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

[SharpeXB]

15 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

There is a great big difference between full labels, visible through the aircraft, and a black dot.

Well you said you want everyone to see you. Full labels definitely accomplishes that. So does gigantic dots. 

[Talisman_VR]

48 minutes ago, draconus said:

No, it's not the way. If you want to be visible all the time drop some flares or play with labels with your friends. DCS is not only about dogfighting and some rely on being not very visible - esp. helis, low strikers and ground units - but even in knife fight keeping tally is a skill and necessity, not a given.

 

Very much this.  Well said draconus.  When I am flying tactically on MP using terrain cover to try and mask my helicopter low level in the normal way, similar to real life, it is not much fun knowing I am completely wasting my time and standing out like an alien craft as a large black square or cube to any human adversary on the hunt for an easy victory. 

In short, I do not want to stand out like the proverbial dogs dangly bits!

P.S.  I don't want to see anyone else and their dangly bits either, lol.

Happy landings,

Talisman

Edited October 2, 2024 by Talisman_VR

[Tippis]

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

But it’s an exploit if anyone can just alter it.

  Good news: not anyone can altaer it.

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Like simply lowering their resolution to make them bigger. 

Yes, that's how resolutions work. That is also not an exploit.

And yes, spotting dots are meant to solve this. They don't, but that's why tweaking is needed. In fact, they're the only way to solve this, and by doing your utmost to try to make them go away, you are actively arguing in favour of applying nonsensical advantages solely based on game settings.

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

If they can some people will exploit these to give themselves advantages far beyond what’s realistic.

You mean like back in the day when you were arguing vociferously for keeping the “exploit” around where you demonstrated that you could see planes at outrageous distances? You showed off being able to see planes at 40nm and argued that this was realistic and good because it proved that there was no problem with spotting and people should just git gud. Or git gudder hardware. Or something equally inane.

Well, good news: the exploit is gone. You will not get your advantage back. Stop complaining just because you have to play on a level playing field with everyone else. If you feel that you're at a disadvantage, explain how this should be solved without giving yourself an advantage instead. It's that last bit that you are unwilling to do, which is why your spamming doesn't have the effect you're hoping for.

 

1 hour ago, Talisman_VR said:

In short, I do not want to stand out like the proverbial dogs dangly bits!

That's a good goal, but the problem here is that it needs to be the same for everyone and it needs a number of solutions to work together to make that happen. Dots are an unavoidable part of the package, and the question there is in what range bracket they should be in effect.

At what distances should you not be visible, no matter what?
At what distances should you be visible, (almost) no matter what?
At what distances should you not just be visible, but discernible enough to figure out where you're going?
At what distances should you be identifiable?

How much do you feel size and aspect should factor into the first two, knowing that this will come at a rendering cost?

And, from a more technical standpoint, what should be the lowest common denominator in terms of perceptual “smallest possible” dot size? While we could discuss it in terms of angular size, it's probably best to state it as 1px at a benchmark resolution. Without these questions answered, we can't actually tell whether the dots are too large or too small, too visible, or too obscure; rendered too far out or too close in.

Edited October 2, 2024 by Tippis

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 hour ago, draconus said:

No, it's not the way. If you want to be visible all the time drop some flares or play with labels with your friends. DCS is not only about dogfighting and some rely on being not very visible - esp. helis, low strikers and ground units - but even in knife fight keeping tally is a skill and necessity, not a given.

 

You are totally taking that quote out of context.

The complete quote

2 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

If the only way to make spotting similar to reality is to make the game ugly, perhaps you should focus on why that is instead of worrying about the specifics of spotting dots. 

The problem lies within DCS's poor lighting and rendering, making a crutch a requirement in VR. It doesn't have to be that way but until ED (and its customers) realize what the actual issue is, it ain't gonna get addressed.

 

 

[SharpeXB]

16 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

The problem lies within DCS's poor lighting and rendering

So improve lighting and rendering instead of creating another type of label. 

[=475FG= Dawger]

52 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

So improve lighting and rendering instead of creating another type of label. 

Yes, you should copy and paste that in every thread instead of what you normally post.

[Tippis]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

So improve lighting and rendering instead of creating another type of label. 

Coincidentally, what we're discussing here is an improvement in rendering. How it is affected by lighting is another improvement (a tweak, if you will) to that system. No new labels have been introduced, only a necessary transition mechanism from rending nothing to rendering something — a something that by its very nature cannot have any of the details or any of the resolution you'd get out of a geometry-based solution.

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Yes, you should copy and paste that in every thread instead of what you normally post.

Well that is the solution. The future is better graphics and higher resolution displays and headsets. Labels and dots are a solution from 20-30 years ago. But realize that even if the game had perfect rendering and graphics the average detection range for a fighter would be like 3-4 miles. I think too many players have been convinced by video games over the decades that this just can’t be right. They believe that far away aircraft should be easily seen and that it makes the game fun. Plus the game’s demographic are people with aging eyesight as well. So this discussion will never stop. 

Edited October 2, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

25 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Labels and dots are a solution from 20-30 years ago.

No, that's not what they are.

They are a solution to a problem that will always exist: the difference between resolutions and avoiding pop-in, especially when dealing with variable FoV. This is a bigger problem now than it was 20–30 years ago when resolutions and display systems were vastly more uniform.

And I'll reiterate, before you try throwing shade at “players being convinced by videogames” that you are that player. By your own admission. That's why you thought 40nm rendering was realistic and ok. That's why you didn't want to see any changes to spotting until you realised other players had a different advantage over you than you had over them. It was never about fairness or realism for you — it was about preserving your advantage and nerfing the other guy's.

[Parkour]

Improved Spotting Dots still unable to be turned OFF in OPTIONS > GAMEPLAY after the 2.9.8.1214 hotfix.

Just tested in the F/A-18 in the 1v1 top single player mission and the Mig is a black square even up to just 2nm or closer. It looks horrible. It suddenly/snap changes to a Mig model when at about 1nm. It's just bad. Again, this is with Improved Spotting Dots OFF. This is literally a screenshot of the Mig 1-second before it drops flares and snaps into a Mig model.
.

[themastrofall]

Simply put, it's a joke that me having my game in high quality makes it impossible to see aircraft and maintain consistent visual in the most simple of conditions. Its become Digital Combat Settings ans universalizing the spotting would eliminate graphics exploitation for net gain. Yall improved the graphics over the past two decades just for people to play the game like it's DCS 1.5 just to see a thing. Simply put, we shouldn't have to run the game at poor visual quality to see aircraft without having to slam into it first.

 

And yes I called it a game, yall are the same lot that got upset when Razbam wanted to make the L-Mav realistic, so please don't try to tell me you care for realism.

[Why485]

To review, these are the iterations of dots we've gone through.

1.5.5 - The original dots: They were 1px dots drawn on every object that was currently being rendered. Many complain about it being very difficult to spot targets at any range, especially those with higher resolution displays, but some notice that if you drop your resolution suddenly you can see targets out to 30-40 miles.

2.9.1. - Improved Spotting Dots V1: ED's implementation of the dot spotting mod. The main difference is that the size of the dot scales with resolution to try and maintain a baseline level of visibility across different monitors. The ED implementation has all the features of the mod, plus the addition of the fade distance of the dot being adjusted based on the size of the object. E.g. a B-52's dot is visible at 30 miles, while an F-5's ~5 miles. Unfortunately this also introduced the cloud rendering bug, which allows dots to be visible from much further than intended. 2D reaction to this patch was mostly positive. VR reaction to this was mixed. For headsets running low res, this looked very bad ("giant bricks"), but for high res headsets, this scaled well and looked fine.

2.9.7 - Improved Spotting Dots V2: VR rendering was changed so that if a VR headset is in use, dots were forced to be drawn at 1px at all times. For headsets running low resolutions, this looks pretty good and anecdotally seems to roughly match 2D spotting. VR reaction to this was mostly positive, because a 1px dot looks good on most common headsets. However, for people running high resolutions, 1px is too small to be noticeable. This seems the be where and why the divide is occurring, as following this patch, I noticed that the players very vocally having difficulty with visibility seem to be the ones with boutique and very high res headsets.

2.9.8 - Improved Spotting Dots V1 (Revision): As was stated by ED, they have reverted to V1, with the minor change of dots being affected by motion blur now. (Which IMO, is not good). 2D is unchanged, however VR reaction to this is mostly negative, because most players with VR, using the most common headsets, are back to seeing bricks again. Players with high res boutique headsets are once again fine, but the average VR user is upset.

It's important to remember in this discussion that, especially when it comes to VR, everybody is seeing different things. Not only is the efficacy of a pixel wildly dependent on the resolution of a headset, but also on the display technology, lenses, and the layers of software ran on top of the headset for various performance or usability reasons. This is why, and I've held this opinion ever since they were introduced many years ago, that a pixel based solution will inherently be a problematic. In a 2D setting these problems are at least somewhat manageable since the main (but not only) difference is resolution, but VR is far more complex.

If ED wants to keep this setting locked down, they will have to create unique profiles for every headset to match some baseline. Based on ED's commentary ("Currently we are working on the advanced functionality for spotting dots rendering which will depend on VR hardware type and its properties"), this seems to be the direction they are going.

Edited October 3, 2024 by Why485

[Exorbit]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. Though, I tend to disagree. I use a crystal with quadview, dfr and Native resolution. I find that the spotting range is now way to big in the last update. For example, in Caucasus instant action I can spot the 2 bandits and the helo right when I spawn. I m not sure I like being able to spot target from that far, it s probably over 30 miles. It felt  better when I was able to disable the dots in the previous update. I understand that it might be necessary in MP and I understand the friction on both sides, but I d rather see the option to disable it as in the previous version. I might be wrong, I m new. Just trying to give some feedback from the perspective of a new player.

 

EDIT: I measured the distance. It's actually 60 kilometers

Edited October 3, 2024 by Exorbit

[YoYo]

Its a pity that yesterday's hot fix didn't at least restore the ability to turn off the flying brick (big box dot). Currently there is no immersion or surprise effect, even targets on the ground are a visible as a box from a distance. The best option for me was Improved Spotting Dots V2 (so version before the last patch).

[Bounti30]

48 minutes ago, YoYo said:

Its a pity that yesterday's hot fix didn't at least restore the ability to turn off the flying brick (big box dot). Currently there is no immersion or surprise effect, even targets on the ground are a visible as a box from a distance. The best option for me was Improved Spotting Dots V2 (so version before the last patch).

Totally agree with you

No comment from ED ?

[waterman]

Contact head office this stupidity has to be sorted once and for all

Eagle Dynamics SA. Official address: Route de Moncor 2, Villars-sur-Glâne 1, 1752, Switzerland. P.O. Box: 187. Registration number: CH-660.2.221.000-8

[MoleUK]

6 hours ago, Why485 said:

To review, these are the iterations of dots we've gone through.

1.5.5 - The original dots: They were 1px dots drawn on every object that was currently being rendered. Many complain about it being very difficult to spot targets at any range, especially those with higher resolution displays, but some notice that if you drop your resolution suddenly you can see targets out to 30-40 miles.

2.9.1. - Improved Spotting Dots V1: ED's implementation of the dot spotting mod. The main difference is that the size of the dot scales with resolution to try and maintain a baseline level of visibility across different monitors. The ED implementation has all the features of the mod, plus the addition of the fade distance of the dot being adjusted based on the size of the object. E.g. a B-52's dot is visible at 30 miles, while an F-5's ~5 miles. Unfortunately this also introduced the cloud rendering bug, which allows dots to be visible from much further than intended. 2D reaction to this patch was mostly positive. VR reaction to this was mixed. For headsets running low res, this looked very bad ("giant bricks"), but for high res headsets, this scaled well and looked fine.

2.9.7 - Improved Spotting Dots V2: VR rendering was changed so that if a VR headset is in use, dots were forced to be drawn at 1px at all times. For headsets running low resolutions, this looks pretty good and anecdotally seems to roughly match 2D spotting. VR reaction to this was mostly positive, because a 1px dot looks good on most common headsets. However, for people running high resolutions, 1px is too small to be noticeable. This seems the be where and why the divide is occurring, as following this patch, I noticed that the players very vocally having difficulty with visibility seem to be the ones with boutique and very high res headsets.

2.9.8 - Improved Spotting Dots V1 (Revision): As was stated by ED, they have reverted to V1, with the minor change of dots being affected by motion blur now. (Which IMO, is not good). 2D is unchanged, however VR reaction to this is mostly negative, because most players with VR, using the most common headsets, are back to seeing bricks again. Players with high res boutique headsets are once again fine, but the average VR user is upset.

It's important to remember in this discussion that, especially when it comes to VR, everybody is seeing different things. Not only is the efficacy of a pixel wildly dependent on the resolution of a headset, but also on the display technology, lenses, and the layers of software ran on top of the headset for various performance or usability reasons. This is why, and I've held this opinion ever since they were introduced many years ago, that a pixel based solution will inherently be a problematic. In a 2D setting these problems are at least somewhat manageable since the main (but not only) difference is resolution, but VR is far more complex.

If ED wants to keep this setting locked down, they will have to create unique profiles for every headset to match some baseline. Based on ED's commentary ("Currently we are working on the advanced functionality for spotting dots rendering which will depend on VR hardware type and its properties"), this seems to be the direction they are going.

 

Honestly imo there was something inbetween their v1 and v2. On the initial rollout of v1 I had fairly large dots, that slowly seemed to be degraded over several patches. This may have been due to changes on my end (quad view, DLAA), but I suspect there was some unnannounced tweaking at some point idk. Then v2 rolled out with no announcement and it was immediately noticeable that it had degraded again.

Everyone seeing different things depending on their individual VR setup is a huge confounding factor. And I don't know if it can be said with any confidence that the "average" VR user was a fan of the V2 revision or not. We'd need more feedback than just forum or discord complaints/praise, as if I were just going on feedback I've personally seen/heard I'd say most people did NOT like the v2 VR spotting dots as most feedback I saw complained about lack of visibility.

And i'm not sure what the "Average" VR users setup looks like right now for DCS. We will have an unusually large number of higher end headsets as people spend more on this hobby, and aside from that many users have started using quad view even with headsets without eye tracking. A lot of the feedback split I've seen between those praising vs complaining about spotting dots has come down to whether or not they're using quad view. Though that is by no means universal.

And I don't entirely understand why quad view is squashing dots so much, as I have the focus area set to 1.0 so it's not upscaling. It is sharpening (AMD CAS) and doing other stuff though, so perhaps it's a quirk of the rendering. I'm assuming it's not due to something as stupid as the dots size being calculcated based on adding the resolution of the outer focus to the inner focus, due to the game rendering 4 views rather than the normal 2. Though it might explain some things if the game is overestimating the resolution you're running at when quad views is enabled.

And yeah an individual setup for each headset is going to take a lot of tweaking, and every time something new and unusual pops up like quad views it might need to be factored all over again. And again for each new headset release. It's going to require a lot of upkeep, and i'm not convinced that 1: It will be done well enough to cover for settings variations, or 2: It will be done in a timely fashion.

Which is why I just keep coming back to sliders as the most workable solution.

Edited October 3, 2024 by MoleUK

[Joch1955]

12 hours ago, Parkour said:

Improved Spotting Dots still unable to be turned OFF in OPTIONS > GAMEPLAY after the 2.9.8.1214 hotfix.

Just tested in the F/A-18 in the 1v1 top single player mission and the Mig is a black square even up to just 2nm or closer. It looks horrible. It suddenly/snap changes to a Mig model when at about 1nm. It's just bad. Again, this is with Improved Spotting Dots OFF. This is literally a screenshot of the Mig 1-second before it drops flares and snaps into a Mig model.
.

Yes that is what I see on my G2. The issue is not just the spotting at huge distances, but it kills any SA of what the bogey is doing. The huge black dot stays the same size and hides the plane so you have no idea if the plane is getting closer, moving away or maneuvering right to left until the actual model pops into view very close by.

With the previous 2.8 ‘off’ settings, when planes were within say 2-4 miles, there were enough visual clues, including engine smoke that you could tell if the plane was getting closer or moving away and within say 1-2 miles, you could make out enough of a shape that you could tell if it was maneuvering right or left.

 

Edited October 3, 2024 by Joch1955

[SharpeXB]

Pixel dots are a terrible solution and should be relegated to dot labels. A single pixel is too large for a faraway target and pixels appear bigger at lower resolutions. My vote is to scrap the whole idea. 

9 hours ago, Why485 said:

To review, these are the iterations of dots we've gone through.

1.5.5 - The original dots: 

Let’s go back to before this

[Avenger31]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

Pixel dots are a terrible solution and should be relegated to dot labels. A single pixel is too large for a faraway target and pixels appear bigger at lower resolutions. My vote is to scrap the whole idea. 

Let’s go back to before this

I completely agree! who wants to use ordinary labels that have always been there, just go ahead. those of us who want to enjoy the realism of air combat don't have to be doomed because of the stupid ideas of some developer who wants to play safe in a digital combat simulator

[PawlaczGMD]

11 hours ago, Exorbit said:

Thanks for the detailed explanation. Though, I tend to disagree. I use a crystal with quadview, dfr and Native resolution. I find that the spotting range is now way to big in the last update. For example, in Caucasus instant action I can spot the 2 bandits and the helo right when I spawn. I m not sure I like being able to spot target from that far, it s probably over 30 miles. It felt  better when I was able to disable the dots in the previous update. I understand that it might be necessary in MP and I understand the friction on both sides, but I d rather see the option to disable it as in the previous version. I might be wrong, I m new. Just trying to give some feedback from the perspective of a new player.

 

EDIT: I measured the distance. It's actually 60 kilometers

 

Increase QV foveated res to 120-125% if your hardware allows, it makes the dots smaller, and about right. I would say slightly too big but acceptable. 

7 hours ago, MoleUK said:

Honestly imo there was something inbetween their v1 and v2. On the initial rollout of v1 I had fairly large dots, that slowly seemed to be degraded over several patches. This may have been due to changes on my end (quad view, DLAA), but I suspect there was some unnannounced tweaking at some point idk. Then v2 rolled out with no announcement and it was immediately noticeable that it had degraded again.

Everyone seeing different things depending on their individual VR setup is a huge confounding factor. And I don't know if it can be said with any confidence that the "average" VR user was a fan of the V2 revision or not. We'd need more feedback than just forum or discord complaints/praise, as if I were just going on feedback I've personally seen/heard I'd say most people did NOT like the v2 VR spotting dots as most feedback I saw complained about lack of visibility.

And i'm not sure what the "Average" VR users setup looks like right now for DCS. We will have an unusually large number of higher end headsets as people spend more on this hobby, and aside from that many users have started using quad view even with headsets without eye tracking. A lot of the feedback split I've seen between those praising vs complaining about spotting dots has come down to whether or not they're using quad view. Though that is by no means universal.

And I don't entirely understand why quad view is squashing dots so much, as I have the focus area set to 1.0 so it's not upscaling. It is sharpening (AMD CAS) and doing other stuff though, so perhaps it's a quirk of the rendering. I'm assuming it's not due to something as stupid as the dots size being calculcated based on adding the resolution of the outer focus to the inner focus, due to the game rendering 4 views rather than the normal 2. Though it might explain some things if the game is overestimating the resolution you're running at when quad views is enabled.

And yeah an individual setup for each headset is going to take a lot of tweaking, and every time something new and unusual pops up like quad views it might need to be factored all over again. And again for each new headset release. It's going to require a lot of upkeep, and i'm not convinced that 1: It will be done well enough to cover for settings variations, or 2: It will be done in a timely fashion.

Which is why I just keep coming back to sliders as the most workable solution.

 

It would be useful to test the dot size with respect to using quad views or not, without upscaling the central foveated region. I might try that.

Because my QV was not working due to the DCS update for 1 day, I can definitely say that the dots at 100% PD no QV were definitely too large, but with QV at 120% PD they are just slightly too large.

[Silver_]

Please, DCS team, I won't be the one to tell you how to do things, but when a plane moves away it gets smaller and smaller and there comes a time when it fades into the background. In your programming logic it would be, as I can see, "it gets smaller and smaller and when it is about to fade into the background, suddenly, it grows like a magnificent black square." If you see logic in this, let God come and see it because, no matter how hard I try, I cannot see your logic. I would have allowed you a black dot that degrades in color tending, finally, to resemble the background but a SOLID BLACK POINT!!! is inadmissible. In my programming days I have not seen anything like it. Excuse me for the criticism but you have more than enough financial means to at least try to do things well and have a good team.

PS: By the way, this option is not useful for much, it stopped working. Thanks for reading me.

[SharpeXB]

29 minutes ago, Silver_ said:

"it gets smaller and smaller and when it is about to fade into the background, suddenly, it grows like a magnificent black square." If you see logic in this, let God come and see it because, no matter how hard I try, I cannot see your logic.

There’s no logic to this. It’s simply trying to sell the game to an older player base with eyesight issues. Everyone knows what the real world data has to say about this. It’s the same “logic” that was behind model enlargement. Unlike every other aspect of the sim they can’t turn to reality for an answer here.

I get it that everyone doesn’t have perfect eyesight. That’s why there are dot labels. 

Edited October 3, 2024 by SharpeXB

[MAXsenna]

There’s no logic to this. It’s simply trying to sell the game to an older player base with eyesight issues. Everyone knows what the real world data has to say about this. Unlike every other aspect of the sim they can’t turn to reality for an answer here. It’s the same “logic” that was behind model enlargement.
I get it that everyone doesn’t have perfect eyesight. That’s why there are dot labels. 

You just can't help yourself, can you?
Happy weekend Sharpy!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Silver_]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

There’s no logic to this. It’s simply trying to sell the game to an older player base with eyesight issues. Everyone knows what the real world data has to say about this. It’s the same “logic” that was behind model enlargement. Unlike every other aspect of the sim they can’t turn to reality for an answer here.

I get it that everyone doesn’t have perfect eyesight. That’s why there are dot labels. 

 

But that is corrected with prescription glasses, not software.