On the new visibility system

[SharpeXB]

9 hours ago, III./SG77-G_Boelcke said:

I guess devs should tweak this feature: ask real pilots about visibility, 

Wow. You act as if the devs have never met any real pilots ?

 

 

[JonRedcorn]

I play on old computer from old days at 800x600 I don't think this is fair and wish for old system back. I also still read newspaper and get milk from cart. Please make fair! 

[peregrine7]

Just a note to those of you who were asking for contacts less than one pixel in angular size to fade based on opacity instead of disappearing.

That is exactly what happens in this new spotting model. Your prayers have been answered ahead of time. 

[Majakowski]

@Bremspropeller

 

The plane I saw from 15-20km on that occasion was very clear to make out while not giving attention to the skies whereas when zooming in it became nearly invisible. I could talk about seeing silhouettes from that range when you zoom in and deliberately concentrate on that spot. But having it visible crystal clear from the other side of the map but disappearing when zoomed is counterintuitive.

 

Also the size of the plane on the monitor (not just one pixel which would be something I could live with as I am aware of the limitations) in no way corresponds to the likes of way larger planes at lower distances from my experience looking after every plane in the sky for 30 years.

 

But this is just my view of the situation. Leaving no contrails has no meaning when the plane is visible all over the map like the Hindenburg.

 

But another thing I am curious about: does the color of the plane matter from these distances or is it just a dark speck in any livery? Because then it could be circumvented with flying in winter skin as this would lower the contrast to sky and clouds.

[Talisman]

15 hours ago, yardstickfb said:

As a VR user I am incredibly happy with the new spotting system. I can actually see aircraft at range and I can pick them out from ground clutter. 

Exactly the opposite for me

 

Talisman

[Semor76]

15 hours ago, SeaSerpent said:

Several times last night I saw some things that baffled me:  There were a lot of distant contacts that appeared to be contrailing, but they were well below contrailing altitudes and they weren't leaking fuel or coolant.  Then, when I got closer, they simply stopped streaming, leaving me a bit confused about what i had been seeing.   Similarly, there was quite a bit of stuff going on in the distance that looked like a "SAM launch", for lack of a better analogy.  

 

Aside from that though,  the glint off of wings is really good now, and it was really cool being able to see distant things against forests and ground from far off.

Had the same effect in single players missions.  Looks weird.

[Talisman]

14 hours ago, wumas0201 said:

As a VR user, I prefer the old visibility system. the new one is very horrible for me, I think it should be tweak as real life.

As a VR user too, visibility, particularly spotting air-to-air contacts, is now total pants!

Very disappointed with this at the moment.

 

Talisman

[216th_Jordan]

What's the current spotting distance for planes such as He-111? Realistically it should be incredibly hard to spot them more than 25km away. (strong reflections aside) 

 

Sadly away from my PC for the next 4 months. 

Edited October 2, 2019 by 216th_Jordan

[SYN_Vander]

8 hours ago, 56RAF_Talisman said:

As a VR user too, visibility, particularly spotting air-to-air contacts, is now total pants!

Very disappointed with this at the moment.

 

Talisman

 

What exactly is "pants"? You can't spot any aircraft or ????? 

[Goffik]

1 hour ago, SYN_Vander said:

 

What exactly is "pants"? You can't spot any aircraft or ????? 

 

Haha, it's a British slang term for "rubbish"... 

[SYN_Vander]

I know, but I don't understand if the complaint is about seeing the planes too easily or not all...

[Goffik]

1 hour ago, SYN_Vander said:

I know, but I don't understand if the complaint is about seeing the planes too easily or not all...

 

Ah ok, sorry. I don't know which he means either. As a VR player myself, the new visibility system has made spotting easier for me. Up until the patch I had little choice but to use the HUD markers as I couldn't see anything. Now, I can actually spot planes before the HUD markers even appear. For me that's great news, because for immersion's sake I want to be able to deactivate the markers altogether. So the new system gets a big thumbs up from me. 

[wumas0201]

7 hours ago, SYN_Vander said:

I know, but I don't understand if the complaint is about seeing the planes too easily or not all...

The point is not about seeing target easily or not, this is about real visibility.

Even you have great eyes like eagle eyes in real life, you still can not see the fighter 20km away, but now you can do that in the game.

It is counterintuitive.

I want to get some real combat experience from the game, that`s why I become a VR user. but now, I get those superman eyes in the game, this really brings me out of the game.

I know that new visibility system solves some visual problems and let` us spot targets more easily. but does it make a sense???

IL2 is not War thunder.

[RedKestrel]

Man there were like a million threads over the years about how we should be able to see fighters from 20 km away and now that we can people are arguing that we shouldn’t. I guess it’s to be expected.

 

[E69_geramos109]

Well I agree that is overdone. I can spot contact from 40 km away...

[[DBS]Browning]

15 hours ago, 216th_Jordan said:

What's the current spotting distance for planes such as He-111? Realistically it should be incredibly hard to spot them more than 25km away. (strong reflections aside) 

 

Sadly away from my PC for the next 4 months. 

 

There is no longer an answer to this question. 

When does a 111 change the colour of a single pixel? Almost certainly beyond 40km away, but that absolutly didn't mean it can be spotted. 

When will an average player be likely to spot a 111? That depends on the position of the sun and the brightness of the ground more than the plane's distance. 

When the sun is low in the sky, behind the spotter and the ground has no snow, the 111 can be speed easily from 35k+.

When the sun is high in the sky, the 111 is under a cloud shadow and there is snow on the ground... Maybe 15k. Maybe less. 

[JG700_Benek]

For me the biggest problem is the fact that when you are not max. zoom out/in the contacts start to get smaller/harder to see and they loose their dark shade. It makes reaquiring the target very hard once ie you change zoom to check six and try to get back to the target its damn hard to track it back thats the biggest pain. Overall the new system is a bit better coz you can see better but it needs big tweak to mid zoom contact visibility.

I think we all agree that the further you zoom the bigger to the dot should be, now it's not the case. I would love when devs can do contacts as much visible as the freakin shadows of the planes. I can see them better than planes and thats bullshit. The planes should be made darker thats why allmost all lower the gamma for. I dont care about realism here this is meant to be fun and since we cannot simulate real life vision whe should make efforts to see the planes better and most importantly to be able to track them and be able to reaquire the target easily.

[Ribbon]

Thanks to devs working on this it was much needed!

Some feedback; I too think it's a bit overdone, 40km spotting is too much.....on nice weather and conditions 25km (max30km) should be more realistic for small objects such as planes.

 

Also those contrails down low looking from far distance i believe are bug devs are going to fix.

[Mauf]

I agree it's an improvement. Now is the time for tweaks it I guess. I too find the long distance targets a bit too big. I also see the whitening of the targets at long range (made me think the Russians applied winter camo in autumn:D). Considering all the different responses to it, might there still be a huge influence of screen resolution at play here (which the devs have to compensate more for)? I'm using 1440p and find it almost where it should be. Somebody with 4k mentioned it looks good all across, I guess those who find it overdone play around 1080p or less?

 

Also it's great to hear that VR players find it an improvement. VR really was at a big disadvantage under the old system, I'll have to test the patch with my rift later.

Edited October 3, 2019 by Mauf

[Luftschiff]

Everything can be tweaked, but even as is it's a huge improvement. We've been asking for this for YEARS. This forum could be rescued from a sinking ship and start complaining about the colour of the rescue vessel before they're even on board. I find the mid-zoom area confusing too, but bloody hell - Great job devs, THANK you!

[JG4_dingsda]

19 minutes ago, Luftschiff said:

This forum could be rescued from a sinking ship and start complaining about the colour of the rescue vessel before they're even on board.

[peregrine7]

There are some conditions and times of day where the spotting appears completely broken.

 

CombatBox server, Eindhoven mission. Early morning with haze. Enemies can be seen taking off from their airfield as you take off from yours. All aircraft appear white (like, bright white) which makes it impossible to ID but easy to spot even single engine fighters at 30-40km. 

 

I have played at other times of day and it seems ok, big improvement from before.

 

[TWC_Ace]

They exaggerated. Ofcourse we need better visibility but not so far away. Also now its sometimes very hard to spot or ID plane which is much closer. Thats wrong. Whe using full zoom IN sometimes its ok sometimes plane is barely visible, then if you zoom out the icon is bigger. Odd.....

Also it seams that new visibility screwed most ppl with medium rigs. Maybe if they didnt exaggerate with visibility those guys would have less performance probs. Also the old "micro stutters in MP after big patch" is back. Randomly (player wise).

Also new sounds need tuning.

Yeah, but I love the new patch, in general.

Edited October 3, 2019 by =VARP=Tvrdi

[icecream]

I agree as well that targets appear too big from mid to long range, zooming in reverts it back to normal size.

I just played an escorting mission on the campaign and from mid-long range they do appear a little bit too big in my opinion.(unless it's a bug)

 

[216th_Jordan]

4 hours ago, Luftschiff said:

Everything can be tweaked, but even as is it's a huge improvement. We've been asking for this for YEARS. This forum could be rescued from a sinking ship and start complaining about the colour of the rescue vessel before they're even on board. I find the mid-zoom area confusing too, but bloody hell - Great job devs, THANK you!

 

That's not my concern though, love the increase in general. But game play wise these things are very impactful. Being a bomber guy made you prey before, so now I'm just hoping that this doesn't stop all the fun of the heavies. 

 

Being a dev in general is tough work and here even more so, that's because this game is so addictive, ? which makes frustration a quick problem. 

 

Edited October 3, 2019 by 216th_Jordan

[SCG_Limboski]

On 10/1/2019 at 9:50 AM, Gambit21 said:

Get a better monitor. At 4K I have no issues - contacts start as a tiny 4K pixel and slowly grow. Stop sniveling 

 

I'm sorry but this is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what I am experiencing on my 2K monitor.  Contacts far away, ~20k or so, look like giant Spruce Goose style winged blobs that are easily spottable when completely zoomed out and they seem like they are very close in distance (~3k).  However, when you try to zoom in on them they shrink into nothingness and are barely visible if at all.  This ruins immersion for me.

 

I sort of doubt the differences in our screen resolution are creating completely opposite phenomena.   Please make a video where you can demonstrate the object looks small initially and then gradually grows as you zoom in and not vice versa like me and almost everybody else here is experiencing.  I'm not "sniveling"...I'm just now experiencing much less realistic phenomena with the new spotting system versus the old one.

 

I agree with RedKestrel that it's ironic that many here were complaining about the hark 10k viewing limit for years and now many here are complaining that airplanes are too visible far out in the distance now.  Don't get me wrong, I definitely appreciate that the devs have addressed the 10k spotting limit and this VERY DIFFICULT problem  which is influenced by many factors in real life and also confounded by all the different hardware that people run IL-2 on.  However, I agree with many others here that the new spotting system is OVERDONE.  Ideally, a balance should be achieved between the old system and the new one.

 

Thanks for providing some technical articles on the topic G_Boelcke.  Below is one reference to a study that I think jives strongly with my own real life flying experience for spotting a large DC-3 where average detection distance was only 5.5 to 8.7 KM away when the observer did not know exactly where to look exactly:

 

Howell [5] carried out a field study in which pilots attempted to detect another aircraft (DC-3) approaching on a collision course. Over various conditions, the average distance at which detection by the pilot occurred (“detection distance”) was from 5.5 to 8.7 km. Of greater relevance to this study, the subject aircraft also carried an experimenter who knew exactly the approach angle of the target aircraft, and “kept constant vigil with his naked eye” until he detected the intruder aircraft. This “threshold distance”, over the same conditions, averaged from 17.3 to 23 km, about three times larger than the detection distance. We will return to these results later in this paper. Analyzing these data, Graham and Orr concluded that see and avoid failures were due primarily to failure to detect the target [1]. No attempt was made to predict aircraft visibility.

 

Edited October 3, 2019 by SCG_Limboski

[Mollotin]

New system is not perfect but i prefer it over the old one where u were able to see enemy planes just disappear even at ranges u would have liked to engage.

[Gambit21]

On 10/1/2019 at 6:02 PM, Cpt_Siddy said:

 

This current system is not "real", it is just approximation,, but we are working with finite pixels that cannot be subdivided beyond what our screens output and have to work with 

 

Yep

The concept of pixel size and render ability elude some.

 

You mean 4K can render a smaller object than 2k? Really? PROVE IT!!!

 

[JonRedcorn]

Apparently the odd scaling while using zoom is fixed in the hotfix haven't tried it myself yet.

[216th_Jordan]

2 hours ago, SCG_Limboski said:

Howell [5] carried out a field study in which pilots attempted to detect another aircraft (DC-3) approaching on a collision course. Over various conditions, the average distance at which detection by the pilot occurred (“detection distance”) was from 5.5 to 8.7 km. Of greater relevance to this study, the subject aircraft also carried an experimenter who knew exactly the approach angle of the target aircraft, and “kept constant vigil with his naked eye” until he detected the intruder aircraft. This “threshold distance”, over the same conditions, averaged from 17.3 to 23 km, about three times larger than the detection distance. We will return to these results later in this paper. Analyzing these data, Graham and Orr concluded that see and avoid failures were due primarily to failure to detect the target [1]. No attempt was made to predict aircraft visibility.

 

 

That is right, spotting something that is below 0.0003 radians is generally considered impossible for the human eye - and that is if you know where to look and that assumes a disk or balloon shaped object in diameter. Hence why a He-111 should not be visible above 25km at all and probably under standard conditions you would not be able to spot it over 10km a lot. Just try spotting airliners and compare their position using flightradar or something, you'll find that the ones you see are usually quite close and even a standard 737 is twice as big as a He-111.

 

Just saying, for the future this needs tweaking, but of course better spotting is better than worse spotting, gameplay wise.

 

 

2 minutes ago, Gambit21 said:

 

Yep

The concept of pixel size and render ability elude some.

 

You mean 4K can render a smaller object than 2k? Really? PROVE IT!!!

 

 

You filter single pixels then, eventually greying them out more and more.

[Guest deleted@83466]

Original deleted.  Posted about long range coolant leak visibility, but see it's been addressed in hotfix.  Awesome!

Edited October 3, 2019 by SeaSerpent

[SCG_Limboski]

On 10/3/2019 at 1:35 PM, Gambit21 said:

Yep    The concept of pixel size and render ability elude some.   You mean 4K can render a smaller object than 2k? Really? PROVE IT!!!

 

That's not what I said at all Gambit.  I said that the new viewing system results in objects getting SMALLER as you zoom in on them (the complete opposite of reality and what you said) and that the difference between our 2k and 4k monitors should not differ fundamentally for this phenomena.  Maybe the effect is less pronounced on your monitor but it still should clearly happen for you if you look closely enough--I have planes spanning like 6 or 7 pixels which go down to basically 1 or 2 pixels as I zoom in on them at some distances.   Anybody else with a 4k monitor want to resolve this?

 

Edit:  I've been experiencing a bug since the new patch in full screen mode that made the graphics appear as much lower resolution than they should be which may have exaggerated the effect I described above.

 

 

Edited October 6, 2019 by SCG_Limboski

[Lusekofte]

21 hours ago, Goffik said:

 

Ah ok, sorry. I don't know which he means either. As a VR player myself, the new visibility system has made spotting easier for me. Up until the patch I had little choice but to use the HUD markers as I couldn't see anything. Now, I can actually spot planes before the HUD markers even appear. For me that's great news, because for immersion's sake I want to be able to deactivate the markers altogether. So the new system gets a big thumbs up from me. 

I haven’t tried new patch yet. But I spotted planes easier with my Rift S than monitor 

with old system. I am curious what I find when coming home

[Gambit21]

13 minutes ago, SCG_Limboski said:

 

That's not what I said at all Gambit.  I said that the new viewing system results in objects getting SMALLER as you zoom in on them (the complete opposite of reality and what you said) and that the difference between our 2k and 4k monitors should not differ fundamentally for this phenomena.  Maybe the effect is less pronounced on your monitor but it still should clearly happen for you if you look closely enough--I have planes spanning like 6 or 7 pixels which go down to basically 1 or 2 pixels as I zoom in on them at some distances.   Anybody else with a 4k monitor want to resolve this?

 

I got you now.

I’m going to test this later.

[SCG_Wulfe]

13 minutes ago, SCG_Limboski said:

 

That's not what I said at all Gambit.  I said that the new viewing system results in objects getting SMALLER as you zoom in on them (the complete opposite of reality and what you said) and that the difference between our 2k and 4k monitors should not differ fundamentally for this phenomena.  Maybe the effect is less pronounced on your monitor but it still should clearly happen for you if you look closely enough--I have planes spanning like 6 or 7 pixels which go down to basically 1 or 2 pixels as I zoom in on them at some distances.   Anybody else with a 4k monitor want to resolve this?

 

Exactly!

Gambit, it's not that we are disputing the fact that a 4k monitor has the ability to display a smaller pixel than a 2k... this discussion is not about the vanishing point of a single pixel.

 

The  issue that was being raised; (that was supposedly just addressed by the Devs in the current hotfix) was that planes showing as more than a single pixel were being scaled to show as larger to aid in spotting. This was allowing people to see aircraft at ranges and in conditions that they never should be able to in real life.

 

Essentially, it was creating a constant single object zoom on distant aircraft that was actually significant enough that when you used the in-game zoom to zoom on them, it made them appear smaller as the effect was removed. 

 

Edit* sorry was typing this while you responded, I see you understand what he was saying now. 

Edited October 3, 2019 by SCG_Wulfe

[Gambit21]

I see - thank you for the clarification.

It’s something I was actually curious about early on but never tested on a lower res monitor.

[Legioneod]

Honestly the new visibility range is a huge improvement imo, I can finally see at decent ranges and it allows me more time to plan my attack/defense.

[216th_Jordan]

Great thing, seems like the biggest problem has directly been addressed:

 

"7. Airplanes long-range visibility algorythm was corrected to minimize plane size amplification effect;" 

[=LD=Strat]

 

[=LD=4brkfast]

The question for spotting I would ask:

 

Do you want players to play this game regularly? Or do you wish smaller numbers?

 

The reason why these spotting issues need to be addressed is most people are not on VR or 2k or 4k. It's not a compromise either, this is the majority of the potential customer base. So the players that poo poo spotting issues and whom selfishly view what they have as 'standard' need to evaluate their stance.

 

By poo pooing this subject you are neglecting potentially hundreds of players. Proof is in the pudding.

 

The last few days have been 400~ players. Compared to what? 100? No contest.