Difficulty Spotting. Is it my Settings or my Eyes?

[Bartacomus]

Ive been flying in a Cold War era Multiplayer Map. No Labels, No Dots.

 

I cannot make visual contact. I need to determine if im blind or my settings are bad.

Im worried the pixels are getting lost in jitter, or i have some setting thats smearing or washing out planes when they are further away.

 

When i look left and right, there is almost an imperceptible jitter? Choppy? just barely noticeable.

 

I do not know much about video settings, id appreciate any hints.

 

My game settings are:

 

Texture Med,

Terrain Low

Civ Low

Water Med

Visible Range Ultra

Heatblur off,

Flat only Shadows

1920x1080 Res, 16:10 Aspect, 1024 Cockpit display

4x MSAA

Depth of Field OFF

Lens and motion blur OFF

SSAA x1.5

SSLR ON

Grass/Clutter off, Tree Vis 80%, Preload Radius 150,000 (max), Smoke dens max gamma 2.5

Ansiotropic Filtering 16x

Terrain Object shadow default, global illumination on,

VSYNC ON

Full Screen OFF

 

My System:

 

Intel i7-7700 3.6 GHz

16gb Installed RAM

64bit, x64 processor

win10

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Vizio 40' FHD LED 1080p 60hz D-series tv, connected by HDMI

[stormrider]

None of the above. It's a problem inherent to how a game is rendered in a monitor in the form of pixels. In real life, your eyes have a far better acuity and the image is not pixelated. The problem here is that DCS, as opposed to other simulators like the one we're supposed not to name which starts with B and ends with S, there is no implementation, other than dots, to attenuate for the problem above.

[=475FG= Dawger]

Ive been flying in a Cold War era Multiplayer Map. No Labels, No Dots.

 

I cannot make visual contact. I need to determine if im blind or my settings are bad.

Im worried the pixels are getting lost in jitter, or i have some setting thats smearing or washing out planes when they are further away.

 

When i look left and right, there is almost an imperceptible jitter? Choppy? just barely noticeable.

 

I do not know much about video settings, id appreciate any hints.

 

My game settings are:

 

Texture Med,

Terrain Low

Civ Low

Water Med

Visible Range Ultra

Heatblur off,

Flat only Shadows

1920x1080 Res, 16:10 Aspect, 1024 Cockpit display

4x MSAA

Depth of Field OFF

Lens and motion blur OFF

SSAA x1.5

SSLR ON

Grass/Clutter off, Tree Vis 80%, Preload Radius 150,000 (max), Smoke dens max gamma 2.5

Ansiotropic Filtering 16x

Terrain Object shadow default, global illumination on,

VSYNC ON

Full Screen OFF

 

My System:

 

Intel i7-7700 3.6 GHz

16gb Installed RAM

64bit, x64 processor

win10

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Vizio 40' FHD LED 1080p 60hz D-series tv, connected by HDMI

 

Its not you.

 

Unfortunately, most DCS users seem to prefer it this way.

[MacEwan]

As other have said, it's not you it's just the way DCS is right now. I'm not smart enough to explain it all but it has something to do with the way things are rendered, colors and shading, pop in/pop out effects, etc...

 

You may sometimes see something from far, then zoom in to get a better look and it vanishes. There are some nice Dot Label mods out there and you can make your own as well. This provides a subtle dot over the object to improve spotting abilities.

[randomTOTEN]

A lot of people screw up their FOV, and FOV determines how much scenery is crammed into a single pixel.

 

Edited August 16, 2020 by randomTOTEN

[Bartacomus]

Well Darnit.

 

Is there a way to.. take advantage of the video settings? Could you turn off specific settings, to trick the rendering into more visible shapes?

 

Could you turn off edge smoothing, or some sort of filtering?

 

If the visual mechanics are fundamentally sketchy.. is there a way to take advantage of this?

 

Without downloading mods, like ESP/Wall hacks. Not that im disinterested, but i prefer an even playing field

[stormrider]

Well Darnit.

 

Is there a way to.. take advantage of the video settings? Could you turn off specific settings, to trick the rendering into more visible shapes?

 

Could you turn off edge smoothing, or some sort of filtering?

 

If the visual mechanics are fundamentally sketchy.. is there a way to take advantage of this?

 

Without downloading mods, like ESP/Wall hacks. Not that im disinterested, but i prefer an even playing field

 

Others have tried, but that we know, after almost 10 years, I never saw that solution that you're asking. Here, I use my own version of the dot labels which fade into a neutral colour that blends with the horizon. Far from perfect, but better than nothing.

[Bartacomus]

thats pretty neat, what did you base you threshold on? distance and evironmental condition?

[Katj]

Well Darnit.

 

 

 

Is there a way to.. take advantage of the video settings? Could you turn off specific settings, to trick the rendering into more visible shapes?

 

 

 

Could you turn off edge smoothing, or some sort of filtering?

 

 

 

If the visual mechanics are fundamentally sketchy.. is there a way to take advantage of this?

 

 

 

Without downloading mods, like ESP/Wall hacks. Not that im disinterested, but i prefer an even playing field

Go to Nvidia control panel and crank up "Sharpening" or something like that. You need somewhat new drivers for it to be there.

 

Definitely helps with spotting, but you might not like the effect it has on everything else.

[stormrider]

thats pretty neat, what did you base you threshold on? distance and evironmental condition?

 

For the ground visibility, on Remote Sensing data by comparing tanks on the ground with calculated altitude. For air units, I used the same old graph that often pop-up on threads regarding spotting distances.

[Bartacomus]

Thats a pretty big bummer. I guess ill have to figure out something for the Korea server.. we were literally setting up fights in PVE. "Where are you?"

 

You know its bad when youre popping flares to get the enemies attention.

 

(I will check out the NVIDIA sharpening Kat)

[The LT]

Its not you.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, most DCS users seem to prefer it this way.

No, most DCS users don't prefer it that way.

[Bartacomus]

What do you do to deal with this?

[POLARIS1]

There is another solution...

For some reason DCS favors a 1080 monitor resolution.

Be it the monitor's inherent resolution or Windows settings.

Compared to a 2K or higher screens you spot at half the distance and actually see the aircraft and not a dot.