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

[Tippis]

56 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

This! There needs to be a true off setting. And that needs to be mission/ server enforceable. 

Other way around. There needs to be a mission-enforceable on setting so make sure people don't try to get their old 40nm spotting advantage back.

 

54 minutes ago, Turbonix said:

No my request is actually the opposite. I don´t want to use this visual aid feature. That would give me in fact a disadvantage over others.

That's just it: it wouldn't. You'd be relying on rendering limits alone, and you'd now have to choose between one of two options:

• Unlimited and uncontrollable spotting range. Planes would be rendered out to maximum distance and it would be entirely reliant on your hardware setup whether you could see them at 160nm, 100nm, or a “mere” 40nm. Note that all of those ranges have at the very least one zero too much in them. But no matter what, you'd get hugely unrealistic results that applied unevenly and inequitably across the player base, which people would exploit to the fullest degree.
• Massive pop-in. If you enforce a maximum rendering distance that is more in line with how far out you should be able to see planes, the moment they cross that boundary, they will pop in and be very obvious. For some. Again, hardware and settings dependent, and people would exploit this ability to choose visibility to the fullest degree.

Those are both bad outcomes.

54 minutes ago, Turbonix said:

I can understand that people in 2D, especially on higher resolution and antialiasing methods activated, need some aid in this regard.

Everyone does, because the goal is to create a unified level of visibility, and unless you are exactly on the reference spec that decides what that visibility should look like, you will need some help to tone up or tone down or tone sideways how the dots appear. But they'd still have to be dots, because that is pretty much the definition of what we are trying to recreate here — if they're not dots, it has failed as an implementation, irrespective of whether they're rendered as actual dots, or if they are using 3D models that are forced to appear as nothing but dots.

54 minutes ago, Turbonix said:

But now it is exactly like that. Just an example: I can clearly see the dot of a contact way before the F4´s radar can even get a brick in the scope, no matter what i tell jester to set the radar up.

And without this kind of solution, it would be even worse. We know this for a fact because we've had it. The only difference is that it wasn't universally known how bad it was, so only some “in the know” could take advantage (and you can now see them clamouring for the return of that advantage, bolstered by the criticism against how the much-needed fix is developing).

54 minutes ago, Turbonix said:

The "advantage" is now mandatory there for everybody. 

That is how it should be.

Now, granted, you could argue for having the ability to turn off that advantage, but that option must not come with an advantage of its own, nor should it be something that can be enforced. Quite the opposite — parity should be enforceable. If a mission maker doesn't care, then yes, they could allow you to cripple yourself but there should not be an option to arbitrarily and uncontrollably give some people an advantage that others can't have.

Note that I'm not saying you should be happy with how that advantage looks, but that is a separate matter.

54 minutes ago, Turbonix said:

I can see that making the spotting equal for everybody on every system is hard to accomplish

Honestly, it really isn't.

But it has a couple of requirements that, for a variety of reasons, the advantage-hunters and ED don't really like, and either try to kill at every opportunity or try to avoid implementing.

• It still needs to be a dot system for the actual spotting part.
• It needs to understand that spotting is only one part of a whole, from just beyond BVR all the way into faceplanting into the other plane's engine exhausts.
• As such, it can't be one system. One size does not fit all.
• It needs to be ok to borrow from other games.
• It needs to yield results that are very different from how things have historically looked in DCS (because DCS is notorious for how wrong it has always gotten this).
• It needs to match actual real-world data.

Only the last part is actually hard, in part because the data itself is disparate and hard to come by. Or, well… the fourth point is also politically difficult, but that's when the big-boy pants need to come on.

 

26 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

These would all need to be mission/server settings.

No. Only one of them need that: enforce on, or player's choice. The on option is for PvP- and realism-oriented missions; the player's choice for when it doesn't matter. And ultimately, it doesn't need to be a choice at all, same as how you can't turn off other parts of the world simulation (yes, yes, I know, wake turbulence yadda yadda…).

 

5 minutes ago, Rufuz64 said:

The only advantage in the old system was when people played at low resolution.

No. There was also the advantage of when people played at high resolution.

One got ease of spotting; the other got spotting range. It was a bit of a sliding scale between those two, and you could pick your favourite, but both ends of the spectrum were horrible and silly.

It was a late discovery that the much more intuitive and obvious high-res advantage was pseudo-balanced against a different low-res advantage, and some people were mightily upset to learn that some players had an advantage over them when they thought that they were the one with an advantage over those peons.

Edited October 4, 2024 by Tippis

[TCKnight]

3 ore fa, BIGNEWY ha scritto:

 

We made it clear in the patch notes we will be working on a system to account for various vr devices and tweak dots again, so not silent, please read the notes again. 

We players read all the notes, we are greedy for patches. So, to understand, we should keep this crap, which no one asked you, for how long?. The patch should improve, not make the situation worse. But haven't you experienced this nonsense that you have released? We just need a hotfix, like for the f10 map, to disable them. Thanks

[Parkour]

3 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

 

We made it clear in the patch notes we will be working on a system to account for various vr devices and tweak dots again, so not silent, please read the notes again. 

So you consider the inability to turn OFF the Improved Spotting Dots as "working as intended"???  As I've explained in detail, the OPTIONS > GAMEPLAY > Improved Spotting Dots is currently broken. There is no difference in the size or when they activate when you set this to either ON or OFF.

This is unbelievable. Hotfix this nightmare.

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

These would all need to be mission/server settings. Dot labels are effectively the same thing and are mission enforced, the same logic would apply to spotting dots. I think having this extra setting needlessly complicates the game a divides up the player base though. It would be better to get rid of spotting dots alltogether.

Your agenda is showing. 
 

You don’t actually care about making spotting more realistic or not.

You just want to be sure whatever system that is built to make an even playing field for various hardware can be turned off in MP servers. 

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

You don’t actually care about making spotting more realistic or not.

You misunderstand. I’m all in favor of this being realistic. I don’t think this can ever be achieved using dots though. And dots are already available as labels. 
 

Edited October 4, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

I’m all in favor of this being realistic. I don’t think this can ever be achieved using dots though. And dots are already available as labels.

No, yes, and no in that order.

The one consistent theme in the long and illustrious history of your arguing against any and all improvements to spotting (or indeed anything) is that you argue against the more realistic option and in favour of the option that lets you (unrealistically) see targets at (unrealistically) longer distances than they can (realistically) see you.

Not only can realism be achieved, but dots are a critical part in making that happen. That's why we have them and why ED are iterating on them. The fault lies in thinking that they're the only part, when in actuality they only fill one role at the very outer edge of perceptibility.

Dots are not labels. Labels are not dots. One is part of the perception simulation, the other is a UI element. The two have exactly nothing in common, even on the occasions when they happen to look vaguely similar. The purpose isn't the same; the controllability isn't the same; the rendering isn't the same; the controllability is not the same; the rule set for drawing them is not the same; and the controllability is not the same. No, that is not a mistaken repetition  — one has three different axes along which it can be controlled by players and mission makers; the other has none. And the (currently broken, but ultimately removable) ability to turn them off isn't even a part of that.

If you mistakenly confuse the two, all you end up proving is that you have no idea how either of those two features work and your opinion on the matter is not just null and void but objectively wrong. It takes a lot for an opinion to be wrong, but this fits the bill.

Edited October 4, 2024 by Tippis

[DigitalEngine]

The new spotting dots are really awful, as in they are BIG BLOCKS. I'm also requesting a hot fix for the user and/or the server to have the option to disable this feature.

[=475FG= Dawger]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

You misunderstand. I’m all in favor of this being realistic. I don’t think this can ever be achieved using dots though. And dots are already available as labels. 
 

 

That's dumb.

If the aircraft is rendered at a far distance, it is a dot.

In fact, out in the real world, when an aviator wished to express that he was now leaving(especially in a rapid fashion) to a fellow aviator, he would say "I'm a dot".

I'm a dot, AMF.

[JG1_Labroisse]

3 hours ago, DigitalEngine said:

The new spotting dots are really awful, as in they are BIG BLOCKS. I'm also requesting a hot fix for the user and/or the server to have the option to disable this feature.

Totally agree, awful.  The use new spotting option doesn't seem to make any difference.  At least let us turn if off if we want to.

 

[SharpeXB]

3 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

If the aircraft is rendered at a far distance, it is a dot

Not a “dot” like we see here trying to use pixels.

[Tippis]

7 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Not a “dot” like we see here trying to use pixels.

Exactly like that, actually: the smallest thing possible.

On your display, we call those things “pixels”. That's what you'd have to use to render the smallest thing possible. Like a plane at a distance that is the smallest thing possible: a dot.

Edited October 5, 2024 by Tippis

[=475FG= Dawger]

A short study of the elements of this problem gives one an idea of how difficult a single solution will be to develop.

The standard visual acuity of the human eye is 1 minute of arc (1/60th of a degree).

This works out to an object of 6 foot dimension being visible to the human eye at 3.7 nautical miles under ideal conditions.

On a computer, this would be represented by a single black pixel (dot)

However, this single pixel must also distend precisely the same minute of arc as what is being represented. The viewers eye distance from the display, the size of the display and the resolution of the display must be known and accounted for in order to attempt to properly simulate human visual acuity. 

While eye distance to the display can be rather precisely determined when it comes to a specific VR HMD, it is an unknown variable when it comes to a traditional monitor. Someone may be 12 inches or 12 feet from the display.

And the display size is also unknown.

 

And this does not even begin to factor in contrast sensitivity, light response or less than ideal conditions (non-contrasting colors for example)

 

At present, DCS does not properly render backlit objects. They are lighter than they should be and thus less visible against light backgrounds, making them disappear at ranges where the target is rendered as a small color blob.

Properly darkening backlit objects would go a long way in resolving middle range visibility issues when the object is rendered in more than 10 pixels. However, visibility of objects rendering in small numbers of pixels or as a single pixel is going to be tough.

It seems obvious that the end user will have to be given the ability to adjust this to his particular hardware.

 

Which will, of course, lead to cries of outrage from the usual suspect(s).

Edited October 5, 2024 by =475FG= Dawger

[Bounti30]

23 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

 

We made it clear in the patch notes we will be working on a system to account for various vr devices and tweak dots again, so not silent, please read the notes again. 

don't worry, I read the patch notes, the community read the patch notes.
But for now it's not working for some.
And Ok you are working on.
BUT, Leave the choice to the player.
I just want to have a choice that's all. 
I hear everyone's opinions on the exploits, the advantages of the old spotting system.
if some people can cheat, I'm not interested in them. I'm going my way.

We will never all agree, but give it a choice.
I repeat myself because it seems so simple to understand

 

[Branimir76]

I agree that ED should work on better spotting system, but until it is done and properly tested, why should we all suffer consequences that we had before, than fixed, then got them back again?

I don't get it? We already tested it and it was BAD. Now we are testing the same BAD thing again?

How hard is to make default dot for majority, and improved dot for some people who like it?

There is literary no mission I can do properly right now without seeing those "dots" (read: graphic artefacts) everywhere there is a unit of any kind.

Do your experiments with your testers, not with general users. We are not Open Beta anymore.

[Midair]

On 10/4/2024 at 4:47 PM, BIGNEWY said:

 

We made it clear in the patch notes we will be working on a system to account for various vr devices and tweak dots again, so not silent, please read the notes again. 

You don't understand our request. We want to be able to turn them off like before the last update. We don't want this and never ask for it.

[SharpeXB]

5 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

The standard visual acuity of the human eye is 1 minute of arc (1/60th of a degree).

This works out to an object of 6 foot dimension being visible to the human eye at 3.7 nautical miles under ideal conditions.

On a computer, this would be represented by a single black pixel (dot)

There seems to be something amiss with this calculation. Yes I see that 1/60th of a a degree figure cited elsewhere. But if that was true a 4K screen that filled a 50d FOV (50x60= 3,000 ie about 3840) would represent lifelike acuity. And of course it doesn’t, you can still discern pixels on such a display. Possibly that figure is the minimum threshold for 20/20 not the limit of what the eye can actually see.

5 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

This works out to an object of 6 foot dimension being visible to the human eye at 3.7 nautical miles under ideal conditions.

Key point here. Forget the math and try to imagine seeing a man sized circle at nearly 4 miles. Especially if it’s stationary and not in contrast to the background, camouflaged etc. Just because something might be visible IRL doesn’t justify placing an easily visible icon on it. And there’s no need for more math. There are many studies about the visibility of combat aircraft to reference. These all indicate ranges far shorter than some gamers think they should be. The average range is about that 3-4 mile figure above but for a whole plane not just something 6’ in size. 

5 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

On a computer, this would be represented by a single black pixel (dot)

On what sort of display? At what size? On the typical 1080p desktop monitor a single pixel like that is way too large for a faraway target. And too easily seen.

5 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

A short study of the elements of this problem gives one an idea of how difficult a single solution will be to develop.

You’re correct in this assertion. Maybe impossible instead of difficult. 

5 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

It seems obvious that the end user will have to be given the ability to adjust this to his particular hardware.

That would just lead to the feature being exploited online. Players can’t be free to decide how visible their opponents should be. The results of that option are easy to predict, everyone will just choose to see everyone at extreme ranges. 

[S-GERAT]

1 hour ago, Midair said:

You don't understand our request. We want to be able to turn them off like before the last update. We don't want this and never ask for it.

 

This, I suffered this improved spotting before.. It made me leave the sim for weeks or revert to the last build. If ED is going to force all of us to play with them let's say clearly from now to avoid purchase more modules..

Yes, I hate these dots.

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

Blah Blah Blah

You forgot to quote the most important part

 

7 hours ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

Which will, of course, lead to cries of outrage from the usual suspect(s).

 

Edited October 5, 2024 by =475FG= Dawger

[=475FG= Dawger]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

There seems to be something amiss with this calculation. Yes I see that 1/60th of a a degree figure cited elsewhere. But if that was true a 4K screen that filled a 50d FOV (50x60= 3,000 ie about 3840) would represent lifelike acuity. And of course it doesn’t, you can still discern pixels on such a display. Possibly that figure is the minimum threshold for 20/20 not the limit of what the eye can actually see.

Key point here. Forget the math and try to imagine seeing a man sized circle at nearly 4 miles. Especially if it’s stationary and not in contrast to the background, camouflaged etc. Just because something might be visible IRL doesn’t justify placing an easily visible icon on it. And there’s no need for more math. There are many studies about the visibility of combat aircraft to reference. These all indicate ranges far shorter than some gamers think they should be. The average range is about that 3-4 mile figure above but for a whole plane not just something 6’ in size. 

On what sort of display? At what size? On the typical 1080p desktop monitor a single pixel like that is way too large for a faraway target. And too easily seen.

You’re correct in this assertion. Maybe impossible instead of difficult. 

That would just lead to the feature being exploited online. Players can’t be free to decide how visible their opponents should be. The results of that option are easy to predict, everyone will just choose to see everyone at extreme ranges. 

Do you even notice you are arguing with yourself here?

[Midair]

Now a dogfight look like this: 

                                                      -                                                        .              --

             .           -        .

We are back to the 80's!

[MAXsenna]

Do you even notice you are arguing with yourself here?

Prince of repeat!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Tippis]

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

There seems to be something amiss with this calculation. Yes I see that 1/60th of a a degree figure cited elsewhere. But if that was true a 4K screen that filled a 50d FOV (50x60= 3,000 ie about 3840) would represent lifelike acuity. And of course it doesn’t, you can still discern pixels on such a display.

The problem is that you can't math. This in spite of it having been shown to you in detail on numerous occasions. Especially, your rounding is atrocious. That 4k resolution is not “about“ 3000. It's actually 28% more. Shock and horror and surprise upon surprise! This means you have to sit 28% farther back to not see the pixel.

I'm also willing to bet that you have no idea what “filling a 50° FoV” would actually look like, so when you say that you can still discern pixels, you're basing this on something very different than how large it would actually be.

Upgrade from Sumerian to Greek for a moment and use radians instead of degrees. The goal you want is 0.29 milliradians (= 1/60°). In addition, your 50° FoV corresponds to 872.7 mils. What you should be asking is, at what distance does a pixel take up less than 0.29 mils, and what is the angular width of the display at this distance?

 

One problem with this question is, what's the size of your pixel? I seem to recall that you bandied about some 52" (I may be off by an inch of five) TV as your display of choice, so let's go with that. We plug in 3840, 2160 and 52" in ye olde PPI calculator and it spits out a dot pitch 0.346mm (and a PPI in the low 70s, which funnily enough is about the same, or lower, than we had 20–30 years ago… you know, that period where you said that dots belonged?).

The beauty of radians (and mils by extension) is that it's simple division and multiplication to turn those into distances. 0.346mm / 0.00029 radians = 1.193m. The 52" display is 132.8 cm wide. To make sure we rely on right angles, we look at the middle and cut that number in half — 66,4 cm. At 119.3 cm away, this equates to 0.557 radians, or 31°. So from one edge to the other, it covers 62°. Again, bam! We're back to that angle expanding out to 3820±rounding 60th-of-a-degrees. As expected. But that's just to prove the result works all the way through.

Coincidentally, and just to check on that initial claim what distance would you have to be at for this TV to cover 50° (0.8727 radians)? Well, that's easy. Again, to make sure we are dealing with right angles, we take half that and measure to the centre. 66.4 cm / 0.43635 radians = 152.4 cm. Another 28% farther out. You managed to get the size wrong by the same factor twice over! Impressive.

 

The main point is, unless you're sitting more than 1m away from that display, you should be able to resolve pixels. If they are distinct enough. How far away you need to sit depends on your actual resolution — not as in pixel count, which is often called resolution when it isn't, but as in pixel density. And note here that the huge TV used in this example actually has pretty horrid resolution in spite of its high pixel count. Its 73 PPI is less than the 91 PPI you'd get out of old 14" XGA monitors from the early '90s. Hell, it's less than SVGA (800×600) on those old displays.

This is why your snide remarks about other people's poor eyesight are laughable in its massive irony. You have no idea how resolution works. You have no idea how large an FoV is. You have no idea how small (or large, in your case) pixels are. You have no idea how this size translate into angles over distance. You, quite simply, have no idea how good or bad your vision is because you don't understand how to check. So most likely, it's not that others have poor eyesight — it's that you sit too close to your monitor to get the full effect everyone else is having. That's the reason your dots are huge: you're too close to them.

 

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

On what sort of display?

All of them. Because that's how large a dot is. By definition.

As for the rest, congratulations, you just demonstrated exactly why spotting dots need to exist.

Edited October 5, 2024 by Tippis

[Magic Zach]

On 9/28/2024 at 8:40 PM, Why485 said:

The official line from Wags and 9L has always been that this would interfere with radar RCS calculations, which is not an explanation I buy but that's what they've said for years.

The straight from the horse's mouth answer is that such a solution is "heresy" because spotting in DCS is already excellent and better than real life. If you have a problem with that, you should buy a 4k monitor that is at least 32 inches big, preferably 40. The problem is clearly because of your hardware, and you should just turn on labels and zoom in if you don't want to buy a very large and high resolution monitor.

 

Lmao that's hilarious.  "If you have an issue spotting, it's because you haven't payed enough money on your setup".  Classic

I wouldn't buy the LOD scaling thing with RCS though that much, because if true they could very feasibly also just make a counter-scaled variable just to cancel out the effect a big LOD has on RCS.

[Magic Zach]

On 9/28/2024 at 7:56 PM, Pillowcat said:

Because they trying to make this more like simulator than a quake probably. Making better cons dots/blips/whatever is right way, scaling is screwing a lot of real life useful and fun practices.

Honestly, I'd rather have a scenario where spotting is possible than fly on a full server and have everyone be oblivious to each other.  Besides LOD scaling would actually be a more realistic approach to spotting than a 2D black box.  A 2D black pixel box isn't going to give you spotting accounting for aircraft color and direction.  A plane flying towards you is harder to see, a plane flying perpendicular is a lot easier, a plane perpendicular and banking is easiest.  None of this a 2D pixel overlay will tell you.

Funny thing is too the scaling factor doesn't even have to be a lot to be effective.  Less is more, too avoid goofy looking visual scenarios but just enough to help everyone spot a little better.

[PawlaczGMD]

Sorry for all the people that are suffering now, but after even more testing, my review on Pimax Crystal is positive. I can finally see stuff in BFM, especially WWII setting. It was hopeless on the previous patch.

I do get your frustration - I need to increase resolution to 125% for the dots to not be really huge. I definitely understand why people on different devices are complaining. I agree with ED that the best and easiest way to solve this is to implement device-specific settings. And hopefully some more advanced system altogether when the state is fixed to be acceptable for everyone.