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

[Xupicor]

On G2 the dots were huge, blobby and didn't really fade off with the distance in my experience. It was either nothing, big square black blob or again almost nothing as the blob disappeared when the unit got close enough.

On Pimax Crystal (so a higher resolution, higher PPD) the dots seem to look way, way more reasonable. It's actually hard to spot targets again - as it should be. The only thing is the blobs seem to sometimes flicker back up for a fraction of a second, so I might be scanning the sky and not really see much and all of a sudden a black blob (way smaller than on G2, though) pops up and disappears. If I focus on that point I usually see a unit there.

So I guess for 4K thereabouts on flat screen or pretty high resolution VR headsets like Crystal this new spotting isn't too bad (excluding other issues with it that are surely pending to be fixed in about two weeks). For G2 it was pretty nightmarish with big black blobs flying around. The most offending thing, though, was that the depth perception made me think the black blobs were way closer to myself than they really were. That doesn't seem to be the case on Crystal, curiously. Probably something to do with the relative size of them.

 

@James DeSouza can you put a little circle around the dots you see? Because I'm squinting my eyes and I can't see a single airplane on that picture.

Ah, I zoomed in and found them. Geez! If it looked like that on G2 I'd be actually happy, haha.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Xupicor

[Licenceless]

On 10/20/2023 at 12:23 AM, Nascar said:

I'm using a G2 and I thought spotting in VR was perfect previously. The best it has ever been. It was a sharp dot at a distance and now it is totally immersion breaking with a big black square. It's akin to playing with labels on.

I think what they did is making dots bigger overall to help higher resolution aka 4k millioners while also making dots fade away at closer distances then before (at least in the last iteration)
it needs more fine tuning though because lower resolutions are more op in terms of spotting since dots are hella big for them.

On 10/19/2023 at 10:58 PM, SharpeXB said:

The problem was that in 1080p distant aircraft were too visible. So now every res is like 1080p? That seems like a mistake. I’ll have to try it. 

yeah i think what they should have done is the opposite, i think at high res the spotting was actually closer to real life and lower res was op AF/unreallistic

On 10/20/2023 at 1:43 AM, BMO said:

as a user with a 3440x1440 the implementation feels right. not overpowered and definitely better than before

yes, for you it's perfect, the problem is that the change made everybody else (lower resolutions) even more OP then before

On 10/20/2023 at 2:25 AM, Mohamengina said:

Thanks to the devs for adding this in.

The extra situational awareness adds a whole new layer to the game and makes it way more playable.

DCS isn't WT though the focus is to mae SA reallistic, not just better

[Licenceless]

On 10/20/2023 at 2:57 AM, DrSlaughterRex said:

Anyone who says that the dots should have been reduced is thinking in the wrong direction. Dots were nigh impossible to see at 1440p.

The way you saw them before (or actually didn't see) is the way it is supposed to be, the problem was with lower resolutions being ablee to see too much, not the opposite

On 10/20/2023 at 3:04 AM, H7142 said:

This change is absolutely in the right direction.  It puts DCS far closer to WT/BMS/IL2 in terms of their solutions for spotting difficulties.  You have to compensate for the fact that your looking at stuff on a monitor and not with your actual eyes.  The old system was not good and a reversion back to it would be a massive step backwards.

that is exactly what should be avoided, other games help with spotting to provide easier action. DCS isn't an action game, it strifes for realism

On 10/20/2023 at 6:05 AM, MadKreator said:

I’m on a 5120x1440p monitor and I’ve never seen a spotting dot in the years I’ve been playing.  Even now with “improved” spotting dot, theres no dots lol I can see the planes starting to render when they get close, but no dots on every enemy like what I see in VR. Do people on 4K monitors see these mystery dots? 1440p 16:9? I wonder if its just the odd aspect ratio? Right now nothing has changed for me

To be more thorough: 2D @ 5120x1440, all graphics setting on max,  motion blur and DOF off, heat blur low. Sharpening at 1, LOD at 2,( msaax2, x4, DLSS, TAA  had no effect). Labels set to dot neutral.  

This morning I thought maybe I saw a spotting dot but it looked like literally 1 pixel. It could have been the plane starting to render in too, it wasn’t all that far away. I only noticed it because I knew a plane was there. Next to imperceivable if I wasn’t really, really looking hard for it. Nothing even remotely close to the dots I’ve seen in VR ( Quest 2 &3)

 

to be fair normal spotting distance should be around 15 km, and your 5k and other higher res like 4k actually made spotting more realistic, it's the lower resolutions that had it way to good and could spot up to 50km easy

[hannibal]

How do you deactivate? Still looks like blobs for me on dsaa

[MadKreator]

4 hours ago, Licenceless said:

The way you saw them before (or actually didn't see) is the way it is supposed to be, the problem was with lower resolutions being ablee to see too much, not the opposite

that is exactly what should be avoided, other games help with spotting to provide easier action. DCS isn't an action game, it strifes for realism

to be fair normal spotting distance should be around 15 km, and your 5k and other higher res like 4k actually made spotting more realistic, it's the lower resolutions that had it way to good and could spot up to 50km easy

Probably true. Mine seems so start getting a visual around something like 6nm out or so. It’s so tiny on my screen I can’t tell whether its an actual “spotting dot” or if its the point where the aircraft are starting to render in. But beyond that range there is nothing visible, to my eyes anyway. I’m used to that, so no complaints here. Thats how dcs has been from day one for me. 

[Tippis]

7 hours ago, James DeSouza said:

You never actually explained the set up in the pictures of yours I have seen, but your screenshots absolutely do show obvious spotting dots, same as mine.  No idea what the ranges are or if those ranges would be "appropriate" since as far as I know you never said, but really spotting dots just in general are inappropriate.

I actually explained the setup of the picture you're using in the very post you previously quoted.

For the second setup. I explained how it was an expansion of the first and  I even posted a zoomed-in view which clearly marked the ranges you were looking at.

If you took more time to read what I actually write rather than relying on strawmen and then being abusive when your claims about what I say doesn't match what I actually say, you'd have an easier time with all of this. Go back, read again, and see if you can come up with an actual argument rather than useless ignorance and counterfactuals.

7 hours ago, James DeSouza said:

There are at least 5 very visible aircraft in this picture, I have no idea how many there actually are (nor do I trust you to say) but there should be 0 very visible aircraft in this picture

There are 44 aircraft within the frame of the the second picture — 11 groups of 4. Again, the farthest range is explained right next to the quote you're using, but you have to read the words and note the phrasing. 3 of those groups are reasonably visible, but the last 4 aircraft are difficult to immediately spot. A fourth group is pretty much invisible unless you know exactly which pixels they are. 12 also happens to be roughly the right number of properly visible aircraft — maybe, as I have consistently said, they can stand to be a bit more faint so that fourth row is truly, not just virtually, invisible and the third row is something you'd have to put your nose up against the monitor to really see. What you don't see is what you claimed: “black boxes the size of small buildings” and that you “can still see them 30-40 miles out pretty clearly”. Instead, you see increasingly faded boxes that stop well before even the lower bound of that bracket.

Again, if you had bothered to read, you would have known this already.

 

16 minutes ago, MadKreator said:

Mine seems so start getting a visual around something like 6nm out or so. It’s so tiny on my screen I can’t tell whether its an actual “spotting dot” or if its the point where the aircraft are starting to render in.

Best way to tell is to set your screenshot format to PNG and just hammer the button when things start to get in range .

[SharpeXB]

On 10/19/2023 at 8:04 PM, H7142 said:

This change is absolutely in the right direction.  It puts DCS far closer to WT/BMS/IL2 in terms of their solutions for spotting difficulties.  You have to compensate for the fact that your looking at stuff on a monitor and not with your actual eyes.  The old system was not good and a reversion back to it would be a massive step backwards.

The yardstick for comparison here should be reality and not other games. That’s part of the problem, players looking to replicate the graphics of other games and not grasping what the real data says about all this. BMS is particularly a problem since it scales up the models to 2-3x their actual size. No wonder so many people in DCS have spotting trouble if this is what they’re used to. 

[Tippis]

Just now, SharpeXB said:

The yardstick for comparison here should be reality and not other games.

True enough, so how about this:

Other games have long since offered a more realistic take on spotting, up to the point of basing their solutions on scientific studies of the process of perception. By moving closer to those games, DCS also moves closer to reality.

[SharpeXB]

5 hours ago, Licenceless said:

aka 4k millioners

Millionaires? That’s hilarious. You can buy a 4K TV these days for half the price a game console.

[James DeSouza]

53 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Again, if you had bothered to read, you would have known this already.

Ah yes, if I bothered to read I would be able to discern knowledge you never posted in the first place.  Very rational.  Anyway your claim that there's 20 million aircraft in that picture kind of doesn't matter.  The thing that does matter is that the 5 aircraft I can see at a glance (I am not even pixel hunting) including the three very clear blue blobs, should not be visible.

 

Since you mentioned 11 I actually decided to go pixel hunting and just loading the picture in to gimp and zooming in 4x (which is the best way to approximate max zoom in DCS that I can think of) and I can obviously see 4 rows of 4 planes, with a potential 5th row but it is hard to tell.  The 5 I could initially see without zooming were the ones downward in the picture from the obvious blue one.  What are the ranges of those first 4 rows of aircraft?  Also what aircraft are they?  I'd assume 5 nm per aircraft except that doesn't fit with a 50 mile maximum.

 

Actually why even bother doing that, it doesn't matter.  That you can initially see the obvious blue one while it is in a 1/3 scale image preview on the forum should be bad enough.  And the worst part is that I have 6/12 vision lmao.

Edited November 5, 2023 by James DeSouza

[James DeSouza]

37 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

The yardstick for comparison here should be reality and not other games. That’s part of the problem, players looking to replicate the graphics of other games and not grasping what the real data says about all this. BMS is particularly a problem since it scales up the models to 2-3x their actual size. No wonder so many people in DCS have spotting trouble if this is what they’re used to. 

Hey now, Eagle Dynamics should be copying the premier in realistic aerial combat, ACE COMBAT.  

[Tippis]

15 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

Ah yes, if I bothered to read

..you would have already known the ranges that I supposedly didn't mention. It's right in the post. You deliberately omitted it in your first quote, and it's plain as day in the second.

15 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

 Anyway your claim that there's 20 million aircraft in that picture kind of doesn't matter

No such claim was made. You're now off by six orders of magnitude rather than just two.

It matters because you claimed that I “either A) do not actually know what [my screenshots] include or B) are going to lie about them?″. I do know what they include, and I don't lie about it. Hell, unlike you, I'll even be honest about my mistake and throw in an errata that will please you immensely because I noticed a very silly error when I tried to match your outcome just now: the measurement to the first row is obviously in nm, not km (but the spacing inbetween groups remains the same because yay grids). Oh dearie me, what a huge setback.

The thing that matters is that those 12 aircraft were never in dispute – they're about right but if anything, I said that they should be a bit less visible, especial with that nm/km gaffe. The fact that you only spot 5 of them just reinforces my point: they're not nearly the huge black blobs out at 30-40 miles you claim everyone is seeing. Even you aren't seeing that.

If you want to argue that they shouldn't be visible, present that argument. Why shouldn't they be visible? What in their nature, or in this setup, makes them invisible in this situation?

Edited November 5, 2023 by Tippis

[James DeSouza]

On 11/2/2023 at 10:46 PM, Tippis said:

 

 

Actually you didn't mention range in the one I quoted, you just mentioned maximum range without increments and so that isn't enough to make a judgement.  Because I have you on an ignore and only notice your posts others quote (because you're kind of...  well...) but I didn't notice this beautiful picture.

 

You can notice 2 rows below that 40km row, so your own picture shows aircraft visible at 30 miles (assuming you keep the distance interval consistent), the thing you have been claiming isn't true all along.  lmfao.

God, what a disaster.

 

Also is that 40km line the line you consider "barely visible"?  In actual reality the 20km line should barely be visible, never mind 40, never mind the actual 50km that is clearly visible in the picture (underside of the same cloud the 40km is in).  You can also see an additional what would likely be the 60km row, but at the same time they are vague enough to the point where they might be compression artefacts.

Edited November 5, 2023 by James DeSouza

[Tippis]

8 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

Actually you didn't mention range in the one I quoted

On 11/1/2023 at 11:42 PM, Tippis said:

This is what it looks like at 10nm — nothing huge, nothing particularly dark (they appear a bit sooner but very faint and at 10nm is where they start to stick out against the background properly).

Liar.

8 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

You can notice 2 rows below that 40km row, so your own picture shows aircraft visible at 30 miles (assuming you keep the distance interval consistent)

Prove it.

 

[James DeSouza]

9 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Liar.

Prove it.

 

No lie.  You mention 10km and you also mention 50nm as the maximum.  Do you not understand what an increment is?  You need to mention the increments for a comparison to be useful.  The picture you posted shows increments.

 

Anyway as for the proof.

null

[Tippis]

15 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

No lie

It's right in the post. Click the little arrow in the upper left corner of your own quote to go there.

The range was mentioned from the get go. You quoted the post but chose to ignore and cut out the information. You then went on to claim that the information you ignored wasn't actually there at all. I also mentioned the increments. I also mentioned the max range (which doesn't even show up). You ignored it all and claimed it wasn't there.

So yes, lie. Just own it and move on.

As for your proof, your 60km line is wrong. There are no compression artefacts. And let's check what that 50km dot looks like. You know, the one that is apparently part of “black boxes the size of small buildings” and you “can still see them 30-40 miles out pretty clearly”, according to you?

Here it is in its full glory:

Again I'm going to have to ask you to read the actual post you quoted and check the context because context holds meaning.

And again, If you want to argue that a dot at any given distance shouldn't be visible, present that argument. Why shouldn't they be visible? What in their nature, or in this setup, makes them invisible in this situation?

Edited November 5, 2023 by Tippis

[James DeSouza]

9 minutes ago, Tippis said:

It's right in the post. Click the little arrow in the upper left corner of your own quote to go there.

 

The first time you posted the image you mentioned 10km, the second time you posted the image (which is what I quoted and didn't cut out despite you claiming I did..?) you mentioned 50nm.  I don't know why you think I am lying but...

 

Also yes, the dot in that image is very clearly visible.  If it is not to you then....  That explains why you think this spotting system is good I guess.  Again, a reminder, I have 6/12 vision, or in other words vision half as good as a normal person and I can clearly see the 40km line without zooming in and can see the 50 and 60km/artefact lines while zooming. Oh and can also see the 20km line (the line at which a rough fighter sized target should no longer be clearly visible) just on the preview image in the forum.  Again, 6/12.

Edited November 5, 2023 by James DeSouza
6/12/24

[Tippis]

21 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

The first time you posted the image you mentioned 10km, the second time you posted the image (which is what I quoted and didn't cut out despite you claiming I did..?) you mentioned 50nm.  I don't know why you think I am lying but...

I think you're lying because you claim that information that was in the two respective posts wasn't there. You can find it by clicking on the quote links in your own posts. In the second one, you even included the information that supposedly wasn't there in your quote.

By the way, they're two different pictures. You'd know this if you had actually read the posts and not chosen to ignore the information in them.

21 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

Also yes, the dot in that image is very clearly visible

Uh-huh. -1° hue; +1% saturation, -1% black compared to the background. That does not qualify as clearly visible in any sense of the word and world apart from the huge black blobs that have been claimed. Can you see it if you hunt for it and know where to look already? Yes. But you don't. And that's if you sit so close to your monitor that the pixels are above the visibility threshold to begin with.

The artefacts you're confusing for spotting dots is DCS cloud rendering. Let that sink in for a bit.

 

21 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

Oh and can also see the 20km line (the line at which a rough fighter sized target should no longer be clearly visible)

And again and again, If you want to argue that a dot at any given distance shouldn't be visible, present that argument. Why shouldn't they be visible? What in their nature, or in this setup, makes them invisible in this situation?

Edited November 5, 2023 by Tippis

[okopanja]

37 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

No lie.  You mention 10km and you also mention 50nm as the maximum.  Do you not understand what an increment is?  You need to mention the increments for a comparison to be useful.  The picture you posted shows increments.

 

Anyway as for the proof.

null

Can you confirm the file format please? Is it BMP/PNG/JPG?

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, James DeSouza said:

Hey now, Eagle Dynamics should be copying the premier in realistic aerial combat, ACE COMBAT.  

Well IL-2 at least is another sim game that attempts realistic spotting. But players there complain about it too. It’s had its share of giant dot solutions tried and failed. There are always players who just can’t seem to see the other aircraft despite how well the game handles it. So there’s no way this debate will ever end. 

[James DeSouza]

15 minutes ago, okopanja said:

Can you confirm the file format please? Is it BMP/PNG/JPG?

PNG.  I posted 0 compression PNG myself (hence 19MB) but the original screenshot has compression.

[James DeSouza]

32 minutes ago, Tippis said:

I think you're lying because you claim that information that was in the two respective posts wasn't there. You can find it by clicking on the quote links in your own posts. In the second one, you even included the information that supposedly wasn't there in your quote.

No I didn't..?  I said you didn't give ranges.  When there are multiple arrays of objects giving a start and an end value is not enough to determine what the interval between the arrays is, especially when you also have an unknown number of arrays.  My friend you shouldn't need this explained to you.

And variations in colour and brightness are how the human eye works, yes.  Though you have basically tipped your hand that the entire reason you think this system is acceptable is because you have severely deficient eyesight.

 

Lmfao.  This thread.

"You can see aircraft out to 30 miles, they're obvious."

"No they're not, here's a screenshot with obvious aircraft out to 30 miles to prove that they're not there."

"They're there though.?"

"You're a liar!  Own it!!"

 

We need apophis now more than ever.

Edited November 5, 2023 by James DeSouza

[Tippis]

47 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

No I didn't..?  I said you didn't give ranges

And I did. In the first post. In the subsequent posts. In the very posts you quoted. You had all the information you needed if you had bothered to read, but then you claim that you didn't.

You lied. Own it.

47 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

And variations in colour and brightness are how the human eye works, yes

…and there are limits to how small a variation is detectable, especially when in the periphery, and especially when they affect an area that is smaller than the eye can resolve to begin with. “Clearly” is not the word you should be using here. Especially not when the original claim was something about huge black boxes out to ranges that aren't even shown.

Let's get really funny and check the ∆E: RGB(182, 202, 208) vs RGB(179, 200, 207) = 1.7758, which falls in the bracket of “perceptible under close scrutiny”. I.e. not clearly. If you compare against the cloud above it, it rises to a massive 3.3725 (= “perceptible at a glance”)… so that would help if it were actually in the cloud.

e: Dammit, now I can't even find the same reference pixel when trying to create a second comparison. Oh well, it's still below 2 which is what matters.

That aside, you have yet to provide any semblance of explanation as to why you feel the visibility at the given ranges are wrong.

53 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

PNG.  I posted 0 compression PNG myself (hence 19MB) but the original screenshot has compression.

You may want to read up on how PNG works.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Tippis

[James DeSouza]

5 minutes ago, Tippis said:

You may want to read up on how PNG works.

Why?  Because it is advertised as "lossless".  God.  I can't be bothered with that one lmao.

[okopanja]

2 hours ago, James DeSouza said:

PNG.  I posted 0 compression PNG myself (hence 19MB) but the original screenshot has compression.

Thanks, I am sorry but only dot I can see is in the larger cloud and very faint.