Contact visibility - need help

[SharpeXB]

Yeah i deliberately looking for it. 10km is too close to eyesight on air

Sure it would be great to have a farther render distance. But the game already challenges the strongest CPUs heavily. Without some upgrade to the game engine (upping it to DX12) most people would just get unplayable frame rates and the only benefit would be aircraft at a range which you can barely see them.

[coconut]

 

 

Without some upgrade to the game engine (upping it to DX12) most people would just get unplayable frame rates

Why? I understand how that would apply to objects which there are many of, such as trees, houses, particles that make up clouds, tracer rounds... But planes? There can only be at most 84 in the game with the current player count limits. With AIs, it's even smaller, somewhere around 20 or so. Those numbers could easily be handled by renderers 20 years ago. And before someone says "but not with the level of detail we have today", the level of detail you need for an aircraft beyond 10km doesn't go beyond a few triangles without texturing.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

Why? I understand how that would apply to objects which there are many of, such as trees, houses, particles that make up clouds, tracer rounds... But planes? There can only be at most 84 in the game with the current player count limits. With AIs, it's even smaller, somewhere around 20 or so. Those numbers could easily be handled by renderers 20 years ago. And before someone says "but not with the level of detail we have today", the level of detail you need for an aircraft beyond 10km doesn't go beyond a few triangles without texturing.

This is intelligent reasoning but we dont know why they didnt move this draw distance far away long time ago? BTW maybe this is good question to Han.

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

Was asked already in the past, the reason was always performance.

 

One way to make the question current is, considering the move to 64-bits, do you have an estimate of when will the game's performance allow for draw difference to be increased, and what changes will be necessary for that?

[=LG=Wicher]

Well, it's not even 10km. It is 9,5km

https://youtu.be/FdP_-tMCToY

[Turban]

 

Well, it's not even 10km. It is 9,5km

https://youtu.be/FdP_-tMCToY

 

 

 

I find that on/off effect so annoying  

[KG200_Volker]

Also draw distance creates a huge problem to level bombing, it makes it almost useless for player made targets due to the near popup which gives no time to correct errors. Even AFs are hard to hit when you need to line up with the runway from high alt, and thats why we have HE111 going jabo!!

 

I m not at home so I ll post later my settings in case it helps some people, I consider it a tradeoff between eye candy and spoting. Maybe we can find amongst us the best middle turrn.

 

Side note, I m not saying that its ok to make a sim that needs 10k euros of a PC to flight it on, but on the other hand, seems ilogical to force everyone to keep a lower level of graphics just to keep it on par with the unfotunate people that dont own a better PC (I m saying "unfortunate" because I think nobody wants a low spec PC but we are forced to due to other financial obligations).

 

Give us options and let us take the decisions, someone wants 159km draw distance and 356AA with 2fps per hour, others want 4000fps per nanosecond, let us chosse guys

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

Improving visibility for at least aircraft should not take siginficant performence drops. DCS for example had different aircraft visibility range settings which didn't have impact on preformence as it's only 2d sprites. What does hurt performence is high resolution textures, effects like tracers, explosions and fires as well as 3d models.

 

What also needs improvement is the limited (terrain) view range as well as the white glowy horizon. Late one is very annoying when flying at highe altitudes since it's always fixed to the middle of the screen and effectively reduces terrain view distance the higher you go.

[coconut]

For planes, the distance-based approach is the wrong one, I believe. What if all 84 players gather in some huge furball?

 

If one's PC can render 20 planes, then the game should render the closest 20 planes, regardless of distance. Obviously it's OK to cut rendering when the plane's rendered size falls too far below 1 pixel, but that would be much further than 10km for planes the size of an he111.

[Asgar]

i think that's a great idea! i would love if they would implement it that way

[216th_Jordan]

Well regarding the idea to 'Increase draw distance just for planes':

We don't know how the code of this engine looks and thus we don't know if it is possible to simply do that or if it's a more complex problem.

 

Draw distance is a big problem in this sim as action can be very close to you and you just have no visual indication. Sometimes when flying on ts you hear of mutiple contacts over a given area with a big fight going on - you're just 12 km away but you see nothing of bombers or escorts or big bombs going off. 

Also, as stated before, levelbombing is very hard - it gets harder the higher you get on itself but if your target only comes in to view 15 seconds before you have to drop the bombs that is a big problem. I don't know what the limiting factor is exactly is but I hope a solution will be there rather sooner than later. (This is one of the most frustrating things for many people) 

[Comes]

 

 

What also needs improvement is the limited (terrain) view range as well as the white glowy horizon. Late one is very annoying when flying at highe altitudes since it's always fixed to the middle of the screen and effectively reduces terrain view distance the higher you go.

+1

Compare that to FSX, where you can even see the earths curvature if you are high enough. 

[unreasonable]

Well regarding the idea to 'Increase draw distance just for planes':

We don't know how the code of this engine looks and thus we don't know if it is possible to simply do that or if it's a more complex problem.

 

Draw distance is a big problem in this sim as action can be very close to you and you just have no visual indication. Sometimes when flying on ts you hear of mutiple contacts over a given area with a big fight going on - you're just 12 km away but you see nothing of bombers or escorts or big bombs going off. 

Also, as stated before, levelbombing is very hard - it gets harder the higher you get on itself but if your target only comes in to view 15 seconds before you have to drop the bombs that is a big problem. I don't know what the limiting factor is exactly is but I hope a solution will be there rather sooner than later. (This is one of the most frustrating things for many people) 

 

I recall the issue coming up in the RoF forum long ago, with the developers saying that the engine could render every object on the map onto the screen, but the issue was finding a workable trade-off between visibility and performance, so I doubt that the DN engine itself creates a limitation.

 

RoF has an objects view distance slider which affects all objects, most distant setting is 7km IIRC.  Static objects in BoS disappear much more closely than that, at least when I last checked.

 

Personally I would prefer a slider option; or several sliders for aircraft, ground objects, special effects, etc so that we can make our own trade-offs.  Even jabo ground attacks on airfields can be frustrating with the current visibility settings.

Edited June 6, 2016 by unreasonable

[seafireliv]

 

Well, it's not even 10km. It is 9,5km

https://youtu.be/FdP_-tMCToY

 

 Thanks for provioding the proof. That vanishing should never happen in a flight sim.

[KG200_Volker]

 

All my settings, very good fps, some shimmering, good sharpness.

 

Suggestions are welcome in order to keep a level of beauty and best possible target recognition, but please not the kind "make everything pitch black with -10 gamma"

 

(If you fiddle with inspectors AA instead of using the in-sim ones like me, avoid the ones with "cv-samples", the sim wont start)

[Livai]

All here are scratching the heads, wondering about the Contact visibility but nobody pointed out about the view system from this game. Sometimes it feels that planes are not rendered correctly 1:1 how far the planes really are. I followed a enemy fighter plane 500-1000m above him. He looks for me like he is 1 km away but he is between 2-3 km away from me. I dived many times down and noticed that he is more far than he looks.

[TP_Jacko]

My theory is the game engine was scaled to WW1 fighters. Throw in a bit of haze and I bet 10 km is a fair view distance. The game does suck shd you see a he111 vanish as its so much bigger than a fighter. I understand targets close to the ground with good cammo were hard to spot in real life. I bet a lot of moving vehicles were spotted from exhaust gas or dust.

 

Lets hope a change us on the way from the devs. Meanwhile i will revisit some of the tips here.

[MadisonV44]

The visibility distance is the main subject to fix IMHO, because it impacts the gameplay.

[=LG=Wicher]

set1.jpg

set2.jpg

set3.jpg

 

All my settings, very good fps, some shimmering, good sharpness.

 

Suggestions are welcome in order to keep a level of beauty and best possible target recognition, but please not the kind "make everything pitch black with -10 gamma"

 

(If you fiddle with inspectors AA instead of using the in-sim ones like me, avoid the ones with "cv-samples", the sim wont start)

 

I used your settings but I get very big fps drop, the trick was to change "Texture Filtering - Quality" from "Very High" to "High", anyway thanks for this settings, I will try them later.

[MadisonV44]

All here are scratching the heads, wondering about the Contact visibility but nobody pointed out about the view system from this game. Sometimes it feels that planes are not rendered correctly 1:1 how far the planes really are. I followed a enemy fighter plane 500-1000m above him. He looks for me like he is 1 km away but he is between 2-3 km away from me. I dived many times down and noticed that he is more far than he looks.

+1 

also noticed this 

[C6_iceheart]

+1 

also noticed this 

+1

[unreasonable]

All here are scratching the heads, wondering about the Contact visibility but nobody pointed out about the view system from this game. Sometimes it feels that planes are not rendered correctly 1:1 how far the planes really are. I followed a enemy fighter plane 500-1000m above him. He looks for me like he is 1 km away but he is between 2-3 km away from me. I dived many times down and noticed that he is more far than he looks.

 

Interestingly, this is also a real life phenomenon:

 

I remember an occasion at military college (Sandhurst) when we probationary officers were asked by the directing staff to estimate the distance to various objects on the other side of a valley: a truck, field gun, barn, people walking about and so on, using only the naked eye. Almost everyone got the distances badly wrong, often underestimating them by 50% or more.

 

Then we were taught how to use our knowledge of the actual size of the objects and the mil markings in our binos to get good estimates.

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

Lots of pilot anecdotes mention that too. One P-39 pilot spent all his ammo at a Fw-190 that seemed in range but all bullets fell short, so the commander told him to close in until you can see the rivets on the wings, and only then shoot.

[seafireliv]

Lots of pilot anecdotes mention that too. One P-39 pilot spent all his ammo at a Fw-190 that seemed in range but all bullets fell short, so the commander told him to close in until you can see the rivets on the wings, and only then shoot.

It`s not possible to get that close in this sim though, I mean to actually see the rivets. It`s also possible the commander was exaggerating and just meant, `Get really close!`

 

I personally like to fill the crosshairs with the aircraft, but with these early slow Russian planes that can be a little difficult.

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

With real-life resolution that is possible, but of course it is a figure of speech. Hitting an enemy up close means you will hit more rounds on target, and your rounds will have a far more devastating effect on the enemy because they will hit with a lot of energy. With the MiG-3's default armament one can tickle a bomber from 200m, but get down to 50m and you will be setting Heinkels on fire in a second.

 

When following an enemy that is faster on a straight line I like to dip the nose, close all the radiators and get every bit I can out of the engine. Most of the time this is enough to close the distance and give me a good if brief shot from close up and below the enemy.

[Crump]

There is a great chart in AC 90-48C.

 

It is on the next to last page, print it out on a 9x11 sheet of paper, hang it up, and stand back 12 feet distance.  The airplane sizes will now correspond to the correct distances on the chart to get an idea for visual aircraft spotting.

 

http://www.edwards.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-060619-019.pdf

 

[Zace]

I am really stuck on this also. I was so excited to finally feel comfortable going from normal to expert, really enjoyed practicing with a joystick and aiming, feeling more real control etc ..... but I just can't see things.

 

Campaign missions for four hours tonight really proved it for me. intercepting bombers and never finding them. If I got a wingman I'd just follow him and I'd only find the bombers when they were almost in gun range. One mission I followed contrails but couldn't see the planes until I was maybe 2k away at most, and just barely even on zoom.

 

I tried all those settings above in this thread, but still can't see unless I bump into stuff. I even got bounced by AI fighters from the direction I was looking at ... Bang bang bang, engine shot out, oh there they are one inch below the middle of the screen!

 

Quite disappointed. I was so super exited o finally graduate to full real. But it's only playable for me with the enemy markers. Takes away a big reason for wanting to play - not so much help.

 

Sigh.

[216th_Jordan]

have you tried the nvidiainspector setting of last page? You can play around a bit with that. I found setting negative lod bias to clamp to increase spotting when the enemy is aiming straight for you as the wings will not be sharpened out of the picture. Also try sparse grid supersampling for antialiasing transparency setting.

[Zace]

have you tried the nvidiainspector setting of last page? You can play around a bit with that. I found setting negative lod bias to clamp to increase spotting when the enemy is aiming straight for you as the wings will not be sharpened out of the picture. Also try sparse grid supersampling for antialiasing transparency setting.

That's all pretty much unintelligible to me haha. However I did Google nvidiainspector and ran it, setting the things from the picture above from Volker. Didn't see, to change much. Ran another mission, if it hadn't been for squadron mates and contrails I never would have seen them.

 

Maybe it's just this map with the ultra bright snow and sun.

 

Thank you for efforts to help.

[Turban]

Do spend time ingame calibrating your monitor, as someone else mentionned  

[216th_Jordan]

That's all pretty much unintelligible to me haha. However I did Google nvidiainspector and ran it, setting the things from the picture above from Volker. Didn't see, to change much. Ran another mission, if it hadn't been for squadron mates and contrails I never would have seen them.

 

Maybe it's just this map with the ultra bright snow and sun.

 

Thank you for efforts to help.

you selected the profile and after you made all the settings hit apply? with override application settings? turn hdr, bloom and ssao off in startup.cfg?

[Zace]

Hi Jordan.  Cheers.

 

I can't connect to Il2 server this morning, so I decided to post some snaps (created a imgur account) to see if anyone can spot something I'm got wrong.my startup config, nvidiainspector setup (which is applied), and a quick mission where I actually could see stuff against a cloud but then dove a little bit and they were completely invisible (so I think that's why I can't see stuff in Campaigns at 3km)

 

 

 

 

 

slightly zoomed .bmp of the bombers actually visible in the first pic.  I can't find them even in the .bmp of the second snap.

 

 

Edited June 11, 2016 by Zace

[216th_Jordan]

For the antialiasing settings to work you will need to sett 'antialiasing compatibility' the second from above to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (needed for AA to work)

 

On texture filtering (number 4) set Anisotropic if desired and try lob bias +0.000 as well as clamp (2 lines below).

you also want to turn off triliniar optimization.

 

Just a trick I do to compare my settings:

Go to QMB set up a mission with bombers and fighters and make a flight record (are you familiar with flight records?) of that. you can then rewatch that record every time you change something and check what is different.

[coconut]

Zace, the very first thing you should do is disable cinematic. Set it to 0 in the config file, or change it in game in the camera settings (not the graphics settings!). It's pretty for videos at low altitude, but IMO completely worthless while playing. It's really motion blur.

Edited June 11, 2016 by coconut

[MadisonV44]

I've never seen distant aircraft disappear and reappear like that in BoS. In 1080p or UHD

In fact I always thought visibility in this game and RoF was superb.

Some of you must have messed up settings of some sort. Set everything back to default...

 

Huge confusion here.You are speaking of two completely different subjects. 

The resolution, monitor specs and settings have nothing to do with the visibility distance bubble, seeing a contact > 9.5 is not a question of hardware or software settings: this is in the code ! 

[Zace]

For the antialiasing settings to work you will need to sett 'antialiasing compatibility' the second from above to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (needed for AA to work)

 

On texture filtering (number 4) set Anisotropic if desired and try lob bias +0.000 as well as clamp (2 lines below).

you also want to turn off triliniar optimization.

 

Just a trick I do to compare my settings:

Go to QMB set up a mission with bombers and fighters and make a flight record (are you familiar with flight records?) of that. you can then rewatch that record every time you change something and check what is different.

 

Hi Jordan - thanks so much for the good information.  And coconut thanks also.  Have now done those changes.

 

I flew that same quick mission and recorded it.  I totally lost the bombers a couple minutes in, looking all over and couldn't see em but KNEW they should be right nearby.  I eventually saw some tracer fire above and right, and closed in.

 

Watching the replay I found that in the replay the planes are so much more visible!  I mean, I suppose part of that is that in replay there are markers, but even ignoring that it's so much easier to see them in the replay than I did flying the mission.  For example:

 

1) At roughlyl 1:55, after noobishly mistaking my wingman for a potential target and rolling over onto his six, I drift ten degres left and promptly lose sight of the bombers.  In the replay it's clearly shown that I look right where they are, but then look all over everywhere else as I obviously didn't see them (maybe 1k away, high and right).  I don't even see my wingman, despite the replay clearly showing that I looked right at him.

 

2) Replay doesn't show me hitting O key and seeing that they should be just to my right, but maybe 2:10 or so you can tell I've done it, as I look right there again.  This time I see tracers and move that way to demonstrate my poor aim.

 

So, what's on my mind now is how can I make things as visible while flying as they are in the replays (without markers of course).  I don't expect the game to highlight things to me, i.e. markers, but it's obvious I'm not seeing things even when I put my field of view right on them and they're only 1.5km away.

 

Will try to attach replay file.

Please ignore my poor aim, and mistaking my wingman for a potential target, barrel rolling around onto his six, lol

 

 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ppfv8j6mis09v88/AAA9mQ61RHHChIU3erMXW_lTa?dl=0

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109690307/skirmish.2016-06-11_19-58-07_00.trk

[Zace]

Another replay - FW190 in a campaign intercept this time.

 

While flying, I used the O key a fair bit and knew they were around, but only caught a glimpse of them high and right as I flew by them, then I couldn't see them anymore.

 

There's even a point where I'd lined up on the bomber formation nearly perfectly using the O key map, 4km behind them, but you can tell from my looking around I have no visibility of them.

 

I only ever saw them for real when one happened to blunder into my gunsight 700 meters in front of me.

 

I never once saw the enemy fighters, even though they'd flown right over me a minute before.  I saw them on the O key map, and knew they must be around, and you can see me looking around for them, but I never actually saw them until the last second.

 

I must say, watching these replays, where the things I'm looking for are RIGHT THERE, but not seeing them in game, makes this entirely unenjoyable and frustrating. 

 

Normal was a spectacular training mode, for my first real joystick work, but I want to fly more real - plus I know the best servers are full real, like WoL.  If the most populated server is only 13 people at peak time (that I've been able to see this week, playing in Australia), then I either need to be able to fix this, or end up just playing single player Normal mode ... or back to WT realistic (I heard visibility was kinda bad in sim).

 

They're visible in the replay, but I don't see them in game.  Any ideas?

 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ppfv8j6mis09v88/AAA9mQ61RHHChIU3erMXW_lTa?dl=0

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109690307/aqm-1-3.2016-06-11_21-30-04_00.trk

Edited June 11, 2016 by Zace

[216th_Jordan]

hmm! When you Hit the 'H' key in replay it will look exactly like in the original flight except for the map.

 

Another thing: have you properly calibrated your monitor? most monitors are set way to high on contrast and brightness (turned my contrast down to 80% and brightness to 75% and my monitor is a few years old and not very powerful - the 100% settings are only really useful if you are playing in bright daylight shining directly on your screen) there are many pictures with description on the web to help you calibrate your monitor settings.

 

Also as suggested before: try turning off Motion blur with ingame settings (should be in camera tab if im not mistaken) and set multisampling to 2 in startup cfg. (might not have an effect because of nvidiainspector, but try anyway )

 

Will try to have a look on your tracks later when I get home

 

Basically spotting is never easy and I sometimes dont see things either. The best way to spot planes is when they move in relation to your view. when they directly fly towards or away from you they are harder to spot.

[Zace]

Ok!

 

So, again thanks. Appreciate all the time and advise. Looks like progress.

 

I thought before that I had adjusted monitor, but the Samsung I have had some magic Eco and magic something or other, so adjustments weren't applied. I downloaded the manual and figured out how to turn those off, then put contrast and brightness down, and also changed its positional mode. Much much better!

 

Now, I stuck suck at spotting things, but when I followed my wing ayes I did see bombers 4km away. I was also able to see a runway in the snow before I actually flew over the dumb thing.

 

Now to figure out out to stop my Focke Wulf from flat spinning so much, and practice actually hitting stuff, and lots of real flying.

 

Thanks again!

Edited June 11, 2016 by Zace

[216th_Jordan]

Great to hear you are making progress!  'Think you are doing ok in your tracks, those situations are hard to spot with

 

On this Track you can see an example of how I'm doing it usually. You need to learn yourself a searchpattern for scanning the sky, I see you zooming in frequently to the front when your enemies pass by your sides. 

Also try to set your zoom on a slider if that is possible. I have a warthog and it doesnt really have a slider so it put zoom on the mouse-coolie of the throttle-unit, pushing it up and down when needed (it is considered an axis by the game).

Sun was shining into my room at that time, thats why my Trackir goes crazy at times :D

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18325538/Jordan%20Berloga%20Track.zip

 

Jordan