Option for Server Administrators to disable VR and other in-cockpit Zoom functions.

[SharpeXB]

21 minutes ago, upyr1 said:

My mainpoint in that post is that Eagle knows DCS needs an overhaul. I know VRAM is not connected however bottlenecks pile up on eachother. 

DCS is actually fine. VR hardware is what needs the overhaul. The only technology which can alleviate the resolution burden on these HMDs is something like foveated rendering. 

[TOViper]

For me the following would occur once a server disables VR-zoom (we can discuss VR-deep-specular-zoom -.... don't know its name actually):
I don't fly there, since I MUST use VR-zoom to read anything on the displays (F-16, F-14, etc.). As easy as this.

This doesn't necessarily mean that I am against such a function

Edited July 4, 2022 by TOViper

[okopanja]

44 minutes ago, CobaltUK said:

Not true.

Would you care to elaborate with the numerical evidence?

For once and all, what should be take into account is the the minimal angle the human eye can resolve.

[lefuneste01]

They should also provide an option  to remove zoom if you are flying with a 4k 50" (or greater) screen.

I'm sure you can see more detail on this config than with a VR HMD.

In fact they should provide an option to forbid any higher resolution than 1024x768 if you have a screen bigger than 14", otherwise it's cheating.

[Mars Exulte]

I always enjoy the tryhards trying to micromanage how people play the game in the interest of ''PvP BALANZE!''... jesus. It's a video game, and 90% of what people do are workarounds for real life hardware limitations. You're not a real fighter pilot, no mtter how much you gimp yourself (or others) in the mock pursuit of REALIZM. It's a vidoe game, and we're all gamers (even the ones that are rl fighter pilots).

[SharpeXB]

28 minutes ago, lefuneste01 said:

They should also provide an option  to remove zoom if you are flying with a 4k 50" (or greater) screen.

This display is still very short of real life vision. That fact should be rather obvious. 

[WipeUout]

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

VR is already life-sized.

Not exactly, the widest FOV you can get in VR with a pimax is 170 degree but most people with a Pimax use 150 degree because it is less demanding.  Human eye FOV is over 180 degrees.  Notwithstanding the FOV, you have 4k per eye of pixels, no more (pimax 8k).  The pixels are streched quite a bit and you loose a lot of resolution compared to pancake mode.  Also, the zoom in VR does not reveal more details because it does not change the resolution of the image, it simply moves the image closer to your eye.

 

Edited July 4, 2022 by WipeUout
Typo

[Dragon1-1]

11 minutes ago, WipeUout said:

Human eye FOV is over 180 degrees.

For a single, nonmoving eye it's not that much. It's actually quite complex, because the eye's "resolution" is not uniformly distributed. Foveated rendering takes advantage of that to improve performance. The major limitation of the current headsets is peripheral vision and the size of the "sweet spot" where the picture is clearest.

Also, VR is "life-sized", in that what you see in the headset looks the same size as IRL. You do have your view restricted, like you were wearing horse blinders (or NVGs, which reportedly have a similar FOV to a Reverb G2), but it's not stretched to match that FOV. On a monitor, changing the FOV doesn't change the picture size (it always fills your monitor), but it does change the "world scale". In VR, changing the FOV (by using a different headset) changes the picture size, and "world scale" doesn't change unless you force it to change.

I found most small labels quite readable at 100% with my Reverb G2. Not all of them, but most MFD symbology and HUDs are fine. It seems that there are some filtering/mipmapping artifacts making it worse than it should be, text of the same apparent size, but at a greater distance is harder to read than one up close. Then again, it's got a high pixel density as expense of limited FOV. Others may differ.

[SharpeXB]

23 hours ago, WipeUout said:

Not exactly, the widest FOV you can get in VR with a pimax is 170 degree but most people with a Pimax use 150 degree because it is less demanding.  Human eye FOV is over 180 degrees.  Notwithstanding the FOV, you have 4k per eye of pixels, no more (pimax 8k).  The pixels are streched quite a bit and you loose a lot of resolution compared to pancake mode.  Also, the zoom in VR does not reveal more details because it does not change the resolution of the image, it simply moves the image closer to your eye.

Not talking about FOV but the size of what you’re seeing. VR in DCS is by definition life size although like looking though a scuba mask. 

Edited July 5, 2022 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

6 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

They aren’t comparable because on a normal sized monitor, max zoom equals life-sized more or less.

LMAO no. I know you love making up these random nonsensical statement without even the slightest connection to any known reality, but come on! At least make it sound like you've at some point in your life actually launched DCS and looked at the view from the cockpit.

In the real world, where the rest of us live, 1:1 FoV is actually commonly achieved by having the zoom slider set to the middle position with a monitor at regular, ergonomically approved, standard distance. You can quite trivially calculate the correct view if you have an aircraft with a known-size mil reticle (e.g. the 50 mil reticle in the F-5) — just multiply that size with the viewing distance to get the size the reticle should be on-screen, break out the ruler (again, eg. the aforemoentioned 50 mil reticle × 90cm viewing distance = 4.5cm) and adjust zoom accordingly. If you're particularly pedantic, you could even adjust the monitor position to make sure it matches the zoom axis centre position this way.

6 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

I can’t imagine what zoom looks like in VR, it must feel terribly unnatural and potentially sickness inducing. So VR players likely already have a reason not to overuse it. 

It's not so much the looks as the the angular compression — something our eyes can't do without the aid of outside help, and the brain is unfortunately very good at determining when you're using those to make the world look wrong… so it doesn't. The issue in VR is that the brain has a very hard time grasping that you're essentially doing the same since it looks like you're just using your eyes.

As for how VR zoom looks, let's take these comparisons from a different thread where you made some other but equally catastrophically uninformed assumptions as to how DCS works in VR and in pancake mode.

 

  

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

Not talking about FOV but the size of what you’re seeing. VR is by definition life size although like looking though a scuba mask. 

Not it is not. If it works out that way, it's by intent and design, not by definition. It entirely depends on how the world is scaled and how that scale is adjusted or derived from IPD settings. This is why in, for instance, Google Maps VR, you can be a giant stomping around in a toy-sized city, or, with the flip of a switch, you can hang precariously 300m above a regular-sized city. Or why you can cross the entire solar system in thee steps in various space simulators.

Edited July 4, 2022 by Tippis

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Tippis said:

In the real world, where the rest of us live, 1:1 FoV is actually commonly achieved by having the zoom slider set to the middle position with a monitor at regular, ergonomically approved, standard distance.

Not sure what screen size you think is “regular, ergonomically approved” but since the game doesn’t know your monitor size or viewing distance, it’s certainly not intended that the middle zoom level reflects anything. This setting would produce the same results on a laptop or a 50” TV. 

1 hour ago, Tippis said:

Not it is not. If it works out that way, it's by intent and design, not by definition. It entirely depends on how the world is scaled and how that scale is adjusted or derived from IPD settings. This is why in, for instance, Google Maps VR, you can be a giant stomping around in a toy-sized city, or, with the flip of a switch, you can hang precariously 300m above a regular-sized city. Or why you can cross the entire solar system in thee steps in various space simulators.

Ok but in this game I’m sure that’s not how VR is typically used, I don’t imagine anyone plays DCS with their IPD set to show the game vastly out of scale.

[SkateZilla]

On 7/2/2022 at 1:02 AM, mobettameta said:

Hello all,

I run a set of servers focused on A2A PvP.  I've been finding that people have been abusing VR Zoom and other in-cockpit zoom functions to either tell aspect, flap position, wing sweep position, AB on/off, or other details that would not be normally observable at the distances they are observing these signs.

I'd like to have the option to disable the feature for all clients on the server.  If there is a way to force it off through lua or something, that is fine, but I think it should be a server option just as "no external views" and such are options.

Thank you.

Not to be a pickle, But there's no water to hold with this, it sounds like someone just decided to cook up a complaint to the server admins to justify their losing streak.


As for Comparing VR to Non VR Screenshots and FoV,

ie, the Above shot.

That Little Circle would be stretched across 160°+ of your vision depending on headset, 

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by SkateZilla

[Tippis]

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Not sure what screen size you think is “regular, ergonomically approved”

That's not what I wrote, now is it?

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

since the game doesn’t know your monitor size or viewing distance

It doesn't have to, but actually, the monitor size is pretty trivial for it to find out. Why and how this is the case has been explained to you extensively.

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

it’s certainly not intended that the middle zoom level reflects anything.

[Citation needed]. Because again, and I'll come back to that word, that is commonly the end result of putting the slider at the 50% position.

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

This setting would produce the same results on a laptop or a 50” TV. 

…and guess what? It can trivially be made to be correct on both using the method described. That's the beauty of the most simple bit of trigonometry: screen size is not a factor in the ability to make it a 1:1 FoV, and ultimately, if you need max zoom to replicate a correct on-screen size of things, then you 1) should probably consider consulting an optometrist as a first step to deal with your persistent tunnel vision, and/or 2) your display arrangement is very poorly thought out and needs to be fixed.

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Ok but in this game I’m sure that’s not how VR is typically used, I don’t imagine anyone plays DCS with their IPD set to show the game vastly out of scale.

As you well know from a different thread where you argued against an option that didn't affect you and that you didn't understand, it's actually the other way around: a lot of things in DCS is out of scale and people want to use IPD settings to make it life-size. You really need to stop using your imagination as a data point.

[Mars Exulte]

It's always fun to watch you two argue in circles =) In a past life you must've been married.

[cfrag]

11 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Not talking about FOV but the size of what you’re seeing. VR is by definition life size although like looking though a scuba mask. 

I'm not sure what "by definition life-size" means, if that assertion is true (I think it's not, see Google Earth), nor how this would apply to the issue at hand. If you mean "scale" then yes, VR HMD are often calibrated to deliver a 1:1 scale "experience": turning your head by 20 degrees turns the view by 20 degrees; a 1m "object space" object looks to be 1m in size in "view space" in relation to everything else around you, and it's size behaves accordingly when you move about -- when done correctly. This is by no means a guarantee, and VR headsets operate at different scales within different apps, depending on how the app's graphics engine works. Fallout 4's engine, for example, works at a 1:1.2 scale: everything is a bit smaller than real world. In addition, many VR headsets allow user-configurable tweaks to change aspect, reprojection, FOV or scale -- all depending on what the vendor packages with their headset and which VR integration software (SteamVR, Win AR, OpenVR, others) you use. So VR isn't 'by definition' life size, it can be a real-world imitating experience if you choose so, and it often makes sense to set it up that way - but by no means always. In Google Earth VR, for example, you are a giant who is some 50m tall, and you walk with giant strides through a realistic miniature world that's at a scale of 1:20 and smaller. In "The Body VR", you are the size of a small cell and move though a human body's blood vessels. Both are definitely not 'life size'. It's one of VR's major selling points to not be tied to to a 1:1 scale or view point. 

In VR, like in real life, depending on your distance, an object can fill the entire screen (when you are close) and reveal a lot of detail, or it can be a near-invisible small 'dot' when you are further away, revealing almost nothing. So the inherent 'size' of what you are seeing is a function of distance. In camera terms, VR goggles often behave as if you are looking through a fixed 50mm camera lens: An object (e.g., a tank) that would appear to be one arcsecond wide "in reality" (naked eye real world) also takes one arcsecond of your view in the HMD.

Note that simply because you have a 1:1 view engine scale that has no implication on visual fidelity/resolution. If you are 1m away from an MFD that is a 30 cm square, it looks to be 30cm wide when viewed at 1m distance in a 1:1 experience. Whether you can read what's on the screen solely depends on the headset's resolution. A good resolution HMD (say Pimax) may allow you to read the display; a lesser display may not, even though both are "1:1 Scale", the distance is identical, and their displays seemingly cover the same angular width in your view. So what you are seeing may be big or small, the visual quality is still highly dependent on the HMD. At 1080x1200 per eye, that HMD reveals much less information than a HMD with 2400x2400 per eye, even if both objects appear to be exactly 1m tall when viewed from 2 meters away.

So how does this apply here? The feature in question (VR Zoom) works differently from a true 3D engine's zoom: in DCS, the engine merely moves the projection plane closer to the eye (i.e. "shoving your nose closer to the screen"); it merely foreshortens the camera's frustum without enlarging the screen resolution or FOV; it's not re-rendering the scene with a smaller FOV like a virtual zoom lens would (which would increase object resolution and reveal new information like object detail). It's very much like moving closer to the screen when using a flat screen: the game's FOV doesn't change, and parts of the screen merely fall off your vision - the pixels of the screen take up larger parts of your vision without revealing additional information. That's why it looks so strange when you move your head in DCS's VR Zoom: you suddenly view the projection screen at an angle and it's revealed to your brain that you are looking at a 2D screen.

VR users can (and do) move their head (HMD) closer to instruments to get a better look, increasing the angular width of what they look at, and that increases the object's resolution until the engine hits the texture's resolution limit. VR Zoom in DCS is a hack that doesn't move the camera, but merely enlarges the projected image without adding detail. It's completely different from the normal flat-screen zoom function. That may be why people who do not use this feature suspect it could be used for nefarious purposes like cheating.

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by cfrag

[okopanja]

3 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

Not to be a pickle, But there's no water to hold with this, it sounds like someone just decided to cook up a complaint to the server admins to justify their losing streak.

Sorry I do not see it this way. You see despite me being a really lousy at spotting, I do not think it is not normal to zoom outside of the cockpit to the level that beats many radars in this game. Real pilots can not see these things.

Also making any analogy with eyesight's megapixels is flawed, since the main limitations is a rather poor optical performance of human eyes. Raw estimates of megapixels are fine if you are looking at the picture 40-50cm away, but not 10s of km in distance.

IMHO: the admin should have an option to restrict your zoom outside of the cockpit (you should be able to zoom inside cockpit unrestricted, if you do not like it, you simple fly on a different server.

Zooming is constantly being abused in MP, especially in combination with aircrafts with augmented reality. You simply zoom in and see what your opponent is doing.

For a reality check: how many of you do not have zoom assigned on hotas or a stick?

[draconus]

@cfrag You're wrong on the VR zoom function (both normal and spyglass) as I've just tested it last night to be sure. I don't argue how it works exactly but it does reveal more information, ie. I look at the counter, the digits are fuzzy, just some 4 pixels high, I cannot read this at all but when using zoom the digits become clearly readable, they are now some 8 pixels high, same as using zoom/fov on a monitor.

@okopanja When starting DCS I used zoom (bound to HOTAS). Then after some time I started using fixed real fov on a monitor. Then I went VR and not using zoom either.

Edited July 5, 2022 by draconus

[cfrag]

Just now, draconus said:

I don't argue how it works exactly but it does reveal more information, ie. I look at the counter, the digits are fuzzy, just some 4 pixels high, I cannot read this at all but when using zoom the digits become clearly readable, they are now some 8 pixels high, same as using zoom/fov on a monitor.

That's not a contradiction - the projection plane renders at a higher resolution (in subpixel resolution) than your HMD. When you zoom in, that is revealed - but it's not new information, it has always been there on the projection screen. It's akin to moving closer to your flat screen. It may reveal more information to your eyes (especially if you have a high resolution screen), but that information was always there, you did not change the zoom factor. Your virtual eyes were too far away from the screen to pick up on that, and VR zoom fixes that. 

4 minutes ago, okopanja said:

Zooming is constantly being abused in MP, especially in combination with aircrafts with augmented reality. You simply zoom in and see what your opponent is doing.

I'm sure that zoom is being abused exactly as you describe. What I'm not so sure about is if VR Zoom is being abused that way, and that only VR zoom is being abused that way. 

[draconus]

3 minutes ago, cfrag said:

It's akin to moving closer to your flat screen.

No, it's not. I don't care what happens behind the scenes and I will not argue with that. I just tell you what I see and it effectively reveals the info I did not have without the zoom.

What you describe:

What I see:

[cfrag]

14 minutes ago, draconus said:

What you describe:

That's not what I describe. What you see in your HMD is a scaled-down version of the projection image, with some loss of detail. When you zoom in, the full resolution is revealed. Just like moving closer to your monitor to reveal more pixel detail that your eyes weren't able to resolve from normal viewing distance.

(and yes, this is not a good example, best mock-up I could come up with, apologies)

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by cfrag

[draconus]

15 minutes ago, cfrag said:

What you see in your HMD is a scaled-down version of the projection image, with some loss of detail.

Doesn't matter in that case. VR zoom effectively works the same as zoom on a monitor, isn't it? It zooms in and you see more things, closer, better, more clearly.

[cfrag]

Just now, draconus said:

VR zoom effectively works the same as zoom on a monitor, isn't it?

I verified in DCS and it seems that VR Zoom and VR Spyglass are correctly zooming using FOV, not simply enlarging the projection plane. VR users now can have a very similar zoom feature as flat screen users. 

@draconus: I stand corrected, thank you.

-ch

 

[SharpeXB]

5 hours ago, cfrag said:

I'm not sure what "by definition life-size" means

It means exactly what it says. When looking at a 3D 1st person sim, it means the angular size of what you see on the screen matches the size you’d see IRL as if you were just looking through the screen like a window. The FOV concept for a monitor doesn’t equate to anything in VR. In VR “Life-sized” is self explanatory and would mean having the IPD set so that you perceive everything at its actual size. In a 1st Person simulator game I can only assume this is the norm. 

Edited July 5, 2022 by SharpeXB

[Cab]

Visual acuity in-game doesn't come close to real life, so maybe the answer here is not to eliminate zoom on command but rather to reduce it.

Chuck Yeager reportedly had 20/10 vision. ED could simulate that instead.

[Mr_sukebe]

Interesting how this seems to be aimed at VR users, especially when I look at online streaming of DCS A2A where most monitor users appear to use zoom far more commonly than I do whilst in VR