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

[draconus]

7 hours ago, Tippis said:

The end goal here is a full-spectrum simulation of pilot's vision

No, it should simulate RL view as best as possible. Pilot vision is subjective and spotting is a skill.

[Parabe11um]

13 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

That looks intentional. It’s like you get light dots in front of dark backgrounds and dark dots in front of light backgrounds. 

I don't think it's intentional that clouds pop dots far beyond the max range dots are supposed to be visible according to the game files.

Either way you shouldn't be putting stuff in front of clouds unless you are specifically trying show that the cloud effect on dots is bad (but again there's a bug thread for that already).

If you are talking about general spotting it'd be better to focus on clear skies.

Edited December 27, 2024 by Parabe11um

[SharpeXB]

4 minutes ago, Parabe11um said:

I don't think it's intentional that clouds pop dots far beyond the max range dots are supposed to be visible according to be files.

Either way you shouldn't be putting stuff in front of clouds unless you are specifically trying show that the cloud effect on dots is bad (but again there's a bug thread for that already).

If you are talking about general spotting it'd be better to focus on clear skies.

The dark dots are equally visible that far away if you look at the other examples. One of the weaknesses of the system is if the dots are dark, what happens in front of dark backgrounds? It’s possible to see bright aircraft very well without the dots against the sea for example. It’s as if the game is trying to compensate for the background by making them lighter. This is the Hornet Caucuses 8v8 BVR mission, give it a try. 
If this is only caused by clouds, the trouble is there are almost always clouds. Even in the Persian Gulf for some strange reason…

[Joch1955]

so did a lot more testing and the new options are very nice.

AUTO works well in pretty much all combat conditions. There is still an issue in certain situations, for example if you are at the same altitude or below and the target is against the sky where the dots are very noticeable, especially within 10 miles. However, targets are harder to spot when below you and silhouetted against the ground.

1 PIXEL seems the closest to what would have been the previous v 2.8 OFF spotting dots, although the spots are difficult to spot farther than 5 miles even in perfect conditions. 

I don’t see what more the Devs can do at this point. There is more than enough options to please every SP/MP players. 

 

[SharpeXB]

The trouble with the player adjustable size setting is that it allows everyone to just select the largest dot regardless of their hardware. The whole idea of having a new system seems to have been to remove the exploit built into the old one. Mainly that you could just lower your resolution to make the dots larger. Perhaps in time the Auto setting can be made to work as intended and the pixel setting overrides can be dropped. Those seem like band aids for the problem they couldn’t solve at the moment particularly for VR. 

[MoleUK]

19 minutes ago, Joch1955 said:

so did a lot more testing and the new options are very nice.

AUTO works well in pretty much all combat conditions. There is still an issue in certain situations, for example if you are at the same altitude or below and the target is against the sky where the dots are very noticeable, especially within 10 miles. However, targets are harder to spot when below you and silhouetted against the ground.

1 PIXEL seems the closest to what would have been the previous v 2.8 OFF spotting dots, although the spots are difficult to spot farther than 5 miles even in perfect conditions. 

I don’t see what more the Devs can do at this point. There is more than enough options to please every SP/MP players. 

 

Yeah this is likely the best compromise that could have been reached.

There is enough flexibility to account for various different setups, without being too over the top. Those servers who want to force them all off can do so, whilst also allowing for those players who want to have dots off for themselves to join any of the servers that allow user controlled dots. Which appears to be most of them atm.

I'm especially happy to see quad view dots fixed, that was a huge problem.

Edited December 27, 2024 by MoleUK

[some1]

Yep, huge improvement with this patch. It took a long time but at last the game looks good in VR again.

So far I settled on 1 pixel setting.

[SharpeXB]

In 1080x1920 with the 2 pixel dot selected, a high aspect MiG-21 (which should be hard to see) is easily visible as a giant square at 5-6 miles.

PS So just finishing this fight without the spotting dots, here's where I require this guy at about 4 miles, it's very challenging with small aircraft like these MiGs and you have to work at acquiring them, with the spotting dots this would just be no effort at all and not very fun or realistic IMO

Edited December 27, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Bounti30]

I just updated DCS.
Finally, a clear improvement.
I am in the testing phase, in any case thank you ED for this work.

[draconus]

7 hours ago, Joch1955 said:

I don’t see what more the Devs can do at this point.

They can do a glint effect for the distant LOD models.

3 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

not very fun or realistic

Don't use the dots then. Now everyone has the chance to set it for themselves depending on their hardware and feeling.

Thank you, ED, for the Off option. I can finally fly with realistic visuals again.

[SharpeXB]

26 minutes ago, draconus said:

Now everyone has the chance to set it for themselves depending on their hardware and feeling.

The trouble is it’s possible to exploit the system in multiplayer then. The previous system could be exploited by lowering the resolution too so we’re back to square one in that regard. I trust that ED will keep working on the Auto mode to get it right. Then they can discard the manual setting. The best solution is one that’s fair and realistic across the board and not exploitable. 

Edited December 27, 2024 by SharpeXB

[TheFreshPrince]

Haven't tested yet, but as far as I understand a common setting can be enforced through the mission editor for MP?

[SharpeXB]

1 minute ago, TheFreshPrince said:

Haven't tested yet, but as far as I understand a common setting can be enforced through the mission editor for MP?

Yes. Most of the servers aren’t enforcing it though. I think GS is the only one that is and has it locked on Auto. 

Edited December 27, 2024 by SharpeXB

[JohnMclane]

It's not an exploit if everyone has access to the same options. Problem is, in DCS many people play for many different reasons. When an option directly affect the way a specific player plays the game, of course it feel like an exploit to him specifically, regardless of how it affects others. This is one of the major reason ED are pretty much always in a lose situation... 

Nevertheless... For someone to feel like this particular option is an exploit, they have to be the competitive type, in which case, the people in charge of where they play will take care of the "exploit" accordingly anyway.

 

 

 

[SharpeXB]

3 hours ago, JohnMclane said:

It's not an exploit if everyone has access to the same options.

I can’t imagine there are too many people who actually like seeing the giant squares. Unfortunately there are probably enough people who don’t care what the game looks like if it gives them an advantage. I don’t think players want to have to choose between having a good looking realistic game or being on par with others exploiting the system. So yes they might have access to it but not want to be forced to use it. 

3 hours ago, JohnMclane said:

For someone to feel like this particular option is an exploit, they have to be the competitive type

It’s not being ultra competitive to just want a fair game. That was supposed to be the purpose of the new system. Instead it just reintroduced an exploit similar to the old one.

[JohnMclane]

27 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I can’t imagine there are too many people who actually like seeing the giant squares. Unfortunately there are probably enough people who don’t care what the game looks like if it gives them an advantage. I don’t think players want to have to choose between having a good looking realistic game or being on par with others exploiting the system. So yes they might have access to it but not want to be forced to use it. 

It’s not being ultra competitive to just want a fair game. That was supposed to be the purpose of the new system. Instead it just reintroduced an exploit similar to the old one.

It's a sand box DCS option... If you play SP, you can use it as you wish. As for MP, different servers will apply it as they feel is most suitable for their mission. If you can't find a server with your view points, maybe you just happen to be part of the not so vast minority... 

As most things, I'd rather the option be available but not enforced as opposed to not having the option at all...

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, JohnMclane said:

It's a sand box DCS option... If you play SP, you can use it as you wish. As for MP, different servers will apply it as they feel is most suitable for their mission. If you can't find a server with your view points, maybe you just happen to be part of the not so vast minority... 

Well certainly for SP anyone can choose to do whatever they want. I get the impression that the server owners are in a bind thinking that giving everyone choices gets them the most players. We’ll see how that goes. Currently the most popular PVP server has this forced to Auto.
If you recall the Model Enlargement feature, one of the reasons that didn’t work out was likely because nobody online could agree on a setting. 

Edited December 28, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

19 hours ago, draconus said:

No, it should simulate RL view as best as possible.

In other words, a full-spectrum simulation of pilot's vision.

Because that's the RL view, done as best as possible. We're dealing with a simulation. The end goal is a good simulation covering as many aspects as possible. Vision is one of those aspects. That much should be obvious.

11 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

In 1080x1920

That's not what your screenshots show, though. Don't you think it's about time you learn how resolutions work?

7 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

The trouble is it’s possible to exploit the system in multiplayer then.

It really isn't. You just think that “exploit” means “thing that is not what I want”, when in the real world, it's getting an unintended and undue advantage from flaws in the system. That's not what's going on here. Instead, what's happening is that people get to choose (or not) their visual setup to match their hardware and room setup, fully in line with how the system is intended to work, and by all accounts working better now than ever before.

That is the very opposite of an exploit. Just because you can't exploit it to get an advantage over others like you want to doesn't mean others can and will do the same to you. It just means it's the same for everyone, which again makes it inherently not an exploit.

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

I can’t imagine there are too many people who actually like seeing the giant squares.

What you can imagine is of absolutely zero relevance to anything, and doubly so to this topic where you have demonstrated your inability to imagine that people see different things — in particular, that they don't see giant squares. This is particularly hilarious in view of how you have shown that you also don't see giant squares. You have consistently failed to produce any evidence of any such effect happening.

You can keep crying about your hallucinatory giant squares and your imaginary exploits but none of those actually exist. Until you start complaining about real things, your opinions and imagination is invalid, wrong, and devoid of any value or contribution to the conversation. Just be happy that you got the option you were clamouring for, even though — as predicted — it ends up not doing the thing you want, largely because you don't understand what it is you're actually asking for and can't articulate a problem that your desired solution should solve.

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

If you recall the Model Enlargement feature, one of the reasons that didn’t work out was likely because nobody online could agree on a setting. 

That's not what happened, no. That's just more imagination on your part.

Edited December 28, 2024 by Tippis

[okopanja]

8 hours ago, draconus said:

They can do a glint effect for the distant LOD models.

Was about to suggest this. If you locate the story of Iljo Arizanov in 29 section, you will notice that he observed an aircraft still illuminated by the sun. I would estimate thatbthe distance must have been at least 37nm, since this was the time the AIM-120 was launched by Rico.

One thing to note the dots should actually appear at different ranges dynamically. E.g. an airliner might be not visibile at ranges as close as 20km, but with glint this is several times longer. I was driving along one of the air traffic coridors yrsterday and was trying to judge the distances when at head of contrail I can actually spot the airplane.

[draconus]

3 hours ago, Tippis said:

The end goal is a good simulation covering as many aspects as possible. Vision is one of those aspects. That much should be obvious.

No. The vision is on the player. If you can't spot the targets use available options in the game. That is obvious.

10 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

The best solution is one that’s fair and realistic across the board and not exploitable.

This is impossible as long as players can change how far their display is away from them, have the fov change available and have different monitor sizes and resolutions.

Now is fair because everyone has options and can make it realistic for them.

[SharpeXB]

6 hours ago, draconus said:

This is impossible as long as players can change how far their display is away from them, have the fov change available and have different monitor sizes and resolutions.

It’s certainly possible to be fair within reason. Simply enforcing Auto mode prevents the easy exploit above. 

[speed-of-heat]

which is down to the mission creators ... nothing to for ED to do at this time ...

[Tippis]

8 hours ago, draconus said:

No. The vision is on the player.

The player isn't in the game.
The virtual pilot is.

You cannot simulate the player. You must simulate the pilot.

This isn't about what the player sees — that's indeed on them — but about what the pilot sees that should be offered up to the player for them to notice or not. The game must offer up a realistic selection of details of the game world that matches what a pilot would* see in that situation. That may (hint: will) involve excluding details that the player might spot because the detail level our display systems are capable of exceeds what the pilot's vision can handle (eg. distant targets, or just very small ones). It may also include adding details the pilot would not see IRL, at least not in that particular manner, but which need to be conveyed to the player to give them cues the pilot would have but which can't be displayed properly on our systems (eg. glint, fine-grained parallax, proper contrast against the background). That last part also includes countering the effects varying FoV and display resolutions.

You seem to be confused what I'm promoting here, and what part of the problem I'm trying to address.
It's not about using in-game tricks to compensate for the player not seeing things — it's about using making sure that, when the player does or doesn't see something, it's on them, and not because the game isn't showing them the right thing.

 

* “Might” is probably the better modality here, veers into issues of what should be filtered and what should be left out. If we're going to do the thing where we rely on the player to spot or miss things, we need to interpret it as “everything the pilot could possibly see”, under the assumption that the pilot is at all times looking in every conceivable direction the player could look at. This is not how the pilot sees the world — they're only looking at one thing at a time, after all — but it is how we must render that world to give the player the ability to look at whatever they want to look at.

It's not that the player should be given perfect information. Quite the opposite. It's that the player should be given accurate information that they can then succeed or fail to process and make use of. To create this accurate information, the pilot must be part of the simulation, same as how we simulate the plane to give the player an accurate behaviour of that horrid lump of metal, except this simulation must extend to the entire drawn field of view rather than just the focal point in the middle. We must simulate what the pilot could see so we know what they player must not be allowed to see as well as what the player must be given a chance to see.

Hence why we need dots — so we can filter out long-range targets and not show them to the player even though the display system can draw them. You may not like it, but it's the only way to combat pop-in at higher resolutions.
Hence why we need scaling — so we can cue aspect changes and show them to the player even though the pilot would not see targets vary in size like that. You may not like it, but it's the only way to convey the proper cues on conventional current hardware.

8 hours ago, draconus said:

If you can't spot the targets use available options in the game.

That only works if the game and its options create a situation where targets are “correctly spottable” (for the lack of a better description) and can be sensibly adjusted to begin with. They never have been in DCS for various technical and political reasons. Part of that is the insistence on showing naive geometry and trigonometry to draw targets way outside of what the in-game pilot should be able to pick up and showing them to the player as if it was the most natural thing in the world to have targets show up at 40nm+ ranges, and using very simplistic cues that flicker on and off to make targets disappear and/or reappear when they shouldn't. Or to oscillate between the two states to make them show up like pixel fireworks when they should be barely noticeable.

Some of those are just bugs that need to be fixed. Some are missing settings, so you can't actually do what you're suggesting. And some of those shouldn't be adjustable and just be part of the core simulation. To fix this, the rendering of contacts need to be made realistic, and potentially new options need to be added to tweak that rendering in line with all your other local settings.

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

Simply enforcing Auto mode prevents the easy exploit above. 

FFS, this is a new level of astonishing achievement in ignorance, even for you.

You are complaining about a problem that doesn't exist because its supposed downside has already been solved, and you are calling it an exploit that some people don't care to use this setting?! GTFO.

2 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

What I’m curious about is these dynamic war servers that depend on people playing roles like flying support helicopters and ground attack etc. What happens when they see nobody stepping up for that role?

Nothing. If something breaks, you fix the mission to not have such dependencies. Like everything you've ever complained about, it's a solved problem and you're just not informed enough on the topic to have any valuable, rational, coherent, or useful input. You're just looking to invent new imaginary problems that don't exist so you can complain about “exploiters” because you don't know how anything works.

[MoleUK]

36 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Well yes, it’s been sorta thrown in their lap. What I’m curious about is these dynamic war servers that depend on people playing roles like flying support helicopters and ground attack etc. What happens when they see nobody stepping up for that role? Look how many modules in DCS aren’t dedicated A2A aircraft. How and where can someone use these online and not just be a target? Is it more important for a server to just attract as many players as possible or is it more important that the mission design is viable? Some of these servers have gone to great lengths to create these scenarios, if they just turn into air quake maybe that’s a problem.

What you aren't understanding is that the general MP playerbase simply doesn't agree with your position. Nor do the mission makers.

ECW went as far as to disable IC entirely for over 6 months, just so people could continue using the spotting mod after ED realised it was being used. The population never wavered in that time. Groundpounders continued to groundpound.

Fundamentally, most MP players don't want to be blind. If anything many of them would prefer to have even better visibility than is now possible.

Disagreeing with them is fine, but that simply puts you in the minority. It doesn't change their minds.

Edited December 28, 2024 by MoleUK

[SharpeXB]

33 minutes ago, MoleUK said:

What you aren't understanding is that the general MP playerbase simply doesn't agree with your position.

Not necessarily, the most popular server has this set to Auto

34 minutes ago, MoleUK said:

Fundamentally, most MP players don't want to be blind.

This new feature has only been around for about a year. What did people do before this? Seems like many people were able to play just fine. Honestly the old system was even more exploitable which was the impetus for creating a new one. I suppose that’s a “win”