reported Spotting dot bugs in VR

[MAXsenna]

1 hour ago, average_pilot said:

So, no way to get rid of those squares as of now?

Non-VR?

Have you tried starting in 2D, turn off, play a mission to check, and then switch to VR?
There must be some silly setting somewhere.

[AhSoul]

15 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

If that was the intention I would think they’d just remove the setting from the GUI or have mentioned this themselves. As it is this comes across like a careless bug. This doesn’t guarantee participation since some people (like me) will just stop playing DCS until this is resolved. 

The fact that it was possible for someone to mod the dots also means it was possible for players to cheat in this manner. Such settings need to be locked down and it’s very surprising ED didn’t realize this earlier. 

surely modding the dots would fail IC?

[SharpeXB]

5 hours ago, AhSoul said:

surely modding the dots would fail IC?

It does now but previously it was possible to hack the setting as was done with the dot mod. 

[=475FG= Dawger]

6 hours ago, AhSoul said:

surely modding the dots would fail IC?

That's why we are in this mess.

In an effort to solve an essentially non-existent problem, certain files modifiable by users were not included in the integrity check.

It was decided that this allowed the potential for cheating and could not be allowed to stand.

So, all that stuff got locked away behind IC and public servers suddenly became unfriendly places for folks who improved quality of life via mods of some of these files, with the spotting dots mod being one of them.

Did some people exploit these files? I am sure they did. It certainly wasn't a huge problem but there are some very squeaky mice and at least one ED employee who believes this to be a crisis.

I think it was a dumb move but prior history suggests no matter how dumb something is, it will never be reverted.

I do really enjoy the fact that it has resulted in an extended period of spotting dots being forced on.

Poetic. 

 

 

[draconus]

24 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

So, all that stuff got locked away behind IC and public servers suddenly became unfriendly places for folks who improved quality of life via mods of some of these files, with the spotting dots mod being one of them.

If the mods were so great the server owners wouldn't force IC, right?

Edited October 6, 2024 by draconus

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 hour ago, draconus said:

If the mods were so great the server owners wouldn't force IC, right?

 

Not forcing IC opens up everything to modification, which results in folks doing outrageous things. Servers that do not enforce IC are password protected, thus limiting the access to a controlled group.

Pushing things like macro_sequencies.lua and the spotting dots mod into IC adds nothing worth the price.

Public MP suffers. PvP WVR is basically dead.

Private, password locked servers could care less, although I expect they aren't too happy that there is now no way around having spotting dots.

Of course, there are those who think modifying macro_sequencies.lua and spotting dots is cheating, which is why we are here. 

I suspect you are one of those people.

 

[SharpeXB]

1 minute ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Not forcing IC opens up everything to modification, which results in folks doing outrageous things.

Leaving that shaders folder open to modification would result in the same thing. It’s amusing that the dot mod creator chose to make that a publicly  available mod instead of just keeping it as a cheat for himself. I’m sure that wasn’t uncommon before the lockdown. It’s amazingly naive of ED to have not realized this for so long and amazing players didn’t either. 

[=475FG= Dawger]

46 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Leaving that shaders folder open to modification would result in the same thing. It’s amusing that the dot mod creator chose to make that a publicly  available mod instead of just keeping it as a cheat for himself. I’m sure that wasn’t uncommon before the lockdown. It’s amazingly naive of ED to have not realized this for so long and amazing players didn’t either. 

He obviously doesn’t think like you do. 
 

And honestly, I feel sorry for you.

You are obsessed with the idea that someone else might get something over on you in a video game. 
 

How sad is that? How it must affect things that really matter in life. A pitiful existence that I cannot comprehend  

Unfortunately, ED seems to be intent on feeding you and your fellow sufferers by indulging a ‘solution’ for every perceived ‘cheat’ much to the detriment of the rest of us  

 

Edited October 6, 2024 by =475FG= Dawger

[SharpeXB]

15 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

You are obsessed with the idea that someone else might get something over on you in a video game.

Nobody likes playing a sport or game with the idea that they’re being cheated on or that it’s even a possibility. No other multiplayer game would have such an obvious hack available in it. Again it’s rather naive of DCS to be like that. For all you know you were visible to your opponent as a big orange ball all those years. Doesn’t that make you feel ridiculous?

Edited October 6, 2024 by SharpeXB

[draconus]

3 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Of course, there are those who think modifying macro_sequencies.lua and spotting dots is cheating, which is why we are here. 

I suspect you are one of those people.

It doesn't have to be but can be cheating or people can and will do "outrageous things" with it. Any modification should fail IC - that's what it's designed for. But IC is also optional for servers. There are some that run mods themselves.

3 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Public MP suffers. PvP WVR is basically dead.

Now we have big contacts in VR so players are coming back, don't they?

Edited October 6, 2024 by draconus

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

Nobody likes playing a sport or game with the idea that they’re being cheated on or that it’s even a possibility. No other multiplayer game would have such an obvious hack available in it. Again it’s rather naive of DCS to be like that. For all you know you were visible to your opponent as a big orange ball all those years. Doesn’t that make you feel ridiculous?

 

No, but I prefer pink. 

Seriously, you presume to speak for everyone but it is you with the issue here. 
 

In the first place, you assume that everyone defines ‘cheating’ in the same manner which is a ridiculous presumption.

I and everyone I know viewed the spotting dot mod as a wonderful tool. 
 

Secondly, it is a game built for enjoyment. DCS was never intended to be some sort of multiplayer competition sport. Treating it like one is what should make one feel ridiculous. 
 

Who cares if some sad soul in a basement somewhere is madly tweaking files in order to see me as a giant pink fuzzball? Not me, certainly. 
 

At least he sees me so there is some hope of a fight. 

[SharpeXB]

29 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

In the first place, you assume that everyone defines ‘cheating’ in the same manner which is a ridiculous presumption.

By any rational definition the ability to unrealistically highlight your opponents in a way that they can’t do to you is cheating. And it’s clear ED considers that cheating as well. 

31 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Secondly, it is a game built for enjoyment. DCS was never intended to be some sort of multiplayer competition sport. Treating it like one is what should make one feel ridiculous. 

So would you play on an open server without the IC? I can’t imagine anyone would want to. 

[YoYo]

Besides the "Big box dot" issue, I noticed another thing related to this. This large dot renders on one eye if it is at a certain angle (say 1/3 on the edge from the lens). Which also means that it is only visible in one eye, and the other is the object model's lod.

[MoleUK]

3 minutes ago, YoYo said:

Besides the "Big box dot" issue, I noticed another thing related to this. This large dot renders on one eye if it is at a certain angle (say 1/3 on the edge from the lens). Which also means that it is only visible in one eye, and the other is the object model's lod.

Yeah the dots are only rendering some of the time and at certain angles. The more ground units there are in the mission the more this becomes a problem.

Longstanding bug, which has complicated the whole spotting discussion from the beginning.

There seems to be a limited number of dots, and ground units seem to be shared with air units for that number. It might be that in VR because it's rendering them twice (or potentially 4x in quad view) it's hitting that cap quicker than in flatscreen.

Edited October 6, 2024 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

41 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

By any rational definition the ability to unrealistically highlight your opponents in a way that they can’t do to you is cheating. And it’s clear ED considers that cheating as well. 

So would you play on an open server without the IC? I can’t imagine anyone would want to. 

ECW ran with the IC disabled for 5 months almost to the day so people could continue to use the spotting mod after it failed IC. It remained one of the most (if not literally the most) populated MP servers in DCS for that entire 5 month period.

Players don't enjoy being blind, even in MP.

Edited October 6, 2024 by MoleUK

[SharpeXB]

Just now, MoleUK said:

ECW ran with the IC disabled for 5 months almost to the day so people could continue to use the spotting mod after it failed IC. It remained one of the most populated MP servers for that entire 5 month period.

Yes they did. It puzzles me why anyone would play like that though and be an unwitting fool for cheaters. It’s actually odd that the IC is up to the servers. I notice you say this in past tense. Perhaps in the long term not enough people were willing to do that. Any server running without an IC would just end up being a magnet for those just wanting to cheat.

Servers can be popular too because there simply isn’t an alternative. 

[MoleUK]

48 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Yes they did. It puzzles me why anyone would play like that though and be an unwitting fool for cheaters. It’s actually odd that the IC is up to the servers. I notice you say this in past tense. Perhaps in the long term not enough people were willing to do that. Any server running without an IC would just end up being a magnet for those just wanting to cheat.

Servers can be popular too because there simply isn’t an alternative. 

When has the IC ever stopped cheaters? When IC was enabled I saw a couple hackers caught on ECW. One was teleport ramming while invulnerable, the other managed to hack the weaponry. They weren't flagged by IC, they had to be manually caught and banned.

You'd have to ask the staff if they had a surge in cheaters when IC was disabled for those 5 months. From the outside nothing really looked any different, and from what I've heard the IC really isn't very sophisticated at all. It's just a small userbase so there's less people with the incentive to work around it.

It's in the past tense because the moment ED added the spotting mod to the game, the IC was re-enabled. Disabling IC had no negative impact on the player numbers while it was in place.

Edited October 6, 2024 by MoleUK

[=475FG= Dawger]

19 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

 It puzzles me why anyone would play like that though and be an unwitting fool for cheaters.

This is where your disconnect is.

You cannot imagine anyone who doesn't think like you do.

People who 'cheat' in video games are laughably pitiful, only exceeded by those who worry constantly about being an 'unwitting fool'.

 

DCS was more fun for my group when we could tweak the spotting dots mod and write our own autostart macros and fly in MP PvP servers.

 

Edited October 6, 2024 by =475FG= Dawger

[MoleUK]

33 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

This is where your disconnect is.

You cannot imagine anyone who doesn't think like you do.

People who 'cheat' in video games are laughably pitiful, only exceeded by those who worry constantly about being an 'unwitting fool'.

 

DCS was more fun for my group when we could tweak the spotting dots mod and write our own autostart macros and fly in MP PvP servers.

 

 

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.

Edited October 6, 2024 by MoleUK

[Tippis]

50 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Yes they did. It puzzles me why anyone would play like that though and be an unwitting fool for cheaters.

What a funny sentiment.

Remember that time when you accidentally let slip that you could see other players at 40nm and essentially told people to “git gud” or “git hardware” to be on your level…? But then when you were on the receiving end of a very similar advantage that other players had, it was suddenly the end of the world and it's a huge puzzle why everyone (not counting past you) don't feel the same.

Edited October 6, 2024 by Tippis

[Tippis]

50 minutes ago, MoleUK said:

When has the IC ever stopped cheaters?

Every time you stretch “cheaters” to encompass people who make use of their knowledge of game data and/or capabilities built into the game.

It mostly serves to separate those who want to play the game exactly as designed (even when wrong, and when it leads to imbalances) from those who want to play the game with custom content and/or enhancements.

Actual cheaters will — as always — modify the runtime, not the installed files.

[MoleUK]

5 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Every time you stretch “cheaters” to encompass people who make use of their knowledge of game data and/or capabilities built into the game.

It mostly serves to separate those who want to play the game exactly as designed (even when wrong, and when it leads to imbalances) from those who want to play the game with custom content and/or enhancements.

Actual cheaters will — as always — modify the runtime, not the installed files.

Unfortunately so.

And some users regularly take advantage of known exploits that pass IC for as long as they possibly can (See: Viggen high altitude performance before it was fixed).

Or the new chaff jammer toggle trick that's just been publicised. That'll likely be widely abused for weeks/months before it's fixed.

There's always something. I just enjoy the game and do my thing.

Edited October 6, 2024 by MoleUK

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, MoleUK said:

When has the IC ever stopped cheaters?

Just because cheating already happens doesn’t mean there should be even more, it makes no sense to disable it. Indeed ED doesn’t do enough to prevent cheating. Look how the spotting dots were hackable, it makes you wonder what else is. I don’t know of any other game which lets servers run without anti-cheat or decide on whether to enforce it. 

2 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

DCS was more fun for my group when we could tweak the spotting dots mod and write our own autostart macros and fly in MP PvP servers.

Yeah but for every person who thinks they’re modifying this realistically or fairly there will be people who just exploit that setting. 

[Tippis]

5 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Just because cheating already happens doesn’t mean there should be even more,

What you're doing there is begging the question.

You're assuming a priori that IC stops cheating, and using that as an argument that it needs to be there, when the actual question was “does it?”

6 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

it makes no sense to disable it

Sure it does. Disabling it allows for the use of any number of QoL improvements and advanced mods to make the game much much better, server-side as well as client-side (but only the client side really matters). Spotting dots are a good example. They were pretty horrid in their implementation, and there were mods to make them make some semblance of sense. But then that mod was disabled and the dots went back to being horrid again to the point where ED had to try to improve them by themselves.

9 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I don’t know of any other game which lets servers run without anti-cheat or decide on whether to enforce it. 

All of them.

Well… all of them that don't have centrally controlled managed hosting.

9 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Yeah but for every person who thinks they’re modifying this realistically or fairly there will be people who just exploit that setting. 

This may come as a shock to you, but just because you would do a thing — and have admitted as much — doesn't mean that everyone else will.

[MoleUK]

8 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Just because cheating already happens doesn’t mean there should be even more, it makes no sense to disable it. Indeed ED doesn’t do enough to prevent cheating. Look how the spotting dots were hackable, it makes you wonder what else is. I don’t know of any other game which lets servers run without anti-cheat or decide on whether to enforce it. 

Yeah but for every person who thinks they’re modifying this realistically or fairly there will be people who just exploit that setting. 

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.

Lots of games let you decide whether anticheat is enabled, that's not very unusual. This is not a ranked MP game or something, with any kind of ingame currency or progression to hack your way through.

There are already people exploiting known bugs and mechanical quirks to their advantage. Like zooming in/out in track-IR to make the current dots pop much bigger. You won't stop that behavior, and you probably shouldn't base the entire MP experience around those people. At least imo.

Edited October 7, 2024 by MoleUK