Detect distance in VR -- test

[pastranario3]

I have been carrying out detect distance tests, the results are in the following link, but I summarize it here, I also accompany the miz to test. If you can share your experiences here, it would be helpful.

DISTANCE DETECT
2D 4K 60KM
2D 1920X1080 60KM
2D 1366X768 16KM
VR (2228X2180 for eye) 16km

 

spotting-test2.miz

Edited April 17, 2023 by pastranario3

[ackattacker]

I’m a professional pilot with well over 10,000 flight hours and I can tell you that IRL it’s damn hard to spot a wide body airliner at 16km. If people are using mods to spot at 60km in DCS then they are basically cheating as far as I’m concerned. 

[pastranario3]

hace 1 hora, ackattacker dijo:

I’m a professional pilot with well over 10,000 flight hours and I can tell you that IRL it’s damn hard to spot a wide body airliner at 16km. If people are using mods to spot at 60km in DCS then they are basically cheating as far as I’m concerned. 

Hello, good information.  60km is without mod in 2d monitor, ED would have to review this.

[ackattacker]

1 hour ago, pastranario3 said:

Hello, good information.  60km is without mod in 2d monitor, ED would have to review this.

Sounds like DCS needs to nerf the guys using 2d monitors then. 60km spotting distance is comical. I found this on Hoggit:

Several investigations have been made to determine aircraft target acquisition capabilities. A total of 759 training engagements at the Naval Air Station Oceana Tactical Air Combat Training System (TACTS) range revealed that in 624 of the engagements the pilots first sighted the target as a dot against the background at an average distance of 5.67 nmi (Hamilton & Monaco, 1986; Monaco & Hamilton, 1985). In the remaining 135 engagements exhaust smoke, contrails and sun glint off the aircraft allowed the pilots to detect the aircraft at even greater distances. In the 122 engagements where exhaust smoke was the primary cue, detection distances averaged 7.64 nmi. Environmental and local conditions as well as target type and paint scheme play a significant role in detection distances though. Variables such as background sky or ground coloring vs. aircraft coloring, brightness and directness of sunlight as well as target location vs. the sun and several other variables can either enhance or decrease detection distances. Furthermore, although Hamilton & Monaco found several instances where exhaust smoke was the primary cue, this condition is arguably becoming of decreasing value as aircraft emissions have become less visible over the last decade or two. Table 1 provides a large list of factors that have been shown to affect target detectability. These items were taken from the field evaluations cited in this section as well as Bloomfield & Smith (1982), Boff & Lincoln (1998), Buffett (1986), Costanza, Stacey, & Snyder (1980), and Hoffman (1976). 

In 1983, Kress & Brictson studied 87 air-to-air engagements at the Yuma TACTS range. Average unaided detection distances for the target F-5 and F-4 aircraft were 3.1 nmi. When the pilots were aided with a head-up display (HUD) symbol that cued the pilot to the target’s location, the mean detection distance grew to 6.8 nmi. 

Another study that investigated detection distances was Temme & Still (1991). They measured air-to-air target detection distances at the Naval Air Station Oceana TACTS range to see if there was a performance difference between those pilots who wore corrective eyeglasses and those who did not. Those with eyeglasses did not detect the targets until they were about 10% closer than those with unaided vision. Two very closely matched groups of eyeglass and non-eyeglass wearers had average detection ranges of 4.52 and 5.64 nmi respectively when using all detection means including aircraft sighting, target glint, contrails and exhaust smoke. When limiting subjects to aircraft-only detections, the corresponding distances were 4.35 and 5.54 nmi respectively. Although the distinction of glasses vs. no glasses is not of interest to this investigation, it does provide two more data points for detection distance ability. 

Another study by Hutchins in 1978 at the Air Combat Maneuvering Range (ACMR), which is the earlier name of the TACTS, involved 45 air combat training engagements. The mean detection distance of the A-4 targets was 3.09, with a range of 0.38 to 6.23 nmi. Other studies were done using observers on the ground. With visibility conditions spanning 7 to 10 miles over an 8-day testing period, O’Neal & Miller (1998) found detection distances for approaching T-38 aircraft to ranged from 4.77 to 6.73 nmi. 

Another ground observer study used 400 visual detections of a T-38 aircraft (Provines, Rahe, Block, Pena, & Tredici, 1983). The aircraft was approaching from a known direction and a distance of 9 miles and mean detection distance was 4.55 miles over the 400 trials. 

References 

Hamilton, P. V., Monaco, W. A. (1986). Improving air-to-air target detection. Wings of Gold, 46-48. 

Kress, G., Brictson, C. A. (1983). Operational Analysis of Visual Skills for Air Combat Maneuvering (NAVTRAEQUIPCEN 80-D-0011/041-3). Orlando, FL: Code N712, Naval Training Equipment Center. 

Hutchins, Jr., C. W. (1978). The Relationship between Air Combat Maneuvering Range (ACMR) Output Measures and Initial Visual Acquisition Performance (NAMRLSR-79-1, AD-A062 134). Naval Air Station, Pensacola, FL: Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory. 

Provines, W. F., Rahe, A. J., Block, M. G., Pena, T., Tredici, T. J. (1983). Yellow Ophthalmic Filters in the Visual Acquisition of Aircraft (USAFSAM-TR-83-46, AD-A138 536). Brooks AFB, TX: Aerospace Medical Division, USAF School of Aerospace Medicine

[dburne]

1 minute ago, ackattacker said:

Sounds like DCS needs to nerf the guys using 2d monitors then. 60km spotting distance is comical.

 

Lol you may start a war with that comment...

[Nodak]

At high altitude above horizon it's absolutely possible.  Practically zero atmospheric distortion up at 35K, if it's not moving directly toward you having relative mostion, your wind shields are clean with good quality, and your eyes are any good at all you will see it.  Altitude and the resulting atmospheric conditions matter, a professional should know this, it's relative to any study.  Actual conditions seem omitted from any mention in these, but the atmosphere is already halved at 5K and distortions already drop significantly.  

Betting these are in the weeds studies.  High altitude intercept pilot is a whole other ball game. 

[ackattacker]

Let me reiterate that I’ve been doing this professionally for decades and that looking for traffic is something I do daily. Nevertheless as a result of this discussion I decided to test this today on my way back from Madrid. Crossing the North Atlantic at FL340 (34,000 feet), there was a fair amount of opposite direction traffic on the same route a few thousand above and below me. TCAS (Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System)  would pick up the traffic at a distance of approximately 25-30nm, and inform me precisely where to look. At this altitude they were producing contrails. I could easily see the contrails at this distance but could not see the aircraft themselves until approximately 15nm despite the contrails making their location obvious.

Later we climbed to FL380 and ultimately FL400 over the Canadian maritimes. At this point traffic was not producing contrails. There where two large wide body aircraft shown on TCAS about 25 miles to the right, one at my altitude and one 2,000’ below. The sun was shining directly on these high-aspect, 260 foot long, 50 foot tall brilliant white aircraft silhouetted against a deep blue sky, and TCAS was directing me precisely where to look. After a minute or so of searching, I was able to see those aircraft, just barely. I found however, that despite the relatively small angular difference between them, if I looked at one aircraft I couldn’t see the other. I had to look in between them to see both. If I took my eyes of them, they where difficult to re-acquire. If TCAS hadn’t been directing me where to look, I would never in a million years have seen them from simply scanning the sky.

Low-aspect traffic coming directly at me from the other direction could not be spotted until about 15 miles, again even though I knew exactly where to look. Once they where within 7-8nm, spotting was much easier and I simply had to look in that general direction of sky.

Let me reiterate that these aircraft are about as long as a football field and painted brilliant white. And, at least according to my AME, I do have 20/20 vision.

Now, imagine instead these aircraft where only 62’ long (the length of an F-14 Tomcat) and painted matte gray.

Or, for another thought experiment, imagine standing on top of the Empire State Building (1250’/380m tall) and spotting a die-cast model of an F-14 Tomcat 4.7 inches in length sitting on the sidewalk. That is is being described when spotting an aircraft at 60km. Let me reiterate, *comical*.

 

 

[SharpeXB]

12 hours ago, ackattacker said:

Sounds like DCS needs to nerf the guys using 2d monitors then. 60km spotting distance is comical.

This phenomenon doesn’t have so much to do with 2D vs VR but resolution. Lower res pixels are larger and therefore a contact rendered as a single pixel will be a larger dot at low resolutions. VR tends to run high levels of pixel density. You aren’t the first person to discover this, the topic is frequently discussed. Alas there probably isn’t a good solution. The use of icons and labels in these games has convinced many players that small distant aircraft should be easily visible which clearly isn’t reality. 

[KoN]

It's not the actual spotting it's when the dot renders into an object that DCS falls short of . This has been going on for years . 

See target ( black dot ) zoom in to identify and that black dot  disappears. 

Why not test in another combat sim and come back here . 

I think 60km is way over the top . 22km is more to real life . 

[eatthis]

On 4/18/2023 at 2:37 PM, dburne said:

 

Lol you may start a war with that comment...

iv heard BOTH sides swaer the other is like cheating lol, personally i struggle to spot thing in vr and i dont use 2d

[eaglecash867]

On 4/18/2023 at 5:04 AM, ackattacker said:

I’m a professional pilot with well over 10,000 flight hours and I can tell you that IRL it’s damn hard to spot a wide body airliner at 16km. If people are using mods to spot at 60km in DCS then they are basically cheating as far as I’m concerned. 

Yup.  Been saying this for years in those threads with people bagging on VR because "I should be able to spot targets at XX.X nautical miles, and I can't do that in VR like I can on my monitor"  The truth is, it is unrealistically easy to spot other aircraft, as well as ground targets, on a 2D monitor, and the current generation of VR is a little worse than reality...but not as much as people sometimes think.  Not a pilot myself, but I fly pretty regularly in the right seat during avionics test flights, and many of those test flights involve functional checks of TCAS, TIS-A, or TIS-B systems.  All of them tell me exactly where to look in the sky, but just like it is for you, I'm not spotting anything at DCS 2D monitor ranges.

[kastrati]

Funny is, I never saw these treads where people want to spot mils away... I only saw the treads where DCS Players complain, that spotting with lower resolution is much easier than whit higher resolution. Because of this, every WW2 and Coldwar player (MP) is forced to play with low resolution or load low und upscale (NIS, FSR, fholger, etc.) ... and all because ED can’t make the dot sizes for all Resolutions equal...  that’s my comparison of the hole spotting topic and there are plenty of treads out there and all have the same base problem...

For example: ...

my monitor size is 1m wide and my resolution is 800x600, an enemy is displayed as 1 pixel = 1.25mm wide/high
Same monitor, but resolution is 1600x900, enemy is displayes as a dot of 1 pixel = 0.625mm wide/high
3840x2160 = 0.26mm wide/high

...

So square sizes in mm² compared to each other are:
800x600 = 1.25*1.25= 1.5625mm² = 100%
1600x900 = 0.625*0.625= 0.390625mm² = 25%
3840x2160 = 0.26*0.26= 0.0676mm² = 4.3..%

I don’t know if this exactly like it works. Maybe at the base resolution of 800x600 a enemy is 2x2 pixel… maybe if the resolution gets higher, they ad some pixels… but it looks like this, that’s far away from a linear curve…

[ackattacker]

It seems obvious to me that the game engine should simply calculate whether an object would be visible to a person with 20/20 vision, and, if not, NOT DISPLAY IT AT ALL at any resolution. 

If the object calculates as visible, and If a person is playing at a ridiculous low resolution to make single pixel dots much more obvious, the game engine could decrease the contrast of that pixel so that spotting it is of comparable difficulty to spotting a smaller, higher contrast pixel. This is basically what is happening in VR… because in VR the game engine renders a higher resolution than the panel resolution, which is downsampled in the distortion correction. So a single black pixel becomes a single gray pixel in the VR pipeline. So the game engine could apply a similar “downsampling” to 2D, low res players, and thereby make spotting more realistic.

Edited May 8, 2023 by ackattacker

[feeleyat]

This definitely has to do with resolution. When I was running 2k/2d I couldn't spot anything. Then I switched to VR (quest 2) and I could spot like I used to at 1080p. The odd things is this only applies from 30 miles to about 8, maybe 6 miles then they disappear until maybe 3-2 miles. So idk what is going on there.

Edited May 15, 2023 by feeleyat
Speeling

[SharpeXB]

I just noticed you actually can’t see any stars at night. They’re obviously rendered too small in 4K to appear, just like distant planes. 

[Temetre]

Am 18.4.2023 um 15:34 schrieb ackattacker:

Sounds like DCS needs to nerf the guys using 2d monitors then. 60km spotting distance is comical. I found this on Hoggit:

Several investigations have been made to determine aircraft target acquisition capabilities. A total of 759 training engagements at the Naval Air Station Oceana Tactical Air Combat Training System (TACTS) range revealed that in 624 of the engagements the pilots first sighted the target as a dot against the background at an average distance of 5.67 nmi (Hamilton & Monaco, 1986; Monaco & Hamilton, 1985). In the remaining 135 engagements exhaust smoke, contrails and sun glint off the aircraft allowed the pilots to detect the aircraft at even greater distances. In the 122 engagements where exhaust smoke was the primary cue, detection distances averaged 7.64 nmi. Environmental and local conditions as well as target type and paint scheme play a significant role in detection distances though. Variables such as background sky or ground coloring vs. aircraft coloring, brightness and directness of sunlight as well as target location vs. the sun and several other variables can either enhance or decrease detection distances. Furthermore, although Hamilton & Monaco found several instances where exhaust smoke was the primary cue, this condition is arguably becoming of decreasing value as aircraft emissions have become less visible over the last decade or two. Table 1 provides a large list of factors that have been shown to affect target detectability. These items were taken from the field evaluations cited in this section as well as Bloomfield & Smith (1982), Boff & Lincoln (1998), Buffett (1986), Costanza, Stacey, & Snyder (1980), and Hoffman (1976). 

In 1983, Kress & Brictson studied 87 air-to-air engagements at the Yuma TACTS range. Average unaided detection distances for the target F-5 and F-4 aircraft were 3.1 nmi. When the pilots were aided with a head-up display (HUD) symbol that cued the pilot to the target’s location, the mean detection distance grew to 6.8 nmi. 

Another study that investigated detection distances was Temme & Still (1991). They measured air-to-air target detection distances at the Naval Air Station Oceana TACTS range to see if there was a performance difference between those pilots who wore corrective eyeglasses and those who did not. Those with eyeglasses did not detect the targets until they were about 10% closer than those with unaided vision. Two very closely matched groups of eyeglass and non-eyeglass wearers had average detection ranges of 4.52 and 5.64 nmi respectively when using all detection means including aircraft sighting, target glint, contrails and exhaust smoke. When limiting subjects to aircraft-only detections, the corresponding distances were 4.35 and 5.54 nmi respectively. Although the distinction of glasses vs. no glasses is not of interest to this investigation, it does provide two more data points for detection distance ability. 

Another study by Hutchins in 1978 at the Air Combat Maneuvering Range (ACMR), which is the earlier name of the TACTS, involved 45 air combat training engagements. The mean detection distance of the A-4 targets was 3.09, with a range of 0.38 to 6.23 nmi. Other studies were done using observers on the ground. With visibility conditions spanning 7 to 10 miles over an 8-day testing period, O’Neal & Miller (1998) found detection distances for approaching T-38 aircraft to ranged from 4.77 to 6.73 nmi. 

Another ground observer study used 400 visual detections of a T-38 aircraft (Provines, Rahe, Block, Pena, & Tredici, 1983). The aircraft was approaching from a known direction and a distance of 9 miles and mean detection distance was 4.55 miles over the 400 trials. 

References 

Hamilton, P. V., Monaco, W. A. (1986). Improving air-to-air target detection. Wings of Gold, 46-48. 

Kress, G., Brictson, C. A. (1983). Operational Analysis of Visual Skills for Air Combat Maneuvering (NAVTRAEQUIPCEN 80-D-0011/041-3). Orlando, FL: Code N712, Naval Training Equipment Center. 

Hutchins, Jr., C. W. (1978). The Relationship between Air Combat Maneuvering Range (ACMR) Output Measures and Initial Visual Acquisition Performance (NAMRLSR-79-1, AD-A062 134). Naval Air Station, Pensacola, FL: Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory. 

Provines, W. F., Rahe, A. J., Block, M. G., Pena, T., Tredici, T. J. (1983). Yellow Ophthalmic Filters in the Visual Acquisition of Aircraft (USAFSAM-TR-83-46, AD-A138 536). Brooks AFB, TX: Aerospace Medical Division, USAF School of Aerospace Medicine

So 10-12km visual detection range, if you vaguely know where to look? Seems about right.

I think without the "dots" people actually found DCS spotting range is too low compared to reality. Eg in BMS they use distance-based scaling lend from IRL flight simulators, to make planes easier to spot visually.

In DCS you either see dots too far away from low resolutoin, or the actual plane is harder to see than in reality.

Edited May 15, 2023 by Temetre

[schmiefel]

14 hours ago, feeleyat said:

The odd things is this only applies from 30 miles to about 8, maybe 6 miles then they disappear until maybe 3-2 miles. So idk what is going on there.

I think one thing that comes to play in that case is that the DCS graphics engine still shows problems to synchronize both eye views in VR. It's something that even happens with clouds in a medium distance that they could appear and disappear depending with what eye / VR device display one looks at them. I had this just yesterday when I did some test flights on the new Normandy map with warbirds. I was clearly chasing another plane from a certain offset when it slightly turned a bit more away from me and as it was turning it simply disappeared.