About drawing distance and contrails

[Remontti]

I have noticed couple of times in multiplayer that I suddenly lost sight on plane that was far away (they didn't disconnect). So I tested the draw distance in quick mission builder with icons on.
I flew at 5000m and  watched a HE111 flying at 1000m. With distance 9km to the bomber, I could see it's wings and heading. And then PUFF...the plane has vanished at 9,5km. Now this got me wondering
am I seeing the bomber better than I should because of scaling?

I've noticed this couple of times also when flying with Yak in multiplayer. I flying at 3000-4000km and skies look clear ahead. Then suddenly there are two white trails at higher altitude. I assume that they are those high flying 109s so I turn around to avoid trouble.
As I gain distance to 109s their white trails stop and I'm wondering if they dived to lower altitude and are after me. Or did the game just stop drawing contrails because the 109s are out of drawing distance? I think I should see the white trails much farther away even if I can't see the planes leaving them.

What do you think? Is the drawing distance good enough?

[Y-29.Silky]

With the contrails, I definitely had a few experiences with that. Not including the fact that planes are nearly impossible to see in the morning/evening blue sky in all the multiplayer missions.

[TG-55Panthercules]

I'm constantly amazed at some of these posts that talk about being able to see planes well at distances from 5 km or more.  On my setup I can barely see anything at those distances - when I toggle on the HUD to check, if the planes are beyond a couple of km from my plane I'm lucky to be seeing even a speck, much less any recognizable shape.

 

Are folks using high zoom levels to see that well?  I can't fly the plane all zoomed in, and I don't like to zoom in and out while flying, so I'm trying to find one zoom level that works well in the cockpit and for looking around, but so far I can tell spotting targets is going to be really dicey that way.

[II./JG77_Manu*]

Are folks using high zoom levels to see that well?  I can't fly the plane all zoomed in, and I don't like to zoom in and out while flying, so I'm trying to find one zoom level that works well in the cockpit and for looking around, but so far I can tell spotting targets is going to be really dicey that way.

I would highly advise you, to set the zoom to an axis/slider. I have it on the slider from my X52 throttle, and i use it all the time. Zoom in/out is actually the control i use the most in the whole game. Multiplayer it's all about spotting, when you don't constantly zoom in there, you will not stand a realistic chance, because you will never see the enemy first. I myself have no problem to spot and identify planes, which are 5km away. The only exception at this distance is Yak/Lagg, or a view angle of Zero/180 degree. Not using this zoom-mode puts you into a highly disadvantageous position.

Edited November 11, 2014 by Celestiale

[Y-29.Silky]

Are folks using high zoom levels to see that well?  I can't fly the plane all zoomed in, and I don't like to zoom in and out while flying, so I'm trying to find one zoom level that works well in the cockpit and for looking around, but so far I can tell spotting targets is going to be really dicey that way.

 

I can see planes on the deck while at 6000m, and yes I do use zoom axis. You don't have to fly the plane zoomed in all the way, you'll get what we're talking about though..

[SR-F_Winger]

I think the drawdistance should be icreased for contrails and normal planevisibility. I know its a tradeoff for performance but currently the contrails just get cut off like with a knofe once the trailer gets out of viewdistance. That really looks odd.

Mybe make them fade out intead of just turning them off? Looks soo stupid right now.

[SAG]

when other planes are veeeeery far from you, why not change the 3d model into a sprite (so that there isnt much performace loss) instead of just "turning them off" kind of what they did with CloD+TF where you can spot planes from very far away, turning them into a sprite wouldnt look bad im gussing since you would only be seeing a "dot" anyway

[tovarisch]

I'm constantly amazed at some of these posts that talk about being able to see planes well at distances from 5 km or more.  On my setup I can barely see anything at those distances - when I toggle on the HUD to check, if the planes are beyond a couple of km from my plane I'm lucky to be seeing even a speck, much less any recognizable shape.

 

Are folks using high zoom levels to see that well?  I can't fly the plane all zoomed in, and I don't like to zoom in and out while flying, so I'm trying to find one zoom level that works well in the cockpit and for looking around, but so far I can tell spotting targets is going to be really dicey that way.

the same for me. I do not understand how people prays for complete realism and they use the zoom constantly...zoom should not be allowed in expert mode....as you do not have it in real life.

[Memnon77]

The fully zoomed in view is actually the view a normal pilot would have from his seat. This is impractical though because of the restrictions imposed on us by sitting in front of a relatively (more or less for some) tiny monitor. Therefor the fully zoomed out view is used so you actually have the wider field of view that you would have in real life, but unfortunately the only way to do this is to minimise the dimensions of the original frame (zoomed in). Thus, zoomed in view is actually the standard and if anything, the fully zoomed out view "could" be seen as breaking the realism.

[Rama]

Zoom is a necessity to have a normal resolution to have the game FoV equal to the FoV of your eye relative to the screen.... in fact full zoom is close to real vision in the screen window.

But for the player confort, you should provide them a view with a wide FoV, not corresponding to the screen window, but corresponding to a much wider virtual window. You get this in full unzoom. This view isn't correct, but still a necessity for the player to have his FoV not too restricted by the screen size.

You can't have at the same time normal resolution and "normal" visual FoV. So the zoom function is a necessity to switch between the 2 and to overcome the restriction of the computer screen size.

[Remontti]

I think the game makes great work rendering aircraft when you use maximum FOV or Zoom out view even if the planes are far away. Here is couple of pics about the situation I described in the first post. You can't quite say what aircraft that is, but you can see where it is going.

 

Here is HE111 with view zoomed out view:

 

And here the same plane with zoomed in view:

 

There is no big difference in the size of aircraft. The HE111 in picture is just about to exit the draw distance and vanish. It just feels odd that you can see it clearly and then it's gone. Maybe some kind of sprite would be nice out side the drawing distance.

[avlSteve]

the same for me. I do not understand how people prays for complete realism and they use the zoom constantly...zoom should not be allowed in expert mode....as you do not have it in real life.

 

In real life we have a screen as large as the sky is wide, and a better resolution.  Zoom required, lest it be utterly unrealistic!

Edited November 13, 2014 by avlSteve

[unreasonable]

Spotting is the thing that BoS (like it's daddy, RoF) does best of all.  If you look at Remontii's pics and count the pixels you can see that the zoomed in version is about twice the width of the unzoomed version, showing that the plane is rendered according to distance and zoom, just like in RoF, and is not a "fixed size" contrary to what has occasionally been claimed on these forums.

 

If free camera mode was enabled we could prove this definitively.

 

I use zoom all the time, on buttons, without it ID friend or foe is too hard.

 

The only area that bothers me is the way the contrails often end with an abrupt, blocky graphic that looks buggy.