[NO LONGER PASSES IC] Improved Contact Dot Spotting (Updated v1.1)

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

7 hours ago, FusRoPotato said:

I can see the ISS fly overhead at night so kjabsdfkjbaskdjuvhouh, load of bs.

Typical distance to spot a fighter jet with 20/20 vision is about 30 nm and I can bold harder than you so don't even.

 

 

To be fair, you see the light reflected off the ISS.  The form of the ISS is too small for you to resolve.  

The same way you see you see light emitted from distant stars at night, though they are too far away for you to resolve the surface of their disk.

 

I have no idea how far fighter aircraft should be able to be seen under normal atmospheric conditions.  Gut instinct is that 40nm seems kinda crazy.  

It seems there are two separate questions:

1.  What is a reasonable distance to spot fighters under normal conditions.

2.  Should displays with lower resolution be able to gain an advantage in spotting them.

The first question has been addressed by plenty of research out there I suspect.  It's probably less than what radar can reach or else why have radar.  Remember what BVR stands for?

The second question seems like an area for additional improvement.

 

BTW, I have noticed this effect in another sim when flying with a group in a scenario.  The two of us that had VR could consistently spot targets much further out than our 2d wingmen.  Even when we told them exactly where to look.

 

$0.02.

 

 

 

 

[Why485]

After reading the thread and some more experimentation there's a few comments I want to make.

1. I played a bit more with settings last night and noticed that the mod only works "as intended" when MSAA is enabled.

I messed up the math somewhere, making the dots not perfectly pixel aligned. Without MSAA, the dots can flicker or appear smaller than they're intended to. This can probably be fixed easily by someone with a better understanding of the shaders. If I happen to find a solution to this I'll update the mod.

2. Based on feedback from VR users, the mod's effects are less predictable due to the wide amount of variance in VR optics and display technology.

For VR, what matters most is the apparent pixel density, i.e. how many "pixels per degree" you get. On common headsets such as the Quest 2, the mod seems to be working as intended. However for more exotic and extremely high resolution headsets such as Varjo Aero, the mod doesn't do much since pixel density is so high that the 2D formula just doesn't work. On the bright side, headsets like this are at the extreme end of the spectrum of support and very much the exception.

What this really exposes though, is the inherent limitation of a pixel based solution. I've said this elsewhere, but dots are really not a great solution to making visibility more realistic, especially in isolation. Dots scale best at low resolutions, and can be useful in creating hard and absolute limits to contact spotting. In my opinion, combining dots with some kind of scaling solution is a much better way to go, as you cover both bases. Scaling the visual models (or some simplified LOD) scales much better with higher resolutions and higher fidelity graphics options, since the actual geometry is still there. Dots meanwhile scale better with low resolutions, and combination of the two means the dots will cover lower resolutions, while scaling covers higher resolutions.

3. There's been some discussion on if the ~10 miles spotting distance is too short.

Especially enlightening about this conversation is the comment, "I can see the ISS". I've already stated in the OP why I chose the numbers I did, but I want to expand on that rationale. TL;DR: the numbers are based on the distances at which you should be able to consistently spot fighter sized targets.

There are absolutely certain circumstances in which it's possible to see small aircraft from extreme distances. The most common example of this is when the sun glints off something on the plane. The human eye is very sensitive to these sorts of "hot spots." It's why you can see illuminated streetlights and traffic lights from much further than you can make out the actual light/lens assembly itself, why you can see stars and planets in the night sky, and why when a plane catches the sun just right, it appears a bright speck of light despite being tens of miles away.

There are some older sims which tried to emulate this idea. I'd give more specific examples but AFAIK that's a bannable offense. Regardless, I think it'd be nice to work out a sensible way to make sun glinting work. I did briefly experiment with this, but I couldn't get it working in a way I thought looked nice, and you also have to be careful to make it somehow never apply to ground units, which is difficult because the shader has no knowledge of the object under it.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Why485

[PeevishMonkey]

1 час назад, ClydeBigBird сказал:

I think your numbers are too conservative.

Every thing I can say - I think this data is generalised information, based on hundreds and hundreds reports. BTW appoximately the same data we have from 2 source of info - from Navy reports and from Air Force ones. Of course, there were persons who could see targets from bigger distanse. But in general...

On the other hand, I do realise that in the game we have a wide spectrum of airplanes - from I-16 or Gaselle to B-52 but DOTs detection is the same for all...

Edited April 18, 2023 by PeevishMonkey

[Schmidtfire]

I don’t get why everyone is obsessing over visual detection at long range. Sure, nice to see improvement there aswell.

But in my opinion, improvement  is much more needed in the sub 6nm realm. Aircrafts tend to just ”melt” away and in a dogfight you will hear the bandit before you get a tally in DCS. Even with dotted color labels you will loose visual at closer ranges.

In VR it’s a bit better since you get a sense of depth and motion. But on a 1440p monitor? Full Stevie Wonder.

[Temetre]

Am 17.4.2023 um 14:24 schrieb BIGNEWY:

 We do not agree it is broken, but like I have said I have raised it with the team. 

I think this is more of a language issue. When players say "this feature is broken", they usually mean "it feels broken".

The feature might not be broken and work just like its programmed to do, but creates an experience so poor for some player they couldnt even tell if its broken or not. Or that it breaks aspects of their gameplay experience, rather than anything technical.

 

Players cant now the technical base or how its supposed to work, but they can get give pretty good impression of how a system "feels". And the label system is soemtimes needed, but feels rather rough a lot of the time. Considering how big of a response this topic always creates, its clearly a big issue to the playerbase, that they would even prefer a simple bandaid to the current system.

To then say this needs to be checked for integrity... sure, you got a reason for saying that, since it could be modified for cheating, and unsatisfactory dev priorities arent your fault, but clearly that will feel tone-deaf and frustrating to players who dislike the current spotting system.

vor 58 Minuten schrieb Schmidtfire:

I don’t get why everyone is obsessing over visual detection at long range. Sure, nice to see improvement there aswell.

But in my opinion, improvement  is much more needed in the sub 6nm realm. Aircrafts tend to just ”melt” away and in a dogfight you will hear the bandit before you get a tally in DCS. Even with dotted color labels you will loose visual at closer ranges.

In VR it’s a bit better since you get a sense of depth and motion. But on a 1440p monitor? Full Stevie Wonder.

100% agreed on that one, thats another major issue.

In VR you get a much better impression of where the enemy aircraft is moving in relation to your aircraft. Also way easier to understand the orientation of everything; I could do things intuitively on my first flight in VR, which I needed to train for a long time with flat screens. And thats with VR suffering from bad resolution (because ultra-high FoV).

Edited April 18, 2023 by Temetre

[WhereNoLarkFlew]

Spotting is the most persistent issue with WWII or Cold War modules in DCS. Don't have much to add other than of the few folks I fly with regularly, spotting is commonly brought up as a sore spot in the experience. 

ED, please nail the flying experience, which includes innovating systems for aircraft spotting. The current system doesn't reflect the attention to detail that exists in other fundamentals of the sim. 

[ClydeBigBird]

1 hour ago, Why485 said:

3. There's been some discussion on if the ~10 miles spotting distance is too short.

Especially enlightening about this conversation is the comment, "I can see the ISS". I've already stated in the OP why I chose the numbers I did, but I want to expand on that rationale. TL;DR: the numbers are based on the distances at which you should be able to consistently spot fighter sized targets.

There are absolutely certain circumstances in which it's possible to see small aircraft from extreme distances. The most common example of this is when the sun glints off something on the plane. The human eye is very sensitive to these sorts of "hot spots." It's why you can see illuminated streetlights and traffic lights from much further than you can make out the actual light/lens assembly itself, why you can see stars and planets in the night sky, and why when a plane catches the sun just right, it appears a bright speck of light despite being tens of miles away.

There are some older sims which tried to emulate this idea. I'd give more specific examples but AFAIK that's a bannable offense. Regardless, I think it'd be nice to work out a sensible way to make sun glinting work. I did briefly experiment with this, but I couldn't get it working in a way I thought looked nice, and you also have to be careful to make it somehow never apply to ground units, which is difficult because the shader has no knowledge of the object under it.

 

Good points about light glinting.  When someone like Yeager says he can see an aircraft at 50 miles he's talking about catching a glint of light rather than resolving the shape of an airplane. IMO until there's a mechanism to simulate light glinting it makes sense to have dots be visible at distances longer than 18 miles, aircraft being literally invisible beyond this point seems a bit much.  The exponential fadeout to a longer distance could be a good compromise here.

[sparrow88]

1 hour ago, Schmidtfire said:

I don’t get why everyone is obsessing over visual detection at long range. Sure, nice to see improvement there aswell.

But in my opinion, improvement  is much more needed in the sub 6nm realm. Aircrafts tend to just ”melt” away and in a dogfight you will hear the bandit before you get a tally in DCS.

So much this. I never saw an issue with spotting system at long distances as it depends on gazilion of variables (fog, air pollution, sun position etc) so discussion 6nm vs 10 nm vs 20 nm is pointless - important part is to make sure that players with different monitors have the same chance to spot a target.

[Harlikwin]

2 hours ago, Schmidtfire said:

I don’t get why everyone is obsessing over visual detection at long range. Sure, nice to see improvement there aswell.

But in my opinion, improvement  is much more needed in the sub 6nm realm. Aircrafts tend to just ”melt” away and in a dogfight you will hear the bandit before you get a tally in DCS. Even with dotted color labels you will loose visual at closer ranges.

In VR it’s a bit better since you get a sense of depth and motion. But on a 1440p monitor? Full Stevie Wonder.

Yeah I think the long range stuff is far less important, and by long range I mean 30 miles or whatnot. The midrange and close range spotting are the major issues and have been for quite some time. There were some improvements to this a while back, but they stopped. 

 

I also think adding this file to be IC locked is a terrible idea as that puts everyone back to the same crappy default spotting. ED needs to figure out how to have acceptable spotting at any resolution before doing that. When I went from the G2 to the Aero my spotting got noticeably worse because my resolution went up significantly. So the choice becomes having poor visuals and some level of spotting i.e. the 1080P solution for all, or having nice visuals on 2k or 4k monitor or in VR (which runs at those resolutions out of necessity). And that is a totally crappy choice.

Honestly I don't see why a resolution scaled "dot" would be all that hard to do. Also as for IC, I think it would be nice if server owners could basically set the dot size to suit their player base in terms of what their community thinks spotting should be. 

Edited April 18, 2023 by Harlikwin

[Callsign JoNay]

48 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

Also as for IC, I think it would be nice if server owners could basically set the dot size to suit their player base in terms of what their community thinks spotting should be. 

Well I think the "dot size" can only be one thing. It's already the smallest size it can be on 720/1080p, which is probably too large, but for the sake of consistency it's the only starting point we have, so you have to make an attempt to scale it up to a similar angular size for 2k and 4k so everyone is having a standardized experience.

What might be nice for server owners to be able to control is the ranges at which the dot becomes transparent/opaque.

[CapnCoke]

For the people that voted "seems worse to me" might be a bit biased regarding the actual range you're supposed to see another jet, and are worried that they'll lose this advantage they're comfortable with if this ever gets implemented. The advantage you get with 1080p is understated because it's not just the ability to spot aircraft 40 miles away, but to instantly build situational awareness without having to do any work that an actual fighter pilot would do. Before using 1080p, I'd rely on EWR picture and overlord bot to build my situational awareness. Now, my workload significantly decreased and all I do is takeoff, circle around and look for dots, and bogey dope with textlord. Sure it is nice to stalk the first dot you see 30-40 miles away and shoot it down and get your dopamine hit, but I prefer a level playing field where it simulates WVR range in a simulation. Maybe even have contrails rendered for planes 50-100 miles away as another tool to build SA?

The biggest issue I currently suffer from in 1440p is when overlord tells me that I merged (which I believe is 5 miles for textlord/overlord, but not sure for DCS awacs), and I can't see the target at all until its too close and I'm already at a bad position since I wasn't able to react accordingly.

Edited April 19, 2023 by CapnCoke

[RedTail11]

I can’t say it’s been a problem for me. Since I use a fairly big TV for a monitor and it won’t go above 1920-1080. So I’m able to see dots pretty far. But this does help even more

[Enigma89]

33 minutes ago, CapnCoke said:

I think some people might be a bit biased regarding the actual range you're supposed to see another jet, and are worried that they'll lose this advantage they're comfortable with if this ever gets implemented. The advantage you get with 1080p is understated because it's not just the ability to spot aircraft 40 miles away, but to instantly build situational awareness without having to do any work that an actual fighter pilot would do. Before using 1080p, I'd rely on EWR picture and overlord bot to build my situational awareness. Now, my workload significantly decreased and all I do is takeoff, circle around and look for dots, and bogey dope with textlord. Sure it is nice to stalk the first dot you see 30-40 miles away and shoot it down and get your dopamine hit, but I prefer a level playing field where it simulates WVR range in a simulation. Maybe even have contrails rendered for planes 50-100 miles away as another tool to build SA?

The biggest issue I currently suffer from in 1440p is when overlord tells me that I merged (which I believe is 5 miles for textlord/overlord, but not sure for DCS awacs), and I can't see the target at all until its too close and I'm already at a bad position since I wasn't able to react accordingly.

One of the biggest reasons why we configured Overlord to not be restricted by LOS is because of the state of spotting in DCS.

[MIghtymoo]

Even Enigma89 is chiming in to this debate .

Edited April 18, 2023 by MIghtymoo

[jackill]

Great to see some effort to improve the situations with spotting. I had 4K 27", now I went to 1440p 27", so it is a welcome improvement.

 

But, as somebody already mentioned: with zoom contacts far away can disappear: 

 

 

[MIghtymoo]

Here are results from my test with a 34 inch 1440p monitor:

I see further and more planes with dots OFF, compared to dots MOD (8 vs 6 planes).

The planes are bigger at mid range with the mod though, so in actual combat it may be easer to see them.

At long ranges the mod is worse with my 3440p monitor compared to OFF

Need to fly some more...

Edited April 18, 2023 by MIghtymoo

[Grax]

On 4/17/2023 at 8:24 AM, BIGNEWY said:

the team will look into it and determine, thank you

 We do not agree it is broken, but like I have said I have raised it with the team. 

------------------------

I have hidden petty squabbling posts, please keep the discussion friendly and respect peoples opinions even if you do not agree with them. 

thanks 

 

 

I just. . . Nevermind. I guess I just wonder sometimes. Edit: I guess spotting isn't technically broken because other aircraft aren't actually invisible. Touche.

The mod is a massive improvement up close. Long distances seem more realistic.

Without it, long-range spotting is easy, and possibly too easy, but finding anything within 25km becomes nearly impossible. Dots blink out, planes disappear depending on angle and zoom, looking in the direction of Overlord/Textlord merge/15km tripwire calls and spotting anything is next to impossible unless I'm low enough to outline the bandit against the sky. And that's with janky reshade settings and my gamma blown out of proportion (higher or lower depending on the map and time of day). I've taken to dropping down to the deck on ECW when I get within around 50km of a bandit because spotting them from any kind of altitude just doesn't seem reliably possible. The state of spotting now (at least in the ECW context) seems to make having the altitude advantage a disadvantage far too much of the time.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Grax

[Amarok_73]

Are there chances @BIGNEWYand @NineLine, that change in the dots mechanism if will be implemented, will work similarly to the labels, so they'll be dependent of the file embedded, in the mission file, so the server admin will be able to decide if these parameters have to be forced, and with what values?

Edited April 18, 2023 by Amarok_73

[Why485]

5 hours ago, Temetre said:

I think this is more of a language issue. When players say "this feature is broken", they usually mean "it feels broken".

The feature might not be broken and work just like its programmed to do, but creates an experience so poor for some player they couldnt even tell if its broken or not. Or that it breaks aspects of their gameplay experience, rather than anything technical.

Players cant now the technical base or how its supposed to work, but they can get give pretty good impression of how a system "feels". And the label system is soemtimes needed, but feels rather rough a lot of the time. Considering how big of a response this topic always creates, its clearly a big issue to the playerbase, that they would even prefer a simple bandaid to the current system.

To then say this needs to be checked for integrity... sure, you got a reason for saying that, since it could be modified for cheating, and unsatisfactory dev priorities arent your fault, but clearly that will feel tone-deaf and frustrating to players who dislike the current spotting system.

This is a very good post.

[Harlikwin]

2 hours ago, Callsign JoNay said:

Well I think the "dot size" can only be one thing. It's already the smallest size it can be on 720/1080p, which is probably too large, but for the sake of consistency it's the only starting point we have, so you have to make an attempt to scale it up to a similar angular size for 2k and 4k so everyone is having a standardized experience.

What might be nice for server owners to be able to control is the ranges at which the dot becomes transparent/opaque.

Honestly both size and range would be good things to have tweakable server side if ED IC locks this. Honestly if ED is smart, letting users and MP server owners control this sort of thing is the best way to go. It basically gets the community off their back cuz you can set it to what "you" feel is realistic. Yay no more flame wars. You can have some "default" that ED thinks is right as well but if people don't like, presto change-o.

 

 

Edited April 18, 2023 by Harlikwin

[ClydeBigBird]

4 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

Honestly both size and range would be good things to have tweakable server side if ED IC locks this.

This would be ideal but I'm not sure how feasible it is.  The dots file appears to be compiled when you launch the game (if you have any syntax errors in the code you get an error after the DCS splash screen).  The developers would probably have to implement a system that makes dot file compilation occur when loading a mission instead, and they'd have to add the ability to download a server-specific dots file.

Best case scenario in the short term is that they adopt the resolution scaling of this mod.  Worst case is they don't change anything, lock down the dots file, and we go back to slumming it in 1080p 

[Harlikwin]

2 minutes ago, ClydeBigBird said:

This would be ideal but I'm not sure how feasible it is.  The dots file appears to be compiled when you launch the game (if you have any syntax errors in the code you get an error after the DCS splash screen).  The developers would probably have to implement a system that makes dot file compilation occur when loading a mission instead, and they'd have to add the ability to download a server-specific dots file.

Best case scenario in the short term is that they adopt the resolution scaling of this mod.  Worst case is they don't change anything, lock down the dots file, and we go back to slumming it in 1080p 

That would be the worst of all possible worlds.

I did finally get this working on my Aero with some tech support from the OP and it makes a big difference. 

[Enigma89]

26 minutes ago, Harlikwin said:

Honestly both size and range would be good things to have tweakable server side if ED IC locks this. Honestly if ED is smart, letting users and MP server owners control this sort of thing is the best way to go. It basically gets the community off their back cuz you can set it to what "you" feel is realistic. Yay no more flame wars. You can have some "default" that ED thinks is right as well but if people don't like, presto change-o.

 

 

 

This seems reasonable to me. 

[Schmidtfire]

In this case I think it would be better to put a solution like this in options. Separate from regular labels. Let the server runners decide upon regular labels and let the players decide if they need this mod to overcome shortcomings of their gaming peripherals. Let people enjoy DCS first and foremost, it's not a competitive e-sport.

But that's just my opinion...
 

[CapnCoke]

2 hours ago, MIghtymoo said:

Here are results from my test with a 34 inch 1440p monitor:

I see further and more planes with dots OFF, compared to dots MOD (8 vs 6 planes).

The planes are bigger at mid range with the mod though, so in actual combat it may be easer to see them.

At long ranges the mod is worse with my 3440p monitor compared to OFF

Need to fly some more...

 

It seems you were testing the "neutral label" which appears like a grey dot over the planes. This mod doesn't affect and modify the labels but the rendering of a "pixel dot" for planes far away before their model is rendered. The mod does reduce the distance of visible planes by fading it out gradually the farther it is.

From my testing with 1440p 27 inch with the Mirage F1 Dogfighting with cannon mission in instant action, I see the mig23 pixel dot without the mod farther which is just one tiny pixel comparing with the mod which is opaque. After getting closer, the modded dot is thicker and easy to see instead of the vanilla single pixel. Before the merge, I can easily see the mig23 and I can easily keep track it during the dogfight. Without it, I'd just lose sight of the mig23 after a loop or two.

Edited April 18, 2023 by CapnCoke