resolved New spotting is great / New spotting is overcooked feedback thread

[Tippis]

5 minutes ago, Talisman_VR said:

Folks will just exploit visuals using the spotting dot, which is likely to be a far easier and even better exploit.   

They already did that with the old system. That's part of why it has to go.

The new one will reduce that ability.

[Talisman_VR]

10 minutes ago, Tippis said:

In what way?

Before this, you were able to spot aircraft at absolutely impossible ranges. That is being remedied with this new system.
You would also get wildly varying, and very counter-intuitive, results depending on resolution — e.g. lower resolutions could see things more easily. That is also within the scope of being remedied by the new system.

It was unrealistic, backwards, and very silly in every way. The new one is in the process of being tweaked, which is in and of itself an improvement even if the current result for you isn't the best for you. But that is not universal.

Hardly, since it is a step along the progress to a vastly improved spotting system that the game has been in dire need of for close to a decade.

1.  In the way that it was not the fiasco we have at the moment.

2.  Hardly, since what we have at the moment is absolutely dire and provides me with no confidence that a player side spotting dot adjustment is the way to go.  In fact I think it is definitely not the way to go.  Also, I am not the only one plagued by this smudgy black square nonsense, so it is not the best for some others too.

4 minutes ago, Tippis said:

They already did that with the old system. That's part of why it has to go.

The new one will reduce that ability.

I do not see how the ability you speak of will be reduced.  What I see is a new additional ability that will be exploited.

[Tippis]

9 minutes ago, Talisman_VR said:

1.  In the way that it was not the fiasco we have at the moment.

That's just repetition — it doesn't answer the question.

9 minutes ago, Talisman_VR said:

2.  Hardly, since what we have at the moment is absolutely dire and provides me with no confidence that a player side spotting dot adjustment is the way to go.  In fact I think it is definitely not the way to go.  Also, I am not the only one plagued by this smudgy black square nonsense, so it is not the best for some others too.

You're overgeneralising from your own experience.

What you have at the moment may be absolutely dire for you. There is no “we“ in any of that, because we do not have that experience — I and many others with me have seen immense improvements with the new system, and you have to include that into the “we” equation. You may have a fiasco, but we certainly don't given those improvements. And since those improvements are there, it is indeed the way to. It just has a bit further to go before you see similar improvements on your end. Between resignation and not doing anything and having some kind of improvement, the latter is the way to go and that is the road we're now on.

Just because you and some others are plagued with smudgy black squares doesn't mean that everyone is. Digging your heels in because the first iteration isn't working for you will just mean that your (lack of) input isn't taken into consideration moving forward and whatever is causing your issues won't be addressed.

 

So, for starters, what kind of display are you playing on? At what resolution and with what kind of scaling and AA settings?

Edited November 18, 2023 by Tippis

[SharpeXB]

31 minutes ago, Talisman_VR said:

Folks will just exploit visuals using the spotting dot, which is likely to be a far easier and even better exploit.   

Indeed 2.9 is even worse in a different way than 2.8. Likely the best solution is to have no spotting dots at all. 

[Tippis]

1 minute ago, SharpeXB said:

Indeed 2.9 is even worse in a different way than 2.8. Likely the best solution is to have no spotting dots at all. 

That is the solution you've clamouring to get away from ever since you learned that under the old system, other people had an advantage over you than what you had over them.

Coincidentally, we had spotting dots before -- they were just worse than the current ones in a number of ways.

[Talisman_VR]

24 minutes ago, Tippis said:

That's just repetition — it doesn't answer the question.

You're overgeneralising from your own experience.

What you have at the moment may be absolutely dire for you. There is no “we“ in any of that, because we do not have that experience — I and many others with me have seen immense improvements with the new system, and you have to include that into the “we” equation. You may have a fiasco, but we certainly don't given those improvements. And since those improvements are there, it is indeed the way to. It just has a bit further to go before you see similar improvements on your end. Between resignation and not doing anything and having some kind of improvement, the latter is the way to go and that is the road we're now on.

Just because you and some others are plagued with smudgy black squares doesn't mean that everyone is. Digging your heels in because the first iteration isn't working for you will just mean that your (lack of) input isn't taken into consideration moving forward and whatever is causing your issues won't be addressed.

 

So, for starters, what kind of display are you playing on? At what resolution and with what kind of scaling and AA settings?

 

You can exhibit all the superior attitude you like towards my post, but it will not change the fact that DCS has created a problem for itself in this instance. 

Your question was answered by my previous post if you cared to take it on board and I do not intend to get into semantics and a yawn fest of detail when what I have posted is a perfectly reasonably expressed dissatisfaction with the new spotting dot system from my perspective.  Bottom line is that I have posted what I have posted and I am not interested in answering your questions.  You say that some others are plagued with smudgy black squares, so there would appear to be a "we" around the place somewhere, lol.

Our views obviously differ, so time to move on I suggest or folks reading this thread will be getting even more bored.  

[Tippis]

8 minutes ago, Talisman_VR said:

You can exhibit all the superior attitude you like towards my post, but it will not change the fact that DCS has created a problem for itself in this instance.

It's called "first iteration of a system". It needs tweaking, and as such it needs input to get the tweaking right. This is not a matter of a superior attitude but about explaining how you'll be better off offering constructive input rather than digging your heels in and demanding to go back to a worse system.

10 minutes ago, Talisman_VR said:

Your question was answered by my previous post if you cared to take it on board

The one about the previous system offering a level playing field, you mean?

The problem is that it didn't. it just offered a system that was unequal in every every direction and often in a way that was completely counter-intuitive (like getting benefits from having a worse system and downgrading your graphics). Now, if you weren't familiar with those flaws, then I suppose that might have felt like something better but in actual fact, you were worse off for not having noticed the advantages others gained towards you.

Now that you've ended up on the side that accidentally gains advantages with this new system, you obviously want those to be gone, and that's admirable. But going back to where others gained them without anyone being able to do anything about it is not really a way forwards. Continuing to improve and tweak this new system is. This is why I'm asking for your actual, constructive, input.

15 minutes ago, Talisman_VR said:

Bottom line is that I have posted what I have posted and I am not interested in answering your questions.

Unfortunately, this means that your problem is less likely to be addressed. That is your choice of course, but it is an unfortunate one if you truly want there to be a fair and equitable system.

[cw4ogden]

It's a long thread so forgive me if this has been said before but, running a HP reverb in VR, when closing, contacts are a blob and easy to see, until they become rendered.  When they are rendered they become all but invisible and are incredibly difficult to see, even using VR zoom feature.  

So on a sliding scale instead of being difficult to see at range, then easier as you get to medium ranges, and easier still as you get very close, currently It's very easy to see distant targets, virtually impossible to see medium range targets, and easy to see, and difficult to identify all but the closest range targets.

For my two cents: the middle ranges are the most broken, though near and far could use improvements.  Far away, the blobs could use to be smaller.  I don't have a suggestion to fix near, as identifying is a different issue that seeing / spotting.  I do think Identification is too difficult, even using silouettes and tactical identification techniques.  I'd guess 30-50% of the time during a merge, I can't tell what just flew passed me.  And nearly 100% of the time I can't identify in time for a safe head on attack.

Given the wide range of gear and 2d versus VR, I know balance is hard, but in my humble opinion playing in VR puts you at significant disadvantage, especially in the WW2 thru cold war era.

Edit: there are also issues with whether or not a specific plane or ground target are even rendered.  Depending on where the player looks, there are occasions when you can not see something in your central vision, that is plain as day in your peripheral vision.  Meaning: to see a plane or ground target, sometimes you can't look right at it.

Edited November 18, 2023 by cw4ogden

[Cgjunk2]

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

It’s worth remembering that this is the Beta test version. Part of the problem is that seemingly everyone treats it as the release version and uses it in MP etc. but that’s a different problem. 

Not really. In 2.8 it is possible to drop your resolution, see bigger dots and thus see aircraft at such crazy distances that radar becomes unnecessary. 

 

If somebody wants to run at low resolutions just to have an unfair advantage, let them!  How many people actually do that?  The ones that do will eventually get bored and move on to War Thunder or space in invaders, or watching somebody fly on twitch.

Maybe I’m overthinking this, but I think the biggest problem here is that the goal of making spotting fair/balanced across systems, displays, or player visual acuity is actually the goal!   Why is this a goal?  This is not a goal consistent with the reality of what DCS simulates!   Making this type change to the default settings of the game marks a fundamental change in philosophy regarding what DCS intends to simulate, and that’s what bothers me at the end of the day.

Having a core philosophy here is important.  If the goal is “balance” across all hardware, skill, and, visual acuity levels,  it makes DCS spend their time and talent on how to make the dots a consistent experience for everyone.  I’d rather they spend their time figuring out schemes for how to best visually simulate what the eye sees in real life, which given the complexities of human perception, is challenging enough.  That said, on my G2 headset, it already looked plenty good before forced dots as game default.

If balanced experience for all is the goal, then DCS should logically apply it to anything in the game that benefits from better hardware, peripherals, or skills.  I have VR, and following a nearby airplane across my field of view is naturally easier than flat screen.  Should we have the default setting be padlock nearest target so everyone has a balanced experience?  

After decades of simming on an old sidewinder stick with twist axis and throttle slider, I finally bought a good hotas and rudders recently that make flying formation and aerobatics way easier.  Should the default for warbirds be auto rudder to make sure everyone has a balanced experience even if flying on a mouse or xbox controller?  Or some sort of external autothrottle layer to make station keeping in formation more balanced across a range of peripherals?

Someone might argue that this shouldn’t matter because you can turn the default to “hard”.   I would counter with the following: How could DCS continue to justify the the hard work of developing high fidelity products and techniques to simulate reality, if their philosophy has shifted to making consistent experiences for all players?  Well, they can’t… because doing so would literally be counterproductive! 
 

 

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Cgjunk2

[Tippis]

17 minutes ago, Cgjunk2 said:

Maybe I’m overthinking this, but I think the biggest problem here is that the goal of making spotting fair/balanced across systems, displays, or player visual acuity is actually the goal!   Why is this a goal?

The goal isn't really to make it fair and balanced, as such, but to make it less a product of your hardware, because ultimately, if it was possible to make the display system a complete non-factor. Spotting being entirely a matter of player skill — being able to see things properly with their own eyes — rather than due to the hardware they're using would be the most realistic outcome. It's part of the simulation: not just the planes, but the pilots flying them who should be seeing the same thing and therefore that's what ideally should be presented to the player.

Now, it will obviously be impossible to make your display and settings be 100% irrelevant, but any move in that direction is still a move towards better realism and towards that simulation of perception you (and many others) are dreaming of. Player acuity isn't really a part of what they're trying to deal with here — that would require very different mechanics and be part of the player display settings anyway. To an extent, the ability to modify dot labels could be seen as that, but that's not really a feature they're advertising. It's not about taking the player out of the equation, but about making the hardware factor as invisible as possible.

25 minutes ago, Cgjunk2 said:

Should the default for warbirds be auto rudder to make sure everyone has a balanced experience even if flying on a mouse or xbox controller?

Sure, why not? The setting is there exactly for that reason, and whether it defaults to on or off is more of a customer-statistics choice if anything. Now, the reason it isn't on by default for most of them is probably because the assumption is that most players will have more complex controllers.

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Cgjunk2 said:

If somebody wants to run at low resolutions just to have an unfair advantage, let them!  How many people actually do that?

Lots of people since 1080p is the most common resolution display. 

Edited November 18, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Why485]

3 hours ago, Cgjunk2 said:

If the goal is “balance” across all hardware, skill, and, visual acuity levels,  it makes DCS spend their time and talent on how to make the dots a consistent experience for everyone.  I’d rather they spend their time figuring out schemes for how to best visually simulate what the eye sees in real life, which given the complexities of human perception, is challenging enough.

These are the same thing.

Anyway, I really, really wish we could get some insight into what ED is trying to accomplish here. I was pleasantly surprised to see that spotting was mentioned in last weeks newsletter but in the end all they did was point out the new option. I can only speculate what their goal is, and everybody here (including myself) is judging this all based on completely arbitrary measures and assumed goals.

The only clue we've got so far is that they recognize this current iteration doesn't work well in VR.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Why485

[Cgjunk2]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

Lots of people since 1080p is the most common resolution display. 

 

I thought what was being discussed was lowering the resolution below native as a cheat.  
 

Regardless, I think most players that care about recreating the experience of flying and “how” you see in the air do not feel sad if it’s harder to spot after upgrading resolution.   In fact, it was the opposite for me.  When I got my G2, I was excited to finally be able to see other planes in the air like I did in real life.  Working for that visual contact is fun in VR without the spotting dots.    I assumed most of the player base would want to avoid anything that creates an impression of artificiality, even if it makes something easier to do.  That’s why I never expected that something like the dots would be such a hot topic.  

Again, I’m not opposed at all to developing good accessibility options to allow the game to be fun for anyone (it’s a sim! Lol).  But I only play MP, which obviously means playing with others, and having some semblance of shared reality.  By making this the default, the “it’s a sim, not a game” crowd now has to wonder if their favorite servers will eventually relegate them to be the only ones that have to fight for visual contact.  After some time, there will be less servers available to the “realism” crowd just due to the fact that spotting dots have been “deemed” to be so necessary that they should be defaulted to on.

It’s for DCS to decide what to do here, I just never expected default spotting dots to be a debate in a game that has been so focused on modeling realism for so long.   

[Enigma89]

I would just like to share not my perspective but the general vibe that I have seen from the multiplayer side. While there is only a dozen or so pages on this thread, there are thousands of interactions per day on discord which is not really captured here. In general, the feedback, from what I have seen, on the spotting changes has been overwhelmingly positive. The few people who seem to be opposed to the new spotting are people using a nascent technology (VR). As this is the first version of this and the few negative response seem to be centered with some VR people, it looks like we are moving in the right direction. Once this is solved for VR, then it should be in a good spot for everyone, including the few players on VR.

What we had previous was simply unacceptable for spotting for a sim in 2023. What we had before was the worst spotting system out of any sim on the market. This is a step in the right direction and it's the first step to fix it.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Enigma89

[SharpeXB]

43 minutes ago, Cgjunk2 said:

I thought what was being discussed was lowering the resolution below native as a cheat.

Well certainly you can “lower” your resolution by simply having a lower res display. That honestly looks better than downscaling. 
 

44 minutes ago, Cgjunk2 said:

I assumed most of the player base would want to avoid anything that creates an impression of artificiality, even if it makes something easier to do.

Wishful thinking  

[SharpeXB]

44 minutes ago, Enigma89 said:

from what I have seen, on the spotting changes has been overwhelmingly positive.

“Positive” meaning people would rather have easy than realistic. What’s popular isn’t always the right answer. The new system is literally just the dot labels forced on. Those same players probably think dot labels aren’t realistic and are thus playing without them. Yet somehow think the same effect with a different name is

[Tippis]

11 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

“Positive” meaning people would rather have easy than realistic

And you're your basing this strawman on.... what, exactly?

Don't extrapolate other people's opinions from your own.

11 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

The new system is literally just the dot labels forced on

Lolno. For one, they're hellalot more realistic and consistent than the dot labels are even able to be.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Tippis

[Cgjunk2]

1 hour ago, Enigma89 said:

I would just like to share not my perspective but the general vibe that I have seen from the multiplayer side. While there is only a dozen or so pages on this thread, there are thousands of interactions per day on discord which is not really captured here. In general, the feedback, from what I have seen, on the spotting changes has been overwhelmingly positive. The few people who seem to be opposed to the new spotting are people using a nascent technology (VR). As this is the first version of this and the few negative response seem to be centered with some VR people, it looks like we are moving in the right direction. Once this is solved for VR, then it should be in a good spot for the majority of the players.

What we had previous was simply unacceptable for spotting for a sim in 2023. What we had before was the worst spotting system out of any sim on the market. This is a step in the right direction and it's the first step to fix it.

The VR experience, nascent or not, has been able to produce the most enjoyable and believable visual experience for me in my 30 plus years of simming.  
 

Now the default will be to cover up realistic visual representations, with black dot that reduces the amount of information transmitted to the eye.  You bet that’s going to get the VR crowd riled up lol.  
 

I’m worried about where this is going.  In a year or two, will DCS be able to justify modeling anything behind the dot if the majority of discord commenters can’t see anything without dots?   I realize statistics on customers  are important for businesses, but it’s not as simple as counting up the number of comments in forums or discord.  I want them to stay the course with the mission of their product…one that inspires players to spend time, effort, and money (hotas, vr, etc) because they see the tremendous depth of the product, and want to keep experiencing more of it!   Black dot overlays are perfectly fine to have, but making them default will set an expectation which will affect and bleed over into development of the sim.  

31 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

 

Wishful thinking  

People want easy instead of realistic on a realistic flight sim?  Say it ain’t so!      

 

Edited November 19, 2023 by Cgjunk2

[Tippis]

1 minute ago, Cgjunk2 said:

I’m worried about where this is going.  In a year or two, will DCS be able to justify modeling anything behind the dot if the majority of discord commenters can’t see anything without dots?

The main point of the dots is to hide the fact that there is nothing being modelled behind it for the simple reason that there shouldn't be.

At the ranges where the dot should be active, any kind of modelling will be reduced to the same four pixels and thus offer no information anyway, meaning all the processing can be skipped and you save a couple of milliseconds on your frametime. Remember, they're spotting dots – not identification dots or figuring out aspect dots. That shouldn't happen until much further in.

The problem before was that the ranges for some of that were stretched out far too long (which parts it happened to depended on your setup, but it was far too long for everyone in one way or another). By having these dots, DCS can now hide the transition from showing you a model that you can identify and track to having nothing at all with a featureless dot and make that seamlessly fade away. The loss of information can happen much sooner and much more realistically, and with a bit of tweaking look good in the process.

The loss of information is a good thing. Because it is how it should be. Not because people like it that way – it should be that way because people dislike not having information that they shouldn't have anyway.

[Enigma89]

36 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

“Positive” meaning people would rather have easy than realistic. What’s popular isn’t always the right answer. The new system is literally just the dot labels forced on. Those same players probably think dot labels aren’t realistic and are thus playing without them. Yet somehow think the same effect with a different name is

While some pilots look at MFDs when they fly, they have to use their eyes (not screens) when they spot in real life. We use screens in DCS to spot.

[SharpeXB]

2 minutes ago, Enigma89 said:

While some pilots look at MFDs when they fly, they have to use their eyes (not screens) when they spot in real life. We use screens in DCS to spot.

There are no giant black cubes to see in real life.

[Tippis]

2 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

There are no giant black cubes to see in real life.

Sure there is.

Spoiler

But you know what there isn't in real life? Eye pixels. Because we don't use screens to look out through the window (and if we did for whatever reason, then yes, there would indeed be tiny featureless pixel blobs, same as in the game).

[Cgjunk2]

30 minutes ago, Tippis said:

The main point of the dots is to hide the fact that there is nothing being modelled behind it for the simple reason that there shouldn't be.

At the ranges where the dot should be active, any kind of modelling will be reduced to the same four pixels and thus offer no information anyway, meaning all the processing can be skipped and you save a couple of milliseconds on your frametime. Remember, they're spotting dots – not identification dots or figuring out aspect dots. That shouldn't happen until much further in.

The problem before was that the ranges for some of that were stretched out far too long (which parts it happened to depended on your setup, but it was far too long for everyone in one way or another). By having these dots, DCS can now hide the transition from showing you a model that you can identify and track to having nothing at all with a featureless dot and make that seamlessly fade away. The loss of information can happen much sooner and much more realistically, and with a bit of tweaking look good in the process.

The loss of information is a good thing. Because it is how it should be. Not because people like it that way – it should be that way because people dislike not having information that they shouldn't have anyway.

I agree there should be no or very little information beyond 10 miles.   Then why is there a huge (or any-sized) dot over planes and objects that are beyond visual range?
 

by 5 miles there should be some additional useful, information transmitted to the eye, so why is there a big dot obscuring all or most of that information?  Also, the fact the blob is meant to improve spotting, means it will improve the ability to maintain the target in sight with just a glance.   In real life, if you lose sight, you have to start looking all over again, and you may not ever see it again if it stays at that distance.
 

Are the people having trouble with flat screens because of field of view issues?   Now I recall, When I played flat screen, I made sure my FOV was set in a way that made my screen act as if it were a window into the cockpit, trying  to simulate one to one object size in the cockpit as much as the screen would allow, and understood that not having track ir meant I needed to use arrows to look around.   Then I got track IR to get around that problem.   I got a bigger monitor when I realized the little airplanes in the distance were smaller because the screen was small.   But i never thought that it was a “DCS problem” that I couldnt see what others with bigger screen sizes could see.   I never thought it was a DCS problem that I couldnt easily see most of the cockpit either.

 

 

Edited November 19, 2023 by Cgjunk2

[Tippis]

7 minutes ago, Cgjunk2 said:

I agree there should be no or very little information beyond 10 miles.   Then why is there a huge dot over planes and objects that are beyond visual range?

Because it's the first roll-out and it has yet to be tweaked.

Fortunately, even in this early state, it makes sure that there is the absolute minimum of information given beyond 10nm — just a hint that something is there.

By 5 miles, there should also be very little information unless we are talking about very large aircraft. The rest might as well just be a tiny dot, which is what they're represented as at the moment. The "tiny:ness" is subject to the same tweaks as before, and it's about spot on for high-res displays.

e: Oh and, I'm not sure people are having trouble with flat screens. If anything, it seems like pancake mode makes these spotting dots work wonderfully, and it's more when you move to other displays that issues arise. There are some hints that TVs are causing problems too, which seems natural since modern ones have a nasty tendency to over-process the image signal to amp up saturation and contrast because it "looks good" for certain types of media. For games, though, you really need to turn all that junk off to make the colours appear correctly and something as detail- and (lack-of-)contrast reliant as spotting dots would be extra susceptible to over-processing.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Tippis

[rob10]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

There are no giant black cubes to see in real life.

Please try to understand that NOT EVERYONE IS SEEING GIANT BLACK CUBES in game currently and virtually no one who isn't seeing them currently is arguing that ED shouldn't continue to tweak things so that those who are currently don't in future!!!!!!  Unlike the majority who are seeing them and think things should just go back to the way they were.

Edited November 19, 2023 by rob10