[REPORTED] Model Visibility Issues

[Barbajet]

Agree.. Dot visibility is very very hard .. much much harder than in Real life.. I hope they can come with a less transparency dot and much farther away visibility.. It's a real pain each time.

[Golo]

11yrs of flying I don't think I've ever picked up traffic outside of 6-7nm that's a fighter or similar size, even when I get Atc position reference...inside 3-4nm I can keep visual with any size traffic which in dcs I can't...makes dogfighting extremely hard and unrealistic on a 46" screen at 1080p siting right in front of it. Will try this mod and see how it goes though.

 

Thanks for your work.

 

Yes, same with me, I dont even care about +5nm visibility, but for dogfighting 0 to 5nm its tragic now in DCS to the point that I resignated on it.

[Barbajet]

I have a hard time to follow a dot even at 1.3 km on a fight LOL!!

[BiBa]

...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.

...

With your animated pics, you nailed accurately this problem! Thanks.

With every new update, on one hand ED solves some bugs, on the other hand BIG ISSUES are created!

 

Simmers expect 100% realistic environment, and should remain totally separated from Gamers' nagging expectation.

[gavagai]

Here the simulation is paused. I'm about 1000-1500m behind a friendly P-51. All I have to do is slightly move my head and the P-51 impostor disappears. Same distance, same lighting, same everything except for the position of my head.

 

sorry that the default screenshot format is a jpg

 

 

[Kuky]

It is wrong to think that aircraft should be visible that easily all the time. Today I had a perfect example of how an aircraft I saw from ground (while in a car) was perfectly visible, but as it kept turning it simply disappeared fully... it simply blended into sky/clouds and I could not get visual on it at all.

 

So don't expect in game to have visibility of aircraft to work from every angle and aspect... it really is not realistic to be so (as I've shown above). Even fairly large aircraft in the sky (relatively to distance) can not be visible at all, even at shorter distance, just because the aircraft aspect is changed. It all depends on lighting, light reflectivity... and this cannot be simulated by any dots.

[Gliptal]

That's fair if you consider the aircraft manuevering in some way, but simple zooming out shouldn't make a target disappear.

[gavagai]

Kuky,

 

If you can kindly read my description again, then compare to your observation, you'll see that they are not comparable. You observed an aircraft that became hard to see because its aspect changed. In my photos the simulation is paused, therefore there is no aspect change. The impostor ceases to be rendered, and so it appears to blink in and out of existence. I could make the P51 disappear and reappear just by turning my head past a critical point and back again.

 

Also, when visible, this p51 was considerably larger than what you see In the corrupted jpg image. It was not by any means a mere dot.

 

I'm not trying to be snarky and I'm not out to make anyone look bad. I posted those pics to help ED improve the sim.

Edited March 26, 2016 by gavagai

[Kuky]

My post was not for or against your post. It was just something that crossed my mind today and I wanted to share it.

[Wolf Rider]

 

11yrs of flying ~

 

~

 

inside 3-4nm I can keep visual with any size traffic which in dcs I can't...

 

~

 

 

 

if you're doing that, you're not concentrating on your (real life, civilian) Flight Panel, which you should be.

As soon as you take your eyes off "target" to check your panel, you have to reacquire "target", which takes a bit, because they've moved.

 

 

 

 

 

~ but simple zooming out shouldn't make a target disappear.

 

 

 

Could you explain what you mean by "zooming out"? it might be helpful to the discussion

Edited March 26, 2016 by Wolf Rider

[Talisman_VR]

if you're doing that, you're not concentrating on your (real life, civilian) Flight Panel, which you should be.

As soon as you take your eyes off "target" to check your panel, you have to reacquire "target", which takes a bit, because they've moved.

 

Perhaps you are coming in a bit strong and reading what you want into this to put down a perfectly valid sentence. Why do you assume the need to check a panel? He did not say he was piloting a plane at the time. Also, perhaps there is a pilot and co-pilot and tasks are shared for a period of time. Perhaps it was his priority to check targets visually and not to look at a panel for a period of time. Perhaps he was off duty at the time.

 

Happy landings,

 

Talisman

[Wolf Rider]

 

 

Perhaps you are coming in a bit strong and reading what you want into this to put down a perfectly valid sentence. Why do you assume the need to check a panel? He did not say he was piloting a plane at the time. Also, perhaps there is a pilot and co-pilot and tasks are shared for a period of time. Perhaps it was his priority to check targets visually and not to look at a panel for a period of time. Perhaps he was off duty at the time.

 

Happy landings,

 

Talisman

 

 

Perhaps a bit strong yourself, with the "hypotheticals"? the chap, and anyone else, after 11yrs of flying, even as a passenger in an airliner (flying regularly) understands fully.... that to flick the eyes away even for a moment makes a condition for reacquiring - my point

[Talisman_VR]

Perhaps a bit strong yourself, with the "hypotheticals"? the chap, and anyone else, after 11yrs of flying, even as a passenger in an airliner (flying regularly) understands fully.... that to flick the eyes away even for a moment makes a condition for reacquiring - my point

 

I am sure anyone involved with avaiation can fully understand your point, just as the reader can fully understand his point too.

 

Happy landings,

 

Talisman

[King_Hrothgar]

The above is irrelevant tbh. What's important is whether or not an object is displayed on the screen and what it looks like when it is. We've had these imposters for a few months now and I don't think they address the root problem. The real problem is the LoDs have a certain cutoff range at which point nothing at all is rendered regardless of whether or not it should still be visible. Very clear examples of this include outposts and large warships. These big objects can go from having an area of 50+ pixels to 0 pixels simply by moving the camera 1 extra meter away. That's the problem and the imposters in their current form make no attempt to address that. They aren't rendered close enough to avoid the pop in/out for most objects and instead are used at extreme ranges that the objects really shouldn't be visible at anyways. This issue applies to all objects in DCS, not just the big ones like ships and outposts. Those are simply the clearest examples of it.

 

In the case of aircraft, I often see planes go from being nearly able to see the markings on it to 0 pixels instantly all the time. These are at ranges of less than 2km where I am tracking the target and know exactly where it is when it suddenly vanishes. This is a LoD issue and it needs to be fixed either by adding additional longer distance LoDs and scaling them correctly, or moving the imposter range from the current 5-50km range down to 0.5-10km, fading out as distance increases.

[Wolf Rider]

 

 

~

 

The real problem is the LoDs have a certain cutoff range at which point nothing at all is rendered regardless of whether or not it should still be visible. Very clear examples of this include outposts and large warships. These big objects can go from having an area of 50+ pixels to 0 pixels simply by moving the camera 1 extra meter away.

 

~

 

 

Perhaps affected by FoV settings? (different from the ingame default) just a question here

Also, I don't see how "Real Life" is irrelevant though, considering this is a sim, but carry on...

Edited March 26, 2016 by Wolf Rider

[BadHabit]

Instead of comparing with the real thing you guys should start comparing with other Sims. Real life is no t a measure, realistic however is. BMS does it, Cliffs of does it even war thunder does it start comparing with more than realistic measures real life is a very distant achievement

 

Mig-21 Headbutter

[Wolf Rider]

That's one for the book :)

Edited March 27, 2016 by Wolf Rider

[Maverick Su-35S]

The model enlargement idea isn't bad..., it's just that it needs modifications to bring it closer to the real thing.

 

The idea with the 2D model is appreciably good in order to overcome the graphics algorithm that makes every unit (vehicle, aircraft, boat, etc.) disappear prematurely between the pixels at ranges well below those for which the human eye can still clearly see distant objects.

 

The thing with the shader (possibly) and transparency effects are creating different problems for spotting an object, but otherwise I personally agree with ED's idea for the model enlargement effect which kicks in above certain distances.

 

What many have already noticed that needs rework, is the Sun's reflection over the 2D enlarged objects that should normally shine very bright (ex: vehicles, aircraft that fly below the viewer, etc.) and so should be much more easier to spot than those that are against the Sun's rays, but in the game exactly the opposite happens when the 2D model comes up because there is no reflection to be seen and the units blend in with the air, land..., etc, thus making them poorly visible from the Sun's direction.

 

Probably, the non-existing reflection could be affected by the transparency model which already makes the units quite transparent and much harder to see even from the lowest distances since the 2D model appears and even if a value of 0 is given for the alpha exp. effect in the impostors.lua file, the transparency can still be clearly seen even at low ranges ruining everything.

Edited April 25, 2016 by Maverick Su-35S

[KoN]

Nearly impossible to see contacts

 

Why is it so hard too see air contacts that are right in front of you , there seems to be a very bad render issues or some thing really isn't right .

Dogfight with WWII is also bad . When is this going to get fixed .

Am i the only one seeing this .

[Reflected]

Set "Model enlargement" to "large", it will help a lot.

 

However, it's still very difficult to spot targets against the ground :/

[Coxy_99]

WWII aircraft is easy by there wing shape :)

[KoN]

I have had it on large , but i just cant tell what direction these contacts are flying in , they seem to render very close , and by then its too late . Ill give it another go . Very hard spotting on this close combat .

OK so we need to zoom in and out constantly .

Edited April 25, 2016 by Con

[Wop-Actual]

Maybe it's cheating, but I turn labels on. However, I have a modified Labels.lua file that makes all contacts the same color (so no difference between friend and foe), and they are only portrayed as a tiny symbol (for example: " * ") starting from a certain distance. You can also choose to apply labels to certain categories, like only aircrafts for example.

 

It sure saves my eyesight.

[SeaW0lf]

Set "Model enlargement" to "large", it will help a lot.

 

However, it's still very difficult to spot targets against the ground :/

 

Cool, I'll try with "large" because mine was off (newbie in DCS).

 

Do the WWII servers use this setting (large) or they keep it off? I am new / trying to adapt, but my only interest is multiplayer.

 

Cheers,

[enigma6584]

Personally myself I keep model enlargement on "medium." Your eyes will get used to the simulation and "how" to see things. You learn to look for shadows, reflections off clouds, smoke trails from jet engines etc. Next thing you know you have no problem. However, I do think things can always be improved or tweaked.