Sense of Speed Low Down

[C3PO]

Been watching a lot of low-level RL flight footage recently, and what feels missing for me in DCS is that sense of speed low down ... whether in VR or pancake mode. Flying through a valley in the Caucasus last night lacked that sheer feeling of speed, even low down. Why is that?

[Gremlin17]

I have noticed this too.  450 knots in DCS feels like about 250 in real life.

[sirrah]

25 minutes ago, C3PO said:

Been watching a lot of low-level RL flight footage recently, and what feels missing for me in DCS is that sense of speed low down ... whether in VR or pancake mode. Flying through a valley in the Caucasus last night lacked that sheer feeling of speed, even low down. Why is that?

I'm now expert, but I'm quite certain this all comes down to the player's fov (field of view), or in fact, lack of fov.

 

I'm not suggesting you should actually do this while driving , but step in your car and start driving, then use your hands as blinkers like this:

(let someone else hold the wheel )

You'll notice how your perception of speed is drastically decreased.

 

 

This is also why I keep saying that imho, the biggest step to be made in VR, isn't resolution per se, but larger fov.

I suppose for pancake.. ehr.. monitor users, it's not much different (depending a bit on the size of your screen and how close you are to it). Most people looking at a monitor on there desk, are pretty much looking through a mailbox slot.

Edited January 12, 2023 by sirrah

[Hiob]

It has to do with the field of view, as @sirrah rightfully assumed. To be more precise with the lack of peripheral sight.

The in-cockpit video footage you see on youtube is usually taken with some kind of gopro and a wide angle lens, that makes it appear faster. (The wide angle lens is basically giving back some of the peripheral view.)

 

[Ala13_ManOWar]

Funnily enough, I find DCS to be one of the better depicting speed down low out there , it was so obvious previous older and not so older softwares did a rather poor job on the matter that DCS really made a difference for me with regards to first person field of view, sense of speed and everything. Sense of speed, yes, but what about sense of height above the ground? Some old software were even "faked" in that depicting 1/2 scale maps hence fake speeds and all. It was weird, until DCS made it spot on.

[Mars Exulte]

Your RL FoV is ballpark of 180'. Ingame with VR is usually around 90'. 2d varies depending on size of TV and personal preference, but it's typically 3+ feet away and definitely always wrong. So yes. Your perception of the environment and motion is very different from real life, because it is, in fact, completely different.

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

Framerate might also play a little part in it, since we target 60+ as to avoid everything look like smeared garbage in game.

[Dragon1-1]

For Caucasus specifically, the trees are enormous. Not unrealistically so, biologically speaking, but of a sort you'd find in an ancient old growth forest rather than town greenery and commercial pine forests that are the main type of wooded areas in those parts. I think ED increased the size one day in order to make forests less dense and save on performance. In other maps, it can be better, although I suspect oversized trees aren't just a Caucasus thing. Either way, it's very noticeable if you try to put your helo down near any trees there. They tower over you like they were growing there for a century or more.

7 hours ago, sirrah said:

I'm not suggesting you should actually do this while driving , but step in your car and start driving, then use your hands as blinkers like this:

(let someone else hold the wheel )

You'll notice how your perception of speed is drastically decreased.

Have you actually done this experiment? It doesn't work that way. In VR, your perception of motion is the same as IRL, because unlike on a screen, in VR the FOV is clipped, rather than compressed. As such, objects in VR appear the same size as they do in real life, but you lose your peripheral vision. On a monitor, depending on the FOV you set you can see an angle comparable to your actual vision angle, but it's compressed to 20 or so degrees in front of your face. Objects on a monitor appear much smaller than they would IRL. Had you tried to scale a monitor the way VR does it, you wouldn't see much because it typically takes up a small portion of your real life FOV, and you'd see a proportionately small fraction of the sim world. Good for WWII tank sims, maybe, but not for flying.

Lack of peripheral vision does little to your perception of speed, oversized objects do. In case of Caucasus specifically, ED has dropped the ball a bit, although the performance tradeoff probably seemed a good one in pre-VR days, as the trees being oversized isn't as obvious out of VR.

[sirrah]

2 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

For Caucasus specifically, the trees are enormous. Not unrealistically so, biologically speaking, but of a sort you'd find in an ancient old growth forest rather than town greenery and commercial pine forests that are the main type of wooded areas in those parts. I think ED increased the size one day in order to make forests less dense and save on performance. In other maps, it can be better, although I suspect oversized trees aren't just a Caucasus thing. Either way, it's very noticeable if you try to put your helo down near any trees there. They tower over you like they were growing there for a century or more.

Have you actually done this experiment? It doesn't work that way. In VR, your perception of motion is the same as IRL, because unlike on a screen, in VR the FOV is clipped, rather than compressed. As such, objects in VR appear the same size as they do in real life, but you lose your peripheral vision. On a monitor, depending on the FOV you set you can see an angle comparable to your actual vision angle, but it's compressed to 20 or so degrees in front of your face. Objects on a monitor appear much smaller than they would IRL. Had you tried to scale a monitor the way VR does it, you wouldn't see much because it typically takes up a small portion of your real life FOV, and you'd see a proportionately small fraction of the sim world. Good for WWII tank sims, maybe, but not for flying.

Lack of peripheral vision does little to your perception of speed, oversized objects do. In case of Caucasus specifically, ED has dropped the ball a bit, although the performance tradeoff probably seemed a good one in pre-VR days, as the trees being oversized isn't as obvious out of VR.

Perhaps my words "perception of speed" were not correct, but to say it simple; things flashing by in the corners of your eyes (big or small, doesn't really matter as long as it has texture/shapes), give you that feeling of speed. Apart from maybe Pimax, no current VR headset accommodates for this.