investigating Ground units can start disappearing at certain angles/distances.

[MoleUK]

Found this during the spotting dot testing. Unsure if it's related or not.

For some months, infantry units on Heatblurs cold war have a similar issue where they're only visible when you get very close. Also seen it reported that the Apache disappears completely at distance atm.

In the short track replays here (all clones of one replay with the ground units swapped), you can see units stop rendering at particular angles/distances.

I would have to do further testing to see if they also disappear in MFD screen capture.

 

disappearing units2abrams.trk disappearing units2humvee.trk disappearing units2ifv.trk

[MoleUK]

Ok, the problem is in fact linked to the disappearing dots. Most likely the same root cause/bug at least.

Units in the far distance are preventing closer units from rendering until very close, as well as deleting air dots.

These two short tracks are clones, one with 50 tanks placed 5km in front of you, with 200 tanks placed 50km away. And the other with only 50 tanks 5km away and no distant units..

In the track with no distant tanks, everything renders fine. In the track with the extra 200 tanks 50km away, the closer ground units will not render until very close.

 

disappearing units distance test2.trk disappearing units distance test2 distant units removed.trk

Edited December 20, 2024 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

Reducing the object draw distance, as with air dots, appears to fix/side-step this problem.

[MoleUK]

Relevant settings:

Ok as an update, changing LOD slider from 0.5 to 1.0 prevents the Abrams from disappearing in the last track.

But with the LOD at 0.5, close units are only disappearing when a certain amount of ground units are present in the distance BEHIND those units, and only when facing in the direction of those distant ground units.

And capping the draw distance for objects still works to fix this, at least when it prevents the distant ground units from rendering at all.

Edited December 20, 2024 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

Yeah confirmed, ANY setting for the LOD slider below 1.0 results in disappearing ground units, but only when there are a certain amount (over 100 iirc) distant ground units behind them in the direction you're facing.

That is a very specific bug and at least easy to work around, but I am fairly certain the LOD slider isn't supposed to be culling like this to begin with.

 

Edited December 20, 2024 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

Here are three tracks that showcase the problem pretty quickly and explicitly.

ALL of these tracks are calibrated to be replayed with the LOD switch slider at 0.3 to properly show the problem in action, so please set LOD to 0.3 and restart the game so that takes effect. And they only replay correctly at 1080p, at 1440 or 4k they go underground.

In the first track, there are 200 abrams tanks total placed in four columns of 50. As you can see in the track, the models for the closest abrams are completely invisible until physically very close. The rear 100 abrams are represented by dots as opposed to models, and so are both visible at range and transition correctly to models when close.

In the second track, there are only 100 abrams. They all correctly transition from model to spotting dot as you get closer and further away.

In the third track, there are 100 abrams in front of me, and 100 abrams placed 50km away. The abrams placed 50km away to the north are effectively taking up all of the spotting dots when they are in the FOV. So the 100 abrams directly in front of me are not getting their spotting dots at distance and are completely disappearing. They only appear as physical models as you get very close. When facing away from the 100 abrams placed 50km away, the 100 abrams that are close all transition correctly.

So this does confirm the 100 dot cap. There is only a limited number of dots that are available, and once more than 100 ground units are in your FOV (not actually technically visible, they can be up to 80km in the direction you're facing), the ground units the FURTHEST AWAY get priority re: dot rendering. So those closer ground units that are supposed to be represented by dots (until close enough to switch to models) become completely invisible. Not to mention the air dots, which don't seem to get priority at all.

I think this shows that whatever system is set up to display dots 1: Shouldn't be limited to 100 as that is way way way too low, and 2: Is prioritising which units are given dots completely back to front. While I can see the logic in giving units further away dot priority, this completely falls apart in busy missions with lots of air/ground targets. And 3: If the dots must have a hard number limit, air units and ground units should NOT share that limit. They need to be seperated.

Please let me know if these tracks do not behave the same way on your system, but afaik it should be universal. Particularly the first track should display it, at least with the LOD slider set correctly.

 

disappearing abrams test.trk disappearing abrams test, 100 tanks removed.trk disappearing abrams test, 100 tanks moved 50km further away.trk

Edited December 23, 2024 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

For now, I would highly recommend not using the LOD switch slider at any setting less than 1.0 to avoid disappearing ground assets.

This doesn't fix the dot cap obviously, but keeping LOD to 1 for ground units and object draw distance to 40k for air dots will partially work around the dot cap.

In fact on thinking about it, if having the LOD slider less than 1.0 means the ground units transition from models to spotting dots at much closer ranges, keeping LOD at 1.0 or above may help with air spotting dots as well. At least a bit, as the ground units should be stealing less dots overall that way.

Edited December 23, 2024 by MoleUK

[Parabe11um]

Still need to run your tracks, but testing it live on HBCW and Contention, I suddenly see more dots appear when I set the LOD slider back to a 1 value.

Really nice work/find as this is kinda of a crazy bug or issue.

[MoleUK]

4 minutes ago, Parabe11um said:

Still need to run your tracks, but testing it live on HBCW and Contention, I suddenly see more dots appear when I set the LOD slider back to a 1 value.

Really nice work/find as this is kinda of a crazy bug or issue.

 

 

That's great to hear. Before these 3 tracks I thought there might be a relation between the LOD slider and dots, but now i'm pretty certain anything below 1.0 will exacerbate the air spotting problem with how aggressively it can switch the ground assets to spotting dots, and thus hit that 100 cap much quicker.

I haven't personally tested if going above 1.0 will help, but i'm guessing it probably will. Though that will come with a performance tradeoff, so it may or may not be worth it.

Edited December 23, 2024 by MoleUK

[Moezilla]

Thanks for taking the time to nail down the conditions to reproduce the dot limit.

I hope ED will take steps in the very near future to address this issue, which has been raised before, but now, thanks to @MoleUK, has tracks and a solid set of conditions to show it in action.

[MoleUK]

Replaying the tracks at 1440p or 4k does not work correctly for some reason and you end up underground (that's a new one for me), it will replay fine at 1080p.

Edited December 23, 2024 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

Some poor (but should be good enough) capture footage here of the first track.

 

[MoleUK]

I created a short track with 200 F5's to show the air dots being culled, and I noticed changing the LOD setting does affect the behavior a bit.

At 0.3, the closest air dots are mostly entirely invisible as expected. While the rear 100 F5's are displayed correctly.

At a LOD switch setting of 1.0 however, the closest air units flicker a lot. I don't know if the system is trying to create a dot and then deleting it, or trying to display a model and then deleting it.

Almost looks like it's the model flickering in/out though, and I have seen reports of that issue elsewhere.

Replay this at 1080p, labels on, LOD set to 1.0.

disappearing F5 test 200.trk

YT compression is doing a number on this so I recommend playing the track back with LOD at 1.0 if possible.