in review Spotting dot bugs in VR

[YoYo]

1 hour ago, josef said:

My friends around me who fly DCS with VR agree that 2.9.5 is more realistic.

No it wasn't, I'm sorry but I don't agree with it at all, your friend also probably doesn't remember the disappearing big box when another LOD was loading a few miles away and the target was not visiblefrom that time. It was terrible.

 

[josef]

For a flight simulation game, it's very important to be able to simulate visualizing a target in the air. 2D displays can't do that, and the reason why we use VR is because it's more successful in that regard. But now with version 2.9.6, it's hard to even visualize a target within 10 nautical miles, and that's a failure.

You may think that a “big black dot” in the air is bad, but being able to “see” is now the first priority.

 

[Czar66]

50 minutes ago, josef said:

For a flight simulation game, it's very important to be able to simulate visualizing a target in the air. 2D displays can't do that, and the reason why we use VR is because it's more successful in that regard. But now with version 2.9.6, it's hard to even visualize a target within 10 nautical miles, and that's a failure.

You may think that a “big black dot” in the air is bad, but being able to “see” is now the first priority.

 

I'm sorry, but in 2D at 1080p there is nothing like "big black dot". I agree with you on the rest.

There are issues with the black dot with some setups but not in 2d 1080p. It is still hard enough to lose sight and lose the fight often.

IL-78 at 10.7 nm. 10 o'clock of the pull up light next to the Collimator sight. Edit: maybe it should be less visible at this point? I'm not sure.

Edited July 26 by Czar66

[draconus]

4 hours ago, josef said:

For a flight simulation game, it's very important to be able to simulate visualizing a target in the air. 2D displays can't do that, and the reason why we use VR is because it's more successful in that regard. But now with version 2.9.6, it's hard to even visualize a target within 10 nautical miles, and that's a failure.

You may think that a “big black dot” in the air is bad, but being able to “see” is now the first priority.

The goal is to visualize the targets realistically. You're not supposed to easily spot fighters from 10nm. If you don't care about that and prioritize seeing the targets no matter what - there are labels for that.

2D display is the exact same technology just bigger than VR - which has two 2D displays. Stereography doesn't help with distant dots. Pixel size theoretically should make it easier but in the end it's PPD and gfx engine implementation that counts. Make sure you have the real fov set before comparing RL visibility. Otherwise you end up with the picture like above - high fov presented on monitor - even if big and close to you, it's still too small to represent RL scale.

btw: this is VR forum.

Edited July 26 by draconus

[YoYo]

4 hours ago, josef said:

2D displays...

Hi. We are only in the VR corner, 2D experiences cannot be compared to VR.

I also want to remind you that DCS has 2 types of zoom for VR, normal and spyglass. When visually scanning the surroundings, especially the sky, you can use this, it helps to see targets from a distance, if someone can't see them with a normal view from the cockpit as well.

[josef]

22 minutes ago, draconus said:

The goal is to visualize the targets realistically. You're not supposed to easily spot fighters from 10nm. If you don't care about that and prioritize seeing the targets no matter what - there are labels for that.

2D display is the exact same technology just bigger than VR - which has two 2D displays. Stereography doesn't help with distant dots. Pixel size theoretically should make it easier but in the end it's PPD and gfx engine implementation that counts. Make sure you have the real fov set before comparing RL visibility. Otherwise you end up with the picture like above - high fov presented on monitor - even if big and close to you, it's still too small to represent RL scale.

btw: this is VR forum.

 

I have a DCS teammate who is an active fighter pilot and he told me that he can see aircarft at 20 kilometers on a good day. I don't think he's bragging. So a clear view of fighters at 10 nautical miles is realistic.

I've read the recollections of Japanese naval pilots during WWII, and this vision wasn't uncommon at that time (the Japanese didn't have radar).

Edited July 26 by josef

[draconus]

7 minutes ago, josef said:

I have a DCS teammate who is an active fighter pilot and he told me that he can see aircarft at 20 kilometers on a good day. I don't think he's bragging. So a clear view of fighters at 10 nautical miles is realistic.

I've read the recollections of Japanese naval pilots during WWII, and this vision wasn't uncommon at that time (the Japanese didn't have radar).

DCS still shows the fighter at this range (F-16, front aspect against clear day sky). Faint dot, just look for it. But it's not easy, esp. when you don't know where to look.

Edited July 26 by draconus

[YoYo]

8 minutes ago, josef said:

I have a DCS teammate who is an active fighter pilot and he told me that he can see aircarft at 20 kilometers on a good day. I don't think he's bragging. So a clear view of fighters at 10 nautical miles is realistic.

I've read the recollections of Japanese naval pilots during WWII, and this vision wasn't uncommon at that time (the Japanese didn't have radar).

 

You have few examples here from me but from some people as well, you can notice the fighter even from 15 nm (test was done without zoom): 

Try to use zoom, it helps to find air target too. I think it's more a matter of individual settings than a problem in DCS. This isn't War Thunder , and in IL-2 I can't see a target (fighter) from 15 miles either.

 

[Werewolf_fs]

As I indicate in this post: 

 

The problem with the different perception of the dot system between different users is working at different resolutions, as it works now, there is an ideal resolution at which it will work relatively well. If you increase this resolution it will become increasingly difficult to see it or if you reduce this resolution further and further down the black megadot will stand out.

The system needs to scale according to the resolution or it will never be a complete solution for everyone.

[Panzerlang]

54 minutes ago, Werewolf_fs said:

 

The system needs to scale according to the resolution or it will never be a complete solution for everyone.

It already does that, it's a function of resolution on pixel size and cannot be solved to everyone's liking. Maybe the big pixel on a low-rez screen could be made very pale but it'd still be a big ugly dot.

If it's an e-sport advantage thing, get a crap monitor or VR headset. If it's realism that's wanted, get the highest-rez hardware available and sacrifice the competitive edge to aesthetics. The cake is what it is and ED have done the best that can be done with it. And if you can't work an angle with a warning of 10 miles maybe take up tank-simming instead.

[josef]

2 hours ago, draconus said:

DCS still shows the fighter at this range (F-16, front aspect against clear day sky). Faint dot, just look for it. But it's not easy, esp. when you don't know where to look.

 

I don't have a problem with 10+ nautical miles being a faint dot in VR mode, but the situation is so close that you can hear the engine roar and it's still a faint dot ......

55 minutes ago, Panzerlang said:

It already does that, it's a function of resolution on pixel size and cannot be solved to everyone's liking. Maybe the big pixel on a low-rez screen could be made very pale but it'd still be a big ugly dot.

If it's an e-sport advantage thing, get a crap monitor or VR headset. If it's realism that's wanted, get the highest-rez hardware available and sacrifice the competitive edge to aesthetics. The cake is what it is and ED have done the best that can be done with it. And if you can't work an angle with a warning of 10 miles maybe take up tank-simming instead.

Currently in version 2.9.6, the VR headset is not reflecting the advantages of eSports.

Edited July 26 by josef

[draconus]

24 minutes ago, josef said:

the situation is so close that you can hear the engine roar and it's still a faint dot

I'd like to see your test track but you should understand that if it's a dot and you hear the roar, it's completely normal, since the aircraft passed you long time ago at considerable distance and the sound has only just propagated to you, and even the sound direction will not be correlated to current aircraft location.

[Panzerlang]

2 hours ago, josef said:

I don't have a problem with 10+ nautical miles being a faint dot in VR mode, but the situation is so close that you can hear the engine roar and it's still a faint dot ......

Currently in version 2.9.6, the VR headset is not reflecting the advantages of eSports.

 

Real pilots didn't have the advantage of playing around with resolution either. They had the eyes they were born with and a good mechanic to keep the canopy clean if they were lucky. A tiny minority had the eyesight of Hartmann (3840x2160), the rest were on average 1080p. Or vice-versa, given how it works in PC-land. Lol.
The point being that there was no level playing field for visuals in real life and there isn't one for us gamers either. Assimilate that reality and play around it, like the real guys had to.

Personally I'd rather see nothing than a black blob, because the former is more realistic than the latter and I thank ED for it.

[Werewolf_fs]

hace 4 horas, Panzerlang dijo:

It already does that, it's a function of resolution on pixel size and cannot be solved to everyone's liking. Maybe the big pixel on a low-rez screen could be made very pale but it'd still be a big ugly dot.

I will modify my words... We need to do better, because it is proven that the ideal or better range of resolution is very very small or minimum.

Edited July 26 by Werewolf_fs

[Tippis]

7 hours ago, Panzerlang said:

The point being that there was no level playing field for visuals in real life and there isn't one for us gamers either.

But this isn't real life. We are not using real eyes. We are using simulated eyes with capabilities that should show up equally on all hardware given the same simulated situation.

The counter-point is basically that something as irrelevant and arbitrary as hardware should not dictate that difference. Something in the simulation should, if it's there at all otherwise the simulation has fundamentally failed.  And if it's there, then it would need to be selectable and enforeable in the client so that you, as the player, choose to have good or bad vision, same as they can choose to fly a good or a bad plane. Or the mission-maker dictates one or the other to apply equally to everyone.

And then we end up with exactly what we're having now: something that tries to equalise the perception across all hardware (spotting dots), with the option to also have something that is completely player-customisable (labels). And of those, labels are a luxury, whereas spotting dots must exist and need to remove hardware differences to the greatest degree possible.

Sure, ultimately there will be differences because of external factors, but the simulation should do its utmost to nullify that difference.

[Panzerlang]

2 hours ago, Tippis said:

Sure, ultimately there will be differences because of external factors, but the simulation should do its utmost to nullify that difference.

Which is exactly what ED have done, no? A pixel is a pixel, smaller or bigger on any given panel ("external factors"). If we ever get pixels the size of human retina cells I guess the issue will be solved but until then...

[Tippis]

4 hours ago, Panzerlang said:

Which is exactly what ED have done, no? A pixel is a pixel, smaller or bigger on any given panel ("external factors"). If we ever get pixels the size of human retina cells I guess the issue will be solved but until then...

It's what they're trying to do, but because of that very reason, “a pixel” can no longer be just a pixel. It needs to be a normalised dot size that may be anywhere from 1px to somewhere in the region of 3×3 pixels ± aliasing. That the fundamental cause behind the “huge black blobs” complaint (which was never actually any of those three things): what suddenly looked huge on one display was how it always looked on another. VR, of course, was a something of a problem since its resolution was treated a bit naively, assuming that pixel sizes were roughly the same as the equivalent pancake display and accidentally forgetting how much closer those pixels were to the user's eyeball.

But ultimately, that's just another scaling factor to be dialled in to determine how large that normalised dot should be. It's really no different than any other display other than that it has to operate on different assumptions of how large the optical dot will actually turn out to be.

[draconus]

5 hours ago, Tippis said:

It needs to be a normalised dot size that may be anywhere from 1px to somewhere in the region of 3×3 pixels ± aliasing.

It's unacceptable and not required for any case. If the target reaches 1 pixel distance on one display - on higher res display it's still shown as more pixels object so it doesn't need to be enlarged to bee seen in the same way (apparent size) obviously.

Edited July 27 by draconus

[Tippis]

39 minutes ago, draconus said:

If the target reaches 1 pixel distance on one display - on higher res display it's still shown as more pixels object so it doesn't need to be enlarged to bee seen in the same way (apparent size) obviously.

It's the other way around that is the problem, and where the normalisation needs to happen. It is unacceptable if a target is shown at different sizes on different displays — the goal with the dots is to eliminate those cases, and to make sure the transition from “smallest possible” to “invisible” happens the same on both.

[draconus]

1 hour ago, Tippis said:

make sure the transition from “smallest possible” to “invisible” happens the same on both

This I can agree with and can be done.

[WipeUout]

One way to even the playfield would be to base the dot rendering size on apparent PPD in the HMD.  I don't know if DCS would have access to all the data required to make that calculation, i.e. what is the HMD's panel pixel size, super/under-sampling rate used, AA or any other factor influencing the apparent PPD.

[Tippis]

1 hour ago, WipeUout said:

One way to even the playfield would be to base the dot rendering size on apparent PPD in the HMD.  I don't know if DCS would have access to all the data required to make that calculation, i.e. what is the HMD's panel pixel size, super/under-sampling rate used, AA or any other factor influencing the apparent PPD.

The only thing that might not be immediately available is PPI, but the number of HMDs is low enough that it should be trivial to keep track of that as a database, or at least get a suitable ballpark figure.

It's not like with monitors, where there combinations of size-resolution-distance are pretty much infinitely variable, even when sizes only really ever come in a couple of standard flavours.

[Nedum]

On 7/26/2024 at 7:57 AM, draconus said:

The goal is to visualize the targets realistically. You're not supposed to easily spot fighters from 10nm. If you don't care about that and prioritize seeing the targets no matter what - there are labels for that.

2D display is the exact same technology just bigger than VR - which has two 2D displays. Stereography doesn't help with distant dots. Pixel size theoretically should make it easier but in the end it's PPD and gfx engine implementation that counts. Make sure you have the real fov set before comparing RL visibility. Otherwise you end up with the picture like above - high fov presented on monitor - even if big and close to you, it's still too small to represent RL scale.

btw: this is VR forum.

 

Never read so much arrogant behavior packed in so few word.

Firstly, to see a dot in a big distance is more realistically as nothing, If you had seen something in RL.

Secondly, if you play the realistic card, make sure you don't counterattack yourself with this "label" thingy.

 

On 7/26/2024 at 8:23 AM, draconus said:

DCS still shows the fighter at this range (F-16, front aspect against clear day sky). Faint dot, just look for it. But it's not easy, esp. when you don't know where to look.

 

The whole discussion is about the trick, to not know where to look at, and still have a chance to find the target in conjunction of size, daytime, and weather.

 

On 7/26/2024 at 12:55 PM, Panzerlang said:

Real pilots didn't have the advantage of playing around with resolution either. They had the eyes they were born with and a good mechanic to keep the canopy clean if they were lucky. A tiny minority had the eyesight of Hartmann (3840x2160), the rest were on average 1080p. Or vice-versa, given how it works in PC-land. Lol.
The point being that there was no level playing field for visuals in real life and there isn't one for us gamers either. Assimilate that reality and play around it, like the real guys had to.

Personally I'd rather see nothing than a black blob, because the former is more realistic than the latter and I thank ED for it.

In DCS, the higher the resolution, the worst it becomes to spot targets. How you try to explain it, is the opposite of how it is in DCS. The lower the resolution, the better the spotting.

The problem DCS have is to decide if the ones with a good resolution get the advantage of a pair of good eyeballs, and when the ones with the poor eyeballs (small resolution) are allowed to spot the enemy too.

No magic, only physics.

Most of us know that DCS is a game. We all have to make compromises and not just one side, because this is probably the smaller of the two sides.

 

On 7/26/2024 at 9:45 AM, Panzerlang said:

It already does that, it's a function of resolution on pixel size and cannot be solved to everyone's liking. Maybe the big pixel on a low-rez screen could be made very pale but it'd still be a big ugly dot.

If it's an e-sport advantage thing, get a crap monitor or VR headset. If it's realism that's wanted, get the high-rez hardware available and sacrifice the competitive edge to aesthetics. The cake is what it is and ED have done the best that can be done with it. And if you can't work an angle with a warning of 10 miles maybe take up tank-simming instead.

At first, I thought: "Hm? the guy seem to understand what's going on." The fade out thing of the big dots for the lower resolution is the way to go, but, as you've already said, is still a big dot.

But why then the thing to take up tank-sim? Oh my.

 

On 7/26/2024 at 11:07 AM, draconus said:

I'd like to see your test track but you should understand that if it's a dot and you hear the roar, it's completely normal, since the aircraft passed you long time ago at considerable distance and the sound has only just propagated to you, and even the sound direction will not be correlated to current aircraft location.

Yeah. The point is, the jet has passed you in such a near distance you can still hear the sound. Speed of sound is nearly 340 m/s (at 20° Celsius). So you should have seen the jet incoming, but for sure you should see where the jet is after he was near enough, so you can still hear the jet. Why isn't it possible in DCS?

 

 

The whole discussion around realism is not made for DCS. DCS cannot and will never be realistic as long ED has to play with all the different hardware, especially different resolution and PPD.

It will not help to say others to play other games or to do the "right" things in the right time, so other people have the more realistic feeling, but the other ones have nearly no "realistic" feeling anymore.

The spotting right now is the worst old one for people with good hardware, only to give people with not so good hardware a more realistic feeling.

So right now, with my high resolution VR-Head Set, I can't spot jets anymore until I can see a kind of jet model (2.5 miles). Till then, they are completely invisible, if they are flying low. And up in the sky I have to know exactly where to look at to figure out there could be a dot or not until they are 5 miles near.

Before the latest big patch, it was still hard to spot tiny jets, but now it feels like I am blind again.

So, NO, this isn't realistic and mostly all of what you guys have said, is wrong if we all want to play a game that's fun for all of us, and it has for sure nothing to do with RL. Not a tiny little bit.

[Panzerlang]

11 hours ago, Nedum said:

Never read so much arrogant behavior packed in so few word.

Firstly, to see a dot in a big distance is more realistically as nothing, If you had seen something in RL.

Secondly, if you play the realistic card, make sure you don't counterattack yourself with this "label" thingy.

 

The whole discussion is about the trick, to not know where to look at, and still have a chance to find the target in conjunction of size, daytime, and weather.

 

In DCS, the higher the resolution, the worst it becomes to spot targets. How you try to explain it, is the opposite of how it is in DCS. The lower the resolution, the better the spotting.

The problem DCS have is to decide if the ones with a good resolution get the advantage of a pair of good eyeballs, and when the ones with the poor eyeballs (small resolution) are allowed to spot the enemy too.

No magic, only physics.

Most of us know that DCS is a game. We all have to make compromises and not just one side, because this is probably the smaller of the two sides.

 

At first, I thought: "Hm? the guy seem to understand what's going on." The fade out thing of the big dots for the lower resolution is the way to go, but, as you've already said, is still a big dot.

But why then the thing to take up tank-sim? Oh my.

 

Yeah. The point is, the jet has passed you in such a near distance you can still hear the sound. Speed of sound is nearly 340 m/s (at 20° Celsius). So you should have seen the jet incoming, but for sure you should see where the jet is after he was near enough, so you can still hear the jet. Why isn't it possible in DCS?

 

 

The whole discussion around realism is not made for DCS. DCS cannot and will never be realistic as long ED has to play with all the different hardware, especially different resolution and PPD.

It will not help to say others to play other games or to do the "right" things in the right time, so other people have the more realistic feeling, but the other ones have nearly no "realistic" feeling anymore.

The spotting right now is the worst old one for people with good hardware, only to give people with not so good hardware a more realistic feeling.

So right now, with my high resolution VR-Head Set, I can't spot jets anymore until I can see a kind of jet model (2.5 miles). Till then, they are completely invisible, if they are flying low. And up in the sky I have to know exactly where to look at to figure out there could be a dot or not until they are 5 miles near.

Before the latest big patch, it was still hard to spot tiny jets, but now it feels like I am blind again.

So, NO, this isn't realistic and mostly all of what you guys have said, is wrong if we all want to play a game that's fun for all of us, and it has for sure nothing to do with RL. Not a tiny little bit.

Given that is IS a game I find adopting the role-playing tactic is fruitful. AKA, I'm a pilot with average eyesight and the Hartmanns have a chance to sneak up on me. C'est la guerre. At least I die (or have to bail) in an aesthetically rewarding virtual environment. Lol.

I guess I don't really know the actual range at which I can first see an enemy in my Crystal but if I'm lucky enough to do so, at max range, it still allows me a chance to position myself, even if he spotted me first. Otherwise I'd go play tanks. 

[mosshunt]

Its personal choice & random hardware and no side is going to be happy whatever ED do. Why not make the dot size a user setting? This isn't warthunder after all.