Windscreen reflections and optical sight purple tint

I love the Mig-21 module but i have some problems with the visibility from the cockpit. As you can see in the screenshot below, the reflections on the windscreen side panels and the purple tint on the optical sight are very strong and it's difficult to see the details on the ground.

Most of the time i have only 1 windscreen panel with good visibility, for the other 2 panels all the details in front are lost in a purple or blue haze.

Is it possible to tone down these visual effects?

Today's OB release.

DCS MiG-21Bis by Magnitude 3 LLC

• Corrected glass material setup. Reflected colors on the HUD and windscreen should not be so bright now.
  

Is there a difference in Persian Gulf map now?

Got these in Caucasus after updating. Looks a bit less intense but still pronounced.

Regards

Jens

Unfortunately in the latest patch there's no significant change for me either. I tested it in both Persian gulf and Caucasus maps and my results are similar to your screenshots.

There's a very small improvement for the optical sight, but the purple tint is still very strong. Not much has changed in the windscreen side panels reflections.

put the sun directly on it and compare it

Well it doesn't help much if the improvement is only visible in direct sunlight and not visible in all the other angles.

What i'm trying to say is that the windscreen reflections are more or less visible all the time and they seem to cover the entire windscreen panels in a light fog. This makes the glass panels semi-opaque and the visibility is very poor, as you can see in the screenshots below. The canopy doesn't seem to be affected by reflections and the visibility is quite good when looking 90 deg left and right.

When banking left and right one of the windscreen panels becomes almost opaque and you can barely see anything through it.

In addition to the poor visibility through the windscreen side panels (described above) more problems are caused by the changes to the optical sight.

In the stable release (2.5.0) the visibility was still manageable because at least i was able to see through the central panel, but now in the open beta (2.5.2) we also have the purple tint on the optical sight, which also makes the visibility worse. It's not the color that is bothering me, but the fact that the glass panel becomes less transparent. To add to that, we also have the lens rim reflecting in the glass panel regardless of the lighting conditions, which i also find distracting.

If you look at the screenshot below, it is hard to believe anyone would be able to spot a small target on the ground when looking through the optical sight.

i agree with the concerns raised here. the current tints and reflections are not very convincing as they don't behave correctly according to the presence and absence of light. reflections remain strong even when there is no strong direct source of light, giving the impression of opaqueness.

as earlier noted in another thread the sun bloom is just... all sorts of broken.

on a tangent: we don't have true dynamic reflections on the cockpit glass, for understandable reasons. however anyone invested in dcs will be enjoying the 6dof movement, which makes the static nature of the reflections particularly jarring and noticeable as they do not shift correctly in response to changing viewing angles. this is a particularly glaring issue for the collimator reflection for example, and doubly so because one is always shifting around to look around the framing.

i think the smart way to deal with this issue is to make reflections relatively subtle -- but of course, having the reflections fade and disappear correctly in shadows will go a long way towards achieving this effect. but in some cases, if a satisfactory reflection can't be painted, it might be better to just not have it altogether.

i think belsimtek's treatment of cockpit internal reflections is pretty good; they're just enough to give you the impression of the cockpit interior, but not visible enough to make you start noticing the static nature of the reflection.

lastly ive also never seen examples of purple tints on russian reflectors, so if any references can be shown id be curious.

ps. thanks for attending to the cockpit-to-exterior transition, getting rid of that huge hole in front of the windscreen is great.

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After a lot of trial and error I've adjusted the transparencies and reflections to be more subtle and came up with this:

Reflections were reduced by 50%, canopy glass cleaned some, Violet haze toned down on reflector, and I adjusted the goop around mirror.

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For the curious, that's a GPSMap 60 from Garmin, I have one in a drawer somewhere, fascinating that one ended up in the cockpit of a MiG-21.

For the curious, that's a GPSMap 60 from Garmin, I have one in a drawer somewhere, fascinating that one ended up in the cockpit of a MiG-21.

Poor man's GPS. I saw a picture somewhere of an SU-24 with a similar setup. Guess it's cheaper than integrating it into the aircraft! :)

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I think there's a large difference between these images and the screenshots in my previous posts. In your images there are some reflections but they only cover relatively small areas of the windscreen. I don't see any fog caused by reflections that covers the whole windscreen side panels.

The same goes for the optical sight; even if there's a slightly darker tint on the glass plate, the visibility through it is still crystal clear in real life. Obviously you can't say the same if you look at the in-game screenshots.

Couple more images of my "fix" to the glass textures. The lens reflection now fades and appears depending on light angle. Reflections on canopy are less opaque.

Will be interesting to see how the upcoming HUD adjustment look in the next patch compared to this.

Couple more images of my "fix" to the glass textures. The lens reflection now fades and appears depending on light angle. Reflections on canopy are less opaque.

 

Will be interesting to see how the upcoming HUD adjustment look in the next patch compared to this.

That looks very good, is this mod available for download?

Sure. Unpack in JSGME _mods folder, activate and it should work.

Mig21Glass-Sight.rar

Sure. Unpack in JSGME _mods folder, activate and it should work.

Thanks a lot, i will try it this evening.

Sure. Unpack in JSGME _mods folder, activate and it should work.

I just tried it and i think it's a major improvement. Thanks a lot !

I'm also looking forward to testing the changes in the next update.

Sure. Unpack in JSGME _mods folder, activate and it should work.

Thank you for FIX !

You're welcome!

I made a few minor adjustments to the sealant around mirror so it looks more like original but darker, fixed sealant gaps in the rear of canopy, and cleaned glass slightly more.

Pictures with mod off and on:

Mig21Glass-Sight2.rar

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What's the gadget with the four numbers and English labels mounted on the left side of the sight? Also I note that the RSBN distance indicator and the SPO-10 indicator appear to have traded places on that aircraft... why would this be?

^ Some aftermarket transponder (that's what XPDR abbreviation is for, plus four digits for squawk codes).

I think there's a large difference between these images and the screenshots in my previous posts. In your images there are some reflections but they only cover relatively small areas of the windscreen. I don't see any fog caused by reflections that covers the whole windscreen side panels.

 

The same goes for the optical sight; even if there's a slightly darker tint on the glass plate, the visibility through it is still crystal clear in real life. Obviously you can't say the same if you look at the in-game screenshots.

I agree the effect in game is way overt the top, nothing like on the real photos.

Here's an early result with interior reflections.

Cleared most of the haze and added subtle interior reflections:

Mig21 Glass-Refl.rar

Brilliant ! Thank you very much for doing this.