fixed Mission 8 NVGs

[LooseSeal]

This is probably more a question about DCS rather than the campaign, but anyway! Spoilers ahead.

 

In the mission you are tasked with engaging armed speedboats at night time. I think this may be the first time I've engaged water targets at night since ED re-did the night lighting, but I'm just finding it utterly impossible. For whatever reason, the boats all have lights on them from a distance which disappear as you get close. The problem is that with NVGs they flicker like Christmas lights and are actually quite blinding. But without NVGs... it's just a black ocean and I can't see them.

 

So.. am I maybe doing something wrong with my setup as regards to night time ops? Should I change the gamma settings or something? Or for this mission should I just use a workaround and point track each boat with the pod?

 

Curious to know how others got on with this task!

[=Panther=]

Have not made it to 8 yet, however are you aware of the goggle gain option in your keystroke list? If not, map your controls so you can play with the gain, it should help out a lot. If you already tried gain, then my apologies, I don't have any other tips besides maybe dumping your shaders.

[baltic_dragon]

As I was building the campaign, the way how the boats appeared changed at least 3 times. Not it is much better than it was before. The key here is to use the ground radar, adjust the brightness of NVGs and attack them from the (IIRC) east and norh - east, when they are much more visible. Also wait for them to shoot and use rocket salvos rather than single projectiles. Hope this helps!

[LooseSeal]

Yeah, I tried lowering and increasing gain. Raising it made the most difference, but I nearly had to increase it to the point where it was just a white light.

 

I found this guy's video of the mission on Youtube -

- At 24:30 you sort of see what I mean, except mine seems even worse. It bewilders me why those boats are lit up in the first place, but the most disorientating thing is that they disappear just before you're in range to launch on them. Sooner ED figures out lighting the better.

 

Edit - Thanks for the advice Baltic! I'll use it next time I play through the campaign, which could be fairly soon. Haha. As it is, I just let Olive handle them and focussed on the more juicy target ;-)

[SignorMagnifico]

On 8/27/2020 at 12:05 PM, LooseSeal said:

Yeah, I tried lowering and increasing gain. Raising it made the most difference, but I nearly had to increase it to the point where it was just a white light.

 

I found this guy's video of the mission on Youtube -

- At 24:30 you sort of see what I mean, except mine seems even worse. It bewilders me why those boats are lit up in the first place, but the most disorientating thing is that they disappear just before you're in range to launch on them. Sooner ED figures out lighting the better.

 

Edit - Thanks for the advice Baltic! I'll use it next time I play through the campaign, which could be fairly soon. Haha. As it is, I just let Olive handle them and focussed on the more juicy target

Tried this mission on the latest patch. The speedboats are impossible to see, and they don't twinkle on NVGs like they do in the video. It seems the lighting update has turned these little boats into stealth boats at night.

 

Looks like there is a bug report for these here. I'm going to make a comparison video for bug reporting on this thread.

 

 

 

Edited February 16, 2021 by SignorMagnifico

[LooseSeal]

2 hours ago, SignorMagnifico said:

 

Looks like there is a bug report for these here. I'm going to make a comparison video for bug reporting on this thread.

 

 

 

I'm not sure I would bother, Magnificent Sir. This issue has been around forever and you can bet that ED is aware of it. Baltic Dragon has certainly acknowledged it more than a few times, and I imagine it annoys him as much as us. The only change that has occurred thus far was stopping the 'twinkling' in the NVGs, but even though it's more realistic it really doesn't help the mission.

 

The issue, I think, is that boats/ships aren't contrasted properly against water with NVGs in the way land objects are against the ground. Even the Grisha in that mission is extremely hard to see.

 

So yeah, maybe not so much a bug as ED needing to adjust the lighting. Can't see it happening in the near future though...

[SignorMagnifico]

12 hours ago, LooseSeal said:

 

I'm not sure I would bother, Magnificent Sir. This issue has been around forever and you can bet that ED is aware of it. Baltic Dragon has certainly acknowledged it more than a few times, and I imagine it annoys him as much as us. The only change that has occurred thus far was stopping the 'twinkling' in the NVGs, but even though it's more realistic it really doesn't help the mission.

 

The issue, I think, is that boats/ships aren't contrasted properly against water with NVGs in the way land objects are against the ground. Even the Grisha in that mission is extremely hard to see.

 

So yeah, maybe not so much a bug as ED needing to adjust the lighting. Can't see it happening in the near future though...

Already did. 

 

 

For comparison: 

[Wait4It]

Honestly in the current version of DCS i think in this mission it's almost impossible to do anything usefull at night. Everything outside the cockpit reads as pitch-black except some coastal towns and the moon. The NVG is very grainy.

But even the TGP and Mav displays are almost unreadably as they appear as fully green squares as visible in the youtube video above.

I hope the night lighting gets some attention.

[TLTeo]

Yeah, I just flew this mission and it was only somewhat possible to engage the speedboats by using the sea radar, and even then it was guesswork more than anything. Same with finding the Grisha, finding it with the TGP is impossible but luckily it pops up on radar and after that tracking it is relatively straightforward. Tweaking the gain/level/contrast/brightness on the TGP improves things somewhat, but without the radar it would just not be doable.

[baltic_dragon]

I feel you guys and as I've said before: during the development the DCS settings changed numerous times, at some points the boats were super visible in NVGs, then they weren't. Then they changed into submarines with only the guy with MG sticking out of the waves. Then the waves disappeared completely and boats were somewhat detectable. Now it is worse again. I'll raise it with ED, but this is completely out of my hands...

[Wait4It]

I completed the mission with all the lights off in my room and made good use of the radar. Then its allright.

 

[JGS]

I couldn't spot them with the googles, even after fiddling with the gain so I ended up turning the labels on and shooting at those. Managed to get two boats.

[Assamita]

I just tried it too and it's a heck of a complicated task, but now that I read the reasons, I'll just use the TGP and maybe labels, or just let Olive do the job. 

[GumidekCZ]

@baltic_dragon I think that everyone who played this mission have same problems as described here. I know that we can't change ED things. But can we change the weather and size plus position of the moon ? It would help a lot. I can try to find some optimum for you if you want.

[baltic_dragon]

@GumidekCZ that is a good idea. The date won't match to the briefed one, but it doesn't matter that much I think - if you can find a better setting, let me know, happy to update it. Otherwise yeah, I'd have to change the whole mission which I may do at some point (planning to run & overhaul the whole campaign in the future, but too busy with a lot of other projects currently to be able to do it).

[GumidekCZ]

21 hours ago, baltic_dragon said:

@GumidekCZ that is a good idea. The date won't match to the briefed one, but it doesn't matter that much I think - if you can find a better setting, let me know, happy to update it. Otherwise yeah, I'd have to change the whole mission which I may do at some point (planning to run & overhaul the whole campaign in the future, but too busy with a lot of other projects currently to be able to do it).

I have just changed date to 15th (instead of 13) of March and weather to "Scattered 1". The resulted NVG visibility allowed me to wipe out entire speed boat group.... of course with some difficulties and 1-2 times lost tally on them and needed to search by radar again.

Also very useful thing is to decrease brightness of HUD to be just barely visible and declutter it. Play with NVG brightness a little before every attack. High zoom cockpit view from longer range (4 and more) make visibility even worse. Zoom out at distance, and zoom in for shooting in close range.

  

[SharpeXB]

Yeah I couldn’t see anything on this mission. The radar just picked up the larger ships although I’m not very good at using it. Didn’t realize the NVGs had a gain control. The other thing is that night has become completely pitch black. There isn’t even a sense of where the sky and canopy is like in that video. 

[baltic_dragon]

@GumidekCZ that is a very good idea, if you found changing the date by two days this useful, I'll be happy to update the mission. 

[baltic_dragon]

@GumidekCZ that has been updated for the next OB patch. 

[baltic_dragon]

I also ran quite an extensive update for this mission today, fixing instances where Olive would not attack with Mavs. And noticed that now you can finally see labels (I am using dot-neutral) in NVGs, making this mission very enjoyable!