it gets some sniffs from time to time, but they are quite busy trying to get to 2.5 right now.

We heard that before 1.5 & EDGE too. This thread is 8 months old now! The bad spotting has been discussed for year's now. It's more then enough time to "tweak" something that's a major flaw of DCS!

It has never worked satisfactory in multiplayer.

[Talisman_VR]

We heard that before 1.5 & EDGE too. This thread is 8 months old now! The bad spotting has been discussed for year's now. It's more then enough time to "tweak" something that's a major flaw of DCS!

It has never worked satisfactory in multiplayer.

 

Very much agree with this sentiment. It is becoming exasperating!

The lack of communication on this topic from DCS (I stand to be corrected if I have missed it) and the lack of progress to date are leading me to feel concerned about the level of interest and commitment from the developers towards this problem.

 

I wish DCS well, particularly with the WWII project and hope that they can deliver acceptable model visibility soon.

 

Happy landings,

 

Talisman

[NineLine]

We heard that before 1.5 & EDGE too. This thread is 8 months old now! The bad spotting has been discussed for year's now. It's more then enough time to "tweak" something that's a major flaw of DCS!

It has never worked satisfactory in multiplayer.

 

Until they dial in the graphics engine and such, its really a lot of tail chasing to try and implement too much right now. There are a number things I am going to push for once the dust settles on this front, but I am not gonna start pushing until I know they can focus more on it.

[Talisman_VR]

Until they dial in the graphics engine and such, its really a lot of tail chasing to try and implement too much right now. There are a number things I am going to push for once the dust settles on this front, but I am not gonna start pushing until I know they can focus more on it.

 

Thanks SiThSpAwN. :thumbup:

 

Happy landings,

 

Talisman

[GrmlZ]

Air 2 Air visibility in 1.5 extremely bad and needs improvement asap.

 

Hi.

 

I am getting more and more into DCS Multiplayer as of late. Which is great, but one thing that bothers me a bit is Air 2 Air visibility, more so than in any other sim I played. I think the air to air visibility in DCS 1.5 needs to be improved by a substantial amount.

There are multiple issues with the A2A spotting in DCS 1.5 at the moment that make dog-fighting significantly less enjoyable. In this thread I would like to point some of them out as well as give a few ideas of what could be improved.

The Model enlargement doesn't help in the situations I am talking about btw, because the planes are to close to be enlarged, and should be big enough to be seen anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, with threads like this it is not uncommon to blame the player.

Get glasses, learn to play, this is how camo paint works and so on.

So let me give you some examples of the issues with the current A2A visibility in DCS.

 

 

Here for example I am attacking a Mig-23. Well, I take your word for it radar....

 

 

 

Here is a Mig-23 right behind my Buddys F-15C.

Just right behind it, cant miss it....

 

 

In case you missed it anyway.

http://i.imgur.com/vTP9j72.jpg

 

 

 

And here we got a nice picture of a P-51 climbing up behind my Fw-190 and about to open fire.

 

 

 

Its in the Blue circle, the black bar below represents the wingspan.

http://i.imgur.com/QnFEvxw.jpg

 

 

 

 

And last but not least.

Here we have a Mig-15 over the Green field in about the middle of the screen.

The one a bit to the left and up.

 

 

Ok ok, thats a bit unfair, there are a lot of green fields here, let me help.

This one, right in the middle. Distance about 1.5-2km.

 

 

Still difficult, lets zoom in a bit.

Oh, there he is.

http://i.imgur.com/Rrdqm9E.jpg

 

 

 

Well, I hope those example show that there is indeed a problem. And not a small one.

I always try to get friends interested in DCS, but when doing some dogfight training they often leave frustrated because they can barely see me even when they are using F2 and Bad-Lock view to help.

And I am not talking about people new to flight sims in general btw.

 

Now, lets talk about what could be improved.

At the moment I would say there are two main problems:

 

First, geometry of planes sometimes disappears completely, or blinks in and out of existence.

Might be when geometry like wings get smaller than one pixel and dont render anymore. (this should never happen unless you want to simulate pilots with a massive visual impairment) Might be a different problem too.

Here is an example. A F-86 Saber at from behind at a range of about 800 meters.

Geometry keeps appearing and disappearing, good luck getting an ID on that plane.

 

 

 

 

Geometry should never disapear.

Even when wings, tail sections and so on get thinner than 1 pixel. Than it should still be drawn with at least one pixel thickness.

 

 

 

Here I made two quick comparison pictures in Paint between what we currently see and what we in my opinion should see.

Here I am in a BF 109 and have another BF 109 in front of me.

As you can see Wings and vertical stabilizer dont or barley render, even though at this range the wingspan of the plane would be high enough that you could still see them.

 

Here is how it should look like.

 

 

 

A second problem is the color of the planes. It seems that at the moment most planes in DCS when to far away for there actual color to render, default to a light color tone, which is very difficult to see over most textures and blends in with the background extremely well.

Almost like a chameleon.

 

Here are two examples.

Here you can see the silver Mig-15 without problem.

 

 

But change the zoom just a little bit, and it is almost invisible. It seems to have taken a light grey blue color that blends in with the background extremely well.

The plane is still in the same spot.

 

Here the same with the previous example over green field.

Nice and visible.

 

Change zoom a bit, suddenly light grey-green, almost impossible to see.

 

A bit more and its just gone.

http://i.imgur.com/mT1AB8y.jpg

 

 

In order to improve this, the “defaul” color that most planes seem to get needs to be a lot darker, and lose the chameleon effect.

 

Again, a bit paint magic to show that.

 

Here we have the picuture with my buddys F-15 and a Mig-23 behind him how it looks now.

 

And this is in my opinion more how it should look like.

 

 

 

 

Just my two cents on the current A2A spotting situation.

I very much hope that we see some large improvements here soon, or with 2.5 at the latest.

Because the current portrayal is not realistic and makes it really hard to get people interested in DCS dog-fighting.

Edited August 9, 2016 by GrmlZ

[autogyro]

Good post and I too have found difficulty, especially in VR with target acquisition and maintaining visual.

[Ktulu2]

+1, many pilots affirmed they had tally near 10NM, so keeping sight under 1NM should not be an issue

[pyromaniac4002]

+1

 

Was very disappointed with how ineffective the scaling turned out to be in EDGE. These screenshots perfectly capture the issue. Visibility is as bad as ever, you just have the option to make your invisible smudge of a ground or air unit in to an obscenely large one that only stands out when you approach because of its blatant disregard for three-dimensional existence.

 

I have better than 20/20 vision, I shelled out for a GTX 980 and i7 4790k, and DCS runs on my monitor's native 1920x1080 resolution with very high settings smoothly. If I'm having trouble seeing this stuff, I can only imagine nearly everyone is.

[Ktulu2]

Also, when you end up putting smart scalling on, it destroys all sense of range/distance, as zooming in makes sprites smaller...

[HiJack]

Yes, this is the reason why I have not bought any campaigns other than the F-15 NTTR campaign. The model scaling is broken and needs a serious fix.