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

[MoleUK]

3 hours ago, kl_koral said:

have you tried also with/without MSAA?

No effect.

This bug isn't like the MSAA/DLAA/Quad view problem where dots get squashed a bit, it just completely deletes them.

[Zakson85]

I keep my fingers crossed for you. I am gently observing from the background how this incredibly important topic and one of the most serious bugs of this game on pvp servers. It will be passed over in silence by the ed team ;). I recorded videos and showed the problem and there was silence. The shape of the dots is still debated... the fact that they disappear is irrelevant. This is over 100 unit dot bug.

Edited November 8, 2024 by Zakson85

[303_Kermit]

On 11/7/2024 at 12:40 PM, MoleUK said:

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.

 

And I started to think, that it's meant to be played like World of Tanks. - Want to see enemy - exp up your "visibility skill" or buy a golden something... or VIP / premium account ...

Edited November 8, 2024 by 303_Kermit

[Olliecast]

Great work on this and thanks for the efforts.
For info I tried this in the crystal and it really has a strange effect on the clouds for shimmering and how they are drawn (they look worse). 
Not sure why but wanted to share for Ed to consider before changing. It was at 40km draw distance. 

Edited November 9, 2024 by Olliecast

[71st_Mastiff]

On 11/8/2024 at 4:54 PM, Olliecast said:

Great work on this and thanks for the efforts.
For info I tried this in the crystal and it really has a strange effect on the clouds for shimmering and how they are drawn (they look worse). 
Not sure why but wanted to share for Ed to consider before changing. It was at 40km draw distance. 

 

I noticed in the new NVIDIA update 566.14 and the new AI experience app. I had no shimmering with correct settings.

 

 

Edited November 16, 2024 by 71st_Mastiff

[MoleUK]

Didn't see anything listed in patch notes but thought I'd check, bug is still present for now. So I'd still recommend reducing the object draw distance to 60 or 40km for multiplayer in particular for now.

On 11/8/2024 at 3:32 PM, Zakson85 said:

I keep my fingers crossed for you. I am gently observing from the background how this incredibly important topic and one of the most serious bugs of this game on pvp servers. It will be passed over in silence by the ed team ;). I recorded videos and showed the problem and there was silence. The shape of the dots is still debated... the fact that they disappear is irrelevant. This is over 100 unit dot bug.

Without the videos and posts you and someone else put together 7+ months ago I never would have bothered to follow it up and nail it down. I just got sick of being blind lol.

Fingers crossed it gets fixed in the next patch, and if it does it will only be thanks to your initial posts/videos on it.

Edited December 5, 2024 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

For anyone following this bug, it also appears to affect the rendering of actual ground units as well. So not only will air dots disappear, but ground units will not render at all until within a few kilometres.

The same draw distance fix works for this problem as well, at least to a degree.

 

[MoleUK]

For anyone who hasn't seen the latest in that ^ thread, it looks like a LOD switch setting of less than 1.0 will also harm air spotting, as it leads to ground units transitioning from models to dots much quicker and therefore hitting the 100 dot cap much quicker.

You should find setting LOD to 1.0 or above will help with air spotting, though not anywhere near as much as capping the object draw distance below 80km.

[-Relax-]

2 Months old report.
How is the Status???
same with contrails not renderes in distance, reported since MAY 2024!

ED come on....... get sh*t fixed

Edited January 2 by -Relax-

[SuperKermit]

Am 23.12.2024 um 15:13 schrieb MoleUK:

You should find setting LOD to 1.0 or above will help with air spotting, though not anywhere near as much as capping the object draw distance below 80km.

I do experience the same issue, with air objects suddenly disappearing after the merge. This even happens e.g. in the F-4 instant action dogfighting the MiG-21 on the Caucasus map.

So do I understand the current fix correctly:

Goto: DCS install > Config > Graphics.lua

1. Take down the view distance to 40000
2. Set the LOD value to 1.0 or above

Right?

[MoleUK]

On 1/21/2025 at 1:17 PM, SuperKermit said:

I do experience the same issue, with air objects suddenly disappearing after the merge. This even happens e.g. in the F-4 instant action dogfighting the MiG-21 on the Caucasus map.

So do I understand the current fix correctly:

Goto: DCS install > Config > Graphics.lua

1. Take down the view distance to 40000
2. Set the LOD value to 1.0 or above

Right?

Disappearing after a merge is likely a different issue (bad LOD transition maybe?), but yes to the current fix for the disappearing dots and ground units.

40000 seems a good sweet spot to avoid there being more than 100 units in your FOV, and LOD set to anything less than 1.0 results in some very iffy behavior to the point where it starts to break the game a bit visually.

Edited January 22 by MoleUK

[SuperKermit]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb MoleUK:

Disappearing after a merge is likely a different issue (bad LOD transition maybe?), but yes to the current fix for the disappearing dots and ground units.

Well, that’s the most annoying thing for me in DCS at the moment:

I merge with the bandit, follow him visually when passing besides me and then he suddenly disappears completely in the sky - even though I was keeping him in the center of my display.

[SuperKermit]

vor 21 Stunden schrieb MoleUK:

Disappearing after a merge is likely a different issue (bad LOD transition maybe?)

I have set the LOD value to 1.3 - so that should not be an issue.

This bug really kills my SA in a dogfight 

[MoleUK]

Visibility bump as this remains an issue.

I think a few Contention regulars settled on 30km object draw distance to avoid dots disappearing.

I also found an old video I took of the dots disappearing as I turned my head in their direction (and thus more distant ground objects came into the FOV), I recorded it in July 2023 so the problem is at least that old and possibly a fair bit older.

Though I did find a forum thread claiming the dots disappearing was a new problem introduced not too long before May '23: 

That timeframe would roughly coincide with the introduction of the MT build (March '23). Some users I talked to did claim that the ST build had much better dot visibility and they stayed on it as long as possible, so it may be this problem was in fact introduced with the MT build of the game.

Edited May 31 by MoleUK

[-Relax-]

"investigating"

Over 6 months later - How is the STATUS?