Jump to content

Distant aircraft and label scaling at higher resolutions


ClydeBigBird

Recommended Posts

When using a 4k display it is extremely difficult to see distance aircraft on servers with labels disabled.  Lowering resolution on the same display to 1080p makes it so much easier to see distant planes it's almost comical.  It's also much easier to see the minimal red/blue line labels at lower resolutions.

I currently have to lower resolution from 2160p to 1080p whenever playing multiplayer if I don't want to be at an enormous disadvantage.  This to me is probably the most glaring issue of the core game at the moment.  Would really like to see a mechanism that scales distant objects and labels so that they are equally visible across different resolutions.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, ClydeBigBird said:

When using a 4k display it is extremely difficult to see distance aircraft on servers with labels disabled.  Lowering resolution on the same display to 1080p makes it so much easier to see distant planes it's almost comical.  It's also much easier to see the minimal red/blue line labels at lower resolutions.

I currently have to lower resolution from 2160p to 1080p whenever playing multiplayer if I don't want to be at an enormous disadvantage.  This to me is probably the most glaring issue of the core game at the moment.  Would really like to see a mechanism that scales distant objects and labels so that they are equally visible across different resolutions.

I find this one of the most important issues DCS has to date. I've been shot down by A-10s and other non "F" aircraft just 'cause they can visually see me better than my onboard sensors can (radar & EOS)!

  • Like 2

Cmptohocah=CMPTOHOCAH 😉

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Cmptohocah said:

I find this one of the most important issues DCS has to date. I've been shot down by A-10s and other non "F" aircraft just 'cause they can visually see me better than my onboard sensors can (radar & EOS)!

I assume you mean the "ZOOM" feature by this.

As amateur astronomer I am horrified to see how the basic optical principles are totally ignored and this abused. The maximal useful magnification of optics is determined by aperture size. Even then clear picture is achieved at much lower magnification. The main reason is that reflection for different wavelengths results in slightly different angles. As a result the picture gets blurred.

Some people will claim that zoom is there to "fix" inherent problem with us having a smaller physical picture than the pilot sitting in the aircraft, and that zoom fixes this.  I would agree with them to this point, until they zoom outside of the cockpit where they have crystal clear picture at maximum magnification.

IMHO: the zoom should introduce the following effect:

- when focal point is close, the outside of cockpit should be completely blurred.

- when focal point is in distance, the picture should be heavily blurred, so we do not see as distinct "dots", as currently aircraft, freshly fired missiles and even flares are rendered.

We should say at best smudged images instead, and some of the above should not be discernible at all. Each telescope has the minimal size for discernible detail expressed as angle.

I suspect all of the sensors suffer from the same effects.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, okopanja said:

I assume you mean the "ZOOM" feature by this.

Yes, this is what I meant.
Had an A-10C fire an AIM-9 at me from 10-15km distance.
I had no idea what happened, until I saw his video recording. This was the most extreme case, but I do get shot at regularly by others such as Mistral, Harrier etc. at insanely large distances. I usually end up seeing them at around 2-3km away.

  • Like 1

Cmptohocah=CMPTOHOCAH 😉

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Cmptohocah said:

Yes, this is what I meant.
Had an A-10C fire an AIM-9 at me from 10-15km distance.
I had no idea what happened, until I saw his video recording. This was the most extreme case, but I do get shot at regularly by others such as Mistral, Harrier etc. at insanely large distances. I usually end up seeing them at around 2-3km away.

I regularly fire ET at 40km passively, only to see the guy through my own zoom. I can see him firing flares, deep diving, in return I fire another ET once he stops.

I did not realize this,  until I saw a video of a guy firing at me.


Edited by okopanja
Link to comment
Share on other sites

People who claim zoom fixes this issue have definitely not experienced it.  When playing at a lower resolution, a distant aircraft will be clearly visible as a speck in the sky when you are zoomed out.  Zooming in can actually cause this speck to disappear!

Unfortunately, I don't expect that this is going to be a trivial thing to fix.  Probably what's happening is distant objects are so small they are rendered as a single (or very few pixels), and these pixels are simply larger at lower resolutions yet practically invisible at 4k.  I've seen people say Falcon BMS has a way of addressing this, I wonder how they do it?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, ClydeBigBird said:

People who claim zoom fixes this issue have definitely not experienced it.  When playing at a lower resolution, a distant aircraft will be clearly visible as a speck in the sky when you are zoomed out.  Zooming in can actually cause this speck to disappear!

Unfortunately, I don't expect that this is going to be a trivial thing to fix.  Probably what's happening is distant objects are so small they are rendered as a single (or very few pixels), and these pixels are simply larger at lower resolutions yet practically invisible at 4k.  I've seen people say Falcon BMS has a way of addressing this, I wonder how they do it?

This is why the rendering needs to be overhauled, aside of the fact that "virtual" lens behaves like a perfect apochromat telescope. If am not mistaken, also all optic sensors are perfect as well.

Also another issue is that rendering needs to take into account physical pixel size into account, since many already use 55in TV sets. Buying larger screen should not allow the user to see further, only wider!


Edited by okopanja
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/3/2022 at 2:33 AM, okopanja said:

Some people will claim that zoom is there to "fix" inherent problem with us having a smaller physical picture than the pilot sitting in the aircraft, and that zoom fixes this. 

Size and FOV are one part of this issue but resolution is a part of it also. A real life sized FOV would actually be closer to the zoomed-in size on a desktop sized screen. But real life resolution is vastly higher than what a screen can produce and the only way to compensate for this is the magnify the image. For a simple understanding of this, notice how it’s necessary to zoom in just to read the instruments in the cockpit. 
Zoom view is basically the only way to simulate 20/20 vision on a computer monitor. The level given to you in the sim is not that egregious. 

i9-13900K @ 6.2GHz oc | ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO | 64GB DDR5 5600MHz | iCUE H150i Liquid CPU Cooler | 24GB GeForce RTX 4090 | Windows 11 Home | 2TB Samsung 980 PRO NVMe | Corsair RM1000x | LG 48GQ900-B 4K OLED Monitor | CH Fighterstick | Ch Pro Throttle | CH Pro Pedals | TrackIR 5

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Size and FOV are one part of this issue but resolution is a part of it also. A real life sized FOV would actually be closer to the zoomed-in size on a desktop sized screen. But real life resolution is vastly higher than what a screen can produce and the only way to compensate for this is the magnify the image. For a simple understanding of this, notice how it’s necessary to zoom in just to read the instruments in the cockpit. 
Zoom view is basically the only way to simulate 20/20 vision on a computer monitor. The level given to you in the sim is not that egregious. 

If you read what I originally wrote I covered 2 things:

1. visibility of instruments: zoom justified

2. visibility of aircraft/missiles/flares beyond visual range: clear cheat

Both of these problems can be solved easily:

1. allow zoom in cockpit only

2. anything outside cockpit: sorry no zoom at all, or extrapolate realistic picture rendered on the distance of cockpit (not the one that renders 50-80km away!)

So people stay in your own cockpit, if your aircraft offers optics fine use them, but physical laws for optics do get applied (no hypersharp image on maximal zoom). This is not a CAD program where infinity is crystal clear.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, okopanja said:

1. visibility of instruments: zoom justified

2. visibility of aircraft/missiles/flares beyond visual range: clear cheat

How could the cockpit view not be a “cheat” and the view outside the cockpit is? The same principles apply to both. It should be fully obvious that what you’re seeing on a screen is much smaller and at a much lower resolution than what you see in the real world.  
If you’re new to playing 3D games, this is an important concept to understand 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_view_in_video_games

If you made the FOV small enough to perceive the game world life-sized, the angle would be too narrow to be usable, especially in a game like this where peripheral vision is important. Some sim racers do actually set this to life-sized since it affects the perception of speed and the loss of peripheral vision isn’t as big a deal and/or they’re using triple screens. 
A monitor can’t show you a realistic peripheral FOV and high acuity at the same time, therefore it’s necessary to change this on the fly ie using the zoom view. This feature is not unique to DCS and is used in all flight sims and many other sim games for the same reasons. Without it you’d be severely handicapped in the ability to replicate real world perception. 

i9-13900K @ 6.2GHz oc | ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO | 64GB DDR5 5600MHz | iCUE H150i Liquid CPU Cooler | 24GB GeForce RTX 4090 | Windows 11 Home | 2TB Samsung 980 PRO NVMe | Corsair RM1000x | LG 48GQ900-B 4K OLED Monitor | CH Fighterstick | Ch Pro Throttle | CH Pro Pedals | TrackIR 5

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

How could the cockpit view not be a “cheat” and the view outside the cockpit is?

Easy you see things that neither you or real-life pilot should see with Eyeball Mk1.

If one wants peripheral vision, zoom out and you will get that feeling for perspective and speed, but that should not allow one to be able to see things real pilots can not see. Seeing the objects in cockpit life sized is ok, going on beyond that for things external to the cockpit is simply not realistic.

Again a simple statement: getting real size HUD or an instrument is OK. Getting the telescope along the way, which is actually "perfect" one is totally wrong. Not to mention the oversized image you can get through 55in screen or VR. Pass certain screen size, the user should benefit only in terms of peripheral vision.

When fixing 4k render, these issues should be taken care of as well.


Edited by okopanja
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, okopanja said:

Easy you see things that neither you or real-life pilot should see with Eyeball Mk1.

Well there’s no current display technology or VR headset that can simulate real life 20/20 vision. Again this should be just abundantly obvious to everyone. For some reason flight sim players get confused by this. Probably because many players aren’t real pilots and being in a cockpit seems foreign. So imagine this is your car. Without a zoom view you wouldn’t be able to read road signs if this were some sort of driving sim. Everyone has flown in an airplane though. You could make out vehicles on the ground from 20,000’ that you’d be unable to see on a 1080p screen without zooming in to see them. 

1 hour ago, okopanja said:

Seeing the objects in cockpit life sized is ok, going on beyond that for things external to the cockpit is simply not realistic.

The same FOV is applied to both. Again this should be obvious. 

1 hour ago, okopanja said:

When fixing 4k render, these issues should be taken care of as well.

It should but it’s a very difficult problem to solve. As screens and HMDs get higher and higher resolutions, they shouldn’t be penalized by pixel sized “sprites” which is what I think DCS is using

  • Like 1

i9-13900K @ 6.2GHz oc | ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO | 64GB DDR5 5600MHz | iCUE H150i Liquid CPU Cooler | 24GB GeForce RTX 4090 | Windows 11 Home | 2TB Samsung 980 PRO NVMe | Corsair RM1000x | LG 48GQ900-B 4K OLED Monitor | CH Fighterstick | Ch Pro Throttle | CH Pro Pedals | TrackIR 5

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, okopanja said:

Not to mention the oversized image you can get through 55in screen or VR

You do realize what you see in VR is not oversized, It’s the actual size. 

i9-13900K @ 6.2GHz oc | ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO | 64GB DDR5 5600MHz | iCUE H150i Liquid CPU Cooler | 24GB GeForce RTX 4090 | Windows 11 Home | 2TB Samsung 980 PRO NVMe | Corsair RM1000x | LG 48GQ900-B 4K OLED Monitor | CH Fighterstick | Ch Pro Throttle | CH Pro Pedals | TrackIR 5

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, SharpeXB said:

You do realize what you see in VR is not oversized, It’s the actual size. 

There is no such thing as seeing a dot 50-80 km away.

There is a limit on what is a minimal angle magnifying device can resolve. Resolve in this case does not mean crystal sharp, it means that you can just see it, barely see it. A pixel if it is easier to imagine it, but very very blurry one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, okopanja said:

There is no such thing as seeing a dot 50-80 km away.

There’s also no way for a computer screen to show something smaller than a pixel, which is still quite large. That’s the problem. Should distant aircraft just vanish at this size? Or remain rendered as a single pixel? Niether choice is accurate or equitable between devices. I agree you shouldn’t see contacts at this range but solving this isn’t too easy. A few years ago DCS experimented with a sprite system that overlayed a fixed-pixel sized sprite over contacts. It made them effectively the size of skyscrapers and was abolished. But it seems something like this is still going on if it’s possible to see things that far away. 

i9-13900K @ 6.2GHz oc | ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO | 64GB DDR5 5600MHz | iCUE H150i Liquid CPU Cooler | 24GB GeForce RTX 4090 | Windows 11 Home | 2TB Samsung 980 PRO NVMe | Corsair RM1000x | LG 48GQ900-B 4K OLED Monitor | CH Fighterstick | Ch Pro Throttle | CH Pro Pedals | TrackIR 5

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

There’s also no way for a computer screen to show something smaller than a pixel, which is still quite large. That’s the problem. Should distant aircraft just vanish at this size? Or remain rendered as a single pixel? Niether choice is accurate or equitable between devices. I agree you shouldn’t see contacts at this range but solving this isn’t too easy. A few years ago DCS experimented with a sprite system that overlayed a fixed-pixel sized sprite over contacts. It made them effectively the size of skyscrapers and was abolished. But it seems something like this is still going on if it’s possible to see things that far away. 

There is maximal angle human eye can resolve + different angles at which the different angles reflect. On top of it there is something called "seeing". In astronomy it is used to describe quality condition of atmosphere which is influenced by humidity, temperature and winds, and tells you how much the atmosphere is calm. Obviously this varies during the day, and typically is best at night when it is cold and no winds. It also depends on different layers of the atmosphere (it can be calm down there, with strong disturbances up there). The worse it is, the details you can resolve are worse. Typically it is very bad just above horizon with best being straight up. In DCS we mostly look level, which would influence how far we could see. I think ED should take into account when designing the better rendering to support newer displays. The simplest thing to do is to emulate this by rendering the target image fainter and fainter, more blended into the background, so much that our eyes at the end do not notice the contrast between different colors.

Do not get me wrong I do not have anything against VR, but present situation with displays and resolutions going up leads to undesirable effects.


Edited by okopanja
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, okopanja said:

I do not have anything against VR, but present situation with displays and resolutions going up leads to undesirable effects.

Maybe the current system is in fact optimized around higher resolution displays where single pixels are much smaller. VR headsets tend to run very high pixel densities even though their native screen res can be small. They push more pixels than a 4K screen and would then be at a disadvantage compared to say a 1080p monitor in this regard. I’m using a 4K screen and feel like what I see is about correct. I don’t see egregious blobs in the distance and the range I can make out a contact seems to correspond to reality. 

i9-13900K @ 6.2GHz oc | ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO | 64GB DDR5 5600MHz | iCUE H150i Liquid CPU Cooler | 24GB GeForce RTX 4090 | Windows 11 Home | 2TB Samsung 980 PRO NVMe | Corsair RM1000x | LG 48GQ900-B 4K OLED Monitor | CH Fighterstick | Ch Pro Throttle | CH Pro Pedals | TrackIR 5

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/6/2022 at 11:46 PM, okopanja said:

The simplest thing to do is to emulate this by rendering the target image fainter and fainter, more blended into the background, so much that our eyes at the end do not notice the contrast between different colors.

Yep, this is how it should be done but I believe current system uses arbitrary black single pixel dots at some calculated distance. Depending on your screen size, resolution and viewer distance this will be either totally visible (ex. close big screen at 1080p or low res VR) or impossible to spot (ex. farther placed medium size 4K). So you both are right but @okopanja rejects the fact that the game doesn't know the physical size of the screen and the distance to the viewer - so you can't simulate proper optical (eye) limits or real fov without that info. And btw same principle apply to both cockpit and outside world.

  • Like 1

🖥️ Win10 i7-10700KF 32GB RTX3060   🥽 Rift S   🕹️ T16000M HOTAS   ✈️ FC3, F-14A/B, F-15E   ⚙️ CA   🚢 SC   🌐 NTTR, PG, Syria

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/9/2022 at 11:56 AM, draconus said:

Yep, this is how it should be done but I believe current system uses arbitrary black single pixel dots at some calculated distance. Depending on your screen size, resolution and viewer distance this will be either totally visible (ex. close big screen at 1080p or low res VR) or impossible to spot (ex. farther placed medium size 4K). So you both are right but @okopanja rejects the fact that the game doesn't know the physical size of the screen and the distance to the viewer - so you can't simulate proper optical (eye) limits or real fov without that info. And btw same principle apply to both cockpit and outside world.

There must be some solution to seeing other aircraft miles (kilometers) away.
If your hardware setup exploits this and you can clearly see me as dot and I have to rely on my onboard sensors to see you, which might or might not pick you up, then you are clearly at a huge advantage over me.

Cmptohocah=CMPTOHOCAH 😉

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wonder if there's a way they can scale the minimum object size in pixels.  E.g. if some far off object would appear as one pixel in 1080p, make it appear as a group of 4 pixels in 4k.  I don't really know enough about graphics or game engine programming to know how doable it would be to only scale up objects that would appear as less than a certain number of pixels without blowing up objects at all distances.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, ClydeBigBird said:

I wonder if there's a way they can scale the minimum object size in pixels.  E.g. if some far off object would appear as one pixel in 1080p, make it appear as a group of 4 pixels in 4k.

That wouldn't make any sense. It'd be going backwards with computer graphics progress. You can get this either by changing your 4k monitor to 1080 res or simply use 1080 monitor if your aim is to have maximum target visibilty atm. If you want target scaled up on 4k - use labels instead.

There's no way to make it even for everybody with different monitor sizes, resolutions and view distances. You can't blame devs for any advantage someone has over you when you simply make it harder for yourself. The 1080 is still available to you if you want to "exploit" it.

If the target is black dot in 4k - it should be ex. grey dot in 1080 (not black) if at all visible - meaning same contrast - this is the only thing devs can make better.

Imo it should be like that:

1. At some distance the target should not be visible at all no matter the resolution.

2. At some point 4k will display faint dot while 1080 should not display any difference at the same spot.

3. At some point 4k will have 2 or more pixels for a target while 1080 should have a faint dot visible.

... This is all done by math for angular size vs pixels on a screen. Where the object is smaller than a pixel it can still be represented by a lower contrast pixel up to the point of no difference between the pixel and the background.


Edited by draconus
  • Like 2

🖥️ Win10 i7-10700KF 32GB RTX3060   🥽 Rift S   🕹️ T16000M HOTAS   ✈️ FC3, F-14A/B, F-15E   ⚙️ CA   🚢 SC   🌐 NTTR, PG, Syria

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Except for the VR(limiting their zoom is trivial), I am pretty sure that for ober 90% of people we are talking about the same viewing distance. Exception might be people using projectors, or some people building pits in unoptimal way for their real fov.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Few ideas that occur to me on how this can be solved:

  • VR: for each device it is know exactly what is the fov and the pixel density and corresponding eye distance
  • plain desktop users: typical eye distance is more or less the say.
  • desktop users with trackIR and similar: distance can be measured by these devices 🙂. In fact distance is used to figure out position of head and move camera (at least by default)
  • laptop users: depends if they use external keyboard or not (again detectable)
  • pits with screen: mostly they tend to bring the screen as close as they can to have better fov
  • pits with projects: now this is difficult to find out, but I gather calibration software they use can infer the distance as well

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It’s a bit farfetched to have the game try to measure the players viewing distance to their screen. 
 

A better solution is to simply stop using pixel-sized sprites or artificial enhancements. That way a distant contact which would appear as one black pixel in 4K would render as (4) 25% grey pixels in 1080p as it should. Higher and higher resolution screens and HMDs will become the norm and so penalizing these is backwards thinking. 

i9-13900K @ 6.2GHz oc | ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO | 64GB DDR5 5600MHz | iCUE H150i Liquid CPU Cooler | 24GB GeForce RTX 4090 | Windows 11 Home | 2TB Samsung 980 PRO NVMe | Corsair RM1000x | LG 48GQ900-B 4K OLED Monitor | CH Fighterstick | Ch Pro Throttle | CH Pro Pedals | TrackIR 5

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

It’s a bit farfetched to have the game try to measure the players viewing distance to their screen. 
 

A better solution is to simply stop using pixel-sized sprites or artificial enhancements. That way a distant contact which would appear as one black pixel in 4K would render as (4) 25% grey pixels in 1080p as it should. Higher and higher resolution screens and HMDs will become the norm and so penalizing these is backwards thinking. 

While it may be true that it is farfetched, measuring distance and considering display advances as well eye capabilities would make this future safe.

I really think this should be a comprehensive solution in order to prevent any future complains, once and for all use cases.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...