Visibility

[NineLine]

Right now I could be on someone’s 6 looking at them not deviating my eyes and still they disappear right in front of me soon as they push terrain into my field of view. An A10 for example is harder to spot than an f15 in game.

 

Too be fair, I have never seen this, if you are maintaining speed and distance, I havent seen an aircraft just vanish. If you have I welcome a track of it. Also, an aircraft such as we are flying are meant to be hard to see so we dont want them to be 747s either, as stated its a real balancing act.

 

Now pool everyone in this thread, and you could have each person have a different set up, monitor, resolution, and quality of their own vision, and it makes the problem that much more difficult to solve. It will take multiple solutions and options to get closer to everyone being happier.

[metzger]

The following thread imho is the most important factor affecting the visibility currently, especially short to mid distances, where the objects just bend with the environment way too much due to the lack of proper lighting, reflections, colors contrast etc.. Resolution would help for identifying, but until there is no proper lightning and contrast, it will be pain to spot anything anywhere.

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=221166

[evilnate]

My opinion as VR user;

 

Continue to have spotting the way it is, and if people want to limit their visual ability they can adjust their settings in game accordingly.

 

I've seen other games do something similar with scaling options.

[philstyle]

What size monitor and resolution do you use Phil?

 

27inch, 1440p.

 

It is better to spot aircraft in 1080p, but the higher resolution just makes DCS look so damned nice...

[SharpeXB]

27inch, 1440p.

 

It is better to spot aircraft in 1080p, but the higher resolution just makes DCS look so damned nice...

Didn’t the last update in fact get rid of the pixel dots that appeared better at lower resolutions?

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3628470&postcount=77

Hence the subject line of this thread?

[BuzzU]

Sharp.........I like your signature and the fact you did all the A-10c training. I'm curious about the yellow one. That wasn't a course that's sold. Isn't it just 3 of them?

 

How did you qualify for it?

 

 

 

Sorry for the off topic. Please don't delete it before I get an answer. :)

[SharpeXB]

Sharp.........I like your signature and the fact you did all the A-10c training. I'm curious about the yellow one. That wasn't a course that's sold. Isn't it just 3 of them?

 

How did you qualify for it?

Check PM :)

 

Oh wait, just to keep this on topic, I did the whole course “full switch” without icons or anything. Including identifying enemy ground targets at night with the NVGs

Edited September 29, 2018 by SharpeXB

[philstyle]

Didn’t the last update in fact get rid of the pixel dots that appeared better at lower resolutions?

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3628470&postcount=77

Hence the subject line of this thread?

 

No that was just an adjustment (fix) to how the labels system is forced in multiplayer servers.

It wasn't about the non-labelled visibility of aircraft.

[SharpeXB]

I figure a visibility discussion would always be about labels-off visibility.

Do you mean “labels” as in icons or “sprites”?

[NineLine]

I figure a visibility discussion would always be about labels-off visibility.

Do you mean “labels” as in icons or “sprites”?

 

I think people hear the word labels and discount them as a cheat, I would like to see a label system that, sure could have options to cheat, but also be robust enough that hardcore users could use to bridge the gap in different tech, such as resolution and monitor size.

 

This is all me right now, my opinions, just formulating and testing. I actually like the new symbol we have, but it needs some love and options to push it over the top (as discussed in the other thread on labels).

[SharpeXB]

I think people hear the word labels and discount them as a cheat

Well I wouldn’t call labels a “cheat” I would consider them an “aid” :smilewink:

 

A good solution for the sim, aside from “aids” is something that’s not just realistic but is also not user controllable or adjustable. Therefore acceptable online in “full real” servers. Otherwise it would be just another aid that would get switched off. A good visibility system would be baked into the sim and not something players can turn on and off. Icons or Labels are user adjustable aids. One problem with the previous Model Enlargement was that it was player adjustable and hence doomed to be switched off since nobody can agree what level to set it at in multiplayer. Everyone could agree on off though.

[Mars Exulte]

For everybody wanting magical chia-planes that grow when you look at them, welcome to public forums. You can expect people to challenge your claims/requests on occasion. This has been hashed to death and the people claiming they can't see or that they should be able to see an F-16 headon 20 miles out are verifiably proven to be full of it. You can still clamor for enlarge-o-vision if you want, but you can expect people to dispute it.

 

We're all using variations of the same tech here. If one guy can see the target and another can't, it's probably because the struggling individual has poor situational awareness. As for using zoom, no it's not realistic, neither is enlarge-o-vision. You argue for one and against the other, we argue for one and against the other. If you REALLY want realism get off your computer and go take some flight lessons.

 

At least with zooming you have to acquire the target to know where to look. With ACME's patented 'Enlarge-O-Vision' the computer slaps you up the head while shouting 'oh look over here! He's right HERE!'

 

It's easy to determine which is the lesser of two evils here. And yeah about people telling you how to play... welcome to literally every facet of life, where you're influenced by rules and restrictions established by other people. Get comfortable, it's a lot worse away from your desk ;)

[David OC]

The real big fix and correct way with no cheat will "eventually" come from foveated rendering in VR. The cheat will be if you have better vision and situational awareness than your opponent.

I mean that's where we want it to end up right.

 

"When your eyes become the selection tool, those first two steps become one." www.wired.com/story/eye-tracking-vr/

 

"Further, Stevens noted that only 7 megapixels of these 576 megapixels matter. Why? Because while we have a 180-degree field of vision, we can only detect high resolution 2 degrees from the center called Foveal vision."

futurism.com/what-is-the-resolution-of-the-human-eye

 

"2 degrees from the center called Foveal vision"

 

So zooming in here is "sort of" correct for a monitor as you should not detect an enemy aircraft at 5 miles out side of this 2 degrees high resolution scan.

 

So going to far on a monitor for general spotting would be very much cheating and having a very large screen, even more so. As you would see the aircraft in your Peripheral vision, when IRL you would not and need to scan the sky a lot more diligently.:) LOL

Edited September 30, 2018 by David OC

[Alphazulu]

You've clearly missed Ninelines other comments. he's addressed this issue by going out of his way to get a 4K monitor to help test the issues and compile a report.

 

 

 

 

Oh yes....clearly I missed what Nineline said......since I responding to what someones else said and not Nineline! Right let me respond to what one person says based on what another person says....:doh:

 

Oh ya, I still fly with guys that are seeing aircraft at 40-50 miles in this version while other guys can't even see them at 5 miles. It's hilarious to me how telling other people on here that changes to the sim should not be made unintentionally somehow has anything to do with you or what you say. Also, love how his response was to tell me that It effects different people in different ways which was exactly my point to the guy that thought it was an improvement.

 

"You need to relax" Nothing cracks me up more then people online that think they actually know how someone else feels when righting a post.

Edited October 6, 2018 by Alphazulu

[shift611]

Model enlargment

 

I have just watch a YouTube vid which mentions a "Model enlargement" option but my "Gameplay" tab doesn't have this, I am assuming this is to make aircraft or ground objects larger, has this been removed?.

[Gladman]

Very unfortunately, it was removed. There have been a thousand cries for its or something similar return, but to no avail.

[TAW_Impalor]

I think configurable IPD on VR screen was meant to address it. However, any setting but Auto creates a parallax effect for the menus and thus unusable??

[Why485]

At work we are working on an IG (image generator, basically a graphics engine) meant for military simulations to be used to train anything from guys on the ground to pilots in flight simulations. One of the specific requests, from industry customers, was to have a system analogous to smart scaling because they feel that it's artificially difficult to spot and identify (key word) aircraft in simulations without it. Just saying.

 

This is a solved problem if you ask me, and smart scaling isn't even the only solution. It's one of many, and they can be even be combined to create a more robust system.

Edited October 9, 2018 by Why485

[NineLine]

At work we are working on an IG (image generator, basically a graphics engine) meant for military simulations to be used to train anything from guys on the ground to pilots in flight simulations. One of the specific requests, from industry customers, was to have a system analogous to smart scaling because they feel that it's artificially difficult to spot and identify (key word) aircraft in simulations without it. Just saying.

 

This is a solved problem if you ask me, and smart scaling isn't even the only solution. It's one of many, and they can be even be combined to create a more robust system.

 

Yeah but that sounds like a pretty good solution for a system where guys arent bringing their own setups right, I mean scaling makes sense, but then take into account all the different setups out there, and all the guys out there willing to us something that maybe looks funny as an advantage in MP... so hard to compare to a system like that.

[Why485]

Yeah but that sounds like a pretty good solution for a system where guys arent bringing their own setups right, I mean scaling makes sense, but then take into account all the different setups out there, and all the guys out there willing to us something that maybe looks funny as an advantage in MP... so hard to compare to a system like that.

 

For the record, customers are expected to put this IG on whatever they want after they've bought into it. We have to support everything from domes to laptop screens to VR. As far as I know it's all using one formula/algorithm.

 

There's been algorithms posted and tested by community members in previous incarnations of this thread which take into account resolution and field of view to address the problems with smart scaling. It's much more robust than the system a certain single engine aircraft focused sim uses. Again, I'm not even saying that smart scaling is the be all end all, but the problems you describe are not insurmountable and sims have been tackling and solving it for decades. It's only gotten better when you compare how more contemporary sims do it to how much older sims used to.

Edited October 9, 2018 by Why485

[OnlyforDCS]

Why485 makes a lot of good points here.

[falcon_120]

For the record, customers are expected to put this IG on whatever they want after they've bought into it. We have to support everything from domes to laptop screens to VR. As far as I know it's all using one formula/algorithm.

 

There's been algorithms posted and tested by community members in previous incarnations of this thread which take into account resolution and field of view to address the problems with smart scaling. It's much more robust than the system a certain single engine aircraft focused sim uses. Again, I'm not even saying that smart scaling is the be all end all, but the problems you describe are not insurmountable and sims have been tackling and solving it for decades. It's only gotten better when you compare how more contemporary sims do it to how much older sims used to.

 

This algortihm seems like a good alternative to implement something better to what we have now, that takes into account different resolutions to avoid unfair advantages. Hasn't this been passed to the ED team to analyse? Or has this been discarded for any reason?

[shift611]

OK thank you all very much for your help and replies.

[USA_Recon]

Visibility

 

I'm fairly new to DCS. I've owned DCS modules since the days of Lomac, but my interest was lower back then. Since returning, I've fallen in love with DCS, the jets, the helo's , Sabre's, Spitfires, etc... it's really quite amazing, and the game has really come a long ways from those early days.

 

But I want to bring up an ongoing issue, one that is expressed often around the forums, on discord, and reddit.

 

I will be 100% honest here, I'll spend my bazillion $$$'s on the great AC DCS provides, often overlooking the stale single player content, and the crashes on the public servers by some of the more immersive online environments in any combat sim.

 

But what will most likely waver my devotion is going to center around Eagle Dynamics dealing with the most obvious of concerns: visibility. Sure, I can enable minimum icons offline, etc.. in order to see something very close, but my passion is online. Having a game where visibility is critical, especially in shorter range combat is one of the more important things in a combat sim.

 

When I started back in DCS, I was finally able to use my pledge toward Normandy. And despite its' shortcomings right now, the aircraft are a treat to fly. But not when your online where you might as well close your eyes because the rendering is so pathetic. Then, I shifted to trying to fly Mig vs. Sabre. Again, the visibility is horrendous. "Use the smoke trails" I'm told. It's like a cop out of what a game should be.

 

So I don't know the history, but I hear things like "they used object enlargement and it really helped" - so I think, why would they throw that out ??? "some of the community complained people could 'see too well'" - really ??? I'd love to see an honest to goodness vote on that. We have the diehard's who try to think using a 24" monitor is real life, then we have the other 80-90% of pilots who actually want to see things. It's rather a disgrace that the only want to see something is to be completely zoomed in 100% in order to see a ground target, or an enemy in short range combat. Beautiful cockpits, beautiful graphics, but I need binoculars (which is completely UNREALISTIC) zoomed in to see a black tank on a white runway!!! I'd like to see the youtube video where someone pulls out binoculars to id the mig in front of him.

 

The story continues, I find out the nice monitor I have that makes the game look like Wag's video's online... well, if you use that, you might as well completely forget being actually competitive. Since now you see 4k resolution but can't see aircraft less than a mile in front of you, or again, have to zoom in the entire time to see. Yes, I've now wasted that $ as I crank down my resolution just to see if it helps. We have video's online reddit documenting this tragedy. (

)

 

DCS has probably the most intelligent developers of any game I've seen, the details are amazing. But why is ED shooting themselves in the foot by making it nearly unplayable outside of BVR and Auto Acquisition modes ? (and I'm talking about us common folks, not you ace types that will say 'oh you just have to "see" better'). Can't the game detect your resolution and provide a decent consistent view for all pilots across monitors and resolutions for example ? Can't you let us decide about 'object enlargement' - rather than strip things that I'm told actually worked, but because someone on 1080p TV said 'it's too big' - then he can turn it off right ?

 

So, I beg of you ED to start to make it a priority to assist us online gamers. Let us see first off. New AC are great, new features fantastic, but this is a core item along with stability and mp server optimizations.

 

I urge the community as a whole to sign a petition, let ED know what is important. I don't want to write a post like this, but I also can't just stay silent on it. If the community comes together as a whole an expresses the importance of being able to see in this game, then I believe ED will listen.

 

Look at the comments for example around VR:

 

 

Again, I love this flight sim, I'm hooked on it - it's an amazing game. Please address this most basic item so we can enjoy it to it's fullest potential.

 

We've all dropped $1000's of $ just to play this game. Let us see!

 

Thanks

[BuzzU]

+1