investigating Ground units remove air spotting dots entirely in certain circumstances.

[MoleUK]

This has been known about/speculated about for a good bit, but I have a decent track replay showcasing the problem. F-5 ownership required.

The first track is with the ground units included, the second track is a copy of the first track but the ground assets have been removed.

You can clearly see right from the beginning of the track that the ground units are causing the spotting dots to not properly render. Once the planes move away from the ground assets, they start to pop in. Later in the track you can see large formations of spotting dots completely disappear and re=appear as I move my head around. In the second track, dots are visible at all times. No dissappearing dots.

It's unclear whether it's just the amount of ground units, the type of ground units, or the proximity of ground units to the air units that is causing the issue. As the spotting dots will phase in/out depending on viewing angle and distances here.

dots start invis.trk dots start invis - ground units removed.trk

initially invisible final.miz

Edited November 1, 2024 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

For those who don't own WW2:

dots start invis - no ww2.trk

[Why485]

I played back the tracks for these and the differences are dramatic.

The tracks with no ground units, all these aircraft dots are visible:

The track with the ground units, almost all aircraft are completely gone:

For reference, these are my graphics settings:

 

Edited November 1, 2024 by Why485

[Parabe11um]

Nice work!

It's helpful to see this laid out in detail, as before we only had speculation and suspicions that this was happening.

Edited November 1, 2024 by Parabe11um

[MoleUK]

I can't say for certain but I am fairly convinced that this bug has been present since day 1 of the improved spotting dot implementation, as I would have periods where dots would phase in and out as I turned my head on ECW which is very ground-unit heavy.

This rather complicates pretty much all feedback that ED have been receiving re: spotting dots, especially in VR. As many users have been trying to point out that they're not getting massively oversized dots when they play, whereas others insist they have been.

It looks like both groups were probably correct, depending on the mission you're playing some users could have been getting comically oversized dots while other users with the exact same hardware and on the same settings were borderline blind because they were playing ground-unit heavy missions.

Edited November 1, 2024 by MoleUK

[BIGNEWY]

I have removed the off topic, please keep the bug reports posts for the actual issue being reported

thanks

[Tippis]

22 minutes ago, MoleUK said:

I can't say for certain but I am fairly convinced that this bug has been present since day 1 of the improved spotting dot implementation, as I would have periods where dots would phase in and out as I turned my head on ECW which is very ground-unit heavy.

That seems very likely, unfortunately. That, on top of confusion with labels, the inherent differences with resolution and physical setup, and of course the whole VR-vs-pancake distinction means we're looking at so many parameters to determine what you see (or more importantly don't see) that it requires some pretty darn rigorous testing to show anything of value. Just running some random mission that isn't specifically designed for it won't necessarily show what you expect it to.

 

2 hours ago, MoleUK said:

It's unclear whether it's just the amount of ground units, the type of ground units, or the proximity of ground units to the air units that is causing the issue. As the spotting dots will phase in/out depending on viewing angle and distances here.

This is an important next step: to try to set up different views and scenarios. I also wonder if it's a matter of the game having a “dot buffer” that can get filled up if you ask it to deal with too many units, and the reason we're seeing what you're illustrating is because ground units are processed first and thus fill this hypothecated buffer before it gets to the aircraft.

So a few cases to test:

1. Does this happen when there are lots of ground units in the mission, but they're behind the camera?
2. Does this happen when there are only a few ground units, but they're all in (theoretical) view of the camera?
3. Does this happen when there are no ground units, just an equal amount of air units?
4. If so, the same question again: does it only happen when those air units are in front of the camera, or can there be anywhere in the world and still make the game “run out” of dots?
5. Can it be triggered on the fly by adding/removing units?
6. Can it be triggered on the fly by changing how many units are in view?
7. While they don't have dots, can it be triggered by just adding a crapton of static units?

Case 3 is interesting for the whole notion of there being a maximum amount of dots in total, and the game can run out of them. If that's what's happening, it should be possible to make it happen with just air units — the only difference is that ground group tends to be (much) larger than air groups so it's more natural that those fill out the allotment sooner.

Case 5–7 is mostly a sanity check along the logic of, is there some kind of draw limit we're nudging up against and if so, can that limit be reached without any active units at all? Is it a case of the rendering iterating through a unit list and putting dots (or not) on top of them, but it just quits after while, and if so, what is it that affects the construction of that list? Is it units in view? Stuff in general in view? Or just the full list of what's placed in the ME?

A particularly worrying scenario would be if it's a limit that is not just an effect that depends on how many units it needs to highlight, but also if stuff like statics or even ground decorations count. It would be an absolute mess if it varied with terrain, for instance, so that high-detail maps (or map areas) would be more susceptible to triggering this error than others.

[MoleUK]

1 minute ago, Tippis said:

That seems very likely, unfortunately. That, on top of confusion with labels, the inherent differences with resolution and physical setup, and of course the whole VR-vs-pancake distinction means we're looking at so many parameters to determine what you see (or more importantly don't see) that it requires some pretty darn rigorous testing to show anything of value. Just running some random mission that isn't specifically designed for it won't necessarily show what you expect it to.

 

This is an important next step: to try to set up different views and scenarios. I also wonder if it's a matter of the game having a “dot buffer” that can get filled up if you ask it to deal with too many units, and the reason we're seeing what you're illustrating is because ground units are processed first and thus fill this hypothecated buffer before it gets to the aircraft.

So a few cases to test:

1. Does this happen when there are lots of ground units in the mission, but they're behind the camera?
2. Does this happen when there are only a few ground units, but they're all in (theoretical) view of the camera?
3. Does this happen when there are no ground units, just an equal amount of air units?
4. If so, the same question again: does it only happen when those air units are in front of the camera, or can there be anywhere in the world and still make the game “run out” of dots?
5. Can it be triggered on the fly by adding/removing units?
6. Can it be triggered on the fly by changing how many units are in view?
7. While they don't have dots, can it be triggered by just adding a crapton of static units?

Case 3 is interesting for the whole notion of there being a maximum amount of dots in total, and the game can run out of them. If that's what's happening, it should be possible to make it happen with just air units — the only difference is that ground group tends to be (much) larger than air groups so it's more natural that those fill out the allotment sooner.

Case 5–7 is mostly a sanity check along the logic of, is there some kind of draw limit we're nudging up against and if so, can that limit be reached without any active units at all? Is it a case of the rendering iterating through a unit list and putting dots (or not) on top of them, but it just quits after while, and if so, what is it that affects the construction of that list? Is it units in view? Stuff in general in view? Or just the full list of what's placed in the ME?

A particularly worrying scenario would be if it's a limit that is not just an effect that depends on how many units it needs to highlight, but also if stuff like statics or even ground decorations count. It would be an absolute mess if it varied with terrain, for instance, so that high-detail maps (or map areas) would be more susceptible to triggering this error than others.

I am a lazy man, so I can't promise that I will spend too much further time on narrowing it down. I might tho lol.

What others have discovered is that 100 may or may not be a magic number. Someone previously ran some tests and found that having anything over 100 ground units started to cull the air dots. I think there is another layer of complication relating to the actual proximity of the air dots to the ground dots, I may get around to doing some testing there as well.

But there may be a universal 100 dot cap complicating things.

[Tippis]

2 minutes ago, MoleUK said:

I am a lazy man, so I can't promise that I will spend too much further time on narrowing it down. I might tho lol.

No worries. I'll probably break down and set up a few just out of curiosity when I really have other things to do

But 100 as a starting point is at least… well… somewhere to start experimenting.

[Tippis]

Good news. It's worse.
Four different tests:

Test 1: 200 air + 1200 ground units (.miz).

Some of the front-line air units are missing their dots but exhibit scintillation, which could at this stage be conceived as being a result of them having shifted to full 3D models without any dots,

 

Test 2: 200 air units (.miz).

Same as above, the presence of those extra 1200 ground units don't seem to make any difference in how many planes are missing their dots. The scintillation is still there, and it's difficult to tell whether it's a numbers issue, a range issue, a transition issue, a "missing dots" issue.

 

Test 3: 2x100 air units + 6x200 ground units, spawned dynamically (.miz).

All units get their dots as they are spawned. The presence of all those ground units does not make the air unit dots go away (nor vice versa as far as I can tell). The extraordinary thing is what happens when we spawn in the second group of 100 airplanes - suddenly the first 100 spawned lose their dots and go into scintillation mode, same as was seen in tests 1 and 2.

Potentially, at this point, the ground units are actually too close and don't get dots, so it's the air units alone that cause the issue.

 

Test 3: 2x100 air units + 6x200 ground units, spawned dynamically; air groups are split into left and right (.miz).

The issue goes away for all units. The ground groups are farther away and are definitely at dot distance (same as the planes). The planes on the show their dots and don't lose them when the group on the left is spawned in. There are no disappearing dots as view is zoomed in and out, but a smooth(ish... as close as it gets) transition from dot to model.

 

So...

It can't be the total amount of dots, because then test 2 (only 200 units) should not exhibit the issue.
It can't be the ground units (alone), because then test 1 and 2 should not show the same dot issue, and/or test 1 and 4 should behave differently.
It might be the total amount on screen (compare test 1 and 4), but why is the first group of planes affected and not the second? Also, it happens with 200 units on screen, but not with 1400, which rather suggests that it's not a unit total.
It might be a unit order thing in that the first airplane group is the one that consistently loses its dots when that happen and those are placed first in the mission and defined first in the file structure.

What is the scintillation? These were recorded without any anti-aliasing - is this the 3D model popping in and out of render distance at the given zoom level, which is only visible when the dot is not hiding it?

 

Edited November 2, 2024 by Tippis

[MoleUK]

9 hours ago, Tippis said:

Good news. It's worse.
Four different tests:

Test 1: 200 air + 1200 ground units (.miz).

Some of the front-line air units are missing their dots but exhibit scintillation, which could at this stage be conceived as being a result of them having shifted to full 3D models without any dots,

 

Test 2: 200 air units (.miz).

Same as above, the presence of those extra 1200 ground units don't seem to make any difference in how many planes are missing their dots. The scintillation is still there, and it's difficult to tell whether it's a numbers issue, a range issue, a transition issue, a "missing dots" issue.

 

Test 3: 2x100 air units + 6x200 ground units, spawned dynamically (.miz).

All units get their dots as they are spawned. The presence of all those ground units does not make the air unit dots go away (nor vice versa as far as I can tell). The extraordinary thing is what happens when we spawn in the second group of 100 airplanes - suddenly the first 100 spawned lose their dots and go into scintillation mode, same as was seen in tests 1 and 2.

Potentially, at this point, the ground units are actually too close and don't get dots, so it's the air units alone that cause the issue.

 

Test 3: 2x100 air units + 6x200 ground units, spawned dynamically; air groups are split into left and right (.miz).

The issue goes away for all units. The ground groups are farther away and are definitely at dot distance (same as the planes). The planes on the show their dots and don't lose them when the group on the left is spawned in. There are no disappearing dots as view is zoomed in and out, but a smooth(ish... as close as it gets) transition from dot to model.

 

So...

It can't be the total amount of dots, because then test 2 (only 200 units) should not exhibit the issue.
It can't be the ground units (alone), because then test 1 and 2 should not show the same dot issue, and/or test 1 and 4 should behave differently.
It might be the total amount on screen (compare test 1 and 4), but why is the first group of planes affected and not the second? Also, it happens with 200 units on screen, but not with 1400, which rather suggests that it's not a unit total.
It might be a unit order thing in that the first airplane group is the one that consistently loses its dots when that happen and those are placed first in the mission and defined first in the file structure.

What is the scintillation? These were recorded without any anti-aliasing - is this the 3D model popping in and out of render distance at the given zoom level, which is only visible when the dot is not hiding it?

 

 

Good catch on the scintillation. There have been quite a few recent bug reports re: disappearing/flickering models, it may or may not be related. I know on ECW, the infantry flat out don't appear till you're within a very close range. Until then there's no dot and no model. On ED's discord there's a bug thread on the flickering models: https://discord.com/channels/542985647502393346/1296306319858597898

It would be interesting to see if on test 3, instead of spawning a second 100 in at once you went 10 by 10 to see if it was 1:1 progressive. I assume it would be, and hints at that 100 number problem popping up again.

Could try a split with 100 on the left and 110 on the right to see if it's consistent.

I should do a count on the number of air units I had in my mission, I'm not sure I even hit 100 air units there. So it's quite likely there's more than one problem, just to make things even harder to track down.

ETA: Unless I miscounted, I only had about 60 F-5's even in the mission.

Edited November 2, 2024 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

Disappearing infantry models here. I suspect it's unrelated (I assumed it was an optimisation step or a missing LOD) but thought I should mention it. Haven't tested if that is happening everywhere with infantry models or only on ECW/Heavy ground unit missions.

 

Edited November 2, 2024 by MoleUK

[Tippis]

Yes, at this point, I'm very uncertain and/or confused by the connection between ground and air dots.

I see the issue appearing in your OP tracks and missions; I see something completely different in the test setup I created, where ground units make no difference but air units makes it trivial to trigger.

Could it perhaps be type specific? That some planes suffer more from it than others? Is it tied to target size — I used A-10As in my test, which are pretty chunky, and maybe that affects how (and when) the dot is rendered? Is it the same for ground units, where some types make it trigger more widely than others? Is it a “heavy processing” vs. “simple processing” distinction. Again, the ones I used are FC aircraft with their simple flight mode — simplified further by their being AI aircraft — plus the simplest trucks available, with literally no AI actions to speak of and very little in the way of graphical flourishes. And all of them were set to do absolutely nothing but exist in the world, oblivious to and ignorant of everything around them.

Is the dot rendering part of the general unit processing or does it happen solely in the renderer?

 

So many questions…

[MoleUK]

10 hours ago, Tippis said:

Yes, at this point, I'm very uncertain and/or confused by the connection between ground and air dots.

I see the issue appearing in your OP tracks and missions; I see something completely different in the test setup I created, where ground units make no difference but air units makes it trivial to trigger.

Could it perhaps be type specific? That some planes suffer more from it than others? Is it tied to target size — I used A-10As in my test, which are pretty chunky, and maybe that affects how (and when) the dot is rendered? Is it the same for ground units, where some types make it trigger more widely than others? Is it a “heavy processing” vs. “simple processing” distinction. Again, the ones I used are FC aircraft with their simple flight mode — simplified further by their being AI aircraft — plus the simplest trucks available, with literally no AI actions to speak of and very little in the way of graphical flourishes. And all of them were set to do absolutely nothing but exist in the world, oblivious to and ignorant of everything around them.

Is the dot rendering part of the general unit processing or does it happen solely in the renderer?

 

So many questions…

Could be type dependant, but I want to narrow down some distances before I start trying that road as it could complicate things. Will try and get a few tracks done today so see if I can get something more concrete.

[MoleUK]

11 hours ago, Tippis said:

Yes, at this point, I'm very uncertain and/or confused by the connection between ground and air dots.

I see the issue appearing in your OP tracks and missions; I see something completely different in the test setup I created, where ground units make no difference but air units makes it trivial to trigger.

Could it perhaps be type specific? That some planes suffer more from it than others? Is it tied to target size — I used A-10As in my test, which are pretty chunky, and maybe that affects how (and when) the dot is rendered? Is it the same for ground units, where some types make it trigger more widely than others? Is it a “heavy processing” vs. “simple processing” distinction. Again, the ones I used are FC aircraft with their simple flight mode — simplified further by their being AI aircraft — plus the simplest trucks available, with literally no AI actions to speak of and very little in the way of graphical flourishes. And all of them were set to do absolutely nothing but exist in the world, oblivious to and ignorant of everything around them.

Is the dot rendering part of the general unit processing or does it happen solely in the renderer?

 

So many questions…

I think I have something. I tried placing hundreds to over a thousand units underneath the air targets, and wasn't getting too much effect. Other than scintillation.

Then I tried deleting all those ground units, and placing them further away and behind the air targets, and voila. Dots start to get nuked.

Try the co alt 300 abrams underneath, then compare to co alt 300 abrams behind.

Then the same with bofors.

It's definitely something in relation to the distances and placement from the ground targets either from the player or from the air dots.

co alt test 1000 bofors underneath moved closer.trk co alt test 300 abrams directly underneath air dots.trk co alt test 300 abrams behind air dots.trk co alt test 1000 bofors closer and behind.trk

Edited November 3, 2024 by MoleUK

[Tippis]

So they seem to be preferentially drawn, back to front? The farther the target, the higher the priority to dot it?

That would explain… I hesitate to say “a lot” but definitely many things regardless.

I wonder if this may be part of how and why people report seeing dots at much longer ranges than simple tests show: the simple tests don't have enough units to trigger any culling or preferential treatment, whereas “live” tests will have more units to choose from and end up picking the ones farthest away and making those much more obvious than the closer one. It would certainly explain some of the disappearing dot problems.

[MoleUK]

46 minutes ago, Tippis said:

So they seem to be preferentially drawn, back to front? The farther the target, the higher the priority to dot it?

That would explain… I hesitate to say “a lot” but definitely many things regardless.

I wonder if this may be part of how and why people report seeing dots at much longer ranges than simple tests show: the simple tests don't have enough units to trigger any culling or preferential treatment, whereas “live” tests will have more units to choose from and end up picking the ones farthest away and making those much more obvious than the closer one. It would certainly explain some of the disappearing dot problems.

Yup.

It's happening when I place 200 abrams 70km away from me. Completely eliminates all the air dots.

I think beyond 80km or so it might stop happening, or some of tree/mountain cover is interfering at that point due to my placement. But 80km is a render distance for a few values in game so that might be the hard limit.

co alt test 200 abrams 70km behind air dots - Copy - Copy.trk

co alt test 200 abrams 70km behind air dots.miz co alt test no ground units.trk

Edited November 3, 2024 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

I put together the before/after effect with the Su25t so anyone can see the current problem in action.

 

su 25t co alt test no ground units - Copy.trk su 25t co alt test 200 abrams 70km behind air dots.trk

[MoleUK]

I have a temporary partial fix for this problem. It's far from perfect and it has drawbacks, but it may be enough to hold people over until ED fix the root cause.

I noticed beyond 80km ground units stopped deleting dots, and there was an old trick I used back in the ST days to gain back some extra performance by reducing the draw distance for ground/air units from 80km to something more reasonable. The same tweak works here.

Look at your current view distance setting in-game. Medium/high/low etc.

Goto: DCS install > Config > Graphics.lua

Scroll down to or find the camera = section of the settings, and find your current view distance (low, medium, high, ultra).

Underneath that, change the 2nd value in the line: objects = {3000, 80000};

Take it down from 80000 to say 40000 or 60000. Maybe even 20000 or 30000 for a very busy mission like ECW if really necessary. This is in meters, so the draw distance for all jets and ground units will be reduced from 80km to 40km/60km. Beyond that they will be invisible, so keep that in mind re: Tpods.

Save and you should be good.

Obviously once you start going over the 100-200 (think it starts at 101) ground units within that new view distance dots will still start to disappear, but it's a significant enough reduction that it should buy you a good bit of wiggle room depending on the mission.

Edited November 7, 2024 by MoleUK

[BIGNEWY]

I have passed your observations on to our QA team. 

thank you 

[ColdClaws]

God bless you.

[MoleUK]

Oh and for any VR users who don't like the current dots (I really like the current VR dot size personally, at least when they're working), you could probably intentionally trigger the bug to make them disappear for now in any missions you play. Just place a bunch of stacks of ground units (over 100) at various cardinal points so they're always within the 80km render field of view, should eliminate most if not all dots in SP missions.

Or if playing online, you could probably actually increase the draw distance value to try and trigger the bug more often. It might have performance implications, but I know there is a crowd of people who really want to be able to disable them, so they could give that a shot.

Edited November 7, 2024 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

After an hour on ECW at 40km object draw distance, I'd say that's a good sweet spot for cold war and WW2 missions. You're not going to get air dots rendering from 40km out, but they do start around 30km-ish.

This is the first MP flight on that server I've had in like 6 months where I actually had dots render properly and consistently.

As a side benefit, the game will likely perform quite a bit better with the reduced draw distance. This was originally a performance tweak after all.

Edited November 7, 2024 by MoleUK

[Roostyla]

I greatly appreciate the time and effort you have put into this, i'll put the same fix in and test as well. Once again the community pushing DCS forward on the spotting dots. My eyes thankyou! 

[kl_koral]

have you tried also with/without MSAA?