Icons

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Regarding Icons, again.

 

I play in mostly Normal servers for the quick action and I like the guys who frequent the same server(s) I do as well. The only problem I see, other than waiting for the FMB and establishing ground targets is how the icons are implemented. This is true of the house servers as well as the DED Fresh Meat server.

 

The icon distance is entirely too long. With the excellent spotting ability of this game the icons are overdone by a fair margin. The ability to see through clouds and your own aircraft actually detracts from the fun unless you are a raw beginner. There is no ability to either bounce or evade if you are within 9.99 kilometers. I’m a lousy dogfighter so being able to detect at such long ranges is a huge advantage to setting up on somebody but is equally defeating in making the actual attack.

 

I proposed, about a year ago, changing the icons and many of those changes were implemented (thanks to Dev’s here). I still think significantly shortening the icon distances will increase both immersion and gameplay. I think they are overdone by a factor of 2 or more.

 

Firstly, of course, make clouds and aircraft opaque. If you couldn’t see it in real life you shouldn’t see it in the game (YES, I know it’s a Normal server). Secondly shorten the initial (gray) sighting distance to 4.99 km which would force guys to start scanning properly – I get most of my kills trapping guys who are tracking one of my teammates and never check their own six. Because, again, I suck at dogfighting. Make the icons remain grayed out until 2 km. This is still enough distance/time to make a decision to fight or flee in most cases.

 

I don’t know if making cockpits and clouds opaque to the icons is difficult or would take up dev resources but I can’t imagine changing the sighting distance could take more than a click or two on someone’s part.

 

I just flew on the 72AG server and a similar system was implemented there. It was, quite frankly, brilliant. I know I can wait for the gajillion custom servers but I’d love to see this implemented on the currently available ones. I think it would make the game/sim better both now and in the future as it would develop better overall pilots. Arrows and 10km icons should be in the old Easy servers. Expert should be for the full real crowd. I just think Normal should be a little closer to, well, normal. 

[SharpeXB]

I wonder how some sims accomplish the aircraft or clouds hiding the icons since those are screen graphics and not 3D objects. CoD does this I believe. I think people like the icons showing through it they lack head tracking and can't easily look around canopy frames etc. it's like a substitute for the virtual cockpit which BoS doesn't have.

The spotting distance of 10km may not be far off. I always have icons off and I can see other aircraft especially in RoF because of their different shapes, ID them at very long ranges. I haven't measured it exactly. DCS is a bit worse than the DN games at this distance rendering but I can see, but not ID, an aircraft there at 10 miles (16km) The ground targets I can see easily at 7 miles (10km) I'm not comparing games I just happened to check it there once.

In the final analysis I don't think there's a "realistic" way to implement icons. They're a game aid and that's all.

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Agreed, my argument is simply: with the excellent spotting distances they should/could be much less of an aid while still being implemented on the Normal servers - particularly because they are not as necessary as they are in other games. They will never be realistic.

[FS_Fenice_1965]

Why not starting to implement the ded server with the possibility to setup icons ranges and appearance like we had in old IL2 ?

Also, rather than seeying those long bars, I'd prefer a minimal approach.

Even in old IL2, with all the different choices we had to setup icons, I always missed a setting with just a coloured dot, only what's necessary to override the excessive (and not realistic..imho) difficulty to see enemies above the ground (expecially since we started to use high resolution monitors).

Edited February 17, 2015 by FS_Fenice_1965