work in progress Improved FLIR improvement discussion

[NineLine]

Thanks for the tracks. Tracks will tell me if you units are started hot, cold, what the OAT is, map ect. It helps me know if its a known issue or a issue I need to dive into more. We have some fixes coming for hot vs cold start as well that should help.

[TobiasA]

vor 5 Minuten schrieb NineLine:

Thanks for the tracks. Tracks will tell me if you units are started hot, cold, what the OAT is, map ect. It helps me know if its a known issue or a issue I need to dive into more. We have some fixes coming for hot vs cold start as well that should help.

Just mention me here, and I will see what I can do. Thanks!

[Moonshine]

in addition to Tobias tracks and screenshots, here are some screenshots and the track of a short test showing the IR signature of T72, T80 and T90. all of the tanks had a waypoint assigned, so the were not stationary from mission start but had to drive a short way to get to their final location.Tank_IR_signature.trk

even then, i do think the IR signature to be off by a lot, given that they can barely be distinguished from the surrounding grass and road, no exhaust smoke etc.

also note by the TGP position indicator, i was basically above the targets when i took the screenshots, spotting those from far away (20-30nm) is pretty much impossible without massive amounts of luck

i think its self explanatory at this point..

then here is a track showing the IR signature of Map objects on PG, especially civilian cars compared to actively driving enemy vehicles:

PG_Map_objects_IR_signature.trk

T72 TV mode:

T72 WHOT:

T72 BHOT

T90 TV Mode

T90 WHOT

T90 BHOT

T80 TV

T80 WHOT

T80 BHOT

Tank_IR_signature.trk

Edited April 1, 2023 by Moonshine

[Flappie]

The vehicles in your mission start with a speed of 0.

Set their WP 0 speed to 20 kph and they will appear hot right away. The spotting will be easier. See attached track.

Tank_IR_signature_initial_speeed_not_null.trk

Edited April 1, 2023 by Flappie

[Moonshine]

interesting, guess i will have to do that in the future as a workaround until its properly done.

[silverdevil]

22 hours ago, Flappie said:

The vehicles in your mission start with a speed of 0.

Set their WP 0 speed to 20 kph and they will appear hot right away. The spotting will be easier. See attached track.

Tank_IR_signature_initial_speeed_not_null.trk 1.11 MB · 1 download

 

after all this time you have a workaround! i changed some parameters in the Cauc free flight and it worked great. i still need to test but i think the T-72s still do not get hot. i knew you would save us!

[SPAS79]

On 4/2/2023 at 6:35 PM, silverdevil said:

after all this time you have a workaround! i changed some parameters in the Cauc free flight and it worked great. i still need to test but i think the T-72s still do not get hot. i knew you would save us!

Does that workaround work for MP servers? What i mean is, is that something that has to be actively implemented or is it something that works automatically with, say a script or some trivial switch of sorts?

Because yeah, i can edit all my sp stuff all i want, but that does not help when flying MP...

[Moonshine]

You have to place the unit, set its waypoints as desired, go to wp 0 and set its speed to anything other than 0.

should work in SP and MP.

if you dont want the tank to be moving, still set its speed at WP 0 to like 20 or something. Have not tested that however. Maybe @Flappiecan explain in more detail

i do believe that idle vehicles should give off less of an IR signature than a driving one, however, currently they pretty much match the exact color of the surrounding terrain and that does seem hard to believe. Plus on IR, exhaust should be visible, giving away its position to some extent 

i mean, IR is even used to find missing people in terrain. And compared to a tank in DCS, the infantryman is literally glowing

Edited April 4, 2023 by Moonshine

[Flappie]

4 hours ago, SPAS79 said:

Does that workaround work for MP servers? What i mean is, is that something that has to be actively implemented or is it something that works automatically with, say a script or some trivial switch of sorts?

Because yeah, i can edit all my sp stuff all i want, but that does not help when flying MP...

This might not be necessary. See:

 

3 hours ago, Moonshine said:

i do believe that idle vehicles should give off less of an IR signature than a driving one, however, currently they pretty much match the exact color of the surrounding terrain and that does seem hard to believe.

According to NineLine's post above, this might be fixed in time for the next OB update.

[NineLine]

4 hours ago, Flappie said:

This might not be necessary. See:

 

According to NineLine's post above, this might be fixed in time for the next OB update.

Cross your fingers... 

[TobiasA]

Am 31.3.2023 um 23:13 schrieb NineLine:

Thanks for the tracks. Tracks will tell me if you units are started hot, cold, what the OAT is, map ect. It helps me know if its a known issue or a issue I need to dive into more. We have some fixes coming for hot vs cold start as well that should help.

Do multiplayer tracks help or are they usually worthless? I think I have one watching 5 trucks driving around endlessly for about 15 minutes, and the remain totally invisible on both BHOT and WHOT.

Might it be the case that the graphic quality plays a role? I also noticed that the A-10 is always better than the same pod on the F-16. 

[NineLine]

1 hour ago, TobiasA said:

Do multiplayer tracks help or are they usually worthless? I think I have one watching 5 trucks driving around endlessly for about 15 minutes, and the remain totally invisible on both BHOT and WHOT.

Might it be the case that the graphic quality plays a role? I also noticed that the A-10 is always better than the same pod on the F-16. 

If you can tell me the unit type I can try testing with that, as well you can send me the replay and if its not too long it can sometimes be ok.

[TobiasA]

[TobiasA]

Am 5.4.2023 um 23:55 schrieb NineLine:

If you can tell me the unit type I can try testing with that, as well you can send me the replay and if its not too long it can sometimes be ok.

The forum editor deleted my whole text in the message above. The track is about 40Mb large and pretty long. I don't know if this really helps... Unit type is Ural-375, and it is driving around Rota Island.
I am unsure if this is a server issue / multiplayer related. In my offline tests, the signatures usually appear after the unit is driving around for a while.
When we fly online missions, they often don't show like in the pictures above, making the units transparent in WHOT or BHOT (as shown in the screenshot).

This did not only happen with the Ural trucks, but also with SA-8, SA-9, SA-15 and SA-19.

I am unsure if this might be a multiplayer / server issue...

[TobiasA]

I can conclude that it is not a multiplayer issue as it is the same when I open exactly that mission offline.

I somehow suspect that a large part results from spawning the unit via a script, and some units (like the Ural-375) seem to never heat up, while others do (most MBT's heat up slowly).

The "units" with best visibility are in fact the civilian cars. Those are really awesome...

Will test further.

[SPAS79]

18 hours ago, TobiasA said:

So it is not just me... 

[TobiasA]

Am 5.4.2023 um 23:55 schrieb NineLine:

If you can tell me the unit type I can try testing with that, as well you can send me the replay and if its not too long it can sometimes be ok.

The fix that units don't start cold made a HUGE difference.

Thanks for that! Really appreciate it.

Edited April 13, 2023 by TobiasA

[Temetre]

Am 26.3.2023 um 15:25 schrieb silverdevil:

as i understand the issue, it is that each model needs to have additional textures to show its heat sig in IR, pic in TV, and normal. one of the ED team had said in a post i remember but i cannot find it. so it would not be that easy to fix. what baffles me is all this worked before. a fix was made to some other aspect and it is ruined IR. doesn't the apache work though? i do not use the apache except for merry-go-round.

I dont get why developers do this sometimes. They litterally and intentionally broke a major part of the game, and tell us "well its unfinished". Thats... really bad.

Like they must understand that they are destroying a central part of the games experience and simulation? They intentionally degraded their product, untl they at some point in the future fix everything. Games have enough bugs without intentionally breaking them, and thats clearly true for DCS.

And its not like this is an unsolvable problem. Either only have the breaking update on an experimental, or have a backup bandaid to cover the unfinished parts (eg not updated vehicles get default textures or so).

 

Im sure the QA team mustve instantly understood how much damage this did to the experience.

Edited April 14, 2023 by Temetre

[Temetre]

More substantially, hot start works well now. See bottom of picture, variety of soviet vehicles.

But cold start, top 5 tanks, still seems weird. Even if we chose cold start, it doesnt seem to make any sense for a tank having the same temperature and level of IR radiation than the ground? Or is the issue that temperature of the tanks takes a while to change, and problem comes fom the sim assuming ground/vehicle having the same temperature at launch?

Edited April 14, 2023 by Temetre

[NineLine]

On 4/13/2023 at 8:43 AM, TobiasA said:

The fix that units don't start cold made a HUGE difference.

Thanks for that! Really appreciate it.

 

Yeah I want some improvements on it still but it should be much better than it was. 

 

5 hours ago, Temetre said:

They litterally and intentionally broke a major part of the game

I really do not know what you are saying here. We do not intentionally break the game. 

[silverdevil]

1 hour ago, NineLine said:

Yeah I want some improvements on it still but it should be much better than it was. 

 

I really do not know what you are saying here. We do not intentionally break the game. 

@Temetre i agree with NineLine. i seriously doubt anyone intentionally broke the game. that would be dumb and the devs are definitely not dumb. it was most likely a mistake and they are trying to fix it. 

[zildac]

TGP seems to be a little broken in regard to FLIR at the moment. Was excellent after the initial rework a few months ago, but it's definitely gone a little backwards since for some reason. I only really use it in the AV8 and the Hornet. Spotting seems much harder in WHOT or BHOT in OB right now.

[Temetre]

vor 15 Stunden schrieb NineLine:

I really do not know what you are saying here. We do not intentionally break the game. 

Of course you dont want to ruin the game, we all want DCS to be the best it can be.

But if you replace an older feature, that was inferior but works, with a new one, that doesnt fully work because its incomplete, then that kinda feels like you broke that part of the game. 

It improved, but after the IR-update, I had so many cases where it was nearly impossible to make out targets via the pod using IR mode.

Edited April 15, 2023 by Temetre

[Taz1004]

I was trying to adjust how the terrain appears in FLIR and discovered that the terrain texture affects the unit's IR signature?  Below is same truck placed on different type of grass not too far apart as you can see.  Clear sky, no fog.  And you can see the one is brighter than the other.  I masked them out to compare.  They also look different on the road, grass, dirt...  So what may look right on one surface may not look right on another.  Or what might look right on PG might not on Caucasus etc.

 

Below, the two flipping images are taken from same track file except that I took out the noise from the terrain on one.  Only thing changed here is "landnoise.tif.dds" in Caucasus.  Nothing on the truck's texture or FLIR texture.  But that terrain noise texture is affecting the truck's IR.

null

 

Part of the problem with FLIR system might lie on the terrain.  Not the unit's FLIR files.  Or how the FLIR is rendered on the terrain.  I couldn't look at how FLIR textures are rendered but it may be rendering as multiplier or transparency?

Edited April 16, 2023 by Taz1004

[Flappie]

Indeed, it looks as if this noise texture is rendered above the truck, not below. I'll give it a try.