running 2560x1440; should I lower the rez to improve spotting contacts?

[ACG_Flyby]

As the tile says, what to do? In Cliffs I use 12x7 rez and it improves spotting contacts tremendously. I'm told that was the native resolution for the sim anyway, though I can't confirm it. Also, a bunch of tweaks in the Nvidia control panel and a few in the conf.ini.

Does or can any of this apply to BoS/Bom/Kuban contact spotting? I haven't experimented, but I think my monitor's native rez of 2560x1440 is a handicap for spotting EA at distance. I did a search but still I thought I'd ask.

thank you,

Flyby out 

[Willy__]

This isnt CloD, you dont need to lower your resolution too see better. Actually, I think its the opposite, I had to lower my res so I could play on my old gfx card since my actual died and my spotting got worse.

[216th_Jordan]

Yeah, my spotting increased when I went from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440. Turning of HDR / SSAO generally helps a bit with spotting. Also make sure your display is calibrated correctly (at least brightness and contrast - mostly they are too high)

The ability to spot in this game depends a lot on daytime/weather/ground and the direction you are looking: against or away from the sun.

Edited January 7, 2017 by 216th_Jordan

[Lusekofte]

And yu have personal preferences , some are much better at spotting than others, those are usually the ones winning airbatles all the time

[TP_Jacko]

Also the game renders aircraft to about 10km.its ok for fighter size but he111 does seem to vanish suddenly. On clod i think i could spot out to 16km. Spotting is a skill i dont have but practice makes perfect.

 

I have not checked if latest patch with dx improves the 10km range

Edited January 7, 2017 by TP_Jacko

[ACG_Flyby]

Thanks for the replies. I'm glad to know my monitor's native rez is fine. I'll try turning off the HDR and SSAO too. I'd already checked contrast (increased) and brightness (dimmed it). I'll see what " I can see" after a test, preferably online. I want to get deeper into the sim as a slight change of pace from hitting Cliffs hard and heavy for so long (though I'll still fly the ACG  Sunday campaigns).

Can anyone recommend Nvidia settings for BoS?

thanks again,

Flyby out 

[=TBAS=Sshadow14]

in the end there is little need when there is a very clear 10km MAX spotting/render range for planes..

Very noticable when you watch a dogfight of 6+ planes just vanish out of the sky as you reach 10km away from them


This is not like War thunder were you could spot a single pixel taking off from his own Airfield while you are @30,000ft over 100km away

And yes i can made this up other week for my Squad.
Re these kind of apply as default High Quality/Performance Settings in NVidia Control Panel

The FXAA is a personal choice and based on your system
(tho remember that Nvidia FXAA is Far Superior in quality and lower usage cost to the Built in game 4 X MSAA 


Games config changes.
(they reset if you alter ingame options - note this config CANNOT be set to read only game will crash)

 

[KEY = graphics]
	adapter = 0
	bloom_enable = 0 (no game option to disable so i do it here)
	desktop_center = 1
	detail_rt_res = 2048 (default is 1K i set this to 2K tho 4K would be better if using 4k Skins)
	fps_counter = 1
	fps_limit = 0
	full_height = 1080  (Can alter your res to suit)
	full_width = 1920  (Can alter your res to suit)
	fullscreen = 1 (much better than borderless window - Also required for Vsync) 
	gamma = 0.80000 (If not using Reshade, Lower this to 0.7 to 0.8 Eg,0.75 works nicely)
	grass_distance = 0.00000 (Set this to 0 to turn OFF grass biggest fps killer in IL2 that why "Distant Grass = only 300FT" 
	hdr_enable = 0 (Not true HDR and causes lots of colour fade)
	land_tex_lods = 3 (this is land detail x4 going above this seems to do nothing)
	mgpu_compatible = 0
	multisampling = 0 (ingame anti A off with external SMAA or FXAA)
	or_enable = 0
	preset = 3
	ssao_enable = 0 (Ambient Occlusion Disabled - Its both low quality and IMHO not need in a flight sim)  
	vsync = 0 (ingame Vsync OFF External Vsync ON.)
	win_height = 768
	win_width = 1280

Edited January 7, 2017 by =r4t=Sshadow14

[216th_Jordan]

The FXAA is a post processing AA. it is not very great in Il-2 because you lose quite some detail in movement. (it can generally look nice of course) I tried a lot of settings over the last 3 years and came to the conclusion that the ingame AA does the job best, perfomance and graphics wise (I tried to improve spotting while getting best framerates).

 

My advice is though: Get Nvidia Inspector, it will let you edit settings that Nvidia control panel will not. Select the Battle of Stalingrad profile in the profile inspector and select: sparse grid supersampling (2x or 4x, depending on your graphics card). This will greatly reduce texture shimmering. It helps me with spotting when flying low due to less irritation.

Edited January 8, 2017 by 216th_Jordan

[Uriah]

'This is not like War thunder were you could spot a single pixel taking off from his own Airfield while you are @30,000ft over 100km away'

It is very hard to spot single pixel.   I would like a single pixel or two at 20km away.  Still hard to spot but just having it there would be nice.  

My eyes are old.  I would not be allowed anywhere near a real fighter plane.

[=TBAS=Sshadow14]

Uriah

The above does not matter here in IL2 Tho

You CANNOT Spot anything past 10km this is a hard coded limit (either from old game engine or for balance reasons to avoid eye sights variations)

At the in game 10km a plane is MUCH more than a single pixel something like a fighter is around 16-24 pixel from what i could measure in just MSpaint (and counting pixels myself manually)

[unreasonable]

I have to admit that I have tried all the various nvidea combinations that people have posted: and in the end the default settings that came with my 780 o/c worked best on my 1080p.

 

By all means try them out, but there is no Holy Grail.

[Willy__]

Another thing that makes great diff i spotting and people tend to forgot is the monitor. A bigger and better adjusted monitor will make spotting easier than a smaller one

[MadisonV44]

Setting your gamma to 0.65 up to 0.75 will increase your ability to spot a plane, even on a gloomy terrain.

The contact below will remain a little darker compared to the terrain in most of the case and will help you to spot better.

 

10 km radius expansion should the next improvement plan of the devs to take advantage of DX11. This is far more important for the gameplay versus grass or tiny details.

 

Actually this limitation reduce the game to a systematic dogfight approach whether you are in the bubble or not. For example, no chance for the bomber when they enter the wrong bubble. In other time we had the ability to apply a various bunch of strategies ... now when you see its too late.     

Edited January 8, 2017 by MadisonV44

[216th_Jordan]

Setting your gamma to 0.65 up to 0.75 will increase your ability to spot a plane, even on a gloomy terrain.

The contact below will remain a little darker compared to the terrain in most of the case and will help you to spot better.

 

I have to contradict you here If you set up your monitor correctly (either with the help of calibration pages or with an external device), gamma 1 should give the best results overall.

I flew a long time with gamma below 0.8 but once I calibrated my monitor correctly it did not help any more, on the contrary, in some situations spotting got even worse, especially in semi-dark settings. Also the game looks rather ugly with lower gamma, but that is personal taste.

 

What really makes a difference is if you got a color true monitor. I went from a rather cheap TN panel to a medium class IPS panel and the results were amazing. Small color nuances are a big deal in this sim.

[ACG_Flyby]

Seems like there are many roads to Stalingrad. Thank you all again for your input. Relative to BoS, I think, I'll have to do as many have suggested, and try various settings to see what works best for me. I'll keep in mind that I'm trying to clarify the contacts at 10m. I hope it's an agenda item for the Devs.

Flyby out

[MadisonV44]

I have to contradict you here If you set up your monitor correctly (either with the help of calibration pages or with an external device), gamma 1 should give the best results overall.

I flew a long time with gamma below 0.8 but once I calibrated my monitor correctly it did not help any more, on the contrary, in some situations spotting got even worse, especially in semi-dark settings. Also the game looks rather ugly with lower gamma, but that is personal taste.

 

What really makes a difference is if you got a color true monitor. I went from a rather cheap TN panel to a medium class IPS panel and the results were amazing. Small color nuances are a big deal in this sim.

 

Happy for you if you have a good result with gamma at 1.0

 

Personally this setting is 100% fine for me (.65).

I prefer invest in a good CGU to boost the game for the moment instead of buying an expansive true color monitor.

Personal taste and performance choice  

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

10 km radius expansion should the next improvement plan of the devs to take advantage of DX11. This is far more important for the gameplay versus grass or tiny details.

Sadly not that soon, Han said that dubbing draw distance will quadruple resources needed to do it in current net code version.

[SharpeXB]

I increased my display resolution from 1080p to UHD a year ago.

The increased resolution definitely helps spot and identify other objects in flight sims. No doubt.

But there are a few caveats. First of all, higher resolution doesn't make any objects bigger, ok that should be obvious but size is the chief attribute a distant contact can have. Also contrast and rendering quality are important and UHD doesn't do anything to improve that either. What higher resolution does do is allow you to identify different aircraft types or even their markings from farther away.

Cliffs of Dover (vanilla) had some problems with antialiasing and LODs which made distant aircraft very difficult to see. Now that 1CGS and TF are officially patching it I'm sure that aspect will be improved.

[MadisonV44]

Sadly not that soon, Han said that dubbing draw distance will quadruple resources needed to do it in current net code version.

 

Bad news, i will personally sacrifice a bunch of grass blades / high res skins on the altar of the gameplay with an extended radius   

 

Devs should do a special instance of the game just for screen shooters and farmers, because in real situation (closed cockpit, no EV) we'll never be close enough, even parked or taxiing to see the difference between 2 skins (and I don't speak about the grass). So you can imagine the gap when flying ! 

 

PS:  By the way grass is on minimum in my config and I completely forget the bubble effect when I immersed in the game.  

[Dakpilot]

You will certainly notice the quality difference when looking out of the window at your own aircraft when using 4K skins, it is a big immersion improvement for me, since you are in the cockpit all the time.

When they (4096x4096 mod skins) were introduced to old IL-2 it had little performance impact, and as yet I have not noticed any performance hit in BoS, 8 v's 8 (only tested with 8 in 4K as yet) will have to try with all 16 in 4K

 

sacrificing grass (only visible below 300M) would have little difference for the 4 times performance hit overall that doubling the view distance would, according to Dev info

 

DX11 has only just been introduced, maybe some further optimisation will allow a bit longer view distance in future, when they have had time to asses things better

 

the lower gamma the settings the worse the 'LOD bubble' will appear

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[MadisonV44]

DX11 has only just been introduced, maybe some further optimisation will allow a bit longer view distance in future, when they have had time to asses things better

+1 

 

Speaking about gamma : lowering the setting stay completly fine for me

With 8x Sparse Grid Supersampling my LOD are 1000% clearly defined. 

What do you mean by LOD bubble ? 

[Dakpilot]

The distance change of 3D forest etc, to texture only, within a 360 degree fixed area of aircraft (LoD bubble)

 

with low gamma the difference in colour/contrast can make this 'bubble of ground detail' around the aircraft more noticeable, even more so on winter maps

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[Blutaar]

Let me choose if i want to run the game 4 times slower with better viewdistance or not but not force me to do it and i really dont think that a damn pixel per plane at long ranges of 10km+ would have any impact at all on the performance.

Must be some engine limitation, hopefully its changeable for the future but we do have this for so long, i dont really believe in that.

[Dakpilot]

Let me choose if i want to run the game 4 times slower with better viewdistance or not but not force me to do it and i really dont think that a damn pixel per plane at long ranges of 10km+ would have any impact at all on the performance.

Must be some engine limitation, hopefully its changeable for the future but we do have this for so long, i dont really believe in that.

 

There has to be some form of level playing field, and a decent performance balance for average systems

 

is it fair to be able to spot planes at twice the distance if you run 2 x Titan X compared to a 'normal' PC?

 

handicapping the vast majority who play online would not be good for business, seeing aircraft at a longer range than others is the biggest advantage you can have

 

As an offline only option this would be fine, but rather impractical to have two different versions of the game

 

As far as a single pixel, this would not have significant performance issue, but then competitive online people will just run a 720P (or even less) res to get a bigger pixel, as happened before, and 2560P and above monitors are then a disadvantage

 

even though it has limitations, the current method gives a reasonable way of all people having a similar experience regards spotting aircraft,

 

just a small increase of a couple of KM which would be accessible to all without a bad performance hit would help a lot

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[ACG_Flyby]

I support any decision the Devs make that would increase the spotting distance beyond 10k. The engine was moved up to DX11-spec, so maybe with the new reserve of rendering power we all received, a little tweak to the spotting distance might squeeze just a bit more immersion out of the sim? Obviously I'm speaking my wishes, and desires. I make no claim to them being rooted in code-writing reality. I just wish it were so. If I could tweak CLiffs of Dover, maybe the Devs can make the sim respond to similar tweaks?

Flyby out

Edited January 8, 2017 by FlybyFlyby

[Blutaar]

Ok, there are some points but why not just make it a serverside setting?

Is it fair for the 2x Titan X user to be performance capped because the game cant render better distances on lower performances?

How is it working in DCS, if you ask me, there are far longer viewdistances there are also longer renderdistances, maybe its the engine 

i dont know but it just looks better for me and performance is very good.

Maybe there is something what can be done if you use a low 720p resolution so thats not a pixel at low res, just half a pixel or no pixel at all.

Yeah of course it will make 720p monitors kind of useless against more pixels, i dont know a solution but i feel this Sim needs better view/renderdistances.

Enough render for things like high alt bombing and spotting things in general and enough viewdistance for a better representation of the horizon, not just a bubble of fog around your aircraft.

But one thing, i still love this sim, thats why i want it to be better.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

Ok, there are some points but why not just make it a serverside setting?

Is it fair for the 2x Titan X user to be performance capped because the game cant render better distances on lower performances?

How is it working in DCS, if you ask me, there are far longer viewdistances there are also longer renderdistances, maybe its the engine 

i dont know but it just looks better for me and performance is very good.

Maybe there is something what can be done if you use a low 720p resolution so thats not a pixel at low res, just half a pixel or no pixel at all.

Yeah of course it will make 720p monitors kind of useless against more pixels, i dont know a solution but i feel this Sim needs better view/renderdistances.

Enough render for things like high alt bombing and spotting things in general and enough viewdistance for a better representation of the horizon, not just a bubble of fog around your aircraft.

But one thing, i still love this sim, thats why i want it to be better.

It is is not about drawing the dots, it's about server side objects physics calculations and amount of data which is going over the network. Maybe if they push some calculation into the client's side we will see some improvements. Other flight games use diffrent approaches  for solving this problem like superimposed dots as contacts regardles of the game scale, this solution is not great because contacts are visible to far for that size and distance.

I support any decision the Devs make that would increase the spotting distance beyond 10k. The engine was moved up to DX11-spec, so maybe with the new reserve of rendering power we all received, a little tweak to the spotting distance might squeeze just a bit more immersion out of the sim? Obviously I'm speaking my wishes, and desires. I make no claim to them being rooted in code-writing reality. I just wish it were so. If I could tweak CLiffs of Dover, maybe the Devs can make the sim respond to similar tweaks?

Flyby out

 It's not about Dx11 if it would be that it would be already done.

[Blutaar]

So it could be an engine limitation and maybe never gets better?

Thats my worst case scenario, hope its not. 

But thx anyway, im just a layman without any knowing of coding or game engines generally, i just hope for the best.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

So it could be an engine limitation and maybe never gets better?

Thats my worst case scenario, hope its not.

But thx anyway, im just a layman without any knowing of coding or game engines generally, i just hope for the best.

Devs are aware of this lilimitations and that there is no quick fix, eventually they will adress this problem.