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

[Talisman_VR]

New spotting is awfully bad!  Overcooked is an understatement!  

How on earth did this even get off the drawing board?  

Big black squares are unacceptable and it is now very much harder to identify aircraft type at previous distances.  

Immersion as regards anything like real is completely ruined.  

Please fix as soon as possible.

Happy landings,

Talisman

(VR Pimax 5K+)

Edited November 6, 2023 by Talisman_VR

[Buzz313th]

23 hours ago, James DeSouza said:

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.

I think you're the only active person in this thread that thinks those were easy to see.  With your bad vision and the fact that those dots are very hard, if not impossible to see at a normal zoom level, I am guessing you got some weird setup happening with your contrast, brightness or color.  

 

23 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

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. 

Good point..  And this is a real thing in aviation.  Some have better vision and recognition than others.

[Buzz313th]

17 hours ago, James DeSouza said:

Your eyes very clearly are not fine if you can only see the one dot.  There's a dot that is only marginally less obvious than it in the same cloud on the other side for instance, you should at least be able to see that one but can't.  You really need to get your eyes checked.  You might think your eyes are fine, eyesight degradation is (normally) so gradual that you do not notice it, but your eyesight is not fine.

You said your vision is pretty bad.  To compensate, could you have maybe changed a bunch of settings to increase contrast drastically?  

[Tippis]

16 minutes ago, Buzz313th said:

You said your vision is pretty bad.  To compensate, could you have maybe changed a bunch of settings to increase contrast drastically?  

He already said that he's playing on a cheap TV on stock setting. So that goes almost without saying.

There's also the matter of viewing distance. Anything closer than 70cm is going to cause further issues (at least at the zoom levels discussed so far).

[Buzz313th]

4 minutes ago, Tippis said:

He already said that he's playing on a cheap TV on stock setting. So that goes almost without saying.

There's also the matter of viewing distance. Anything closer than 70cm is going to cause further issues (at least at the zoom levels discussed so far).

There is also the issue of glasses.  If he is wearing glasses that have a good amount of magnification, it could also contribute.

 

Maybe the most reasonable solution for ED, would be to give us sliders where we can adjust the "Dot" size, color blend and distances where the dot is first rendered and at what distance it transitions to the rendered model.  But at the same time set a "Standard" that can be ED's best educated guess on a realistic representation of object visibility.  Give the server admins the ability to set limits on player adjustability.  People could use a "Calibration Mission File" that starts in active pause with groups of aircraft at different distances with rough guidelines as to what the player should see and at what distance, so they can tweak their settings.  

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Buzz313th said:

Good point..  And this is a real thing in aviation.  Some have better vision and recognition than others.

Go figure this is true of the real world as well so why wouldn’t it be in a realistic sim? This is why the game has an option for labels but for whatever reason people won’t use them. So now we just have another version of “labels for people who won’t use labels”
 

21 minutes ago, Buzz313th said:

Maybe the most reasonable solution for ED, would be to give us sliders where we can adjust the "Dot" size, color blend and distances where the dot is first rendered and at what distance it transitions to the rendered model.  But at the same time set a "Standard" that can be ED's best educated guess on a realistic representation of object visibility.  Give the server admins the ability to set limits on player adjustability.  People could use a "Calibration Mission File" that starts in active pause with groups of aircraft at different distances with rough guidelines as to what the player should see and at what distance, so they can tweak their settings.  

That sort of thing would just fragment up multiplayer and make it a mess. And the idea of just making it adjustable seems like an excuse rather than getting it right. 
Theres already a user-adjustable visibility option which is using labels. So people can just use that. 

[Tippis]

3 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Go figure this is true of the real world as well so why wouldn’t it be in a realistic sim?

Because, realistically, the pilots that we're simulating would not have the bad eyes that the players have.

[bear.is.flying]

Suggestion: set the dot size based on degrees or mils, instead of a fixed number of pixels.

For regular screens, you can calculate based on the user FOV divided by the screen resolution.

For VR displays, you have the each headset’s rendering FOV and display resolution. 

[Bosun]

I play 4k on a 32" screen, native with a 4090, running DLAA and everything on Ultra or Max.  No upscaling.

My analysis?  

I played on 1080 for over decade.  The spotting I have now at 4k is slightly worse than what I had at 1080p, because there were less surrounding details in the lower resolution for even a larger dot to blend in with. 

That, to me, is realistic. 

So from my end - I love the spotting changes.  I can see contacts far enough out where I feel like others can (in online play, people can call contacts and I can, for the first time in 4k, in ANY game, actually see them physically rendered when other people are seeing them), and it is slightly still more difficult than 1080p for me, which hits the sweet spot of the fact that this isn't a real simulation, so details like light flashing off of metal, subtle movements, and other things that are impossible to render in a game envrionment (currently) can be overcome by the game mechanics. 

Part of our suspension of disbelief still revolves around 'game mechanics' making up for lack of real world fidelity. Even though we have come immeasurably far in rendering technology, we're still a very long way from allowing a game to simulate the subtle nuances of movement and light and shadow at a distance, that our eyes would be able to ascertain, in a game.  Ergo, we sometimes have to deal with 'gamed' mechanics to compensate for that lack of fidelity.  

I think you've done a marvellous job with this attempt to upgrade classic LOD spotting for the first time in 20 years.  You're the first sim to do so, and you've done it rather well. 

I look forward to the improvements and refinements - but from my end - thanks.  I can finally play online and see again in native 4k. 

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Bosun said:

I can finally play online and see again in native 4k.

Just realize the VR players online are seeing you as a giant black cube

[okopanja]

14 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Just realize the VR players online are seeing you as a giant black cube

Just tracked dude from 15km with my eyes being wider than runway width. No VR.

I did not follow the frenzy of the that last dot mode, was it more realistic than current spotting or not?

[Buzz313th]

Question to all following this thread...

At the maximum distance where you see the spotting dot, is it black or dark grey?  Or is it slightly color blended with the background, or partially transparent?

For me, on a flat screen at 2556x1440 when I first notice the dot, it is a black or dark grey pixel that is quickly becoming opaque from transparent.  Then it remains a black or dark grey dot until the model renders in at around ~3-10 miles depending on the size of the model.  In VR on a Q3 running 4800x2600, I see the same, only the black dot is much bigger.

Where the size of the dot makes a difference, also the contrast of the dot against the background is just as important.  It is the lack of contrast at distance that poses problems for the human eye to acquire small distant objects.    

[PeevishMonkey]

1 час назад, Buzz313th сказал:

At the maximum distance where you see the spotting dot, is it black or dark grey?  Or is it slightly color blended with the background, or partially transparent?

Like here:

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/335334-new-spotting-is-great-new-spotting-is-overcooked-feedback-thread/?do=findComment&comment=5312942

 

[Tippis]

6 hours ago, okopanja said:

Just tracked dude from 15km with my eyes being wider than runway width. No VR.

I did not follow the frenzy of the that last dot mode, was it more realistic than current spotting or not?

Much less. It suffered the double problem of being visible at impossible ranges if your resolution was high enough, only to disappear at closer ones… except if you had a low resolution, in which case it was the opposite: far too visible close up, but invisible at longer range. It was an inconsistent mess, and none of it was even remotely realistic.

 

5 hours ago, Buzz313th said:

At the maximum distance where you see the spotting dot, is it black or dark grey?  Or is it slightly color blended with the background, or partially transparent?

Depends a bit on your definition of “see”. By the time it is readily apparent, it is passing through a stage of increasing opaqueness, from being colour-blended and transparent to being a “huge” (read: 2×2 pixel) dot. Unsurprisingly, it's the colour shift more than anything that catches the eye. The size doesn't really change in any appreciable way because we're dealing with something so small that there's very little size that could change to begin with — ±1 pixel is the difference between not existing at all. By the time it gets larger than that, it has already transitioned into 3D model.

But this is in high-res pancake mode at “invisible-pixel” distance from a calibrated monitor.

[Buzz313th]

14 hours ago, Tippis said:

Depends a bit on your definition of “see”.

That made me laugh..  

This is the only definition I know of...

see¹

/sē/

verb

 

1. 1.

   perceive with the eyes; discern visually.

[James DeSouza]

On 11/6/2023 at 4:15 PM, Buzz313th said:

I think you're the only active person in this thread that thinks those were easy to see.  With your bad vision and the fact that those dots are very hard, if not impossible to see at a normal zoom level, I am guessing you got some weird setup happening with your contrast, brightness or color.  

No, it's because I am only half blind and not fully blind.  Also some of those dots are not easy to see (some are), but the main issue is that none of them should be easy to see and most of them should not be visible at all.  Like the other guy accidentally showed the game is displaying aircraft out to 90-100km.  You cannot visually see aircraft at that distance.  A reminder that cruising airliners overflying you are both larger and less distant than even the closest range band in that picture.  How visible are they?  They're not.  

Also like I said to the other guy, I haven't changed any settings.  Every setting is default.

Also I am not wearing glasses, every optician I have been to gives me a different prescription and none of them help my vision in any noticable way while all of them give me headaches, so I gave up on the whole thing.  It's actually kind of annoying, they don't seem to be able to respond when the answer to "Number 1 or Number 2" is always "they both look the same".

But the main thing about your speculation regarding me and my screen is that you're doing it.  You have been presented with many screenshots of the system being broken, even one of the guys arguing against it has presented a screenshot showing the very thing he claimed wasn't true, and instead of acknowledging that the system needs to be torn out you're trying to make guesses as to why I am able to (presumably) see better than you.  It's fallacious "reasoning".

As for giving you options to adjust the dot size.  They already do, it's called labels.  It's been in the game forever.

  

On 11/6/2023 at 11:44 PM, okopanja said:

Just tracked dude from 15km with my eyes being wider than runway width. No VR.

I did not follow the frenzy of the that last dot mode, was it more realistic than current spotting or not?

Finally coming to realise the new system is broken

Yes, yes...  *villainous hand rubbing*.

 

  

On 11/6/2023 at 11:29 PM, SharpeXB said:

Just realize the VR players online are seeing you as a giant black cube

Leaked image of the upcoming B-21 raider module for DCS;

 

Edited November 8, 2023 by James DeSouza
Manual merge.

[Buzz313th]

@James DeSouza I agree with you that the system is not showing realistic visibility.  My 1st post on this thread mentioned that the limits to seeing different size aircraft are much shorter.  We are on the same page, I was just commenting on your ability to see the smallest dot that I find hard to spot.  

[BIGNEWY]

Folks please keep the feedback constructive, sarcasm doesn't help in the thread. 

 

[okopanja]

1 hour ago, James DeSouza said:

Finally coming to realise the new system is broken

Yes, yes...  *villainous hand rubbing*.

Yes it was broken even before and is broken even now. But I think this is important to bring to attention of ED with both positive and negative feedback.

However, as you have  seen, there are practical boundaries on what they can do. E.g. I optimized my monitor to provide what is considered to be more accurate picture, but someone may actually do the opposite the bring those features to be more visible at expensive of faithfulness of picture.

Every single gaming monitor today offers you special mode for: e.g. seeing in darkness, having extra sharp contrast picture etc. VRs offer this on a whole new level.

Edited November 8, 2023 by okopanja

[NineLine]

An option to turn it off is now working internally, and I hope it comes out in the next update. Making a system that can work as perfectly as possible on every possible combination of equipment is daunting, but we are working to do our best. Thanks.

[Tippis]

20 hours ago, James DeSouza said:

But the main thing about your speculation regarding me and my screen is that you're doing it.  You have been presented with many screenshots of the system being broken, even one of the guys arguing against it has presented a screenshot showing the very thing he claimed wasn't true, and instead of acknowledging that the system needs to be torn out you're trying to make guesses as to why I am able to (presumably) see better than you.  It's fallacious "reasoning".

Why should it be acknowledged that the system needs to be thrown out when the screen shots demonstrate that it's working?

The screenshot I presented didn't actually show anything I had said it didn't. Rather, in your hunt to prove that it was there, you ended up pointing to something completely different, which was the first clue, and then you provided another one when you finally started giving the information that was needed to constructively participate in the discussion.

You are not playing on a good monitor — it is very likely that that it is distorting the image for you (including the screenshots) and showing you stuff that just isn't there. This is why you pointed out non-existing dots as “proof” of your position. But the proof wasn't there. At no point did you manage to show something that I had said didn't exist. It's really that simple.

20 hours ago, James DeSouza said:

Like the other guy accidentally showed the game is displaying aircraft out to 90-100km.

Who? It certainly can't be me since you know my name and have no need to refer to me as “the other guy”… so your reference here is quite unclear.
And if you are saying that it was me, then I'm afraid that no, that's most likely you misinterpreting rendering artifacts as something they're not and you need to be very clear what it is you think you're seeing and where.

The farthest out anyone — including, and especially you — has been able to accurately point to an aircraft in the pictures I've provided is out to 50km. At that point, they are by very definition of the word, not clear. And they are, as I have repeatedly mentioned, still too visible… but even so, it's a massively improvement over how it used to be.

It is working. It is moving in the right direction. There is no reason to rip it out at this point when we haven't even seen the results of any tweaks. If you want to present an argument why these at-the-very-edge-of-visibility dots are rendered incorrectly or shouldn't even exist, present that argument. This constant sniping and misrepresentation is utterly useless and unhelpful for everyone involved.

So here's a simple one to start with: why should the planes shown in my images not show up at the distances they do? If 50km is too much, what would you suggest was a more sensible upper limit for being able to after very close examination, spot the presence of a large fighter aircraft?

Edited November 9, 2023 by Tippis

[Bosun]

I echo that.  

Honestly, I'm not really that tied to dots being any particular size.  

I just want spotting to be similar across resolutions. 

In the old system, you had a definite and clear advantage at lower resolutions, and a definite and clear advantage with larger monitors.  In this modern age of graphics, those two factors can absolutely be compensated for to create uniform experiences, and there's no reason not too. 

You could no sooner argue that pennies or daylight savings time should be kept in perpetuity, than you could argue that the spotting didn't need adjustment.  

I, for one, am glad they're moving in the direction they're going, because of all the things that are so obvious and within our ability to fix (pennies/daylight savings time), it is a refreshing spot of hope and light in the world to see at least this one being worked on.  

 

[SharpeXB]

25 minutes ago, Bosun said:

and a definite and clear advantage with larger monitors

How do you suppose the game is going to account for your (apparent) monitor size? Is it going to measure how close you sit too?

You can buy a giant 4K TV for less than a PlayStation. So if you think it’s an advantage there’s not much stopping anyone from having one. 

[Tippis]

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

How do you suppose the game is going to account for your (apparent) monitor size?

By setting limits an what is rendered, disregarding whether or not they can be rendered just because the resolution allows for it.

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

You can buy a giant 4K TV for less than a PlayStation. So if you think it’s an advantage there’s not much stopping anyone from having one. 

By the same logic, the advantage of lower resolutions that you've been complaining about isn't a problem either: if you think it's an advantage, there's nothing stopping you from having it too.

[trindade]

It's not perfect but is much better than before. Keep the good work ED. 

Cheers