Spotting Distance... again

Watch the very first video in the link you were given. The "baloney" you reference is a straw man.

What is "realisic" is discussed in the first video. Reliastic range for single engine aircraft is put around the 10 to 15km range - not 50km. This is about the 10nm you are also referencing.

Standing on the ground at my local gliderport, spotting an aircraft with a 55' wingspan less than 5 miles away is hit and miss, despite knowing he's there and having the advantage of him being silhouetted against the sky. Looking away for even 10-15 seconds can result in completely losing track of him for a prolonged period of time.

POSSIBILITY to see something and CERTAINTY are not the same thing. People talk like it should be easy to spot them, and I KNOW from personal experience it is NOT, especially when add in extra dimensions (being airborne yourself) and mutual movement (being moving yourself).

From the way DCS renders, I can guarantee the aircraft is being displayed in some shape form or fashion approximating scale, and is being overlooked. It is THERE, you are not noticing it.

This 10-15km stuff stop and think about the size of a 'single engine aircraft' and its relative size to you if 7-10 miles away... that's TWICE the distance from my parents home to the nearest town. It's a long ways, and even something 40-50ft long is going to be a small speck. CAN you see it? Yeah, if you look directly at it, or lighting conditions are just right and it flashes or something. Is it a CERTAINTY you'll see it? No, not remotely.

DCS Spotting is an issue..

Been seeing so many post over at hoggit reddit about the current state of DCS spotting, and how bad it is... Wanted to drop some links here for everyone in dcs to get involve and hopefully ED can finally recognized the issue that has been brought up for years without a single response..

One of the post that caught my attention was this...

By Kalsin8 :

"I've written about the unrealistic spotting in DCS before:

To give more evidence, this real-life picture that I took shows an aircraft lining up on the runway, exactly 9.29km away from me:

https://i.imgur.com/Xv9XJbK.jpg

A similar setup in DCS with a similarly-sized aircraft (KC-130) moving laterally across the sky is almost invisible:

https://imgur.com/1HcZ3dS.png

https://imgur.com/ewZo6e6.png

It's not until I zoom in all the way before it starts to resemble what it looks like in real life, though still a bit too small:

https://imgur.com/JAMEQp0.png "

here are few more...

What are your guys thought on this ?

What are your guys thought on this ?

I would say it's a bunch of forumites with a ''flawed'' grasp of what's going on. As said above

''There's a runway here and planes landing on it constantly. It's 10km away and I can see every plane approaching and leaving''. No shit? You can spot aircraft when it's a 100% certainty they're going to be passing through very specific areas at regular intervals? You can look up into the sky around any busy terminal and usually spot several aircraft at any given moment. A bit different from being airborne and trying to locate moving targets in 3 dimensions while also moving yourself, with no clear 'box' to search for them in @@

As for certain specifics, like an already spotted aircraft being relatively less visible than an ingame equivalent, there are multiple factors that influence that, specifically time of day and lighting affecting how dark/light an aircraft appears etc.

A greater influence is the reduced FoV inherent in using a monitor. You guys keep talking about ''zooming in''... you're not ''zooming in'' you're STARTING ''zoomed OUT''. The FoV you use in order to have good awareness of your cockpit is unnaturally far out compared to the size of the ''window'' you're looking through (your 24+ inch screen). Until you ''zoom in'' an insane amount, what you're doing is making your perspective more comparable to what it ''really'' would be.

This is BECAUSE the aircraft are being rendered on a 1-to-1 scale, but you are using an unnaturally wide FoV because ''game''. Use the wider FoV for cockpit usage, and a more ''natural FoV'' for spotting. Or suck it up and accept that your chosen FoV sucks balls for trying to spot tiny dots miles away.

I would say it's a bunch of forumites with a ''flawed'' grasp of what's going on. As said above

 

''There's a runway here and planes landing on it constantly. It's 10km away and I can see every plane approaching and leaving''. No shit? You can spot aircraft when it's a 100% certainty they're going to be passing through very specific areas at regular intervals? You can look up into the sky around any busy terminal and usually spot several aircraft at any given moment. A bit different from being airborne and trying to locate moving targets in 3 dimensions while also moving yourself, with no clear 'box' to search for them in @@

 

As for certain specifics, like an already spotted aircraft being relatively less visible than an ingame equivalent, there are multiple factors that influence that, specifically time of day and lighting affecting how dark/light an aircraft appears etc.

 

A greater influence is the reduced FoV inherent in using a monitor. You guys keep talking about ''zooming in''... you're not ''zooming in'' you're STARTING ''zoomed OUT''. The FoV you use in order to have good awareness of your cockpit is unnaturally far out compared to the size of the ''window'' you're looking through (your 24+ inch screen). Until you ''zoom in'' an insane amount, what you're doing is making your perspective more comparable to what it ''really'' would be.

 

This is BECAUSE the aircraft are being rendered on a 1-to-1 scale, but you are using an unnaturally wide FoV because ''game''. Use the wider FoV for cockpit usage, and a more ''natural FoV'' for spotting. Or suck it up and accept that your chosen FoV sucks balls for trying to spot tiny dots miles away.

Dont think its entirely based on FoV and yes enemy background environment sometimes does have an affect aswell... but take a look at this..

https://giant.gfycat.com/HappyFarFruitfly.webm

also this

https://gfycat.com/jollyvaguefugu

what are your thoughts on this situation?

Higher resolution monitors have smaller pixels, ergo, the higher the resolution on the same screen size, the harder it becomes to spot planes at a distance. That's why spotting in the Rift is relatively easy (also because of 1:1 head movement, which is more natural in focussing on a specific point, moving your eyes and/or head away from target, and move eyes/head back. Can't have that on 2D with TiR). I think. :)

DCS needs a spotting system overhaul I use Dot only labels to simulate this as best I can but a from the ground up rework kinda like what a certain game with 'thunder' in its name did to make their spotting system so good.

This is the file I use (disclaimer the change in opacity is broken right now so its full opacity at max range but once ED finally fixes this it'll work again)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d0cwl8xkfa638ke/DCSLabelsMod.zip?dl=0

@OP

Sorry, I've been gaming on everything from a 27'' 1080p to a 35'' 1440p, and furthermore in many other games, too, as well as training other pilots.

 

Spotting almost entirely comes down to your methodology of searching.[…]

If it was just a methodology issue as you firmly believe, the people complaining would experience it in others flight sims too. In my case it's not happening, I don't struggle on the two others main combat flight sims out there. Never.

It has nothing to do with methodology — it has to do with how the game rendering of scale and distance is inherently unbalanced in favour of worse hardware, and without any regard to actual perception.

It has a rather silly way of figuring out lower and upper limits of rendering that results in making planes easier to spot the lower your resolution is. It also has a rather naive way of doing scale that only takes physical size into account, and not the many other cues that the brain picks up on and use to perceive objects at a distance.

There are well-know, well-established, and at this point utterly trivial solutions to those issues, but for reasons that should not even exist, they have decided not to implement those…

No amount of “git gud” posturing will change the simple fact that the rendering of scale is backwards and that both realism and gameplay suffers for it.

^ yup I hope ED reworks the vision system as it really needs to be a big ticket issue especially considering most fights due to missile issues usually get into WVR range. And for WWII and korea jets vision is everything as everything is wvr. The best temporary fix is to use Dot only labels and edit their opacity:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d0cwl8xkfa638ke/DCSLabelsMod.zip?dl=0

example of the version the community I fly with uses (note opacity changing depending on distance is broken as of ~3 patches ago still waiting for a fix) hopefully one day it'll be llike this:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/361938229219295233/556226804185300994/shot_2019.03.15_16.16.01.jpg

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/361938229219295233/556225899243241532/shot_2019.03.15_16.18.12.jpg

It has nothing to do with methodology — it has to do with how the game rendering of scale and distance is inherently unbalanced in favour of worse hardware, and without any regard to actual perception.

 

It has a rather silly way of figuring out lower and upper limits of rendering that results in making planes easier to spot the lower your resolution is. It also has a rather naive way of doing scale that only takes physical size into account, and not the many other cues that the brain picks up on and use to perceive objects at a distance.

 

There are well-know, well-established, and at this point utterly trivial solutions to those issues, but for reasons that should not even exist, they have decided not to implement those…

 

 

No amount of “git gud” posturing will change the simple fact that the rendering of scale is backwards and that both realism and gameplay suffers for it.

You can’t expect ED to follow what you’re trying to say here. It just doesn’t have any definition that’s useful. What does any of that even mean?

This is not real life. This is a simulator. A game. In real life, pilots usually have a perfect vision and don't see all the world around in a screen with limited resolution, framerate and refresh rate. They also have preriferic vision, something that a screen doesn't allow. ED shouldn't try to copy the reality, since it's imposible. ED should try to do a simulation that FEELS real. And that ilusion of reality usually requires unrealistic "tricks" or "cheats", as the colums of the Partenon that look stright because they are slighty bended. DCS should make you feel like a real pilot even if you wear glases and you don't have a huge 4K screen. If that means unrealistic "tricks" or even "cheats" like the planes looking bigger than actually are in the distance to make them easier to spot, or something like that, it's OK for me.

This is not real life. This is a simulator. A game.

This. Pretty much. Seriously these comments "Well I don't have a problem, so it's not a problem" are making me lose my faith in humanity little by little.

Seriously, we are NOT real pilots, we are NOT sitting in real cockpits, we are NOT looking directly at objects using ONLY our eyes. There is this thing called a monitor on which things are rendered, depending on your graphics settings and hardware never as well as they would be in real life, we have NO depth perception, we have NO peripheral vision, the TrackIR movement is awkward even at the BEST of times etc. etc. etc

If you don't have problems with spotting well I call that BS! Why? Because I've seen youtube videos of the best, absolute best players of this game lose sight of airplanes in situations where it would be impossible to do so in real life, over and over again. I've played with some really great DCS pilots who struggle with spotting.

Saying that there isn't a problem and that something can't be done to improve this issue is complete and utter....well I won't say it because Ill get banned but you get the gist of it.

What are the best settings for spotting?

Resolution: lower is better what I understood

How to set the rest?

Dont think its entirely based on FoV and yes enemy background environment sometimes does have an affect aswell... but take a look at this..

 

https://giant.gfycat.com/HappyFarFruitfly.webm

 

 

also this

 

https://gfycat.com/jollyvaguefugu

 

 

 

what are your thoughts on this situation?

This is the biggest issue I feel... things disappearing based on zoom. Doesn't just impact contrails either but some ground units. I have seen FARPs and radio towers on blueflag disappear when I wasn't even all that far away.

I'm also affected (27" 1440p). Because of this ("this issue is reported, the issue is being discussed internally, and the issue is being worked on as it can be around changes in the new engine." - https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=157129&page=66 as per Sithspawn in 2017), I've did not buy F-14 and stopped playing MiG-21 in MP completely as I'm not able see A/A enemies at close ranges.

I'll wait till ED fixes this and only then I'll buy more A/A crafts (still A/G is great experience for me).

Thank you for all the constructive comments. Thank you especially to Shahdoh for the tip about editing the lua which I'm going to try.

Thankfully ED disagrees with those who don't believe there is an issue. I'm not sure there's a lot of point in wading through the technicalities of spotting. ED know their engine better than we do, and as the customer, all we need to do is make sure ED know we are having a problem with spotting. We don't need to define why this is, or fix it.

Hardware and settings may factor in but we're not talking about niche hardware here. DCS World should work well with all common hardware. It also needs to work well for those who aren't blessed with fighter pilot vision - most of us perhaps? Having options for making spotting easier is the key here. Labels are one option, but I'm hoping that ED will offer some less immersion breaking improvements in future.

What I hope for is that Nineline can escalate this for us and get some sort of comment from the Devs. I do wonder if it is actually being worked on with any sort of urgency, or if it's not being worked on at this time. I understand that there is a lot of work to do in DCS but it is plain to see from comments here and on other forums that many DCS players would like to see spotting improvements and perhaps, if it isn't being worked on now, the Devs would consider moving it up the priority list?

Discussed here in lots of detail.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=209219&page=3

Also a paper discussing spotting distance in sims vs reality:

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a414893.pdf

Yes, it’s from 2003 but an important quote:

"Does the potential application of this technique disappear as technology erases the

display resolution hurdle? Arguably, the answer is no, at least for the foreseeable future."

"Therefore, until even the least expensive, most portable displays can provide more detail than the human eye needs, this type of visual performance-enhancing method should be

useful."

And yes, we know ED have said smart scaling won’t work in DCS. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem

If that means unrealistic "tricks" or even "cheats" like the planes looking bigger than actually are in the distance to make them easier to spot, or something like that, it's OK for me.

ED already tried this, in the form of “sprites” that didn’t allow a distant aircraft to shrink below a certain number of pixels. The problem was that even on its lowest setting it made distant aircraft too visible. To the point where radar was no longer needed. It made distant ground targets effectively the size of battleships. So it was disabled on most all the multiplayer servers.

And no matter what setting, people still complained they couldn’t see anything.

I think the new labels setup with proper values can make for a very good compromise, enhancing the LOD at ranges and at varying degrees of visibility, and then turned off completly once in dogfight range.

Yes, there are still the issues of seeing the dots through clouds and airframe, but that is part of the compromise. And if everyone can see them equally, its not cheating, though granted, not realistic.

I would say it's a bunch of forumites with a ''flawed'' grasp of what's going on. As said above

 

''There's a runway here and planes landing on it constantly. It's 10km away and I can see every plane approaching and leaving''. No shit? You can spot aircraft when it's a 100% certainty they're going to be passing through very specific areas at regular intervals? You can look up into the sky around any busy terminal and usually spot several aircraft at any given moment. A bit different from being airborne and trying to locate moving targets in 3 dimensions while also moving yourself, with no clear 'box' to search for them in @@

 

As for certain specifics, like an already spotted aircraft being relatively less visible than an ingame equivalent, there are multiple factors that influence that, specifically time of day and lighting affecting how dark/light an aircraft appears etc.

 

A greater influence is the reduced FoV inherent in using a monitor. You guys keep talking about ''zooming in''... you're not ''zooming in'' you're STARTING ''zoomed OUT''. The FoV you use in order to have good awareness of your cockpit is unnaturally far out compared to the size of the ''window'' you're looking through (your 24+ inch screen). Until you ''zoom in'' an insane amount, what you're doing is making your perspective more comparable to what it ''really'' would be.

 

This is BECAUSE the aircraft are being rendered on a 1-to-1 scale, but you are using an unnaturally wide FoV because ''game''. Use the wider FoV for cockpit usage, and a more ''natural FoV'' for spotting. Or suck it up and accept that your chosen FoV sucks balls for trying to spot tiny dots miles away.

Surely you concede then, that this is unrealistic in terms of what a real pilot with good vision would be aware of by comparison?

End of the day I want to play a realistic game and that means some spotting enhancements to circumvent the limitations of the 2d monitor with no peripheral vision that 99% of us are using.

I'd really like to see a eds stance on this and a few comments from someone in the team. This issue has been around forever and you'll see even the most experienced players lose track of targets that are a few miles straight in front of them.

I've asked NineLine by PM if he would raise the matter and request a comment from ED on our behalf.

There definitely is a problem with spotting in DCS, mostly caused by the fact that you can't cram the entire natural human's FOV into a small screen and expect it to be rendered in 1:1 scale.

Certainly zooming in helps, but you're sacrificing much of your FOV and peripheral vision. It would be like scanning the sky by looking through a straw.

IMO the best way to improve visibility is to vastly increase the contrast of aircraft against the background, to appear much darker against a bright blue sky, basically a silhouette. Same goes for planes against the ground, although it would be more challenging to render because of various brightness levels and color of different textures.

This is not real life. This is a simulator. A game. In real life, pilots usually have a perfect vision and don't see all the world around in a screen with limited resolution, framerate and refresh rate. They also have preriferic vision, something that a screen doesn't allow. ED shouldn't try to copy the reality, since it's imposible. ED should try to do a simulation that FEELS real. And that ilusion of reality usually requires unrealistic "tricks" or "cheats", as the colums of the Partenon that look stright because they are slighty bended. DCS should make you feel like a real pilot even if you wear glases and you don't have a huge 4K screen. If that means unrealistic "tricks" or even "cheats" like the planes looking bigger than actually are in the distance to make them easier to spot, or something like that, it's OK for me.

:thumbup:

I've asked NineLine by PM if he would raise the matter and request a comment from ED on our behalf.

You say as though you're the first person in the history of flight sims to go ''I CANNAE SEE'' @@ This is a ''every two weeks'' topic, and each time the person acts as if it's a novel idea =)

@samich

No, what I'm saying apparently went right over your head.

I said the FoV people typically use for navigation is too zoomed out, making distant objects appear even smaller. The solution is to zoom in to a more reasonable FoV when scanning for distant targets.

The issue is the FoV the player is willfully choosing to use. There is no magic fix on ED's end for what is a player's deliberate choice.

No, spotting is not the same in game as it is in real life... because the FoV being used is the equivalent of having eyes in the back of your head. Anything over approximately 50-60 degrees is ''too zoomed out'' for true to scale. Easy concept to grasp, but the people complaining about it either A. Don't understand or B. Stubbornly cry ''muh immerzion'' and want Enlarge-O-Vision 9000 to compensate for their foolish notions of what is or isn't ''realistic''.

Man you're an angry guy.

You're assuming we all play with a wide fov..based on what? How do assumptions like that help anyone?Watch people play the game on YouTube, they lose track of targets in places that they clearly shouldn't be

There are solutions to this. I have no where near the same problems spotting in other Sims and I'm very clearly not alone in this