Spotting Planes in ACMs with VR

Hi,

I am relatively new to DCS and VR so maybe it is just me, but I seem to have difficulties spotting enemy aircraft during dogfights. Are there any setting changes that you would recommend to make it easier to spot enemies in a dogfight? Other than turning on cheats of course.

More specifically, is there a setting in the graphics that helps with this?

Thanks!

What helps is increasing pixeldensity ( or Supersampling, its the same thing).

It comes with a cost of increased load on the hardware and may affect your fps.

Rift S, if you use them, is at least not that low resulotion. They are better than the first VR generation.

I actually think I did read about someone saying the opposite, PD 1.0 gave better detection, but for me it was better with the Oculus Rift with higher PD.

For the Reverb( higher resulotion than Rift S I think the detection range isnt that bad.

Would it be fair to say lowering PD increases spotting ability but decreases Identification ability and vice versa? At least with the Rift S

Ya with the Reverb it isnt any easier. I have been pretty disappointed with the ability to see aircraft at even close in distances. It is almost as if planes get smaller. I too have flown in real life and done Air Combat USA. I never really lost sight of the other plane while doing the simulated dog-fighting. Even when we separated 2-3 miles apart for the merge, it was easy to see the other plane. I think I only lost sight of the other plane once when he went low and the dark paint masked against the dark ocean water but it was maybe for a second or two.

Ya with the Reverb it isnt any easier. I have been pretty disappointed with the ability to see aircraft at even close in distances. It is almost as if planes get smaller. I too have flown in real life and done Air Combat USA. I never really lost sight of the other plane while doing the simulated dog-fighting. Even when we separated 2-3 miles apart for the merge, it was easy to see the other plane. I think I only lost sight of the other plane once when he went low and the dark paint masked against the dark ocean water but it was maybe for a second or two.

I'm honestly not having any issues with keeping tally using the Reverb. Its actually improved over my Vive Pro. I've got my SS set to 150%, so maybe that's helping. but I can get visual on the tanker at 8ish miles and can easily see an F-5 or Mig-29 at 3-4 miles which is very realistic. Much beyond that and fighter size targets, unless highlighted against a blue sky background or clouds, are tough to see even in the best conditions. Vipers, F-5s and Harriers are THE hardest ones to get a tally on IMHO. Especially nose on. Tiny little buggers.....

I use Valve Index and the "only" drawback is that, due to performance reasons, the Motion Smoothing, which is subpar compared to Oculus ASW (I had a Rift cv1 previously) creates too much ghosting, thus rendering close combat VID harder.

As for the spotting I find it easier than real life for medium, long distances.

For close distances what's harder than real life is image clarity/sharpness (SteamVR Motion Smoothness is at fault here) and FOV which makes it harder to keep eyes on the target.

For ground targets it is way easier to spot targets than in real life.

Most issues are a combination of resolution/sampling/LOD, but overall I find DCS quite good in this department (not saying it's perfect and there is no room for improvement)...

... only hardware has not evolved enough.

The future is bright!!!

Ya with the Reverb it isnt any easier.

Maybe you refer to a flat screen...anyway:

The friends I game DCS with still use Rift CV1. Theres one Rift S, otherwise only CV1.

Before I got the Reverb I think we mostly detected other aircrafts at the same time, since I got the Reverb I often see the aircraft first and can point out a bearing and aspect call and after a while get ”visual” from the others. How much further away I see them I dont really know, but its mostly first detection from me.

I use a label mod just to have "small dots" to increase awareness. Attacht it.

Labels.lua

I'm honestly not having any issues with keeping tally using the Reverb. Its actually improved over my Vive Pro. I've got my SS set to 150%, so maybe that's helping. but I can get visual on the tanker at 8ish miles and can easily see an F-5 or Mig-29 at 3-4 miles which is very realistic. Much beyond that and fighter size targets, unless highlighted against a blue sky background or clouds, are tough to see even in the best conditions. Vipers, F-5s and Harriers are THE hardest ones to get a tally on IMHO. Especially nose on. Tiny little buggers.....

same, though i'm only at 120%

I use a label mod just to have "small dots" to increase awareness. Attacht it.

Does it feel like cheating? That is what I want to avoid...

I use a label mod just to have "small dots" to increase awareness. Attacht it.

Does it feel like cheating? That is what I want to avoid...

Yes, it would’nt feel that nice. If you’re gaming against others, it would’nt be fair...and also, IRL other aircrafts is quite easy to se against the right background bot not against the “wrong” background. Its the same in game, so when I game with friends and we do 2vs2 or 4vs4 etc I use this tactics. Works well. If using “dots”( I guess something like the default blue text but smaller dot?) I guess you would be a easy target despite using good tactics ?

I don't have any issues seeing with my Reverb outside of one item.... dark blue sky. Aircraft disappear in the unrealistic dark blue sky. Reality is it would be even easier to see. I'm looking outside now and my sky is light blue, not dark blue. The DCS world is like a poorly done gradient from light to dark.

Outside of that, VR improved my ability to see in VR outside of the obvious need to turn at a 1:1 ratio to see things.

Seeing in DCS is about training the eyes. Especially at the ranges your talking about, 2-3 miles. And it would obviously be harder to spot a F5 against a dark Nevada range, but that is realistic. The key is positioning yourself to see the bandit against the lighter areas of the sky.

Yes, it would’nt feel that nice. If you’re gaming against others, it would’nt be fair...and also, IRL other aircrafts is quite easy to se against the right background bot not against the “wrong” background. Its the same in game, so when I game with friends and we do 2vs2 or 4vs4 etc I use this tactics. Works well. If using “dots”( I guess something like the default blue text but smaller dot?) I guess you would be a easy target despite using good tactics ?

For me is more "cheating" the fact that the sim doesn´t represent realistic viewing, like the other 2WW sim, which is quite far realistic (even represents sun reflections over metallic surfaces, "glaring" that could be easily notice at distance). So using "dots" represents to me the more realistic approach to awareness in real life (i tweaked the labels just avoid to seeing planes at 30 Km...)

Hi there: I made a series of modifications to the lua trying to adjust it as much as possible to reality. Read this post to see if it fits what you are looking for.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=224708

I'm honestly not having any issues with keeping tally using the Reverb. Its actually improved over my Vive Pro. I've got my SS set to 150%, so maybe that's helping. but I can get visual on the tanker at 8ish miles and can easily see an F-5 or Mig-29 at 3-4 miles which is very realistic. Much beyond that and fighter size targets, unless highlighted against a blue sky background or clouds, are tough to see even in the best conditions. Vipers, F-5s and Harriers are THE hardest ones to get a tally on IMHO. Especially nose on. Tiny little buggers.....

Hi - what is SS in your quote above?

Steam super sampling

Steam super sampling

Correct.

Took some print screen from todays gaming. Reduced speed and let my friend in front of me and took some screen shots when I could see the tanker.

18Nm to the tanker and aorund 10Nm to my friend.

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The same picture, but marked where the F/A-18 and KC-130 is.

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A bit closer but still far away, and not that hard to spot:

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Here, both around 5Nm and very easy to spot:

This is not shorter visual ranges than IRL. The clarity of the air is very important. Up where I live we often have visibility > 100km in the vinter. Still not that easy to spot aircrafts more than 10 miles away. In other parts of the world the air isnt that clear at all and the real detection range is short because of that.

My conclusion is that at least with my settings and the reverb its not that different from the real World.

[Edit]I forgot to mention that my screen is a 1440P which makes the VR print screens downsampled to 1429x1400(compared to the Reverbs 2160x2160). Today I gamed with SS150% against normal 120%. Didnt really experience any noticable difference in detecting range, my friend with Oculus Rift VC1 had shorter range but not with that much.

[Edit]#2 About the bold part above: maybe 30 years of IRL looking for other aircrafts make a difference. I remember having harder to detect other A/C’s than my instructors in the beginning. It was not a question of my visuals but more of a training to learn how to scan/detect them. How much this matters, I dont know.

Steam super sampling

How do I access the steam supersampling options??

click on steam vr -> settings -> video ... or similar

I think it would be implement some system similar to IL2, VR visibility is outstanding. Not only in VR, also in 2D, in that sim specially due IIWW planes, it is very realistic. Even, they improved clarity filter along some reflections of sun over distant planes, I remember 3 years ago in DCS we had impostor option, I don´t know why it was removed (in 1.5 version).

KC130 @ 27Nm

On the way for refueling I got Visual at 28.4Nm with the KC130 tanker.

Got this screenshot at 27.0Nm:

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With my Reverb and my settings, I wouldnt say I think the visible range is to short.

How do I access the steam supersampling options??

Do you use SteamVR? Otherwise that won't really make sense to you just yet. SteamVR does support Oculus Rift, I use it myself.