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

[KoN]

22 hours ago, Ourorborus said:

Because rolling back to stable  for a large server is much more than just ticking a box to change versions.

 

Please dont let this be dragged into a stable vs OB discussion. Everyone here knows why Openbeta exists.

 

Perhaps I could have worded myself better:

....contrary to what was stated before, turning the feature off not only works for Multiplayer, but is in fact is preferable for many who play MP.

Funny all I used hear was I CANT SEE A THING , lol . 

And I'm still hearing it . 

I've been around this simulation since flanker days . Been flying online in squadron for years . 

Now we have choices and still people complain. Lol

Anyway I think it's a good thing . Just needs tweaking. 

[Sixxpack]

Same here all. I have the G2 as well. But we are in the right direction, it just needs to be tweaked a little that's all as I mostly fly on full real servers.

All the best,

Sixxer!

 

[James DeSouza]

On 10/26/2023 at 12:08 PM, nuNce said:

Which means that 10km for a modern fighter which is twice the size of a WWII aircraft is more than fair.

No.  I don't have exact figures but a nice example is that of a British F4 pilot I was listening to, who had above average eyesight, he said the furthest he ever saw a fighter at was 8 miles for a regular phantom and 10 miles for the German F4F phantom and in both cases it was because he saw the engine smoke rather than the aircraft themselves (and the German phantoms apparently smoked more).  And he treated seeing them at this kind of distance as if it was an achievement.  The Phantom is gigantic (same size as an F-15) and spews out smoke, and you're at a best case seeing it (already knowing the rough area it is in) is ~16km.

 

Every fighter I have seen makes a point of how important the radar is even up close.  For instance I was listening to an F16 pilot who said dogfight auto aquisition modes are important in BFM because they put a box around the target that lets you spot them more easily, and F16 dogfight mode only locks to something like 4 miles.  I can't see why that would be if you have giant black blocks floating around which is the current system.  Aircraft are difficult to spot.

 

 

I still don't understand why they added this.  There's been a dots only label option for ages (forever as far as I know) that puts dots over things so you can see them more easily.  It does what this does, it already exists, why make this change?

Edited October 28, 2023 by James DeSouza

[TheFreshPrince]

Well i can see bandits at over 20 miles, possibly even more. Nice advantage, but unrealistic. This is in 2K.

 

 

At 24 miles you can already start to see it, when you look closely.

Edited October 28, 2023 by TheFreshPrince

[James DeSouza]

10 minutes ago, TheFreshPrince said:

Well i can see bandits at over 20 miles, possibly even more. Nice advantage, but unrealistic. This is in 2K.

 

 

At 24 miles you can already start to see it, when you look closely.

 

Why even have radar   Also the hornet is in Nm isn't it, so that 24.2 would be near 30 normal miles.

 

Also with 1200 knot closure the guy has to be nose on to you, so you absolutely should not be able to see anything at those kinds of distances.

Edited October 28, 2023 by James DeSouza

[Why485]

16 hours ago, TheFreshPrince said:

Well i can see bandits at over 20 miles, possibly even more. Nice advantage, but unrealistic. This is in 2K.

At 24 miles you can already start to see it, when you look closely.

This is the bug related to transparencies I have mentioned in earlier posts. You shouldn't be able to see it right now, and at those distances wouldn't if it wasn't in front of the clouds. This is part of what's making this discussion difficult and adding to the very inconsistent reporting.

Edited October 29, 2023 by Why485

[Tippis]

3 hours ago, James DeSouza said:

I still don't understand why they added this.  There's been a dots only label option for ages (forever as far as I know) that puts dots over things so you can see them more easily.  It does what this does, it already exists, why make this change?

Because dot labels are hugely problematic as far as providing sensible spotting (until/unless you tweak the heck out of them). For one, they're in the UI layer so they render on top of everything — never mind being able to see planes at 40nm; you can see them at 40nm through the airplane body and mountains. They're what it says on the in: labels. The fact that they had to do secondary work to make up for DCS' wonky and lacklustre distance rendering and spotting was more of an ugly bodge than anything.

This change is about something else: a stab at making that distance rendering and spotting actually work and make any sense. There is still quite some ways to go, but it's a start since it introduces a number of options and capabilities that simply didn't exist before. It is now possible to work at creating an equitable and comparable outcome across all kinds of resolutions and display systems. It is possible to hard-cap how far you can see things and not make it look weird. It is possible to adjust both of those depending on aircraft size. Above all, it opens up the possibility to do something DCS has never done or been able to do before: simulating perception.

They added it because it attacks a different problem, and provides a foundation for an actual solution, than anything we've previously had (well… in the v2.0 era at least).

[fagulha]

I´m all into options for every type of flying. We just need an option to enable/disable it and i believe by using this feature of 2.9 as foundation as already said by Tippis, in the future it will be possible to disable/enable it so we all can adjust the sim to our liking.

Personally i dislike it. I hate to use those dots/spots (autoexec option does not work) but i´m glad it´s available for others.

(VR user)

Edited October 30, 2023 by fagulha
Typo

[SharpeXB]

I guess the question still remains, why do we need dots at all? They're always going to look artificial and have some basic problems.

- They're pixel-sized and so will always look different on different systems.

- They don't reflect target size, aspect, lighting environment etc.

- Even though they might mimic a believable detection range, they are still too visible.

- The dot will change or vanish with FOV

In the 2160 x 3840 examples below these are all small fighters, head on aspect at about 4 miles, probably the max range you'd expect to easily see them IRL and in 2.8 that's exactly what you get. So what's wrong with that? The 2.9 version these appear as black squares, not aircraft silhouettes.

The real problem with 2.8 wasn't that spotting was too difficult, it was that the system gave players the incentive to turn down their resolution and make the dots bigger. But making everyone like 1080 used to be isn't the solution.

4 hours ago, James DeSouza said:

I still don't understand why they added this.  There's been a dots only label option for ages (forever as far as I know) that puts dots over things so you can see them more easily.  It does what this does, it already exists, why make this change?

This exactly. Why just replicate dot labels in another method? Because that what this now looks like. If the dot labels were modified to be hidden behind objects and such this would be exactly the same thing.

Edited October 28, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

30 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I guess the question still remains, why do we need dots at all?

Not really, no. That has been answered in full and has been known for, oh, a decade or so.

The benefit of dots over the previous options available are that:

• They can be larger than a single pixel and also sub-pixel sized, making contacts look the same on all systems.
• They can reflect target sizes, aspect, lighting conditions etc and do so with some form of parity across different systems.
• They can accurately mimic realistic detection ranges, which means they will simply not be visible above certain ranges.
• Because of all of the above, they can actually integrate reasonably well with the highly unrealistic zoom ability (which we simply can't get rid of) — since they can linearly compensate for how small a contact should be (if visible at all) at any given range and FoV.

30 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

The real problem with 2.8 wasn't that spotting was too difficult, it was that the system gave players the incentive to turn down their resolution and make the dots bigger. But making everyone like 1080 used to be isn't the solution.

The real problem with 2.8 was that spotting was too difficult when it shouldn't be, and too easy when it shouldn't be. Fortunately, the new system opens up for a solution where everyone gets the same thing, whether they're 1080 or 1440 or 2160 or whatever the future may hold. This must happen at some point or DCS is (some would say remains) obsolete. That is not the same thing as “making everyone like 1080 used to” for the simple reason that this wasn't accurate either — it suffered from the “too difficult when it shouldn't be” issue. Nor will it make everyone like 2160 used to be because it suffered at the other end of the spectrum. Instead, it's about making everyone like everyone else, irrespective of resolution. That is the only valid and even remotely intelligent solution — all others are catastrophically stupid.

…oh, and if it turns out that what 1080p had was actually the most realistic outcome, then everyone should indeed get that. Because that's the end goal here, after all. But that has nothing to do with where that solution originates and everything to do with what it actually is.

30 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Why just replicate dot labels in another method?

Good news: nothing of the sort is happening. Dot labels suffer from all the flaws you listed. The new spotting dots do not. Dot labels are customisable UI labels to provide meta-game information about aircraft. The spotting dots are a part of the actual simulation, specifically of aspects of perception. They're not the same thing; they do not replace each other; they have very different purposes to solve very different problems.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Tippis

[SharpeXB]

40 minutes ago, Tippis said:

They can reflect target sizes, aspect, lighting conditions etc and do so with some form of parity across different systems.

Since they’re just dots (squares), how can they reflect target shape or aspect?

40 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Because of all of the above, they can actually integrate reasonably well with the highly unrealistic zoom ability

Zoom isn’t unrealistic. On a normal desktop sized screen the zoom-in is more like reality. So I guess zoom-out is unrealistic? Wide FOV is essentially replicating peripheral vision and you’d never see a tiny target that way. Agree there’s no such thing IRL as a variable FOV but it’s essential for playing a sim like this on a monitor. 

40 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Fortunately, the new system opens up for a solution where everyone gets the same thing, whether they're 1080 or 1440 or 2160 or whatever the future may hold.

2.9 at least seem to accomplish that, except for VR. It seems reasonable to imagine that when this gets toned down for VR it gets toned down for everyone else too.

40 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Dot labels suffer from all the flaws you listed.

It would probably be easier to fix the labels than introduce a new system that’s essentially provides the same result. Just make it so labels can be hidden and the problem is solved. 

PS screen shot of dot labels in 2.8, exactly the same result as spotting dots in 2.9

Edited October 28, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

Just now, SharpeXB said:

Since they’re just dots (squares), how can they reflect target shape or aspect?

They're not just dots. Dots are not just squares.

1 minute ago, SharpeXB said:

Zoom isn’t unrealistic.

You should probably stay away from doctors, if that's how your “real world” works for you, since you're liable to picked up in a black van and subjected to all kinds of biological inquiry and experimentation.

Zoom is unrealistic. Eyes don't work that way.

3 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

It seems reasonable to imagine that when this gets toned down for VR it gets toned down for everyone else too.

It's just as reasonable to imagine that it becomes somewhat device dependent so that when it's toned down for devices where you get 22px/degree, that has no effect on devices that give you 40px/degree. I know that you never managed to get your head around the trivial concept of pixel density, but here, as always, it matters (and isn't very difficult to deal with).

7 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

It would probably be easier to fix the labels than introduce a new system that’s essentially provides the same result.

That would be a laughably futile and pointless exercise since no-one wants that. Labels are working perfectly for their purpose and no replacement is necessary — maybe some more programmability and options, but that's an expansion, not a fix. The only fix that is needed has nothing to do with labels and more to do with how DCS forces settings in multiplayer. Labels are just one of many unfortunate victims of that bug/design flaw.

Spotting, on the other hand, does need a new system — or, perhaps more accurately, it needs a system — that very specifically does not yield the same result. Otherwise it wouldn't fix the numerous and well-documented flaws with spotting, now would it?

Labels are UI.
Spotting is simulation.
The two are not the same and cannot be sensibly served by the same system.

[SharpeXB]

55 minutes ago, Tippis said:

They're not just dots. Dots are not just squares.

That’s what I see on my screen. Do you see something different? Post a screenshot. This discussion is only useful with actual images. 

55 minutes ago, Tippis said:

It's just as reasonable to imagine that it becomes somewhat device dependent

Possibly. But the effect needs to be much less pronounced than what we are seeing now. And it can’t be hackable or subject to exploits. 

55 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Spotting is simulation.

But excessively easy spotting spoils the simulation and looks ugly. This still needs adjustment. In this case spotting has been turned into labels.
 

Edited October 28, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

22 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

That’s what I see on my screen.

Your screenshots tell a different story. You should probably look at them a bit closer…

Oops.

22 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

And it can’t be hackable or subject to exploits. 

Welcome. You just arrived at the point where you realise why the UI element of dot labels was not a solution to the simulation problem of perception.

22 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

But excessively easy spotting spoils the simulation and looks ugly.

Nope.

You see, by spending so many years arguing against realism, improved simulation, and better spotting systems, you have dug in so hard in your position where spotting must be very very hard, so any and all improvements will come out as “excessively easy” and “ugly”. In actual fact, what you feel trips that line is quite likely to still be too difficult to be realistic, as demonstrated by your vociferous and adamant arguing that scientifically proven outcomes for those two reasons even though that's actually what pilots see.

So no. Excessively easy spotting may actually be the perfect simulation, and look as good as it ever can.

Your aesthetic sensibilities are in every way absolutely worthless, pointless, and utterly irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Tippis

[SharpeXB]

17 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Your screenshots tell a different story.

The screenshot I posed shows these looking like cubes. The other accounts I read describe them as looking like this too. Do you have an example of these looking different? 

19 minutes ago, Tippis said:

You just arrived at the point where you realise why the UI element of dot labels was not a solution to the simulation problem of perception.

I agree that a realistic spotting system should be different than labels, but right now these both look the same. Does that make sense?

[PeevishMonkey]

It would be extremely cute if ED explain own expectations about visibility. I didn't see it in news.

Until we don't know it, all we able to do - argue in forum battles.

 

[Tippis]

4 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

The screenshot I posed shows these looking like cubes.

…but that wasn't what I was saying, now was it.

Let's repeat and see how many times it takes for you to read:

They're not just dots. Dots are not just squares.

5 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I agree that a realistic spotting system should be different than labels, but right now these both look the same. Does that make sense?

Aside from them not looking the same, as proven by your screenshots, sure… Note what the arrows are actually pointing towards (or not towards, since it's not there in your supposed 2.9 screenshot).

Either your label settings are confusing you, or you're not looking very closely (which, I suppose, tells us a lot about why you think the way you do about spotting). Or you've tried to capture two very different scenarios just to try to fake a point.

Also note how your screenshots show that they're not pixel-sized, and how only one of the two elements would look different on different systems.

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Tippis said:

…but that wasn't what I was saying, now was it.

Let's repeat and see how many times it takes for you to read:

They're not just dots. Dots are not just squares.

Aside from them not looking the same, as proven by your screenshots, sure… Note what the arrows are actually pointing towards (or not towards, since it's not there in your supposed 2.9 screenshot).

Either your label settings are confusing you, or you're not looking very closely (which, I suppose, tells us a lot about why you think the way you do about spotting). Or you've tried to capture two very different scenarios just to try to fake a point.

Also note how your screenshots show that they're not pixel-sized, and how only one of the two elements would look different on different systems.

I’m afk now but those two screenshots look like 2.9 for the first and 2.8 for the second. In 2.9 you’re seeing the spotting dots. And in 2.8 those are the dot labels floating over the tiny 4K sized v2.8 spotting dots or aircraft smudges or whatever you want to call them. Those are basically invisible at normal size. 
Note how the 2.9 spotting dot and 2.8 dot labels look almost exactly the same. 
The point here is that the 2.9 spotting dots are not aircraft shaped and don’t seem to change with the target aspect. If those distant target have different aspects they should be represented by different sized dots. As far as I can tell this doesn’t happen. Maybe someone could test that. 

Edited October 28, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

10 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Note how the 2.9 spotting dot and 2.8 dot labels look almost exactly the same. 

…and so the goalpost-moving begins.

Note how they're not the same. Exactly or otherwise. Note how they're not just dots, nor not (just) squares. Note that the spotting dot is something separate from the dot label. Note that you're increasingly confused about what you're even looking at (or for) and discussing.

12 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

The point here is that the 2.9 spotting dots are not aircraft shaped and don’t seem to change with the target aspect.

That wasn't the point at all, now was it.

The point is that spotting dots — since not even remotely are they visually, functionally, or systemically the same as dot labels — can reflect target sizes, aspect, lighting conditions etc and do so with some form of parity across different systems. Whether they should or not, and consequently whether ED should put the effort into making them fully behave like that, is a slightly different conversation.

Even more to the point, at the ranges where spotting dot is meant to really provide the patch between low-LoD models and seeing nothing at all, being aircraft-shaped is almost inherently out of the question. But that doesn't mean they can't reflect other details, and provide the cues you need to figure out what you're looking at. Perception is funny that way.

 

Granted, a Serfoss solution would be superior to all of this, but ED have unfortunately painted themselves into a corner on that one and made it politically unacceptable to go for the best methodology.

[SharpeXB]

7 minutes ago, Tippis said:

The point is that spotting dots — since not even remotely are they visually, functionally, or systemically the same as dot labels — can reflect target sizes, aspect, lighting conditions etc and do so with some form of parity across different systems.

They could do this it seems. But do they currently? Right now they seem to look exactly the same. 

[Tippis]

11 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

They could do this it seems. But do they currently? Right now they seem to look exactly the same. 

Right now, they do not look exactly the same, no, as you accidentally demonstrated with your screenshots.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Tippis

[SharpeXB]

35 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Right now, they do not look exactly the same, no, as you accidentally demonstrated with your screenshots.

 

The 2.9 spotting dot and the dot label do look almost identical in my example. That’s looking at the dot label on a 4K screen. It might look different at other resolutions. Just to be clear. These two things circled in red are: Top = 2.9 spotting dot. Bottom = dot label. On top what you’ve indicated as “No Dots” are indeed the 2.9 spotting dots  

Edited October 28, 2023 by SharpeXB

[James DeSouza]

5 hours ago, Tippis said:

Because dot labels are hugely problematic as far as providing sensible spotting (until/unless you tweak the heck out of them). For one, they're in the UI layer so they render on top of everything — never mind being able to see planes at 40nm; you can see them at 40nm through the airplane body and mountains. They're what it says on the in: labels. The fact that they had to do secondary work to make up for DCS' wonky and lacklustre distance rendering and spotting was more of an ugly bodge than anything.

This change is about something else: a stab at making that distance rendering and spotting actually work and make any sense. There is still quite some ways to go, but it's a start since it introduces a number of options and capabilities that simply didn't exist before. It is now possible to work at creating an equitable and comparable outcome across all kinds of resolutions and display systems. It is possible to hard-cap how far you can see things and not make it look weird. It is possible to adjust both of those depending on aircraft size. Above all, it opens up the possibility to do something DCS has never done or been able to do before: simulating perception.

They added it because it attacks a different problem, and provides a foundation for an actual solution, than anything we've previously had (well… in the v2.0 era at least).

It is not attacking a different problem.  It is attacking the same problem.  And this approach it will never be a solution to the problem wither because it is completely arbitrary.

The only actual solution to the problem is to have models fade out until they take up the space a single pixel would be on the screen, then do not render them at all once they are at a distance where they would take up less than a single pixel on the screen.  If the distance scaling is accurate then this is a completely objective way to handle the problem.  The only argument against it is that it puts people who do not have the money to buy higher resolution screens at a disadvantage, but every single part of this game puts the people who have less money at a disadvantage (ie joystick vs keyboard and mouse, track IR vs viewhat, thrustmaster HOTAS X vs Virpil CM3 and whatever joystick, guy with 5 fps on a 1050 vs 144 on a 4090TI, etc.) so bodging an awful "fix" to try to level the playing field in this specific context when the entire rest of the playing field is nonsensical, especially when the fix has an awful effect that you could already get if you wanted it through the dot labels as you yourself prove in this post;

2 hours ago, Tippis said:

…but that wasn't what I was saying, now was it.

Let's repeat and see how many times it takes for you to read:

They're not just dots. Dots are not just squares.

Aside from them not looking the same, as proven by your screenshots, sure… Note what the arrows are actually pointing towards (or not towards, since it's not there in your supposed 2.9 screenshot).

Either your label settings are confusing you, or you're not looking very closely (which, I suppose, tells us a lot about why you think the way you do about spotting). Or you've tried to capture two very different scenarios just to try to fake a point.

Also note how your screenshots show that they're not pixel-sized, and how only one of the two elements would look different on different systems.

  

3 hours ago, Tippis said:

Zoom is unrealistic. Eyes don't work that way.

You should probably stay away from doctors, if that's how your “real world” works for you, since you're liable to picked up in a black van and subjected to all kinds of biological inquiry and experimentation.

 

 

Zoom actually is realistic in this context as it gives you a rough visual resolution per degree field of view closer to what your eyes are actually capable of.  It is an unrealistic way of achieving a realistic end goal

Edited October 28, 2023 by James DeSouza

[SharpeXB]

23 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

The only argument against it is that it puts people who do not have the money to buy higher resolution screens at a disadvantage,

4K TVs have become so amazingly cheap, literally less than a game console or what people spend on HOTAS controllers. I think the real cost barrier there is the graphics card and not the display itself.

If it seems unfair to give expensive hardware an advantage, the opposite is fully illogical. The game shouldn’t actually encourage the use of lower spec gear. That’s counterintuitive. Ideally there’s a solution for everyone though. 

[Tippis]

19 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

The 2.9 spotting dot and the dot label do look almost identical in my example.

…and yet, they're not actually identical. They function very differently. They solve very different problems.

I'm sorry that you ruined your own argument. Or, well, no I'm not, nor am I surprised because you always end up doing this.

20 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

On top what you’ve indicated as “No Dots” are indeed the 2.9 spotting dots

That's not what I'm indicating. What I'm showing as “no dots” is the lack of dots, as demonstrated by your comparison image where the dots in question are present. This shows that spotting dots and dot labels look nothing alike, and that most likely, you're confused about what you're looking at.

That, or you're faking your shots to try to show something else, but accidentally end up disproving your claim anyway…

Look at them again. Spot the difference. It matters.

 

23 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

It is not attacking a different problem.  It is attacking the same problem.

Dot labels attack the problem that, out of the box, the other label presets offer far too much information — including things like coalition, unit category, unit type, unit name, range etc etc etc. They're a new preset for something that has been available ever since editable labels were introduced, and that's so long ago that the exact details are lost in the mists of time. They were co-opted to solve spotting issues because ED dragged their heels as far as fixing the problems with spotting. It's a UI element that can be made to compensate for lacking simulation. It's not very good at it, but when it's all you have, it will be used that way.

Spotting dots attack the problem of lacking simulation. It is not a UI element and does not offer the user customisation of one, because that would defeat the purpose of it being part of the simulation. I suppose it could conceivably be co-opted to solve some other problem, but definitely not the UI one that dot labels deal with.

Two different problems with two different solutions. One being able to poorly substitute for the other does not change this.

32 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

And this approach it will never be a solution to the problem wither because it is completely arbitrary.

Having an arbitrary starting point for your tweaking doesn't preclude the ability to arrive at a fully working solution. You have to start somewhere, and as any converging function will show you, you can start with most amazingly bad guesses and still work your way to where you want to be.

This approach can quite trivially be a solution to the problem at hand.

 

35 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

The only actual solution to the problem is to have models fade out until they take up the space a single pixel would be on the screen, then do not render them at all once they are at a distance where they would take up less than a single pixel on the screen. 

That is not actually the only actual solution. The problem you get with what you're suggesting is exactly what we have now: you end up with a very naïve geometric function that results in planes being far too visible far too far out, and with ease of spotting being a function of how bad your settings are — the worse the graphics, the better the spotting.

What this solution allows for is a transitional stage that can be adjusted independently so planes no longer appear at long distances, no matter what your settings, and where they show up (reasonably) the same size at the same distance, also no matter your settings. It's all about that transitional state and not relying on simple trigonometry, but rather using various soft and hard caps related to actual perception. This is particularly important since we have to account for the inherently unrealistic, but almost equally inherently necessary, zoom function: something that alters what “a pixel” represents at a given distance. It must be able to tell the render that, no, it doesn't matter that this plane would mathematically take up 10 pixels at this zoom level — it cannot be seen at this distance, period.

There are various ways to deal with the pop-in that this will create, and using various proxies and overlays that can be faded in or out independently of the model is one way of doing that. A different solution is to use range-scale functions (that can also compensate for FoV settings), such as Serfoss.

46 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

The only argument against it is that it puts people who do not have the money to buy higher resolution screens at a disadvantage

The other argument against it is that it lets you see stuff at unrealistic ranges. And that it doesn't solve the problem where lower-resolution screens offer an advantage. And the aforementioned zoom problem. And that other and better solutions are available.

49 minutes ago, James DeSouza said:

Zoom actually is realistic in this context as it gives you a rough visual resolution per degree field of view closer to what your eyes are actually capable of. 

No, zoom does not do that. That's just a function of setting a given FoV at a given monitor size at a given distance from the player. Zoom as a function lets you set that perfect match, yes, but that doesn't make zoom realistic — only that very specific setting (which you don't even need zoom to get to).

But no, zoom is not realistic because eyes don't work that way.