SharpeXB

Except for the pilots who were killed and never saw who killed them. Which is certainly the case for most of the dead pilots. Dead pilots don’t write after action reports.

You need to back up statements like this with facts. There’s a section for technical assistance if you can really support the observation that one of the 3D models is incorrectly shaped. This sim already does a very good job of rendering the aircraft shapes at distance. Exaggerated features have the potential to be perceptible by the player and look odd. Many aircraft only have very subtle differences between them and the degree of exaggeration is too subjective. What do you consider “too much FOV zoom” ? considering that, on a desktop size monitor, the full zoom in is probably closer to life sized. If you see an aircraft actually vanish from the screen then maybe consider a bug report supported by a track etc. otherwise are you sure you aren’t just losing track of contacts? I lose track of contacts all the time but it’s not the games fault, it’s mine. Smart scaling or something similar presents the big problem that players will certainly want it adjustable. That would have the result of fragmenting multiplayer. Any system for visibility needs to be baked into the game and not adjustable by the players.

It represents the futility of war.

A huge difference between newer flight sims and the old ones is the type of display that’s used. Today it’s about universal that every player has a large 1080p or higher res monitors as opposed to the small low res CRTs of the past. Past sims needed to have these visibility enhancements like scaling or dots because otherwise they would have been unplayable. Especially Falcon that simulated long range modern air combat. The new flight sims don’t need this degree of enhancement. Plus they have much better and more realistic graphics where these enhancements would spoil the image presented to the player. IL-2S here does I believe use some sort of sprite, but if so, it’s well done in the fact that it’s unobtrusive and importantly not user adjustable. It’s aparent from reading this type of discussion over and over, it comes up constantly, that some older players aren’t adapting their methods to the new games, the old enhancements are a crutch that needs to be unlearned. The way you’re supposed to see distant objects clearly, in current sims, is to use the zoom view. Not to have every distant object appear artificially larger. Of course the 1CGS team knows everything about past games and their features. And all the current sim products have gone this direction for a good reason. The recently abandoned effort by ED to introduce scaled up models just illustrates why this isn’t done anymore. At some point you need to adapt your gameplay style and expectations to the current products because it’s not likely they’re going to change in this regard.

I thought in Rise of Flight that the AI can’t see through clouds or darkness. I figure IL-2S is the same.

I had this problem as well with W10. The joy# would change almost with every restart of the PC 1CGS fixed the menu system not to ID devices using the generic Windows Joy# so I figure this problem should have dispapeared. You should contact support if you’re having this problem. DCS or other sins were never affected as they don’t use the Windows Joy# Rise of Flight does and stil can be affected. An update to Windows 10 caused this problem to stop for me as far as W10 is concerned.

Clearly that means making this game into a replica of a sim from 20 years ago....

Giving distant AI a simple FM was considered. I’m not sure if it is anymore. There has been some optimization already. At some point you have to decide if this is a game for you or not. It sounds like you’re stuck in sims from decades ago and can’t move on. No sim today is going to have 800 aircraft in the air with the fidelity that’s expected by today’s market. Your comments aren’t constructive they’re just endless complaining. This thread is going the direction of the pointless FM debates and maybe needs to be moderated as such. It’s run it’s course. So what’s your point? Are you implying that the Devs are lying?

In BoX all the AI aircraft use the same advanced flight model as the player. That’s not the case in any of these other sims. The FM is the chief thing that limits how many aircraft the game can handle at one time. This has been optimized recently to allow more AI but it’s still a limiting factor.

I doubt IL-2 is ever going to use smart scaling so this is all moot. What would happen with this feature is players would also demand for it to be user adjustable just like DCS did. Then it would get switched off in mp and nobody would use it. Then it would get removed just like DCS did. Of course you would. How is smart scaling “scaling” if it’s not drawing objects larger than they should be? Even a tank that’s 3 pixels in size, at too great a distance is effectively the size of a skyscraper. That’s the same thing DCS was trying to do and the effect was ridiculous. The ground targets, being seen directly against other objects for scale, made this awkwardly apparent. The only difference between smart scaling and “Model Enlargement” in DCS was the use of a 2D sprite instead of an oversized LOD model.

As far as I know BMS was the only sim to use this. So it’s not a “general approach” it’s a feature that one game decided to use. It doesn’t make that the right solution for all sims into eternity. And DCS could not use a system that scaled up its LOD models (it affects the radar in game) which was why they used sprites or imposters. The result to the player is basically the same. You’re seeing tanks on the ground the size of skyscrapers. BoX will never adopt something as silly as that. And yeah... 2003 is the dark ages of gaming, the era of small square low res CRTs Smart scaling is a solution from the past. The solution for the future is like this

Yes it was different. But it still represented distant objects out of scale which didn’t work. That’s basically what smart scaling does. Or if there’s a difference nobody has been able to explain it that I’ve seen. And yeah smart scaling is a feature from back in the day of 10” CRTs. Flight “sims” back then had Atari level graphics so nobody cared how awful that looked. The DCS discussions are best left to that forum, but they’re dead there because the feature didn’t work. It has been discussed to death there by now.

I’m curious what your comparison is to BoX and DCS, which sim are you holding up as a better example? Because these and I suppose the revamped Cliffs of Dover are the only current games in this genre. If you go back to 1946 or BMS these games contain such legacy features like smart scaling and “dots” or whatever that are out of place today. They were originally meant for small low res CRT monitors. Those solutions don’t work today or are really awkward. DCS just tried this model scaling thing that flopped.

I felt that I was very able to spot objects in 1080p as well. Actually the chief attributes that help spotting are size and contrast. Neither of which is improved by 4K. There are threads over on DCS claiming that 4K makes spotting worse I don’t really agree. But what the extra resolution does help is identifying and even reading tail numbers and being able to read all the tiny text in the cockpit without zooming in. Even in 1080p though BoX did a nice job of rendering the aircraft silhouette and the ability to ID other aircraft is and was very good. Same with RoF. In 1080p I could count the wing struts to ID or discern the shape of the fuselage from head on. DCS 2.5 does get reflections now on the WWII planes which used to be rendered matte in 1.5.

Some people have trouble with this and some don’t. Why that’s the case I have no idea. All I know is I can see the stuff on my screen that others claim they can’t. Aircraft never just vanish in front of me unless I actually lose sight of them. I’m not doing anything special at all with graphics, they’re all set on defaults although maximum, including the Nvidia CP which is all at default. The DCS discussion is a bit off topic here, there are tons of things they’ve done and tried to do and reasons why. It’s all in lengthily threads over there. These are different game engines that have a different aim from one another. Discussions like this just run their course with no solution because for the most part nobody knows the hardware players are using and players don’t understand the limitations or goals of the game engine. So it’s not really much point to keep it going.