Altitude perception in DCS

[Rhrich]

Hi all,

How do you find the height perception in DCS?

I have a Facebook Q3 headset, and I really feel I don’t get enough sense of the altitude. 
It’s decades since I was last in the cockpit of something decent, and my eyes aren’t what they used to be, but I’ve always thought that you don’t get sufficient impression of altitude and the enormity of one’s surroundings in DCS. 

But, as said, I’m old so I figured it just could be that. However, just a few days ago I was passenger on a civilian flight in a place covered by DCS. It was scattered clouds as well and I knew that altitude.
 

So, I thought id recreate what I saw out of the window in dcs. And now I’m certain that there’s something off in altitude perception or perspective in DCs.
 

anyone else noticed this? And is there settings I can change to rectify this? (It would not ve surprising if I’m to blame…)

[Dangerzone]

Distance in VR is something I don't think yet has been fully mastered. I certainly feel like distant things are closer and smaller than what they should be. I don't know if this is due to the way VR attempts to fool the brain, whether it's just my brain getting used to VR, or other factors.

I did a little bit of searching on this. From what I could gather, the whole close seems good, distant seems less good could be due to Binocular cues getting weaker with distance, and that Monocular cues such as haze, scale and perceptive are harder to replicate with limited FOV and resolution. IPD / world scale settings can also have an impact. The one area I've always wondered is DCS's own IPD settings - which seems to make a big difference in the cockpit for the cockpit view, but has no perceivable difference for outside objects.  

But in the end, I've just accepted that VR is an emulation of an environment - does a good job at helping me to judge distance with things like formation, and gives me a more immersive experience, but that it's normal to feel like the 'world is smaller'.

 

[draconus]

Never had problem with that. Whole idea of VR and proper objects in a game is to have them correctly scaled, exactly to not feel any difference at least on that part.

IPD change works only for close objects because that small parallax is not gonna change your view on the distant ones.

The quality of the simulated terrain though leaves much for improvement and with limited headset resolution I think it has the biggest impact on how you perceive the world in DCS.

[Rhrich]

Thank you. 
 

I’ve never messed with the IPD, I just assumed it was the same as the «set how far it is between your eyes» thing. 
Could it be beneficial to change that in DCS as well?

 

A few comments:

It’s altitude I think seems off. Distance seems somewhat better (although this is highly subjective). However I believe it’s considerably easier to spot stuff than in real life. Especially from distance and front facing in some planes with smaller front cross section, like 16, 21, etc

[draconus]

IPD is what you described it is and so it should be set in DCS and on your headset. It can affect how you see the scale in VR but I doubt you'll see a difference between 63 vs 65mm. Check extreme numbers like 40 vs 80 to see what I mean, just for fun. One will make you feel like a giant and the other makes you feel like a fly. Both will not affect the distant objects much though.

That you feel altitude is off, I already said possible reasons (image realism and details) but it's not much devs can do about without major graphics improvemnts, especially when distance feels ok. Altitude is just vertical distance, right?

Spotting depends on your settings esp. resolution, AA method and of course spotting dots setting.