reported Spotting dot bugs in VR

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, MoleUK said:

I'm not necessarily arguing for disabling IC, just pointing out that one of the games biggest servers had it off for 5 months. The world didn't end. And why would disabling IC lead to more cheating, when we've already established that the IC doesn't seem to stop cheating? It just stops some forms of cheats but not others.

I’m sure IC exists for a reason. It certainly has a role in preventing easy cheating in the game. I can’t see a good argument for not having it. The reason you see those servers still populated without it is that frankly there’s not an alternative to them. I’m sure most people would prefer to have it on. And that was just one server doing that for a few months, not permanently eliminating it on the entire game. That would be disastrous. 

2 hours ago, MoleUK said:

Like zooming in/out in track-IR to make the current dots pop much bigger

Well that’s an inherent flaw of sorts with the whole concept of using dots. The feature should be a mission setting like dot labels or simply combined with them. 

[Tippis]

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

I’m sure IC exists for a reason.

Maybe. But the question that you have failed to answer is, does it stop cheating? Or does it miss the mark and end up mostly just stop us from improving the game and get good data out? Just because you believe it does doesn't make it so. Appeal to incredulity is a fallacy for a reason.

You have been given good arguments — your inability or unwillingness to respond to them doesn't mean they don't exist. Appeal to ignorance is also a fallacy — doubly so when it's wilful.

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Well that’s an inherent flaw of sorts with the whole concept of using dots.

Nope. That is a failure of implementation. It has nothing to do with dots as a concept, as is abundantly clear to anyone who has even the slightest shred of understanding of the topic. A dot that stops being a dot when you do things to it is… drumroll… not actually a dot. So that inherently can't be a flaw with dots.

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

The feature should be a mission setting like dot labels or simply combined with them. 

Nope. It would be unspeakably idiotic to make simulation elements depend on UI settings. In fact, it's exactly that kind of flaw that brought us here. What's next? Do you want to make it so that having the BDA window up increased your bomb damage? Because that's about on the same level of shockingly stupid idea as what you just suggested.

Edited October 7, 2024 by Tippis

[=475FG= Dawger]

This issue isn't binary integrity check (IC). 

IC is applied to a set of files. The question is what should be included in that set.

Most agree that we should all be playing with the same basic physics so files related to flight model physics and whether or not an aircraft is actually rendered are probably safely assumed to be included in the integrity check system.

The problem is a very few, who we all know well, are very vocal about expanding the definition of cheating to include everything you can possibly imagine.

The result is things get done by ED, like including many previously modifiable files under the IC umbrella.

The result is the game moves away from public MP PvP and gets hidden away behind password protected servers where groups can turn off IC and use mods to their hearts content.

Whether or not this is good for the long term future of DCS is open for debate.

Personally, I have hardware issues that prevent me from spawning in DCS VR. I have zero motivation to fix them. My wingman of over 2 decades hasn't flown DCS this year. The rest of my group are doing other things.

The lack of enthusiasm isn't down to spotting dots alone. Its the total package of DCS moving towards a policy of punishing us all for the mostly imagined sins of a very few.

At some point, I'll just move on and put DCS in my past as I don't think the trend is likely to reverse.

19 hours ago, MoleUK said:

God I miss the clear canopy mod as well. The baked in reflections on the Huey/Hip remain godawful, and it's been a year since the IC change made the fix to that problem no longer viable.

ED really should have copied over some of the quicker autostarts for a tickbox option for each module as well.

 

Yes, they took away a lot of really nice mods in a vain attempt to satisfy a few nutcases.

[draconus]

13 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

IC is applied to a set of files. The question is what should be included in that set.

All game files.

13 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Yes, they took away a lot of really nice mods in a vain attempt to satisfy a few nutcases.

Like the fat dots now for a few happy VR users.

[SharpeXB]

41 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

The problem is a very few, who we all know well, are very vocal about expanding the definition of cheating to include everything you can possibly imagine.

Modifying your opponents visibility in a way that’s not known to or available to everyone in the base game is cheating. Pure and simple. It’s amazing that’s this was possible before and they were right to lock that down. Any game would do the same for something like that.

41 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Personally, I have hardware issues that prevent me from spawning in DCS VR.

Spotting?

41 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Yes, they took away a lot of really nice mods in a vain attempt to satisfy a few nutcases.

Unofficial mods are not a great idea in this game. They cause problems and are a pain to keep up with. They also will stop working at some point, like this spotting mod which I can assume doesn’t work well anymore even if you enabled it. Becoming dependent on something which will inevitably stop working is a certain path to frustration. Using them on a server is rather nuts and it’s best to just avoid them entirely IMO

 

Edited October 7, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Red_Pilot]

Is this already spam or not yet?

[Tippis]

49 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Modifying your opponents visibility in a way that’s not known to or available to everyone in the base game is cheating. Pure and simple.

And you were all in favour of it when it was working for you.

So let's just say that your opinion on the matter is… tainted. You, of all people, are not in a position to complain that other players are “cheating” by setting their game up a specific way.

49 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Unofficial mods are not a great idea in this game.

Yes they are. They provide excellent extensions to fill in some pretty egregious gaps in both content and functionality. In fact, some are pretty much obligatory to get the full experience — stuff like SRS, LotATC, Tacview, SLMod. And that's on top of those that fix very nonsensical and outright anti-realisitc design decisions, like that spotting mod, the clear canopy mod, the good old F5 RWR mod, the gun dispersal mod, and any myriad of terrain mods. The list goes on.

Unofficial mods are not just a great idea — they're a key component in what makes DCS great. Up until the point where ED make it less great by arbitrarily and pointlessly restricting them because some clueless people get a bee in their bonnet about some perceived irrelevant advantage this might conceivably create according to this prophetic dream they had but refused to back up with any kind of evidence.

The whingebags ruin the game for everyone, to a massively larger degree than cheaters ever can because, ultimately, such a tiny set of people can even be affected by cheats to begin with, and the number of cheaters that exist that could affect this tiny set of people is itself vanishingly small. And, let's just reiterate the point above, ironically, it's occasionally the whingebags who are the ones who actually cheat… at least according to their own definitions.

Not happy with just ruining the game for some with their own abuses, they want to make sure ED ruins it for everyone for no remotely sane reason whatsoever.

Edited October 7, 2024 by Tippis

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 hour ago, Tippis said:

And you were all in favour of it when it was working for you.

So let's just say that your opinion on the matter is… tainted. You, of all people, are not in a position to complain that other players are “cheating” by setting their game up a specific way.

Yes they are. They provide excellent extensions to fill in some pretty egregious gaps in both content and functionality. In fact, some are pretty much obligatory to get the full experience — stuff like SRS, LotATC, Tacview, SLMod. And that's on top of those that fix very nonsensical and outright anti-realisitc design decisions, like that spotting mod, the clear canopy mod, the good old F5 RWR mod, the gun dispersal mod, and any myriad of terrain mods. The list goes on.

Unofficial mods are not just a great idea — they're a key component in what makes DCS great. Up until the point where ED make it less great by arbitrarily and pointlessly restricting them because some clueless people get a bee in their bonnet about some perceived irrelevant advantage this might conceivably create according to this prophetic dream they had but refused to back up with any kind of evidence.

The whingebags ruin the game for everyone, to a massively larger degree than cheaters ever can because, ultimately, such a tiny set of people can even be affected by cheats to begin with, and the number of cheaters that exist that could affect this tiny set of people is itself vanishingly small. And, let's just reiterate the point above, ironically, it's occasionally the whingebags who are the ones who actually cheat… at least according to their own definitions.

Not happy with just ruining the game for some with their own abuses, they want to make sure ED ruins it for everyone for no remotely sane reason whatsoever.

 

Excellent summation. 
 

 

[mosshunt]

ED are never going to get this right as everyone wants something different on their specific hardware. Personally I play SP I would rather there be no spotting dots at all, I can see rectangles coming at me from miles away. Can ED fix option the option to disable improved spotting dots / provide an option just to disable them? 

[Bounti30]

Most people want a simple dot spotting off function.
Is this technically possible or not ?
Wouldn't deactivating the spotting dot option be like having a different version of DCS and therefore incompatible with the one using the option?
So it would be impossible to make the two versions coexist in MP.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is a reason why ED cannot grant the request

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Bounti30 said:

Wouldn't deactivating the spotting dot option be like having a different version of DCS and therefore incompatible with the one using the option? So it would be impossible to make the two versions coexist in MP.

It could be a mission setting like labels and such. So yes that’s certainly possible. And needed…

[AhSoul]

The problem is It's about trying to make an aircraft visible to all players at distance X regardless of the resolution they're playing in.

No dots, and the person with not enough resolution to show the aircraft at distance X would see nothing, and is at a disadvantage.

With dots, the person with not enough resolution gets an artificially large visible target and gets an advantage.

For SP, fine have a toggle and do what you want, but for MP any toggle swaps the advantage.

Until everyone has screens/headsets with human eye levels of resolution, so there's enough pixels to render something realistic at all distances, I'm not sure what the best solution is?

[SharpeXB]

7 minutes ago, AhSoul said:

No dots, and the person with not enough resolution to show the aircraft at distance X would see nothing, and is at a disadvantage.

With dots, the person with not enough resolution gets an artificially large visible target and gets an advantage.

Yeah there’s just not a good solution using dots. Although I think what would happen in the first instance there is when something gets smaller than a pixel you’d see a 50% shaded pixel, not nothing. Depending on whether AA is enabled which in that case you’d want. 

[MAXsenna]

1 hour ago, Bounti30 said:

Is this technically possible or not ?

Of course. I have dots/labels turned off in 2D.

1 hour ago, Bounti30 said:

Wouldn't deactivating the spotting dot option be like having a different version of DCS and therefore incompatible with the one using the option? So it would be impossible to make the two versions coexist in MP.

Why would you think that? Easy Comms, wake turbulence, labels and what not. If the mission permits it you can select it. Still the same game.  

[draconus]

29 minutes ago, AhSoul said:

The problem is It's about trying to make an aircraft visible to all players at distance X regardless of the resolution they're playing in.

Yes and with different display types, resolutions, sizes, settings, user distance from the screen and selectable zoom/fov it is simply impossible to make realistic for all cases. That's why there should only exist model fading (to not exceed realistic visibility when it's still large enough to render) - all the other cases should just be taken care of by model rendering with LODs, and a good one - think of resize filter in computer graphics.

 

[josef]

The current pattern of spotting dot is very good.

We're competing in SATAC Cold War these days.Now can visually see enemy aircraft within 10 nautical miles whether you use a monitor or VR. This is in line with reality. The previous mode where you couldn't see anything made it hard to fight in a scenario like Cold War that relied more on IR missiles.

[draconus]

Let the numbers speak:

[YoYo]

5 hours ago, draconus said:

Let the numbers speak:

Exactly, this is actually a basic question, how many people are satisfied with the current and previous system? Good move.

[BIGNEWY]

Quote

 

I think a lot of this confusion about the spotting dots option is a miss understanding of what its function is. 

Tooltip for improved dots says:

"with this option enabled the spotting dots ( distance visual contacts ) are rendered independently of the camera zoom factor. The dot visibility is a function of object size only"

For VR dots are always enabled, and their size is calculated depending on the headset resolution and calculated with similar logic that was used in Improved Contact Dot Spotting mod. 


we are working on a solution that will better adjust to specific VR devices with tailored pre-sets.

 

posting this here also 

[YoYo]

I didnt check it yet but Todays patch brings something new with the Dot :)!

 

 

[BIGNEWY]

VR Dots have been tuned, please try and let us know what you think. 

Quote

 

• Spotting dots size in VR adjusted to be smaller in certain cases based on feedback. We are still working on different preset logic for VR. (Please be advised that setting “Improved spotting dots” does not affect presence of spotting dots in VR, please read the setting tooltip).

 

 

[Melt-Down]

Why?? Why is it so hard, to give the choice to every player to decide if they want to used them or not??

I don't care if others want to used them, I DON'T want to used them, it's basically turning DCS into War Thunder. 
 

29 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

VR Dots have been tuned, please try and let us know what you think. 

 

 

[BIGNEWY]

45 minutes ago, Melt-Down said:

Why?? Why is it so hard, to give the choice to every player to decide if they want to used them or not??

I don't care if others want to used them, I DON'T want to used them, it's basically turning DCS into War Thunder. 
 

 

Please give me feedback after you have tried them. 

thanks

[some1]

1 hour ago, BIGNEWY said:

VR Dots have been tuned, please try and let us know what you think. 

Still awful. ED stubbornness in forcing this broken implementation on everybody is mind boggling. 

But let's repeat one more time. The dots in VR are at least twice the size of the dots on a 4k monitor. Which makes them more than twice as noticeable, because their area is 3-4 times bigger.

4k monitor, HUD lines are 4 pixels wide, dot is 2 pixels.

VR, HUD lines are 4 pixels wide, dot is 4 pixels.

In both cases the target is 30 km away. 

Since projected HUD image has fixed angular dimensions, it's a good way to measure apparent size of the objects regardless of resolution and display mode.

Edited October 30, 2024 by some1

[Fisherman82]

If it would make them feel better they could have it default and a setting for NOT using them.