Altitude perception/sensation

[Matt2k]

I feel like dcs world altitudes are kind of wrong, for example, the F2 camera bar that shows your speed, altitude, bearing, AoA, etc. Says (100 Meters) and it feels like you are going at 30/50ish meters.

 

Other example, when you fly at 10000 Meters (30000ft) it doesn't feel like 10000 Meters, feels way lower compared to other sims.

 

Any thought about this?:huh:

[MacEwan]

Maybe the other sims are wrong? Lol jk

 

But more seriously, you have to consider altitude above ground as well. And it may be better to compare things with real life instead of with other sims

[Mars Exulte]

Our thoughts are that this is subjective and how you ''feel'' in relation to your environment is nothing anybody can help with. Btw, 100 meters isn't that high when most the planes we're flying are 50-60ft long and traveling 400+ mph. So, if it doesn't feel ''real'' to you, it's because it's not, it's digital entertainment.

 

It's really easy to check if the distances are right. After that it's a matter of your perception, which is affected by monitor size, distance from monitor, and FoV, none of which anybody but youbhas any control over.

[Eldur]

It's hard for pancake simmers to discuss this topic. Get into VR and be amazed

[Syndrome]

There are some definite differences. Mostly in the sky darkening at high altitude.

 

 

Even at 81,000 ft, the sky is very blue and the land features are noticably larger than a real life images from 60,000 ft. I mean it still looks good, but the OP has a point.

[PoorOldSpike]

I feel like dcs world altitudes are kind of wrong, for example, the F2 camera bar that shows your speed, altitude, bearing, AoA, etc. Says (100 Meters) and it feels like you are going at 30/50ish meters.

Other example, when you fly at 10000 Meters (30000ft) it doesn't feel like 10000 Meters, feels way lower compared to other sims.

 

 

Another guy asked a question something like that a while back in the Flight Sim X forum, so we suggested he juggle the zoom in/out keys til he finds the setting he likes, and he later came back thanking us and turning handsprings of delight..:)

Basically if you zoom out, the moving landscape races by fast giving a greater impression of speed, but if you zoom in, it slows to a boring crawl.

[Mars Exulte]

@syndrom

Depends on time of day and conditions, if you climb high enough in DCS the sky will indeed darken and you can see the stars. Problem is DCS has a view distance limit, achieved with the haze, so you aren't seeing the actual horizon in the first place, but a cutoff.

[Syndrome]

@syndrom

Depends on time of day and conditions, if you climb high enough in DCS the sky will indeed darken and you can see the stars. Problem is DCS has a view distance limit, achieved with the haze, so you aren't seeing the actual horizon in the first place, but a cutoff.

 

Yeah that's what I thought too until I tested it out. You can only see stars in the top 30 degs from zenith. As long as the sun is up, the horizon stays opaque blue regardless of the time of day.

 

The main issue here is that the sky near the horizon is too opaque blue at high altitude. You have to reach 90,000 ft before it starts to look like 45,000 ft IRL.

 

 

DCS at 90,000 ft

 

Real Life at 45,000 ft

[Matt2k]

Another thing that I noticed is that I was flying at some towers height altitude and F2 camera said I was at 100 meter:huh:, I don't know if it is wrong or it measures altitude from sea level. (Btw the city was close to senaki airbase)

[Kang]

That kind of thing is less of a 'you need VR for depth perception' thing and more of a FOV thing. Generally a flight sim will 'scale down', to afford you a decent field of view on your average monitor. If you measure the actual angle of view your monitor delivers and you set the game FOV to meet that, everything should look right scale-wise. The problem is that you'll feel like looking through a pinhole at all times.

[Emmy]

It's hard for pancake simmers to discuss this topic. Get into VR and be amazed

 

Not necessarily...

 

Case in point, flying on our NTTR server today going pretty much East to west with a 60kt wind out of the north. The “off axis” moment of the ground textures on the periphery of my vision definitely messed with my inner ear and this was with TrackIR.

[LuckyFromArma]

I feel like dcs world altitudes are kind of wrong, for example, the F2 camera bar that shows your speed, altitude, bearing, AoA, etc. Says (100 Meters) and it feels like you are going at 30/50ish meters.

 

Other example, when you fly at 10000 Meters (30000ft) it doesn't feel like 10000 Meters, feels way lower compared to other sims.

 

Any thought about this?:huh:

 

Watching the radar altimeter will give a better perception of altitude.:pilotfly:

[Fri13]

Another guy asked a question something like that a while back in the Flight Sim X forum, so we suggested he juggle the zoom in/out keys til he finds the setting he likes, and he later came back thanking us and turning handsprings of delight..:)

Basically if you zoom out, the moving landscape races by fast giving a greater impression of speed, but if you zoom in, it slows to a boring crawl.

 

Difficult to zoom in VR... ;-)

 

Could be interesting to get a wider FOV without actually having wider FOV.

How badly it would damage brain by doing so?

[Fri13]

I feel like dcs world altitudes are kind of wrong, for example, the F2 camera bar that shows your speed, altitude, bearing, AoA, etc. Says (100 Meters) and it feels like you are going at 30/50ish meters.

 

Other example, when you fly at 10000 Meters (30000ft) it doesn't feel like 10000 Meters, feels way lower compared to other sims.

 

Any thought about this?:huh:

 

In 3D modeling you set basic values for scaling etc, and then everything follows that scale. So you can't really cheat in that.

 

But similar way I have same feeling, something is off and I always think it is simply lack of fine details on ground. No bushes, no rocks, no large variations between trees sizes, no context that what is range and distance visually.

 

Like even today I could swear that helicopters rotor blades are far shorter than in reality, like UH-1H and Mi-8, that feels to have blades almost just half the length. Yet when you know it is impossible if properly done 3D model, it just doesn't feel right.

 

Like Mi-8 rotor diameter is little over 21m IIRC, so over 10.5 meters any direction, and you are fairly front of it, it doesn't show up so much after all.

UH-1 has 14 meters, so 7 meters and again sitting well front of you and that is almost nothing.

 

It is just how badly human remembers the dimensions of things. Like stand next to real Mi-8, sit in cockpit and then drive to fly it in DCS and you believe "It must have been bigger", yet it is correct.

[Mars Exulte]

Could be interesting to get a wider FOV without actually having wider FOV.

How badly it would damage brain by doing so?

 

It damaged my brain severely just reading it, I can only imagine what would happen if it was achieved.

[Greyman]

Another thing that I noticed is that I was flying at some towers height altitude and F2 camera said I was at 100 meter:huh:, I don't know if it is wrong or it measures altitude from sea level. (Btw the city was close to senaki airbase)

 

Aircraft tend to measure altitude using the barometric air pressure (BARO), which will give a reading relative to sea level, so if the towers were built on land at sea level, the altitude would be reasonably accurate. However, if the land was say 30m above sea level, then you would need to subtract that from the altitude reading to get a better idea of your height above the ground

 

However, some of the aircraft will also be able to provide an altitude using a radar transceiver, mounted on the underside of the fuselage, and this should provide a fairly accurate reading of your height above the ground.

[shagrat]

Yeah that's what I thought too until I tested it out. You can only see stars in the top 30 degs from zenith. As long as the sun is up, the horizon stays opaque blue regardless of the time of day.

 

 

 

The main issue here is that the sky near the horizon is too opaque blue at high altitude. You have to reach 90,000 ft before it starts to look like 45,000 ft IRL.

 

 

 

 

 

DCS at 90,000 ft

 

 

 

 

Real Life at 45,000 ft

 

 

It would be a better comparison if both pictures had a clear sky.

These photos mostly show how different the horizon lighting looks when you have an overcast/cloud layer... at what altitude is the cloud layer in the video? 6k ft? 10k ft? 20k ft?

[shagrat]

I feel like dcs world altitudes are kind of wrong, for example, the F2 camera bar that shows your speed, altitude, bearing, AoA, etc. Says (100 Meters) and it feels like you are going at 30/50ish meters.

 

 

 

Other example, when you fly at 10000 Meters (30000ft) it doesn't feel like 10000 Meters, feels way lower compared to other sims.

 

 

 

Any thought about this?:huh:

The altitude on the bar in F2 view is the altitude (MSL) not the height (AGL). So when you hover 30 feet above the peak of Mt. Elbrus on the Caucasus the altitude should show about 18,550 ft.

[Flagrum]

Difficult to zoom in VR... ;-)

 

Could be interesting to get a wider FOV without actually having wider FOV.

How badly it would damage brain by doing so?

It would probably collapse into a relativistic singularity ... taking the whole universe with it.

 

 

I.e. it is not possible - or would require "different" laws of physics/mathematics/etc. than we have in our world.

 

 

If you want to make something look bigger than it is, you have to take that part of your picture (i.e. what you currently see) and stretch it in all directions. And that is effectively changing your FoV.

 

 

The only other way is to get closer to the object you want to see bigger. But what you see then is not really "bigger than it is", because it IS that big then.

[bkthunder]

It would be a better comparison if both pictures had a clear sky.

These photos mostly show how different the horizon lighting looks when you have an overcast/cloud layer... at what altitude is the cloud layer in the video? 6k ft? 10k ft? 20k ft?

 

Using pictures is extremely misleading because of shutter speed / aperture etc.

That RL picutre is just dark. The clouds below are much whiter IRL so the camera has to darken the overall picture. That's not how the sky looks like at 45k feet.

 

Unfortunately unless you see things with your own eyes, you'd at least need a decent HDR picture that hasn't been tinkered with to make it look more dramatic. Hard to find I'd say.

 

If you have't seen the sky at 45k feet during daytime, let me tell you, there is a very good reason why pilots wear sunglasses ;)

 

The question is always the same: do we want a sim that looks like real life, or one that looks like a youtube video?

Same with the propeller disc being visible from the cockpit, IRL the props are completely invisible to the pilot, but yet every single flight sim has that nice prop effect that only cameras can caputre...

[shagrat]

Using pictures is extremely misleading because of shutter speed / aperture etc.

 

That RL picutre is just dark. The clouds below are much whiter IRL so the camera has to darken the overall picture. That's not how the sky looks like at 45k feet.

 

 

 

Unfortunately unless you see things with your own eyes, you'd at least need a decent HDR picture that hasn't been tinkered with to make it look more dramatic. Hard to find I'd say.

 

 

 

If you have't seen the sky at 45k feet during daytime, let me tell you, there is a very good reason why pilots wear sunglasses ;)

 

 

 

The question is always the same: do we want a sim that looks like real life, or one that looks like a youtube video?

 

Same with the propeller disc being visible from the cockpit, IRL the props are completely invisible to the pilot, but yet every single flight sim has that nice prop effect that only cameras can caputre...

That was what I meant. The Photos are nice, but you can't compare them, as at least half a dozen variables influence the result.

Even if we assume the photograph captured it perfectly, to say the horizon is to white, blue, dim, bright or whatever is pointless if the horizon is actually covered in cloud layer(s) in the photo and the DCS screenshot has a clear sky.

And you are absolutely right with the photograph (aperture, lens quality, shutter time etc.) vs. real life.

Everybody can simply test this by taking a photo of the sky at dawn. It never gets a 100% correct color of the overall scene compared to what your eyes see. Even HDR and Photoshop magic can't get it 100% similar.

[Emmy]

The altitude on the bar in F2 view is the altitude (MSL) not the height (AGL). So when you hover 30 feet above the peak of Mt. Elbrus on the Caucasus the altitude should show about 18,550 ft.

 

It’s actually true altitude isn’t it? There’s no correction for temperature or pressure.

 

Fly at 10,000’ on a standard day .. note the F2 view

 

Now change the pressure but again fly at 10,000’ (per the altimeter) and I bet you’ll see a different value in F2.

[Notso]

I feel like dcs world altitudes are kind of wrong, for example, the F2 camera bar that shows your speed, altitude, bearing, AoA, etc. Says (100 Meters) and it feels like you are going at 30/50ish meters.

 

Other example, when you fly at 10000 Meters (30000ft) it doesn't feel like 10000 Meters, feels way lower compared to other sims.

 

Any thought about this?:huh:

 

My impression is: It feels about right compared to IRL. I have very little reference to compare to other commercial games/sims.

[shagrat]

It’s actually true altitude isn’t it? There’s no correction for temperature or pressure.

 

 

 

Fly at 10,000’ on a standard day .. note the F2 view

 

 

 

Now change the pressure but again fly at 10,000’ (per the altimeter) and I bet you’ll see a different value in F2.

Did not talk about the gauges modules Altimeter, only the F2 bar, it should show MSL for standard day pressure and temp on sea level. It is the elevation from the F10 Map under the mouse cursor.

The altimeter in the module can show different values depending on pressure/temperature, the use of radar altimeter vs. QNH, QNE or "forgot to adjust the altimeter"... the F2 bar is not a good indicator of height above ground, unless you fly over the ocean.

[oreste]

The correct altitude must be measured with on-board instruments such as the altimeter or the radar. In some cases you will have to adjust the altimeter according to the atmospheric pressure of the airport, only then will you have the correct altitude. Or use a radar system that detects the distance from the ground is convenient for low-altitude flights.If you are flying for example on the F 16 you can change between altitude measurement with radar system or pneumatic system by clicking a button.Using a helicopter you must always have a good feeling of both the distance from the ground and the speed of both the air and the ground.In certain mountains at low temperatures you will also have to deal with the cold, if you do not fly low you will have ice problems in engines like flying with the MI 8. Some planes have less accurate instrumentation maybe and you can't click to make too many changes or adjustments but if you take those that have been reproduced in great depth you will have all the correct measurements of both the speed , gps position, altitude etc.