Scaling Issues or a battle against microbes

[JCTherik]

7 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

People hate scaling because it would look ridiculous. What’s hilarious is anyone here who brings up scaling writes these lengthy treatises with numbers and figures but never shows any screenshots of what it would look like. Because it would look absurd!

Here’s a screenshot of what “Serfoss scaling” would look like in DCS. This isn’t disinformation, it was actually made by a proponent of the idea. Look how ridiculous this technique is when there are non scaled objects in the vicinity Nobody wants this

So you have decided that that is how scaling would look like, therefore you're telling me that i should use labels instead, because they look more realistic to you.

 

First of all, nobody's forcing you to use scaling, but you are forcing me to use labels.

 

Have you seen how bad labels look like in VR by any chance?

 

 

[draconus]

10 hours ago, JCTherik said:

...

That said, i still prefer having those huge dots, knowing that people with 720p monitors have always had those huge dots.

...

Btw why would random glints be bad? I'd say that random glints with reasonable frequency, duration and intensity would be much preferable over the long distance black dot.

In fact, it could be very difficult to distinguish randomly generated glints from raytraced glints if the frequency, intensity and duration are set just right and varied based on distance, airplane type, weather, etc.

Ofcourse proper glints would be better, but random glints may be dead easy to implement.

I smell "MP balance" attitude. There'll never be such a thing unless we're all flying the same aircraft, using same weapons, same display device and controls. Where was the last time you saw anyone using 720p? Even then we're all clear the rendering needs correction. Easiest example is to take a high-res high-quality realistic photo and do a proper scaling on it. Same aircraft would be ex. one faint pixel on 720p, while it could take taking multiple pixels on 4K, but pure black pixel would happen only at night without lights either reflected or lighten on the aircraft - no case like this is possible during the day because some light is reflecting from the aircraft and there's atmospheric perspective always making distant aircraft lighter/fainter.

Random glints sounds like "twinkle star I'm here" idea - definitely not fitting DCS realistic sim and, like I said, the tech and code is already there in DCS - the cockpit glints properly, the aircraft also do so, the vehicles, water, etc. - it just needs to be implemented for distant LOD models. It would then make sense to fly NOE and use cloud shadows to avoid sun lighten areas specifically to avoid the glints if you expect the enemy nearby. You could avoid flying some direction/angle vs the enemy for the same reason.

[JCTherik]

7 minutes ago, draconus said:

I smell "MP balance" attitude. There'll never be such a thing unless we're all flying the same aircraft, using same weapons, same display device and controls. Where was the last time you saw anyone using 720p? Even then we're all clear the rendering needs correction. Easiest example is to take a high-res high-quality realistic photo and do a proper scaling on it. Same aircraft would be ex. one faint pixel on 720p, while it could take taking multiple pixels on 4K, but pure black pixel would happen only at night without lights either reflected or lighten on the aircraft - no case like this is possible during the day because some light is reflecting from the aircraft and there's atmospheric perspective always making distant aircraft lighter/fainter.

Random glints sounds like "twinkle star I'm here" idea - definitely not fitting DCS realistic sim and, like I said, the tech and code is already there in DCS - the cockpit glints properly, the aircraft also do so, the vehicles, water, etc. - it just needs to be implemented for distant LOD models. It would then make sense to fly NOE and use cloud shadows to avoid sun lighten areas specifically to avoid the glints if you expect the enemy nearby. You could avoid flying some direction/angle vs the enemy for the same reason.

Not twinkling glints, but for example a chance that a 6 second long bright glare of would appear on average once in 5 minutes, a 2 second dimer one on average once every 50 seconds, a 10 second grey barely visible one once every 3 minutes, etc.

With proper parameters, I think it could be fairly similar to real glints, but ofcourse I agree that doing it properly based on sun angles and aspects would feel much better, even though it may not actually be distinguishable from the random ones without a ton of testing.

 

Btw MP balance, I don't care about MP balance across different airplanes, but if you have 2 airplanes, same energy, same stores, same state, same background, same altitude/speed etc, they should have the same chance at spotting each other despite playing on different hardware.

 

Otherwise you get the problem that was here for ages, where the weathered MP veterans are running on pixelated 1080p with no antialiasing and all the immersive visual folks get left in the dust, because each just sees something completely else.

[draconus]

Even my 27" 1080p doesn't look pixelated from 50cm but yeah, it must be that, let's ignore that veterans are usually guys with hundreds of flight hours, combat skilled, knowing where to expect the enemy and how to look for them. What's stopping you from using the lower resolution if you know it's the cause of you losing the battles? Yes, it is wrong, but it's the reason ED still tries to do something with it and develops new spotting tech, the wrong way imho.

I don't understand why you're pushing random glints idea when the proper one is right at hand and I already gave you examples that randomness would kill any purpose of avoiding the glints from your aircraft.

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, JCTherik said:

So you have decided that that is how scaling would look like, therefore you're telling me that i should use labels instead, because they look more realistic to you.

That image was actually made by a proponent of scaling. Do you have another example? It highlights the chief problem of the method, that you’ll see scaled aircraft against non scaled objects. Amazingly this person thought this looked acceptable. 

2 hours ago, JCTherik said:

First of all, nobody's forcing you to use scaling, but you are forcing me to use labels.

Neither scaling or labels are realistic but since labels are already in the game that’s the solution for you if you don’t have the ability to see small objects. 
The new Spotting Dots are identical to Dot Labels as far as I can tell. I can’t be forced to use scaling since it’s not in this game nor will it ever be. 

1 hour ago, JCTherik said:

Otherwise you get the problem that was here for ages, where the weathered MP veterans are running on pixelated 1080p with no antialiasing and all the immersive visual folks get left in the dust, because each just sees something completely else.

That problem is still here. Have you played version 2.9? You can now select either version of the spotting dots and anyone can exploit that to see aircraft 20-30 miles away. 

[JCTherik]

3 hours ago, draconus said:

What's stopping you from using the lower resolution

Nothing is stopping me. It's a huge hassle to switch to low res and restart dcs, but yea it works like magic, suddenly i see everything!

In VR, the display fills a large part of your FOV, so imagine dropping the resolution to something like 1080p, 50cm from your eyes but on an 80 inch monitor. You will see pixels! In fact it's so bad you have to lean forward to read the instruments sometimes. And we don't have that fancy zoom that you guys have in flat screen.

Even on full res, VR is usually a pixelated mess because the fresnel lenses make the pixels flicker. So, if you don't like to risk seizures and eye strain, you crank the resolution way higher, and the headset would effectively do a heavy SSAA - supersampling antialiasing.

But that means that while dcs may believe that you see 3k by 3k per eye which it renders, you only have a 2k by 2k physical pixels, so that single pixel dot then gets averaged with the blue sky pixels around it and simply won't render anywhere near as dark and sharp as what it does on a flat screen. It's even worse around 5 miles distance, the airplane may even be few pixels wide, but you won't see third of those pixels at all and now it's light grey, and it gets smeared by the built in SSAA against the light blue sky pixels and is virtually invisible. Imagine how bad that is against terrain.

 

Add in that only maybe centre 30% of your vision may actually be in sharp focus on a good day, so while my FOV may be large, i still need to be pointing my head directly on the enemy to even have a shred of a chance to see a blurry speck.

 

Yes, reducing resolution and disabling all antialiasing is a "fix" which works, and it's disgustingly ugly and makes all the edges in the world flash like a disco. I'd like a solution that doesn't involve dropping resolution.

Im yet to hear a feasible proposal that doesn't involve scaling in some way.

Let's drop the random glints idea, it would be simple and no performance hit but i agree 100% that path traced glints would be the right way to do it.

[JCTherik]

3 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

That image was actually made by a proponent of scaling. Do you have another example? It highlights the chief problem of the method, that you’ll see scaled aircraft against non scaled objects. Amazingly this person thought this looked acceptable. 

Neither scaling or labels are realistic but since labels are already in the game that’s the solution for you if you don’t have the ability to see small objects. 
The new Spotting Dots are identical to Dot Labels as far as I can tell. I can’t be forced to use scaling since it’s not in this game nor will it ever be. 

That problem is still here. Have you played version 2.9? You can now select either version of the spotting dots and anyone can exploit that to see aircraft 20-30 miles away. 

As long as you keep dismissing a problem which you don't personally experience and keep suggesting labels, i don't think we'll come to an agreement.

I don't want to repeat the problems with labels for the upteenth time as the debate keeps going in circles, but here we go, one last time 

1. Lack of aspect information 

2. Labels visible through the cockpit floor

3. Labels visible through clouds

4. Labels visible through terrain

5. Ugly and pixelated in VR

6. Disabled on many PVP servers

7. Grey dot label suffers from exactly the same resolution issues as the old black dot

8. Labels not in the same position as the aircraft 

9. Most unrealistic of all the solutions

[SharpeXB]

58 minutes ago, JCTherik said:

As long as you keep dismissing a problem which you don't personally experience and keep suggesting labels, i don't think we'll come to an agreement.

I don't want to repeat the problems with labels for the upteenth time as the debate keeps going in circles, but here we go, one last time 

1. Lack of aspect information 

2. Labels visible through the cockpit floor

3. Labels visible through clouds

4. Labels visible through terrain

5. Ugly and pixelated in VR

6. Disabled on many PVP servers

7. Grey dot label suffers from exactly the same resolution issues as the old black dot

8. Labels not in the same position as the aircraft 

9. Most unrealistic of all the solutions

 Your troubles are due to the fact that you’re using VR. The low resolution of the headsets is a limitation of current technology, not something to do with DCS.  
Plenty of people seem to be able to use VR just fine here though.

1 hour ago, JCTherik said:

And we don't have that fancy zoom that you guys have in flat screen.

I understand there is actually a VR zoom feature, maybe you should try that. 

[draconus]

1 hour ago, JCTherik said:

Even on full res, VR is usually a pixelated mess because the fresnel lenses make the pixels flicker. So, if you don't like to risk seizures and eye strain, you crank the resolution way higher, and the headset would effectively do a heavy SSAA - supersampling antialiasing.

Apparently you have some bigger problems with the VR tech. I mentioned my monitor but I play mostly in VR, mind you. How can fresnel lens make anything flicker? They're just lens to let the light through. Use DLAA and shimmers are gone. Maybe it's not for you if you can't handle the lower resolution and "pixel mess". Zoom option is there with 2 magnifications but it's not for looking around - it's for checking the details when your resolution is lacking.

I don't think you can expect any more pixels than one from 5nm range aircraft but you don't know exactly what happens in the rendering path so I doubt you can point finger at gfx scaling making the dots disappear - it doesn't work that simple - and ED is still working on the solution, I hope.

[JCTherik]

50 minutes ago, draconus said:

Apparently you have some bigger problems with the VR tech. I mentioned my monitor but I play mostly in VR, mind you. How can fresnel lens make anything flicker? They're just lens to let the light through. Use DLAA and shimmers are gone. Maybe it's not for you if you can't handle the lower resolution and "pixel mess". Zoom option is there with 2 magnifications but it's not for looking around - it's for checking the details when your resolution is lacking.

I don't think you can expect any more pixels than one from 5nm range aircraft but you don't know exactly what happens in the rendering path so I doubt you can point finger at gfx scaling making the dots disappear - it doesn't work that simple - and ED is still working on the solution, I hope.

The airplane disappearing issue was reported here by multiple people, it's not just me. It is paradoxically better on lower res, same as the issue with the dot visibility on low res vs high res flat screens. But on some vr headsets it also affects the situation when the airplane is far away but not yet a dot. The airplane is very hard to see past maybe 2 miles or so.

Fresnel lenses make the pixels flicker a little on the edges, and create a lot of aliasing, that's why the VR headsets often run at 150% resolution by default.

[draconus]

34 minutes ago, JCTherik said:

Fresnel lenses make the pixels flicker a little on the edges, and create a lot of aliasing, that's why the VR headsets often run at 150% resolution by default.

Rendering resolution doesn't change how physical pixels look like in the HMD. Lenses don't create aliasing. It's the effect of the edges on image displayed with the pixels - no matter if it's CRT, LCD or hand drawn on a graph paper. Upscaling can reduce aliasing.