Can anything be done to improve the look of the radar beam?

[Inf]

Maybe this is how the Viggen radar beam actually looks, or it might be a limitation of how cockpits are made in DCS...but the radar beam in the AG radar display looks really WIP to me. Like, it looks like a textured quad that's rotating, and when it hits one limit it just flips horizontally, but the alignment isn't quite right so there's a noticeable jump. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Can anything be done about this? Like if the offset is an issue maybe use two quads (one for each direction) and fade them out?

[Machalot]

Compare to this video at timestamp 12:08.  It should start playing just before that point.

 

[Inf]

haha well damn! perfectly captured then!  Guess I'll learn to love it in time.

[Cobra847]

49 minutes ago, Inf said:

haha well damn! perfectly captured then!  Guess I'll learn to love it in time.

This is a funny one, as when I was making it I had the same feeling; but we did indeed simply try to emulate the video  

[scoobie]

Whoa, wait... what's going on at 12:21-12:22 in the video? That "rotation" on the radar screen? I've never seen anything like this in DCS:Viggy or... maybe I've never paid enough attention to the radar screen. I don't have sound here, but I guess they're talking Swedish so it wouldn't help me anyway.
It looks like the pilot turned on memory mode to sort out those ships, then the two lines at the sides started extending from the bottom of the screen (starting at around 12:13), which I think mean he started pulling up (?). Then the lines started "curving", which probably means he banked right as shortly afterwards you can see the compass ring started rotating. But he was still in memory mode. It just occurred to me I've never really used memory mode (other than a quick test maybe), so I don't know... Do we have such fancy feature in DCS? I have no complaints about the Viggy, I'm just curious.

[Machalot]

The rotation effect was the horizon line as he banked. The CRT screen is a lot smearier than what is modeled in DCS.

[frosen]

7 hours ago, scoobie said:

Whoa, wait... what's going on at 12:21-12:22 in the video? That "rotation" on the radar screen? I've never seen anything like this in DCS:Viggy or... maybe I've never paid enough attention to the radar screen. I don't have sound here, but I guess they're talking Swedish so it wouldn't help me anyway.
It looks like the pilot turned on memory mode to sort out those ships, then the two lines at the sides started extending from the bottom of the screen (starting at around 12:13), which I think mean he started pulling up (?). Then the lines started "curving", which probably means he banked right as shortly afterwards you can see the compass ring started rotating. But he was still in memory mode. It just occurred to me I've never really used memory mode (other than a quick test maybe), so I don't know... Do we have such fancy feature in DCS? I have no complaints about the Viggy, I'm just curious.

They were per the doctrine actually supposed to use memory mode pretty much all the time. A few scans by the radar and then into memory mode and mark the targets. Then a couple of minutes till next couple of sweeps etc.

That's why I'm very happy to finally have the proper memory mode in place in DCS to play it tactical 

[Machalot]

I read somewhere else on the forums or maybe discord that memory mode reduces accuracy because the image doesn't update to track aircraft motion, but the cursor does track aircraft motion. Is that true or false? 

[scoobie]

 I have no idea (@Machalot)

Thank you for all the clarifications!
The "smudging effect" must be... I think... caused by the "persistence CRT" (I don't know how they were called in English) used in the Viggy to cater for the memory mode. So, without memory mode there should be no smudging and with the mode turned on... apparently there was some smudging (I've never used such scope, so I don't know exactly, I saw a few of them, but I must have been a teenager back then and such scopes were expensive - nobody would let me touch such "serious" gear). I think the smudging may be really hard to model in detail - I doubt there's a knight-errant in HB to go down such rabbit hole, the only gain would be... smudging in memory mode. That doesn't sound like worth the effort

 

10 hours ago, Cobra847 said:

we did indeed simply try to emulate the video

And that shows!
Has anybody else noticed that near the "pivot point" of the beam sweeping the screen there's a small "missing" arc, like "cut out"? It looks the same in DCS:Viggy! Such a tiny detail. How crazy is that!

 

Hm... since we're talking about these things... The radar screen could easily look more real if there was only one hue of green on it - they were all monochrome. There must be a graphics file where this attitude indicator "pattern" (those lines) is drawn - the lines should be the same hue of green as the radar return picture. In the current representation it looks fake from 5 feet away, or at least it looks fake to all the folks who were lucky to sit in front of CRT scopes in their lives... and a lot of them are still alive

I attached pictures for comparison. I don't know if "rich green" in the second picture is a proper phrase, but it clearly is a different green from the radar picture - so impossible to obtain IRL.

(To make it clear: of course it's no big deal, nothing to write home about, just a tiny idea for a cheap (if subtle) improvement.)

 

[Machalot]

6 hours ago, scoobie said:

 I have no idea (@Machalot)

Thank you for all the clarifications!
The "smudging effect" must be... I think... caused by the "persistence CRT" (I don't know how they were called in English) used in the Viggy to cater for the memory mode. So, without memory mode there should be no smudging and with the mode turned on... apparently there was some smudging (I've never used such scope, so I don't know exactly, I saw a few of them, but I must have been a teenager back then and such scopes were expensive - nobody would let me touch such "serious" gear). I think the smudging may be really hard to model in detail - I doubt there's a knight-errant in HB to go down such rabbit hole, the only gain would be... smudging in memory mode. That doesn't sound like worth the effort

 

And that shows!
Has anybody else noticed that near the "pivot point" of the beam sweeping the screen there's a small "missing" arc, like "cut out"? It looks the same in DCS:Viggy! Such a tiny detail. How crazy is that!

 

Hm... since we're talking about these things... The radar screen could easily look more real if there was only one hue of green on it - they were all monochrome. There must be a graphics file where this attitude indicator "pattern" (those lines) is drawn - the lines should be the same hue of green as the radar return picture. In the current representation it looks fake from 5 feet away, or at least it looks fake to all the folks who were lucky to sit in front of CRT scopes in their lives... and a lot of them are still alive

I attached pictures for comparison. I don't know if "rich green" in the second picture is a proper phrase, but it clearly is a different green from the radar picture - so impossible to obtain IRL.

(To make it clear: of course it's no big deal, nothing to write home about, just a tiny idea for a cheap (if subtle) improvement.)

 

Amazingly, @MYSE1234had already reported this in the big tracker with an excerpt from the manual! 

[MYSE1234]

7 hours ago, Machalot said:

Amazingly, @MYSE1234had already reported this in the big tracker with an excerpt from the manual! 

Only partly, but I'll add on the "missing" bits.

[frosen]

6 hours ago, MYSE1234 said:

Only partly, but I'll add on the "missing" bits.

Were can I find that bug tracker?

[Machalot]

15 minutes ago, frosen said:

Were can I find that bug tracker?

It's not public, only HB and the beta testers have access. 

[frosen]

1 hour ago, Machalot said:

It's not public, only HB and the beta testers have access. 

Ok, thanks. That makes sense.