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

[SharpeXB]

5 minutes ago, Parkour said:

Yeah, I guess a drop of 2000 players to 1000 players isn't a crash to you. But you appear to like the dots, so your ability to see correctly is in question as well...

No that doesn’t look really dramatic to me. The max chart shows some bigger surges, like the pandemic from 2020-22. That was huge for gaming in general. 
Where did you get the idea I like the dots?! Read my posts

Edited October 17, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Parkour]

This is why I used a 6 month graph to show to decline after the Sept 30th patch. It shows a decrease in player base. The trend since the May bump has been going down. It these decisions of "we broke something, but we'd like your feedback" and the response from Bignewy of "it will take time".  They don't have time anymore based on these trends.

I'm not even sure why I'm trying anymore. I'll just go play IL-2 and have fun not flying against giant Lego black blocks.

[nessuno0505]

Il 16/10/2024 at 18:34, SharpeXB ha scritto:

That wouldn’t work for multiplayer. Letting players decide on their own dot sizes would be a form of cheating or exploiting the system. 

They could lock the choice from the server side, even if that would mean servers for 1080p, servers for 1440p, servers for 4k and servers for VR users. But you know, there's differences in spotting in the 4 cases even without dots. I say leave the choice to the server keeper: to lock the option or leave it open to client/user's choice. Or ED could lock the dots size to the screen resolution you choose.

Edited October 17, 2024 by nessuno0505

[SharpeXB]

9 minutes ago, nessuno0505 said:

They could lock the choice from the server side, even if that would mean servers for 1080p, servers for 1440p, servers for 4k and servers for VR users.

That wouldn’t be workable. There aren’t nearly enough players or servers for such options. 

10 minutes ago, nessuno0505 said:

Or ED could lock the dots size to the screen resolution you choose.

I thought that’s what the improved option was supposed to do, eliminate the exploit of simply lowering your resolution to create bigger dots. I don’t think this has been achieved though. 

[Tippis]

59 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

That wouldn’t be workable. There aren’t nearly enough players or servers for such options.

That would be self-regulating. There are certainly enough servers, and give than it's mostly a PvP concern and those players are a tiny minority, they don't really matter anyway but would also end up self-regulating regardless. If you want your thrills, you go with what is offered or build it yourself if you think there's a market for it.

If it turns out not to be a market for your particular flavour to match your personal concerns, then guess what? Your concerns don't really matter so you can set them aside.

59 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I thought that’s what the improved option was supposed to do, eliminate the exploit of simply lowering your resolution to create bigger dots. I don’t think this has been achieved though. 

It has. It just doesn't yield the equalised result that would be the best outcome, and it will never yield the small dots you are expecting.

The fundamental flaw in your thinking is what you think of as “bigger”, without any regard as to what that supposed big:ness is in relation to.

 

2 hours ago, Parkour said:

I'm not even sure why I'm trying anymore. I'll just go play IL-2 and have fun not flying against giant Lego black blocks.

Funnily enough, it has exactly what people are loudly saying they don't want here. If that's what you want, you need to try even more to make sure the complainers don't make ED throw up their arms and give up

As for the graph, you need to show at least 2 years worth of data to make that kind of claim. Games have seasons, and DCS is no different. Can you show that this supposed slump is different from what it looked like in 2023 and 2022? Because if not, that flat graph shows pretty much nothing.

Every single year, without fail, the guys that head our little community get into a panic somewhere around late January because numbers are down. Every year. Because it turns out that, for whatever reason, January is not DCS season in that particular slice of community. Maybe people are going back to jobs and school and trying to get a good start for the new year or something. Same thing here.

Edited October 17, 2024 by Tippis

[Dangerzone]

2 hours ago, Parkour said:

This is why I used a 6 month graph to show to decline after the Sept 30th patch. It shows a decrease in player base. The trend since the May bump has been going down. 

To be fair - I don't think that decline is solely for the dots. (Don't get me wrong - I wholely support the option for users to be able to turn these off, and it is likely a contributing factor - but one of many). There is a lot more going on at the moment that I think it contributing to the decline in DCS. The graph seems to reflect what we've seen in our servers - maybe maybe only 1/4 of our usual player base are still regularly active. From conversations, it seems the ongoing instability, and performance issues between DCS releases is a factor (especially now since stable has gone), and there is also a fatigue when it comes to some mission makers / scripters / server hosters where passion is slowly being lost as well as the work involved in trying to overcome things that break between releases is getting to a point where it's very tiring. 

I appreciate that the last 2 patches have been focused on bug fixes and performance - but concerned with the reckless assumption that all is right by ED removing features (like ST, or the ability to turn dots off, etc) without at least having a release tested and proven in the public first. 

[BIGNEWY]

hi all, 

just a reminder keep this thread for discussing the spotting dots. 

thank you 

 

 

[BIGNEWY]

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

Tooltip for improved dots says:

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

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


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

Thank you 

[SharpeXB]

18 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

For VR dots are always enabled

What about 2D?

[darkman222]

Spotting dots worked so good in VR (Varjo Aero) before the rollback to the big blocks.

The things that bother me with what we have now is, that if you use VR zoom the threshold when the dot is disabled sometimes lies in between where you can actually see the bandit and where the 3d model is too small to see but the dot is not displayed either. It happens that if you zoom in you lose the dot and dont see the bandit either.

Also the dot seems to fade out over distance, also not in a linear way. If you see a dot it does not represent if its far away or pretty close which is misleading for estimating the threat if there are multiple bandits.

And it probably does not change the size or the fading characteristics of the dot according to the object size. Thats the most obivous that ejected pilots are displayed as prominent as jets or helicopters. Thus I started chasing parachutists again like months ago when spotting dots were introduced.

 

[some1]

1 hour ago, BIGNEWY said:

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

Here's an idea ED. How about you rollback the rollback you did in the previous patch, and wait until you have a working solution, instead of forcing a broken implementation on every VR user?

The game looks simply awful in VR. 

[Branimir76]

2 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

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

Tooltip for improved dots says:

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

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


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

Thank you 

Spotting dot worked fine for range of VR-s until last update. Now we have black bricks covering planes. It literary prevents me to see the aircraft underneath.

IT IS A BAD SOLUTION. IT DOES NOT WORK.

THE OLD SOLUTION WORKED FINE AND WE WERE NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT IT.

THERE ARE LOTS OF DIFFERENT THINGS ED NEEDS TO FOCUS ON.

LEAVE THE SPOTTING DOT AS IT WAS BEFORE AND DO THE TESTING SOMEWHERE ELSE.

[draconus]

2 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

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

It's ok that it's WIP but you see the backlash - majority of VR users are pissed off with current implementation. Why ED is so stubborn and refuse to hotfix it to previous state or at least give us an option?

About the "improved spotting dots" option description - it's not what it used to be for.

And how do we even know the tailored presets won't end up like current blobs?

[rob10]

1 hour ago, Branimir76 said:

THE OLD SOLUTION WORKED FINE AND WE WERE NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT IT.

I really don't have a dog in this fight as I use 2-D and haven't really had issues either way.  But I will point out to all the people screaming in this thread that "no one" was complaining previously that you can find LOTS of complaints from people who were screaming that they couldn't see anything before this change and how all the servers they played on were losing players because of this.  I get it sucks for people with big blobs now and hopefully ED manages to find a happy medium really soon, but I just want to point out that there were clearly people who the old system wasn't working for either.  Would be nice if the ON/OFF worked, but "simple" things like adding that back don't take into account what might have changed in the background that mean it would take as much work to re-add it as it would to get a more proper fix.

[Branimir76]

3 minutes ago, rob10 said:

I really don't have a dog in this fight as I use 2-D and haven't really had issues either way.  But I will point out to all the people screaming in this thread that "no one" was complaining previously that you can find LOTS of complaints from people who were screaming that they couldn't see anything before this change and how all the servers they played on were losing players because of this.  I get it sucks for people with big blobs now and hopefully ED manages to find a happy medium really soon, but I just want to point out that there were clearly people who the old system wasn't working for either.  Would be nice if the ON/OFF worked, but "simple" things like adding that back don't take into account what might have changed in the background that mean it would take as much work to re-add it as it would to get a more proper fix.

I have been flying in 2D also. Never had an issue. You cannot expect to see a target 20 miles away without any issue.

[Branimir76]

This is heavily zoomed for reference.
F-18 on the runway, and a little bit further F-18 with spotting dot covering almost entire plane.
Not helping at all...

[Tippis]

6 hours ago, Branimir76 said:

I have been flying in 2D also. Never had an issue. You cannot expect to see a target 20 miles away without any issue.

And that's the whole problem.

When you confidently shout that “THE OLD SOLUTION WORKED FINE AND WE WERE NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT IT”, you are objectively wrong. You are at best generalising from your own unique experience, but you need to realise that that's exactly what it is and nothing more. It's your experience, and it's unique to you.

A lot of others were complaining because the old solution did not work fine. For some, it created huge blobs that were far too easy to spot, and there were plenty of complaints about how unrealistic and unfair this was. For others, they created smaller dots that you could see at 40nm and beyond, and there were plenty of complaints about how unrealistic and unfair this was. If you never came across those issues, you either didn't pay attention or you were incredibly lucky, neither of which is a good reason to bring it back. Quite the opposite.

Alternatively, whatever nonsense outcome was given to you just worked to your advantage so you didn't care for that reason. Like the people who saw targets at 40nm — they did expect this to be the norm and didn't see a problem with until it was pointed out how ridiculous that was, and then they got very defensive and whingy when that range was reduced to half (never mind that it should have been reduced even more). That's exactly why it had to go: because what you experienced would differ from what others experienced and there was no telling who got a good outcome and who didn't. If it worked, it might have been good or bad, but at least consistent. The old system couldn't even provide that.

But no matter why you didn't experience anything you'd label as a problem, that doesn't mean the problem wasn't real and wasn't well-documented. The old solution did not “work fine” in any sense of the word. At best you accidentally got a good result out of it, but that in and of itself shows how massively broken it was. Targets that could be seen at two or three times the current ranges; targets that couldn't be seen properly at any range — the old system had it all, somehow at once, and must not under any circumstances be allowed to return. It wasn't that you didn't have an issue. It's that you didn't know that you had one, or what kind of issue it was. That's a whole problem in and of itself.

Edited October 18, 2024 by Tippis

[Turbonix]

@Tippis

first of alI, I didn´t read all of your posts precisely, but i get a picture.

Why do you constantly oppose the opinions of other people? To me it looks that most of these guys, myself included, just don´t want to be bothered by big black legobricks in a simgame and mainly want a realistic spotting system and therefore kind of prefer how it was before.
All i see is you trying to make these people look stupid in the face of your superior knowledge of what´s really going on behind the tech.
I even find your responses to other people's posts quite assaultive at times.

What i cannot see:

What is your agenda?
Why is everybody else either a cheater who wants  to utterly exploit the game, or an uneducated fool to you who desperately needs your wisdom?
What is your goal in constantly correcting other people?
Why can´t you just accept other opinions or wishes?
What do you want, or expect from a good spotting system? 

[=475FG= Dawger]

For me, flying VR, this implementation is the best its ever been. The very old issue of invisible airplanes between 3-5 miles is mostly gone. 
 

Yes, I can see airplanes farther than I should against the blue sky but it certainly isn’t egregiously horrible. 
 

All the whining had me prepared for something terrible and it turns out to be a pretty good step forward. 

[Tippis]

9 hours ago, Turbonix said:

Why do you constantly oppose the opinions of other people?

This is a forum. Without opposing opinions, there is no meaningful exchange.

9 hours ago, Turbonix said:

To me it looks that most of these guys, myself included, just don´t want to be bothered by big black legobricks in a simgame and mainly want a realistic spotting system and therefore kind of prefer how it was before.

The problem with this opinion is that it's contradicting itself. If you want a realistic spotting system, you don't want the old one. It was catastrophically unrealistic in every way imaginable, at times in ways that shouldn't be able to co-exist, but did anyway — it was that bad. The new one is actually far more realistic, dot size aside, and that dot size is a step along the way in the tweaking process. While it is vastly better than the old one, the new system will naturally go through these iterations where targets will be too large, then too small, then large again, then small again… until we hit some sufficiently good and equitable size that works the best. Same with range — it'll go down and down and down and up and down (the first three downs is just to bring it back from the over-visibility we have, which again I want to remind you is still a massive improvement over the old numbers). The only way forward is through all of that.

If you preferred how it was before, there are three options: 1) you got very very lucky and by pure accident got a good solution out of the system. This was not universal, and that's a problem — a select few being lucky is not sufficient reason to go back. 2) you didn't know better and just got used to it. That's fair enough, but the goal is ultimately to improve the perception simulation, and not knowing what's good and bad is also not a reason to go back to the objectively bad state. 3) you benefitted from it and want to go back to where you had an unfair advantage. This is by far the best reason not to go back.

Except for in one very specific case (who through their incessant posting on the topic in a vain attempt to make sure no improvement ever happened accidentally let slip why they want things to stay the same), I am not trying to assign any particular one of those reasons to posters who want to get rid of the dots. But throughout the discussion, it has been shown time and again that it boils down to one of those three when you manage to get an answer as to why they want to go back.

9 hours ago, Turbonix said:

What is your agenda?

To get a good, solid, modern, well-thought-through simulation of perception along the entire spectrum of ranges — all the way from BVR and right up until you are trading paint with another plane. DCS' spotting is disgraceful and it has a long-standing and well-deserved reputation for being the worst in the business. I do not want to see ED's efforts to get out of that hole ruined by complaints from people who don't understand the need or the process, or who actively want to sabotage it.

9 hours ago, Turbonix said:

What is your goal in constantly correcting other people?
Why can´t you just accept other opinions or wishes?

I can accept opinions and wishes just fine. But sometimes those opinions are on very shaky grounds — based on incorrect assumptions, misunderstandings, lack of a grander perspective or context — and a reasonable opinion-holder is likely to change their mind if they understand why that is. If you are of the opinion that the moon is made of cheese and will soon crash into us, then maybe you can be swayed from your plan to bake the world's largest cracker if you learn that it's mostly rock and if any of the pebbles that will remain after tidal forces rip it apart actually reach the ground for you to eat, baking will not exist as a concept any more.

And sometimes, those “opinions” are actually nothing of the kind. They're just rote repetitions of known and proven untruths and fantasies, with the sole intent to maintain (or regress back to) a state of horrible brokenness and unfairness. No amount of geology and orbital mechanics demonstration will help there — these posts are just there to spread utter nonsense to try to prop up misinformed (actual) opinions in the hope that hose opinion-holders will reciprocate and accidentally support regression towards a bad state of affairs.

Wishes are a bit different. You can wish for anything, but you need understand what it is you wish for. If you want more realism, then you either need to show that this is actually what will come out of your wish, or you need to be prepared to read long explanations of why the outcome will actually be the opposite of what you want.

9 hours ago, Turbonix said:

What do you want, or expect from a good spotting system? 

I've posted it before, but repetition is the mother of somethingsomething…

I expect a good spotting system to not just deal with spotting. I expect it to be a simulation of perception. “Spotting” is really just one particular phase of that larger system, dealing with the range segment where a target crosses over from BVR to WVR, but is not yet large enough in the sky to let you identify it as another other than a tiny blob. No direction, no type, no discernible colour — nothing. Just a blob that you probably want to keep your eye on until you figure out what it is. Closer in, that “spotting” will transition into “tracking”, where you still don't know what it is, but you can tell where it's going. You can see that it has a pointy end and a burn:y end, and IT'S COMING RIGHT AT YOU! Even closer in, it crosses over into an “identification” phase, where you can now tell the make and colour of the thing, and figure out whether to shoot it or not.

These different phases need to be data driven, not dependent on game settings. We have (admittedly spotty and difficult-to-acquire) data on what can be seen when, and these need to be the determining factor as far as when targets transition into spotting range, into tracking range, and (to a lesser degree) into identification range. They must not be driven by simple geometry and trigonometry, although those can be used to sanity-check the outcome. Perception doesn't work like that. It's a partially discrete cognitive process where the brain will both filter out and fill in noisy information to let us see less than geometry would suggest for some situations, and more than mere geometry would allow in others. This also means that we can't have a single solution to cover all phases. Spots can't convey aspect — they're dots — so something else is needed to provide that information to the brain.

The system needs to be equitable. I use that word rather than “fair” because the whole point is to be able to play with the gaps in the other player's knowledge to create an unfair advantage for yourself. But they ways in which you can do that need to be the same for everyone. You need to be able to rely on the fact that your plane will not stand out against the sky or the ground, and sneak up on the guy that way, and whatever settings they have on their end should not change this. Just because he has a 4k display or plays in VR, he shouldn't be able to spot you at four times the distance, or fail to spot you at all. This means it needs to have pretty complex systems to account for and counteract things like different resolutions, different pixel densities, zoom levels, texture selections, etc etc. You will never be able to solve pixel-peeping, but you can try to get close.

Because of this, I expect the system to have a clearly defined baseline: at what resolution and PPI, and at what range, is a specific target is exactly one 100%-filled pixel large. I expect this baseline to translate into “blobs” at higher resolutions and PPI by necessity, but I also expect aliasing to be used to create sub-pixel details for both higher and lower resolutions. I have no particular expectations of when I should see a target — let the data show what it should be — but I do expect that no amount of fiddling with settings and controls will change that. Something huge enough that it shows up at 10nm shows up at 10nm for everyone. Something that is hidden at that distance is hidden from everyone. As far as spotting goes, the use parameters such as livery, size, aspect, relation to the sun etc would be icing on top, but are far-future goodies rather than something I expect out of the gate.

I also expect it to be a painful process to jump straight to the equitable part of that whole thing without having established the baseline, or any of the data, nor any additional solutions for the other parts of the perception simulation. We'll have periods of over-visbility and under-visiblity; periods of hardware advantages and periods of hardware disadvantages. But I expect it to move forward rather than regress. Missing the mark is not the same as regression.

Edited October 19, 2024 by Tippis

[sandpatch]

The main problem seems that it is so different between different setups like VR and different resolution. 

What we need is a standardised way where all setups see the other planes at similar distances. 

A reasonable distance feels like it would be 10 NM maximum, and a very visible plane at 2 NM.

The way it is now where when you zoom in the plane dissappears and when you zoom out the plane becomes a huge blob is just not ok. You shouldn't be punished for zooming in.

 

[Branimir76]

13 hours ago, Tippis said:

And that's the whole problem.

When you confidently shout that “THE OLD SOLUTION WORKED FINE AND WE WERE NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT IT”, you are objectively wrong. You are at best generalising from your own unique experience, but you need to realise that that's exactly what it is and nothing more. It's your experience, and it's unique to you.

A lot of others were complaining because the old solution did not work fine. For some, it created huge blobs that were far too easy to spot, and there were plenty of complaints about how unrealistic and unfair this was. For others, they created smaller dots that you could see at 40nm and beyond, and there were plenty of complaints about how unrealistic and unfair this was. If you never came across those issues, you either didn't pay attention or you were incredibly lucky, neither of which is a good reason to bring it back. Quite the opposite.

Alternatively, whatever nonsense outcome was given to you just worked to your advantage so you didn't care for that reason. Like the people who saw targets at 40nm — they did expect this to be the norm and didn't see a problem with until it was pointed out how ridiculous that was, and then they got very defensive and whingy when that range was reduced to half (never mind that it should have been reduced even more). That's exactly why it had to go: because what you experienced would differ from what others experienced and there was no telling who got a good outcome and who didn't. If it worked, it might have been good or bad, but at least consistent. The old system couldn't even provide that.

But no matter why you didn't experience anything you'd label as a problem, that doesn't mean the problem wasn't real and wasn't well-documented. The old solution did not “work fine” in any sense of the word. At best you accidentally got a good result out of it, but that in and of itself shows how massively broken it was. Targets that could be seen at two or three times the current ranges; targets that couldn't be seen properly at any range — the old system had it all, somehow at once, and must not under any circumstances be allowed to return. It wasn't that you didn't have an issue. It's that you didn't know that you had one, or what kind of issue it was. That's a whole problem in and of itself.

 

Read again:
I dont care if ED want to implement new spotting dot, but make it work first, and only then implement it.
We already test it before and it was not good.
Then, they added an option to turn it off.
Now, they took that option away, while giving us the thing we already know it's bad.
Thousands of people cannot fly missions right now, because air and ground targets are ugly black blobs seen from miles away.

I hope I cleared that for you.

[Tippis]

7 minutes ago, Branimir76 said:

I dont care if ED want to implement new spotting dot, but make it work first, and only then implement it.

They made it work. Now they're tweaking it.

The problem is more that they got rid of the beta client, ostensibly because everyone was using it as the de-facto live client without providing feedback, so now they only have their live environment to get mass-test data.

1 minute ago, Branimir76 said:

We already test it before and it was not good.
Then, they added an option to turn it off.
Now, they took that option away, while giving us the thing we already know it's bad.

Could you please post a screen shot of your options screen?

I ask because taking something away is very different from breaking it. If you turned it off and wasn't part of the testing group, then I certainly understand that being forced back into testing is frustrating, but let's be clear about what's going on here. If it was not good before, the unfortunate reality of the matter is that it's best improved by keeping it on and providing data. In particular, it is important to have points of comparison where you can point to before and after, and what got better or worse between each iteration.

5 minutes ago, Branimir76 said:

Thousands of people cannot fly missions right now, because air and ground targets are ugly black blobs seen from miles away.

Sure they can. They may prefer not to, but that's a rather different grammatical mood than “can”.

[Robi Hobby]

 

.... Thousands of people cannot fly missions right now, because air and ground targets are ugly black blobs seen from miles away.     Me too ! 

 

The feeling of flying is completely ruined! I can't fly in VR like this. I'm over 55 years old and have Prescription Lenses in my Quest 3.
It now looks like Lego Bricks are flying around! Absolute catastrophe. Really bad! 

 

I would be in favor of being able to adjust the spotting dots in increments of 10.   100% normal size for people who are half blind. down to 0% and OFF! 

That's why I'm not buying anything anymore, not even the Iraq Map. 

 

Edited October 19, 2024 by Robi Hobby

[Thamiel]

1 hour ago, Tippis said:

They made it work. Now they're tweaking it.

You forgot to add "... again.".

Edited October 19, 2024 by Thamiel