Visibility and contrast at short range

Hi guys I do almost dogfight (guns only) in F18 on DCS and in certains conditions because of a lack of contrast of the target at short range it's very difficult to see the target (not because of the size)

I know aim of the paint is to do visibility prob, but here target is very close

Check screenshots

Do you think you could do something for that please, maybe add more contrast? or sun reflect on the target?

Please ED give us an answer

Best regards

good point. i think this shading problem is a much bigger issue than the long range pixel visibility (might be different for competitive MP / AirQuake).

i have made some tests in blender once, which uses a path tracing renderer (cycles) and in my test scene it was a hundred times easier to spot and follow targets even up to pixel size distances.

i think the problem is, that dcs does not do any complex shading on objects that are more than some meters away from you.

therefore they lack contrast, but more importantly they don't change brightness very much; i found that the pulsating changes in reflected light helped to spot a maneuvering plane, because it obviously reflects sunlight back to you depending on the angle to the sun and the observer.

in my test this worked even with super low poly aircrafts. the important thing is proper shading at all distances.

another good addition would be a glare/glint effect, to improve it even further. that should work very well with a pbr renderer like dcs, however you would first need the reflection shading to generate the proper highlights to base the effect on.

The best solution for this issue

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=173243&highlight=HDR

HDR wouldn't solve anything if the rendering issues twistking lists aren't solved first, and if those are solved, HDR isn't all that necessary anyway since the game already provides better perception-enhancing cues.

The best solution for this issue

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=173243&highlight=HDR

that would top it off nicely, yes.

however, i think people will be surprised how much of an improvment the shading alone would give you.

and remember that without the proper roughness shading there is no use for the additional dynamic range of HDR to begin with.

*edit* sniped by tippis

I think its all the canopy and HUD (glass) reflections (the baked and the cockpit global illumination one), it makes them very milky, especially at X angle to the sun, and this is washing the image out, reducing contrast. Try to pause and switch to ALT+F1 and see the difference with and without canopy/HUD.

And its something you really notice if you have to run the game without shadows due to performance. It gets a lot worse without shadows. So imo, to help this, ED and 3rd party devs have to reduce canopy/HUD opacity and reflections a great deal.

I think its all the canopy and HUD (glass) reflections (the baked and the cockpit global illumination one), it makes them very milky, especially at X angle to the sun, and this is washing the image out, reducing contrast. Try to pause and switch to ALT+F1 and see the difference with and without canopy/HUD.

 

And its something you really notice if you have to run the game without shadows due to performance. It gets a lot worse without shadows. So imo, to help this, ED and 3rd party devs have to reduce canopy/HUD opacity and reflections a great deal.

Hi you are certainly right but the fix need to be Official because it's not so fairplay if some have a fix and others no

Best Regards