Scaling Dots to Screen Resolution - Spotting Gameplay Improvements

[Black_Dynamite]

Hi All,

sorry if this has been brought up before. I have not seen anything recent, though. I know that spotting has been an ongoing debate for some years.

My problem is that I can't see dots. Obviously, dots are meant to be seen as, otherwise, they would not exist in the game. Currently my workaround is turning down pixel density (VR) or screen resolution (monitor). When I do this, I see dots everywhere whereas before it would just show an empty sky. Typically followed by a fox-3 to the face.

I don't like this though, as the sim looks ugly on lower resolutions. I think we can all agree on that. Would it not be possible to implement a slider to increase the pixel size of dots? They need to be visible for everyone and currently for people with higher resolution displays this is not so much the case.

I think I am speaking for a large portion of the user base when asking for something simple and elegant to be implemented in this regard.

Cheers,
Black_Dynamite

[sirrah]

30 minutes ago, Black_Dynamite said:

Hi All,

sorry if this has been brought up before. I have not seen anything recent, though. I know that spotting has been an ongoing debate for some years.

My problem is that I can't see dots. Obviously, dots are meant to be seen as, otherwise, they would not exist in the game. Currently my workaround is turning down pixel density (VR) or screen resolution (monitor). When I do this, I see dots everywhere whereas before it would just show an empty sky. Typically followed by a fox-3 to the face.

I don't like this though, as the sim looks ugly on lower resolutions. I think we can all agree on that. Would it not be possible to implement a slider to increase the pixel size of dots? They need to be visible for everyone and currently for people with higher resolution displays this is not so much the case.

I think I am speaking for a large portion of the user base when asking for something simple and elegant to be implemented in this regard.

Cheers,
Black_Dynamite

What HMD are you using?
I know that since I switched from my Rift cv1 to a Reverb, I have never had any issues to spot enemy air units (in fact, sometimes I can see them from so far away, that I doubt if that's realistic). Not sure why, but I can imagine that the higher resolution of the Reverb has something to do with it?

(spotting ground units is still very hard, but that's just realistic I guess)

[Black_Dynamite]

10 minutes ago, sirrah said:

What HMD are you using?
I know that since I switched from my Rift cv1 to a Reverb, I have never had any issues to spot enemy air units (in fact, sometimes I can see them from so far away, that I doubt if that's realistic). Not sure why, but I can imagine that the higher resolution of the Reverb has something to do with it?

(spotting ground units is still very hard, but that's just realistic I guess)

Using the Reverb here myself. I can tell you for a fact that spotting in DCS is just very different from real life. In real life, regardless of what display solution you use for the game, you get a much higher quality image. Your Eye will see it's environment at a much higher resolution in all regards, be that lighting dynamic range, "pixels" or color contrast. Spotting things from a cockpit in real life is, while a skill and sometimes tricky, not as much of a problem as it is in this sim.

To account for this, ED and other simulators have introduced dots. These exist to visualize targets that would possibly be viewable in real life and after they become hard to see due to the hardware limitations of our electronics. This is all fine and good.

The problem I have is that lowering my display resolution makes these dots much larger while, at high resolutions, they are harder to see. I suggest that we are meant to be able to see these dots, else they would not exist in the game. I think it would make sense to give the user an option to adjust the size of these dots to more than one pixel. That way people with high resolution displays can enjoy good graphics and still have well visible dots.

We can then implement realism by making them fade out at distance. But I definitely want to be able to see them at all while enjoying cranked up resolution settings. Currently I can't.

[LeCuvier]

It's pointless for someone to say that he has no spotting issues, this does not help. I'm one of those who do have spotting issues, and part of that is due to my age.
My work-around: I have changed the dot symbol from a "." to an asterix ("*").

That's easy to do via a little edit of the file "labels.lua" under "C:\Users\YOURNAME\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Config\View".

Open the file with Notepad++ and go to line 63. It should show this:

return {"˙","CenterBottom", blending or 1.0 , opacity  or 0.1}

Change it to

return {"*","CenterBottom", blending or 1.0 , opacity  or 0.1}

and save the file.

You need to start DCS World after making the change.

[Black_Dynamite]

33 minutes ago, LeCuvier said:

It's pointless for someone to say that he has no spotting issues, this does not help. I'm one of those who do have spotting issues, and part of that is due to my age.
My work-around: I have changed the dot symbol from a "." to an asterix ("*").

That's easy to do via a little edit of the file "labels.lua" under "C:\Users\YOURNAME\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Config\View".

Open the file with Notepad++ and go to line 63. It should show this:

return {"˙","CenterBottom", blending or 1.0 , opacity  or 0.1}

Change it to

return {"*","CenterBottom", blending or 1.0 , opacity  or 0.1}

and save the file.

You need to start DCS World after making the change.

LeCuvier, thank you very much for posting your fix. I just tried to implement this, however, I ran into some problems. It seems that my files are structured differently (other version?) and that, also, there is some copy/pasting to do from primary game directory to USERNAME directory. Truth be told, I don't want to go down the rabbit trail of text edits and copy/pasting config files. I just don't have the time. I am in the middle of a career job and just moved in with the girl. ED, please implement a solution.

[sirrah]

40 minutes ago, LeCuvier said:

It's pointless for someone to say that he has no spotting issues

I assume you're referring to my reply?

I was only trying to help the OP, as for me the spotting issue got solved when I switched to a higher res HMD. So much for trying to be helpful...

[Black_Dynamite]

2 minutes ago, sirrah said:

I assume you're referring to my reply?

I was only trying to help the OP, as for me the spotting issue got solved when I switched to a higher res HMD. So much for trying to be helpful...

Hello Sirrah, the higher res helps me see things better up close for sure. However, I think we perhaps mean two different things. After the models fade out then the dot feature comes into play. These dots are a certain amount of pixel(s) in size. Higher res displays will show them smaller, which makes them harder to see. While users who run lower resolutions see them much easier. Let's not get into each others hair over this. This thread is a simple DCS wishlist contribution.

[Tippis]

11 hours ago, LeCuvier said:

It's pointless for someone to say that he has no spotting issues, this does not help. I'm one of those who do have spotting issues, and part of that is due to my age.
My work-around: I have changed the dot symbol from a "." to an asterix ("*").

That's easy to do via a little edit of the file "labels.lua" under "C:\Users\YOURNAME\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Config\View".

Open the file with Notepad++ and go to line 63. It should show this:

return {"˙","CenterBottom", blending or 1.0 , opacity  or 0.1}

Change it to

return {"*","CenterBottom", blending or 1.0 , opacity  or 0.1}

and save the file.

You need to start DCS World after making the change.

In addition to this brief suggestion, you can also universally change the size of all kinds of dots and labels by changing the font size in the labels setup.

Search for the line(s)…

font_properties =  {"DejaVuLGCSans.ttf", 13, 0, 0, 2}

…or something to that effect, and you can simply just increase the size (first number, in pixels), or move or alter the label blur (x,y in the second and third number; blur type as the last one). You can choose between 0 = no blur; 1 = 3×3px blur; 2 = 5×5px blur, but these will only show up if there is also a suitable blur colour and opacity set up, which requires some extra fiddling. In the latest version of the labels file, there will be multiple such font definitions for each label style so you need to pick the one you intend to use (or just alter all of them).

So just bump that font size and get some really big blogs going.

 

Oh, and if your line 63 does not correspond to what LeCuvier is saying above, it may be because you already have an altered labels file, or just a different version to the one referenced here. In that case, you want to search for ”local function dot_symbol” and “local function NEUTRAL_DOT” — these are where that dot definition will show up.

[Black_Dynamite]

21 hours ago, Tippis said:

In addition to this brief suggestion, you can also universally change the size of all kinds of dots and labels by changing the font size in the labels setup.

Search for the line(s)…

font_properties =  {"DejaVuLGCSans.ttf", 13, 0, 0, 2}

…or something to that effect, and you can simply just increase the size (first number, in pixels), or move or alter the label blur (x,y in the second and third number; blur type as the last one). You can choose between 0 = no blur; 1 = 3×3px blur; 2 = 5×5px blur, but these will only show up if there is also a suitable blur colour and opacity set up, which requires some extra fiddling. In the latest version of the labels file, there will be multiple such font definitions for each label style so you need to pick the one you intend to use (or just alter all of them).

So just bump that font size and get some really big blogs going.

 

Oh, and if your line 63 does not correspond to what LeCuvier is saying above, it may be because you already have an altered labels file, or just a different version to the one referenced here. In that case, you want to search for ”local function dot_symbol” and “local function NEUTRAL_DOT” — these are where that dot definition will show up.

Tippis,

thank you for elaborating. I gave this another go tonight. Is it possible that this will only work with labels turned on? I am asking as my "gripe" is really with the dots that the game will show which are not part of the labeling system.

Cheers,
Black_Dynamite

[Tippis]

1 hour ago, Black_Dynamite said:

Tippis,

thank you for elaborating. I gave this another go tonight. Is it possible that this will only work with labels turned on? I am asking as my "gripe" is really with the dots that the game will show which are not part of the labeling system.

Cheers,
Black_Dynamite

The vast majority of it is done through the labelling system, yes, and this has been explicitly stated by ED as being the intended solution unless and until they can be convinced that an actual realistic simulation of spotting and perception is something they'll want to invest time in. You can mod the rest as well, but that will break IC, with all the problems this will cause in multiplayer.

It's also worth mentioning that all the tricks you can do to improve on your dots and labels can be overwritten and enforced in multiplayer missions, so the mission-designer decides what you see and with you having no way of affecting that. In fact, they're so enthusiastically enforced that even though it looks like you can make the client choose what they see, that option doesn't actually exist — the server always enforces its options in one way or another.

Edited March 12, 2022 by Tippis

[Black_Dynamite]

2 minutes ago, Tippis said:

[...] with you having no way of affecting that. [...]

Not entirely true. Dialing down overall resolution works wonders. But I see your point.

Anyhow, thanks for the input. Hopefully we can have a better solution regarding this item one day. Really, it is on ED to work something out.