Aircraft Visibility

[Tango]

I must say that until the MiG-21 I had never tried serious A-A engagements in DCS (on top of that, I was buried in code most of the time and flying only to test things! :D ).

 

Having tried a few intercepts and dogfights now however, it is immediately obvious that the visibility range needs changing.

 

Best regards,

Tango.

[Python]

You're not alone Vintovka, I have a 27" 1920 monitor also, spotting is near impossible. I'm sure it is being looked into.

Edited September 26, 2014 by Python

[grifo]

Would be useful to know some ED thought about it... Forgive me if I missed it in this thread. Just to know something like "we are aware of it and working about" or "this is what we believe right in our sim, scaling is quite realistic yet!"

[audax]

"We will discuss this after EDGE is done, but this is what we believe right in our sim, scaling is quite realistic yet!"

[grifo]

discussing about could be a good start!:)

[9.JG27 DavidRed]

my approach on this shows that there is possibly a bug in regards of lods?

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=131673

[damar]

I can see a plane over 10km away in real world,but can always lost visual contact in DCS over 1km... Please,please improve it in EDGE!

[Fri13]

Citation from Steel Beasts Pro manual:

 

 

"If you don`t need glasses it is quite possible to spot a moving tank at distanses up to 300m with the naked eye.(...) At 3000 meters, a typical tank would subtend an angleof about 0,057degrees(about 1mil).To Make that tank appear as just a single pixel on your monitor at a resolution of 1600x1200 means that the field of view must be reduced to about 90degrees, far short of a human`s 170 degree FOV, and still the tank would appear as a single dot. Concersely, if you want a natural field of view of 180 degrees, the tank would be smaller than a single pixel at distances above just 1590 meters "

 

Anyone against smart scaling? (till we have 80 000 x 80 000 pixels gpu/monitors) ?

 

Interesting as i need to say i believe there is a typo as 300m is way too short now or is it now in steel beast itself? Is it meant to say 3000- meters? As a moving unit is easy to spot at those distances in reality, a moving man can be spotted from 1-1.5km range, but be invisible when still at 5m range.

 

In DCS I can spot moving ground units from 8-15km distance very easily without zooming, but at 8-10km range I can spot individual units sitting on ground still because they get rendered when zooming in, at 5-6km I can spot without zooming. But then again the camouflage and staying still can very well hide unit for me when I am up in air and I need to spot it top of terrain texture and I am just 400-600m altitude.

For moving ground units spotting the key is to have view still enough to spot dot movement, so locking camera to ground or using TrackIR makes huge difference than trying spot units when own view moves as well.

 

I hope there will be some resolution to problem of moving and still units. Via transparency (apply a 50-75% transparency to unit when still in forest and you don't easily spot it) or via special shading effects or even in future if there is change to have voxels used or similar to draw grass and such to hide the unit when zooming in.

[Maverick-X]

Isn't there already a scaling? If you view something in the pursuit-cam (or what it is called - default F5) it appears a lot bigger than from cockpit view

[Djent33]

Well here I’m “fighting” with a P-51 and this is what I see: the P-51 in the centre of the screen shot is banking left showing its full profile, the aircraft is at a distance of 1.3km and 761m altitude in the area above the road.

Comparing the visibility with the 2nd chimney on the right hand side at a distance of 3.2km is what some pilots might say “WOW” I need to have my eyes checked.

 

Default zoom screenshot taken before the eye surgery.

 

 

BTW if saw a flying chimney with the size of the Mig-15’s fuselage I’d see it and fight it from 3.2km.

 

Cheers.

 

[CallsignFrosty]

anyone using 4K? I just bought a 28" 4K with GSYNC.. not arrived yet

 

What are people's experiences with the high resolutions?

[Python]

You'll need a mighty system to run DCS at 4k, I'm interested to hear the answer myself however, I am considering upgrading to the Asus Rog swift Gsync monitor. Not quite 4k but it's better than my current 1080p set up which just doesn't work well with DCS when it comes to spotting.

[ViFF]

Voted: Increase far dot size and add a metal glare.

 

 

DavidRed's post that he linked is very informative.

 

From 4 km and onwards a P-51 is represented by a very small 3d object that is transparent when viewed from below or when banking at an angle that would be a "belly view" from 3rd person perspective.

 

so then i opened the "suspicious" ld_tec.edm file, which you will see at a distance of 4km or higher:

 

ld_tec.edm:

 

 

ok, its a block,a green one, probably not the best colour chosen, and would explain why distance contacts "dots" sometimes blend so perfectly into the terrain, that they just disappear within it, even if you know where to look.

 

but to my surprise, when i began to look at this block from other angles, it became apparent, that this block becomes transparent when viewed from below:

 

 

 

if you move it more, it becomes totally invisible:

 

 

so to confirm that, i edited the P-51D.lods file, so that the ld_tec.edm "lod dot" doesnt only appear at 4km distance or higher, but already really close(i think 60m), and this is what i got:

 

 

so it seems, that when looked at certain angles, planes disappear at certain distances, depending on the file, completely, regardless of zoom or resolution.

this is also happening with the FW-190(only difference its happening at >=6km), and very likely its true for other planes as well

 

 

Cheers

[Fri13]

;2214013']anyone using 4K? I just bought a 28" 4K with GSYNC.. not arrived yet

 

What are people's experiences with the high resolutions?

Huge difference to 4K. And it doesn't require much as DCS is same running either on 4k or 1920x1200 or 1650x1050 on computer that has specs of AMD 8350 (8x4Ghz), 16GiB DDR3, Nvidia GTX750 or GTX760. DCS runs as smoothly (55-60fps depending altitude, flying either KA-50 or Fighter, always having VSync on) and as laggy when ever there is smoke and explosion effects around, dropping FPS to halt or 1-2 for a moment. Every effect at full (cockpit shadows enabled).

 

The difference is that the ground units does pop-up from very far distance and makes planes like SU-25A so pleasure to fly as it is possible to exploit weapons at about max range to ground units.

 

Not have tested those mods to add super-mega-ultimate ground quality.

 

Now my dream is to get a 55" 4K television as they are pretty (dirty?) cheap being around 799€. It would be dedicated flight Sim display then as possibility see targets further really is awesome.

[Haukka81]

I already reported this to ED - it is going to be a major problem with air-to-air combat. It needs fixing.

 

Best regards,

Tango.

 

NIce! :thumbup::thumbup:

[Fri13]

Update: now with Mig-21 for few days and it feels little stupid when usually I spot air targets (C-130 and F-4 / F-5) before Mig 30km radar range does draw the blob. Makes to feel that radar has no use in Default Weather :-(

[vicx]

Is it still BVR if you have a 16K TV and can see jets 20 nautical miles away?

 

You might not be "cheating" with labels but you are doing something that is impossible IRL.

 

Yay Realism.

[Fri13]

Is it still BVR if you have a 16K TV and can see jets 20 nautical miles away?

 

You might not be "cheating" with labels but you are doing something that is impossible IRL.

 

Yay Realism.

It is interesting as in default weather with 4k display I can spot targets 18nm (35km) range WITHOUT zoom. I only have trackIR to brovide cockpit movement as I find the view zooming being too radical without dampening and kind a (cheating).

 

But that really requires I know to where I look if want to be quick and that targets are laid front of the sky. And the Mig-21Bis dirty windows are not helping at all in the situation.

[airdoc]

Guys, i think that the last update has already produced an improvement on the visibility issue.

I checked the LODs for the 109, p51 and Dora with DCS Modelviewer, and didn't find the "green boxes", instead there were black aircraft models there.

Unless i 'm mistaken, there has also been some kind of far dot size increase :

 

The first picture is at 3.6 km distance and the second at 5.1 km. The dot appears bigger at 5.1 kms.

 

 

 

 

EDIT : Upon checking the LOD files again, the box appears to be there for the Mustang (i see it as black with the model viewer though). Maybe the whole issue had to do with the new Omega AMD drivers that i installed recently working better with the updates. For some reason, I 'm getting better visibility since the last update. Dots appear more sharp and are easier to spot and track.

Edited December 27, 2014 by airdoc

[rcjonessnp175]

Ya use nvidia dsr if you can much easier to spot objects.

[airdoc]

For the time being running on Radeon HD 7850 2GB.

I 'll wait for EDGE before I upgrade

[POLARIS1]

While DSR makes wonders regarding visibility...using it makes words so tiny they're essentially unreadable...

[rcjonessnp175]

Try looking for those font mods guys use for the oculus rift

[Aginor]

Maybe they have really changed something, I just tested it and could spot the "Desert Rat" P-51 at my altitude from a bit more than 3 miles, flying a 109

[airdoc]

EDIT : double post

Edited December 27, 2014 by airdoc