Today's patch added the entire shaders folder to IC, effectively blocking every quality of life mod that accessed that folder

[SickSidewinder9]

On 5/19/2023 at 11:35 AM, NineLine said:

Dear all,

We needed to first block files that were being exploited. We are now working on adapting the spotting mod to suit users and server owners alike for better gameplay. I understand your frustration when something no longer works the same as it has, but we are working towards a better solution than what was available before.

The same goes with the reflections, while I understand some liked to remove them completely, we need a better solution and I will be submitting that to the team as well. 

We already have our first version of the improved dots in an internal build and will be testing, tuning and tweaking and hopefully, we can show something soon.

Thanks.

Allow servers to whitelist certain files by MD5 sum or similar means.

Because Taz's dot, glass, and NVG mods are basically a necessity at this point.

On 5/24/2023 at 1:23 AM, draconus said:

Any plans/work on the sun glints on distant aircraft? It's the most important effect revealing the enemy IRL. The tech is already there on cockpits and near LOD aircraft.

Ooh, that's a good one!

[key_stroked]

Still can't see out of my canopy glass.

[draconus]

59 minutes ago, key_stroked said:

Still can't see out of my canopy glass.

Screenshot?

[Pavlin_33]

On 5/23/2023 at 2:22 PM, Extranajero said:

It sounds like you use VR. You can't really compare the VR experience to the flat screen one. I have never used VR because I don't want to wear a bucket of sweat on my head and halve my frame rates, but my VR using friends report that they can see aircraft at distances I could only dream about. However, once in gun range they can't tell the difference between a Mustang and a Mig-29, so then I become their eyes, just like they were mine at long range.
 

I am very glad to hear that I am not the only one with this problem. For me WVR is somewhere around 3-4km. Beyond that I am blind as a bat.

[key_stroked]

22 hours ago, draconus said:

Screenshot?

For what? They didn't fix anything yet.

[draconus]

1 hour ago, key_stroked said:

For what? They didn't fix anything yet.

You said that you can't see out of canopy glass - I'd like to see that. Is it pitch black night or IFR canopy cover mod?

[cfrag]

4 hours ago, draconus said:

You said that you can't see out of canopy glass - I'd like to see that.

Above image: turning final in the Tiger for landing. Can you tell which airport? How about telling me which map I'm on?

This is killing bug in the Tiger and other planes that ED is well aware of (IIRC for a couple of years now), and that is tied to the opacity bug in the glass shader. I was able to work around that bug with a small fix to the glass shader. With the shaders now being part of the integrity check, it's up to ED to correct this, because we can no longer use our own fixes. IMHO the Tiger is no longer a viable aircraft to fly, which is sad, but my current recommendation to anyone who thinks about purchasing it. Let us hope that some day ED get around to applying the fix (which isn't that terribly difficult, considering the fact that it took me all of 5 minutes to do).

This is only related to the 'visibility of other aircraft' issue in that the same integrity check also disables those shaders that kick in for far away aircraft. In this case, it feels that ED threw out the kid with the bathwater. IIRC, @NineLine was kind enough to mention that this issue was passed on to the Team. That's a couple of months ago now, so here's hoping that we find ourselves with a flyable Tiger (or Mi-8 or Huey) some time soon.

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by cfrag

[cfrag]

And this is how it looks in the Hip:

Same bug, making it near-impossible to fly the Hip. I'm coming in for a landing on a ship in this one. It should be visible in the left lower window. Can you tell me which ship I'm approaching?

[buceador]

On 5/26/2023 at 5:15 PM, draconus said:

Congratulations! You've found a MT bug reported 3 months ago and already fixed in current beta.

Unnecessarily antagonistic?

[draconus]

21 minutes ago, cfrag said:

This is killing bug in the Tiger and other planes that ED is well aware of (IIRC for a couple of years now), and that is tied to the opacity bug in the glass shader. I was able to work around that bug with a small fix to the glass shader. With the shaders now being part of the integrity check, it's up to ED to correct this, because we can no longer use our own fixes. IMHO the Tiger is no longer a viable aircraft to fly, which is sad, but my current recommendation to anyone who thinks about purchasing it.

Thanks for the screenshot but I was testing a few ED aircraft recently, including the F-5E and did not saw any canopy bugs there, so it was obviously fully flyable. Can't find it reported here either: https://forum.dcs.world/forum/280-bugs-and-problems/

[cfrag]

Just now, draconus said:

I was testing a few ED aircraft recently, including the F-5E and did not saw any canopy bugs there, so it was obviously fully flyable

Will you believe me when I say that

• I took that screenshot today, in the current OB, flying the Tiger with no mods, plain vanilla DCS. VR, of course.
• I deem the opacity a killing bug, the plane to me is unflyable when heading that direction. In a circling fight, I become blind and lose sight of my objective for a couple of seconds each turn.

14 minutes ago, draconus said:

Can't find it reported here either: https://forum.dcs.world/forum/280-bugs-and-problems/

Testing can be difficult, and re-creating bugs exceedingly so, as we all use different computer and peripherals. Can we agree that I am really seeing what I posted, that I am not trying to intentionally mislead you? This is to me a show-stopping bug. It is also known under "Tiger Dirty Canopy" (in a 2017 posting) that was exacerbated with the new glass shaders in 2.7 (?). It's well known, even if your search did not return positive results (it may have been reported in the 250, 260 or 270 series of bugs). The community has also responded that same year by posting multiple fixes. One fix is to replace the reflective texture with a less intrusive one. That's the one that the shader loads to create the opaque bits. 

[draconus]

23 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Can we agree that I am really seeing what I posted, that I am not trying to intentionally mislead you? This is to me a show-stopping bug.

Of course I believe you, just seems weird of you not to pursue the bug in the F-5 subforum instead of this one here.

[cfrag]

9 minutes ago, draconus said:

seems weird of you not to pursue the bug in the F-5 subforum instead of this one here.

Good point! As I mentioned, I believe @NineLine mentioned in May (in this thread) that the team was made aware of this issue, so I was hoping that it was going to be resolved soon. I take your point (of course) and will open a bug report in the Tiger Bug Forum - thank you for taking the time to remind me.

EDIT: reported here

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by cfrag

[NineLine]

3 hours ago, cfrag said:

Good point! As I mentioned, I believe @NineLine mentioned in May (in this thread) that the team was made aware of this issue, so I was hoping that it was going to be resolved soon. I take your point (of course) and will open a bug report in the Tiger Bug Forum - thank you for taking the time to remind me.

EDIT: reported here

 

 

Can you send me a track of when that screenshot was taken? Thanks. 

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, NineLine said:

Can you send me a track of when that screenshot was taken? Thanks. 

Certainly, it's easily reproducible, total track time is only a few seconds. Below please find the track. When the effect sets in, I hit active pause and move my head before I end the mission.

 

opaque tiger2.trk

[Art-J]

I recall the Hip reflections issue shown above was exacerbated by one of shadow settings, though don't recall which one exactly. Might be worth experimenting. I don't own the F-5, so can't comment on it, but wouldn't be surprised if it was a similar problem.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Art-J

[NineLine]

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

Certainly, it's easily reproducible, total track time is only a few seconds. Below please find the track. When the effect sets in, I hit active pause and move my head before I end the mission.

 

opaque tiger2.trk 386.29 kB · 0 downloads

Thanks I will take a look soon

 

[Why485]

1 hour ago, Art-J said:

I recall the Hip reflections issue shown above was exacerbated by one of shadow settings, though don't recall which one exactly. Might be worth experimenting. I don't own the F-5, so can't comment on it, but wouldn't be surprised if it was a similar problem.

It's "caused" by disabling shadows. It's a problem in basically every plane, but it's more pronounced in some than others due to the layouts of the canopy and cockpit.

For example, here it is in the MiG-19:

When shadows are enabled, the Mi-8 canopy is always in shadow whenever the sun could be shining on it in such a way that it becomes opaque, preventing you from seeing the opaque glare. With shadows disabled, and you have the sun behind you in the Mi-8, then you get the full glare reflection of the sun with nothing to block it.

There are many issues with canopy glare and reflections that make it difficult to impossible to see out the window. The Harrier is also quite bad about this. I can barely see out the window to land the plane:

Here is another one, this time on the HUD, and with shadows enabled too:

I used to work around these issues with the clear canopy mod but that's no longer possible for the great majority of servers.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Why485

[NineLine]

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

Certainly, it's easily reproducible, total track time is only a few seconds. Below please find the track. When the effect sets in, I hit active pause and move my head before I end the mission.

 

opaque tiger2.trk 386.29 kB · 0 downloads

This is reported already, but I added a screen from your track as well as the track and bumped the priority on it. Thanks.

[key_stroked]

10 hours ago, NineLine said:

This is reported already, but I added a screen from your track as well as the track and bumped the priority on it. Thanks.

What priority was it on before?

[draconus]

11 hours ago, Why485 said:

There are many issues with canopy glare and reflections that make it difficult to impossible to see out the window.

The glare and reflections are RL issues as well and these are simulated. By disabling shadows you always sacrifice the quality (realism) for the performance. The devs would have to make some workarounds for "no shadows" settings otherwise - imho that wouldn't make sense but there is a long standing wish for the cockpit shadows to be a separated setting for exactly such cases - performance plus good looking cockpit.

[Why485]

On 7/19/2023 at 2:22 AM, draconus said:

The glare and reflections are RL issues as well and these are simulated. By disabling shadows you always sacrifice the quality (realism) for the performance. The devs would have to make some workarounds for "no shadows" settings otherwise - imho that wouldn't make sense but there is a long standing wish for the cockpit shadows to be a separated setting for exactly such cases - performance plus good looking cockpit.

It's both good and realistic for people to not be able to see out their planes. People who run on low settings not having clean canopies is immersive because it's like not paying the maintenance crews for your planes enough, so they don't have the budget to clean the windows. It doesn't make sense to make this optional.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Why485

[cfrag]

20 minutes ago, Why485 said:

It's both good and realistic for people to not be able to see out their planes. People who run on low settings not having clean canopies is immersive because it's like not paying the maintenance crews for your planes enough, so they don't have the budget to clean the windows.

I can't tell if you are sarcastic or not. In case not, in which air force is it realistic to have enough funds to buy and maintain a fleet of fighter jets but not enough money to pay the crew and chief to wipe a few windows?  

[zildac]

8 minutes ago, cfrag said:

I can't tell if you are sarcastic or not. In case not, in which air force is it realistic to have enough funds to buy and maintain a fleet of fighter jets but not enough money to pay the crew and chief to wipe a few windows?  

You beat me to it

[Dragon1-1]

On 7/20/2023 at 9:02 PM, cfrag said:

I can't tell if you are sarcastic or not.

Then you need to get your sarcasm meter checked, since that was quite obviously sarcastic (and no, no hiding behind Poe's law, it doesn't apply here).