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Spotting is really bad


Snapage

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It would be nice to be able to see aircraft reliably. I can see single pixel planes at very long distance against white horizon but they disappear at medium distances. Checking six is almost pointless because most of the time I cant see a plane until he is close enough to shoot. Even if I know someone is behind me I can't distinguish him on the monitor. Its really bad. I am not the only one with this issue many people have the same problem.

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You are not the only one. I sometimes can’t spot my wingman even though I know he is there and I am looking just about straight at him. The odd thing is that on youtube flicks that people post I can see their opponents better than what I see in my game. I also played other WWII sim/games with icons off and there the problem was not as severe.
 

Perhaps it is a matter of video settings that I have not figured out yet.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Snapage said:

It would be nice to be able to see aircraft reliably. I can see single pixel planes at very long distance against white horizon but they disappear at medium distances. Checking six is almost pointless because most of the time I cant see a plane until he is close enough to shoot. Even if I know someone is behind me I can't distinguish him on the monitor. Its really bad. I am not the only one with this issue many people have the same problem.

 

Welcome to the reality. You are extremely challenged to spot anything on the ground or in the air. That is why various sensors like radars and IRST has been developed to make it possible detect something. And why all kind other technologies like datalinks has been developed to actually get one sensor data transmitted for other system to be used for targeting or combine with it (and other) sensors.

 

Example the F-5 is famous for its true stealthiness. You point that fighter nose at the enemy and you disappear like you would have covered yourself with Harry Potter cloak of invisibility.

And if the target can't estimate your trajectory and energy to get on benefitical position and how to avoid it, they die for it as they have no idea anymore where you are and what you can do.

You can't do that same with the F-14 or F-15. You don't sneak around one by doing so simple thing.

 

The rule of dog fight is, do not lose an eye sight of your enemy. Keep your eyes all the time on it or you might never find it anymore. And when the F-5 can perform a such magical disappearing, they get the control of fight.

 

BVR spotting range.jpg

 

I think the DCS offers still too good spotting capabilities for the air, and way too excellent for the ground. As on the ground it is rule of thumb that pilot can spot something on ground at about 1000-1500 meters visually. We are not talking a red civilian car on the highway or middle of the bright green field. But a military painted vehicles stationary in the minimum expected manner. And if the ground units does anything as their basic training teaches them, they become invisible for the visual spotting, FLIR and lasers. You do not see them, you don't spot them, you don't find them. Only specific kind things will reveal their position, such as movement, light, smoke, fire and tracks/trails. And that means someone using flashlight at night, fires a weapon at night, doesn't cover shiny surfaces that can reflect sun, doesn't hide their tracks, keeps moving on stationary terrain etc.

 

Even Afghan militants found this by hard way, that running away in panic from Mi-24 lead only to death as it was easy to spot them on ground when moving. But when they staid stationary, the pilots became almost completely blind and even flew over or next to them without spotting them on the ground.

 

War is about information, it is not about who has biggest bomb. It is that you know where enemy is, what is tne enemy strength and capability, and what is readiness and performance to complete expected missions from it. This is why a game of chess is still far more valuable in military tactics and strategies than any other game is. Why such a simple things means life or death as unit capability to arrive on location at expected time and manner and to follow orders without hesitation.

 

War is not that you send pilots to fly around and expect them to see all, and then just go there to shoot everything down they just spot.

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@Fri13

You're missing the point here.

 

Currently, especially in VR you can easily spot other planes at 5-10 miles (especially against the sky) but they become very difficult to spot at 2-3 miles, sometimes impossible. You can't even pretend it's realistic.

 

I haven't done any testing (or reading) on the subject so everything below are just my observations.

At long distances the aircraft model is replaced by a single pixel impostor.

In VR, especially at PD of 1.0 a single pixel is quite big so it's easy to spot. With higher PD this might be more difficult as neighboring pixels are "mushed" together.

When you get closer the impostor is replaced by the actual model (at least a low poly version of it) and if for example. the render engine decides its size is smaller than a pixel it will flicker on/off.

At that point supersampling (or larger PD) should help cause that airplane would have been rendered on higher resolution. Take that with a grain of salt though as it's just my conjecture.

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The change from "easily visible" to "non existent" in VR is particularly easy to spot when you use the max zoom on a pixel you clearly see from far away : the render engine considers that with that level of zoom, this impostor bigger model isn't needed anymore, and suddenly, there absolutely nothing in the air. When releasing the zoom button, the contact is back there, magically.

Which means that there is a whole mid-range in VR where targets are simply not there. You can keep track of the contact ALL YOU WANT, you'll lose it when it enters this range. You'll have then to play with the 2 zoom levels to try acquiring it back, which is not that simple since your focal point seems offset between the different zoom levels, so you're not looking at the exact same place depending on your zoom level.

That said, the situation has improved dramatically from a year back, tbh. Yes, I keep losing track of targets, but most of the time it does seem legit to me, due to my own airframe, movement, eye breaking contact, etc.... That automatic contact disappearance behaviour isn't really happening on such a critical phase of an encounter, and you can acquire it back most of the time.

 

Ofc it could be better and hopefully ED is continuing trying to improve, but, at least in VR, I don't feel so blind. I don't know the situation on flat screen though....


Edited by Whisper
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5 hours ago, PL_Harpoon said:

@Fri13

You're missing the point here.

 

Currently, especially in VR you can easily spot other planes at 5-10 miles (especially against the sky) but they become very difficult to spot at 2-3 miles, sometimes impossible. You can't even pretend it's realistic.

 

It should be very difficult to spot. That is reality. If you lose sighting of the target, you might very well lose it forever because you are trying to find something through a ~2 degree straw. If the target manages to stay stationary relative to you and background, or it can conceal itself by lowering its contrast then it will become extremely difficult to see if you don't know exactly where to look and try to see the movement etc.

 

Because something comes closer doesn't make it easier to spot or see.

 

5 hours ago, PL_Harpoon said:

 

When you get closer the impostor is replaced by the actual model (at least a low poly version of it) and if for example. the render engine decides its size is smaller than a pixel it will flicker on/off.

At that point supersampling (or larger PD) should help cause that airplane would have been rendered on higher resolution. Take that with a grain of salt though as it's just my conjecture.

 

I have flown a lot intercepts with random targets and I don't recall ever suddenly the aircraft just disappearing because it would not be rendered. For the similarity of color or contrast? Yes, but not because it became invisible.

 

If there is a such thing that object becomes transparent (not because colors and contrast) then it needs to be fixed.

 

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The dot simply shrinks to something so tiny (and perhaps yes same color as background) that it's not there anymore. I personnaly think it's deemed to tiny by the renderer to be actually visible

What headset do you have? Because on my Rift S, you really can't miss that when zooming in on a distant dot


Edited by Whisper
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The effect can be easily shown with MsPaint.

 

1. Draw a slightly angled horizontal line:

image.png

 

2. Select the area around it and shrink it vertically:

image.png

 

As you can see, some pixels disappeared.

 

That's roughly how the image is rendered without supersampling.

 

With supersampling the pixels don't disappear but the whole line blends with its surroundings.

image.png

image.png

image.png


Edited by PL_Harpoon
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@Fri13,

I and I suspect that the OP as well are not talking about spotting a dot 12 km away - I am talking about 2 km away. The nice graph you are showing is completely irrelevant to what we are talking about.

 

Yes, I flew in planes and helicopters from Jet Rangers to F-16D and I know how easy it is to lose a plane at a distance - but at 2 km it is enough to know the quadrant and you can re acquire the other plane at will. 

Part of the issue in the game is that I have to trade angular resolution with field of view - if I zoom in enough so that the target has a shape rather than a tiny cluster of pixels, then I have to scan the skies looking through a straw. If I keep some wider FOV then planes don’t look like planes - I basically have to spot an irregularity in the background pixels. This is nothing like realism.
 

I wonder if it is easier on a 1440 screen vs. 1080 that I currently use.

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“Mosquitoes fly, but flies don’t Mosquito” :pilotfly:

- Geoffrey de Havilland.

 

... well, he could have said it!

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1 hour ago, Bozon said:

@Fri13,

I and I suspect that the OP as well are not talking about spotting a dot 12 km away - I am talking about 2 km away. The nice graph you are showing is completely irrelevant to what we are talking about.

 

Yes, I flew in planes and helicopters from Jet Rangers to F-16D and I know how easy it is to lose a plane at a distance - but at 2 km it is enough to know the quadrant and you can re acquire the other plane at will. 

Part of the issue in the game is that I have to trade angular resolution with field of view - if I zoom in enough so that the target has a shape rather than a tiny cluster of pixels, then I have to scan the skies looking through a straw. If I keep some wider FOV then planes don’t look like planes - I basically have to spot an irregularity in the background pixels. This is nothing like realism.
 

I wonder if it is easier on a 1440 screen vs. 1080 that I currently use.

IMHO,  No.    My screen is native 1440 and I have had to reduce to 1080 to see the pixels better. Higher resolution will make the dots and image even smaller.

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16 hours ago, Fri13 said:

 

Welcome to the reality. You are extremely challenged to spot anything on the ground or in the air. That is why various sensors like radars and IRST has been developed to make it possible detect something. And why all kind other technologies like datalinks has been developed to actually get one sensor data transmitted for other system to be used for targeting or combine with it (and other) sensors.

 

Example the F-5 is famous for its true stealthiness. You point that fighter nose at the enemy and you disappear like you would have covered yourself with Harry Potter cloak of invisibility.

And if the target can't estimate your trajectory and energy to get on benefitical position and how to avoid it, they die for it as they have no idea anymore where you are and what you can do.

You can't do that same with the F-14 or F-15. You don't sneak around one by doing so simple thing.

 

The rule of dog fight is, do not lose an eye sight of your enemy. Keep your eyes all the time on it or you might never find it anymore. And when the F-5 can perform a such magical disappearing, they get the control of fight.

 

BVR spotting range.jpg

 

I think the DCS offers still too good spotting capabilities for the air, and way too excellent for the ground. As on the ground it is rule of thumb that pilot can spot something on ground at about 1000-1500 meters visually. We are not talking a red civilian car on the highway or middle of the bright green field. But a military painted vehicles stationary in the minimum expected manner. And if the ground units does anything as their basic training teaches them, they become invisible for the visual spotting, FLIR and lasers. You do not see them, you don't spot them, you don't find them. Only specific kind things will reveal their position, such as movement, light, smoke, fire and tracks/trails. And that means someone using flashlight at night, fires a weapon at night, doesn't cover shiny surfaces that can reflect sun, doesn't hide their tracks, keeps moving on stationary terrain etc.

 

Even Afghan militants found this by hard way, that running away in panic from Mi-24 lead only to death as it was easy to spot them on ground when moving. But when they staid stationary, the pilots became almost completely blind and even flew over or next to them without spotting them on the ground.

 

War is about information, it is not about who has biggest bomb. It is that you know where enemy is, what is tne enemy strength and capability, and what is readiness and performance to complete expected missions from it. This is why a game of chess is still far more valuable in military tactics and strategies than any other game is. Why such a simple things means life or death as unit capability to arrive on location at expected time and manner and to follow orders without hesitation.

 

War is not that you send pilots to fly around and expect them to see all, and then just go there to shoot everything down they just spot.

 

A computer screen is nothing like reality and everyone is using different settings and specifications. You can't mimic reality on a small computer screen with limited resolution. Some people will have an advantage and others a disadvantage simply because of their set up. It should just be even across the board by making aircraft rendered in a distinguishable way regardless of your computer equipment and graphics settings.

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Just now, Snapage said:

 

A computer screen is nothing like reality and everyone is using different settings and specifications. You can't mimic reality on a small computer screen with limited resolution.

 

You can't make a perfect, but you can get the same effect. That is the fact.

 

Just now, Snapage said:

Some people will have an advantage and others a disadvantage simply because of their set up.

 

Some are using HOTAS while some use keyboard and mouse, some use joypad while some use just a joystick with a few buttons etc.

Some people are terrible spotting anything as they don't know what they are looking for or where, some are excellent as they are just natural in that.

 

Life is not fair....

 

Just now, Snapage said:

It should just be even across the board by making aircraft rendered in a distinguishable way regardless of your computer equipment and graphics settings.

 

But that is the unrealistic thing that DCS has currently, "distinguishable way" is more of a game style than realism. Like you can spot now ground units way too far distances, same thing is with air units. Either people want to go for the game style where it is easy to spot targets and so on keep track of them while looking elsewhere now and then. Or they want realism where you likely lose a enemy when you take your eyes off from it.

 

The labels etc are always fun for a training and first experiences, but in time they just become annoyance as it takes away the fun of the game when you can just see everything. Similar thing is when models are made distinguishable from the environment - with labels or without.

 

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5 hours ago, PL_Harpoon said:

The effect can be easily shown with MsPaint.

 

That is aliasing effect because rescaling. You have data (black line) that you want to shrink smaller than it is, so in simple algorithm the value becomes zero.

That is not same thing at all as with LOD systems it is.

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34 minutes ago, Fri13 said:

 

That is aliasing effect because rescaling. You have data (black line) that you want to shrink smaller than it is, so in simple algorithm the value becomes zero.

That is not same thing at all as with LOD systems it is.

Yes but in VR this antialiasing effect applies. On a distant augmented dot, even after aliasing takes place, the dot remains visible. At the distance where the dot is not augmented anymore, aliasing make it disappear

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33 minutes ago, Fri13 said:

 

You can't make a perfect, but you can get the same effect. That is the fact.

 

 

Some are using HOTAS while some use keyboard and mouse, some use joypad while some use just a joystick with a few buttons etc.

Some people are terrible spotting anything as they don't know what they are looking for or where, some are excellent as they are just natural in that.

 

Life is not fair....

 

 

But that is the unrealistic thing that DCS has currently, "distinguishable way" is more of a game style than realism. Like you can spot now ground units way too far distances, same thing is with air units. Either people want to go for the game style where it is easy to spot targets and so on keep track of them while looking elsewhere now and then. Or they want realism where you likely lose a enemy when you take your eyes off from it.

 

The labels etc are always fun for a training and first experiences, but in time they just become annoyance as it takes away the fun of the game when you can just see everything. Similar thing is when models are made distinguishable from the environment - with labels or without.

 

 

Different HOTAS, stick setups etc are irrelevant. The game has settings to allow you tweak the sensitivity of your control inputs depending on what you use which makes most set ups comparable. Just like you have graphics settings to allow good performance depending on what hardware you are using. But trying to render aircraft in a 3D environment in a realistic way on a 2D monitor or tiny VR screen is not achievable. The resolution limitations and limited screen size don't make it possible. Visibility depends to much on your settings and equipment. Anti aliasing makes things look nicer but blends aircraft in with the environment even more. The higher the resolution the smaller the pixels you are trying to see, lower the resolution the larger the pixels you are trying to see. Lower texture resolution means less detail in the surrounding textures and makes it easier to distinguish the pixels that are representing aircraft. 

 

You also have the fact that planes disappear and reappear as you zoom in and out. I don't know about you but I don't find it fun for planes to disappear right in front of me or to know someone is there and close but you can't see them. Planes are easy to spot at long distance but become almost impossible to see once close.

 

We are looking at a limited amount of pixels on a screen just a few feet in front of you. Not even close to reality.

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It is possible to replicate the RL if you want to use a fixed resolution and a fixed screen size with fixed dpi.

Trying to have the same effect on all possible screen/resolution combos is literally impossible.

 

And I'm not saying DCS does a bad job of it. Actually it is quite fine currently, much better than before.

 

But it's good that threads like this one crop up from time to time to remind ED that it can be even better.

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I run with a first gen release rift and its almost impossible for me to see an aircraft past 2 miles without labels, even with that they have to be just above the horizon to stand out, in real life i have spotted aircraft far further out, i agree with what someone above said about the range thing though, once i actually see an aircraft with labels i do the zoom thing and they all but disappear, there needs to be a way to somewhat scale spotting to try and level it out across the different vr platforms, spotting does seem to be easier without VR from what i gather but i have flown with vr for so long that i was before 2.0. 

 

Irl in all the 9s vis i have spotted aircraft out to over 10 miles, however with 5km vis i havent seen an aircraft head on at co alt until the last minute so close i could count rivets.

 

that being said for ww2 servers specifically most of the time the weather is great vis with few clouds.

 

 


Edited by zcrazyx
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On 1/4/2021 at 9:59 PM, zcrazyx said:

I run with a first gen release rift and its almost impossible for me to see an aircraft past 2 miles without labels, even with that they have to be just above the horizon to stand out, in real life i have spotted aircraft far further out, i agree with what someone above said about the range thing though, once i actually see an aircraft with labels i do the zoom thing and they all but disappear, there needs to be a way to somewhat scale spotting to try and level it out across the different vr platforms, spotting does seem to be easier without VR from what i gather but i have flown with vr for so long that i was before 2.0. 

 

Irl in all the 9s vis i have spotted aircraft out to over 10 miles, however with 5km vis i havent seen an aircraft head on at co alt until the last minute so close i could count rivets.

 

that being said for ww2 servers specifically most of the time the weather is great vis with few clouds.

 

 

 

Having just upgraded from a Rift CV1 to a Reverb G2 I can tell you that, even with my limited time on it so far, spotting is much easier. 

 

I am running it at only 60% resolution for performance but the clarity and removal of SDE makes being able to spot much much better. 

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2 hours ago, Krupi said:

Having just upgraded from a Rift CV1 to a Reverb G2 I can tell you that, even with my limited time on it so far, spotting is much easier. 

 

I am running it at only 60% resolution for performance but the clarity and removal of SDE makes being able to spot much much better. 

Yeah, can't wait for mine to arrive.

 

In the mean time I found that playing at PD 1.0 with no anti-aliasing and no super sampling gives me the best visibility at long range (even though the game looks worse up close).

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On 1/4/2021 at 10:47 PM, Snapage said:

 

Different HOTAS, stick setups etc are irrelevant. The game has settings to allow you tweak the sensitivity of your control inputs depending on what you use which makes most set ups comparable. Just like you have graphics settings to allow good performance depending on what hardware you are using. But trying to render aircraft in a 3D environment in a realistic way on a 2D monitor or tiny VR screen is not achievable. The resolution limitations and limited screen size don't make it possible. Visibility depends to much on your settings and equipment. Anti aliasing makes things look nicer but blends aircraft in with the environment even more. The higher the resolution the smaller the pixels you are trying to see, lower the resolution the larger the pixels you are trying to see. Lower texture resolution means less detail in the surrounding textures and makes it easier to distinguish the pixels that are representing aircraft. 

 

You also have the fact that planes disappear and reappear as you zoom in and out. I don't know about you but I don't find it fun for planes to disappear right in front of me or to know someone is there and close but you can't see them. Planes are easy to spot at long distance but become almost impossible to see once close.

 

We are looking at a limited amount of pixels on a screen just a few feet in front of you. Not even close to reality.


Yesterday when flying online I noticed for the first time that in VR the pixels / dots at medium distance only get rendered on one of the eyes. It makes seeing it extremely difficult.
Far out the dot is very clear and up close the lod is there and visible. But in between they sort of vanish right now.

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Just now, JHAT said:


Yesterday when flying online I noticed for the first time that in VR the pixels / dots at medium distance only get rendered on one of the eyes. It makes seeing it extremely difficult.
Far out the dot is very clear and up close the lod is there and visible. But in between they sort of vanish right now.

please check you are not using stereo parser in your autoexec.cfg if you are disable it, its W.I.P and has side effects currently 

 

Im using a G2 and dont have any issues spotting personally, but it can take a while to get you eye in. 

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2 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

please check you are not using stereo parser in your autoexec.cfg if you are disable it, its W.I.P and has side effects currently 

 

Im using a G2 and dont have any issues spotting personally, but it can take a while to get you eye in. 


I didn‘t have the entry but now I‘ve forced it off. Thanks for the tip. Offline it was rendering fine in a quick test (better visibility I‘d say even). Gotta try it online.


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