General advice for spotting

[Giovanni_Giorgio]

1 minute ago, Birdman said:

You'll get a lot of hate doing that.

I think the kill to death ratio when I did that was 1:2 not in my favor. I was almost always inevitable bounced at some point. To all the folks I somehow managed to shot down: I was mostly playing with spotting MP to see what works and what does not.

[VR-DriftaholiC]

18 hours ago, mincer said:

I have a question for experienced pilots here. A common tactics to intercept bombers/attackers is to "sit on the traffic" from airfields to the target instead of hovering right over it. I find it insanely hard to spot anything this way. I did some experiments on popular servers, basically staying at the edge of flak range of enemy airfields on the expected route to the targets being attacked.

 

I recorded tracks, and I miss a ton of flights passing right below me. It is especially hard if I stay at mid altitude, like 3-5k. If I am lower (often because of clouds), the chances are a bit better, but it feels like playing Russian roulette. How do you guys do that?

Also, I noticed that when it is dark, like early in the morning or late in the evening, contacts are often visible as highly contrast turquoise dots. Why is that?

 

 

 

If the sun is behind you they will glow white/turquoise if the sun is behind them they will be black specks. Always keep the sun as an advantage.

[Giovanni_Giorgio]

Speaking about deferred shading, I believe there is a good chance the thing will actually become much worse.

[Tipsi]

5 minutes ago, mincer said:

Speaking about deferred shading, I believe there is a good chance the thing will actually become much worse.

You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about ?

[zdog0331]

2 hours ago, Tipsi said:

You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about ?

He is talking about performance of the game.  A quick go over as to what is going on is in the next patch the Devs will start using a different lighting system called deferred shading.  This lighting should make the game look better and the developers believe that the performance will improve, however due to the fact that this is an entirely different lighting system its possible that it will be harder on the systems while easier on others.  As to the actual effect on performance, overall its unknown to us and speculation at this point so the answer is we really don't know.  But the devs have stated that we should see a slight improvement in performance.

[Giovanni_Giorgio]

I think I understand what my problem is. I played many hours in 1946 flying fighters and formed certain tactical habits. They were based on the fact that it was possible to maintain reasonable situational awareness. However, this game is completely different. In this game you have to always assume that spotting is broken and you are basically blind no matter how hard you try (unless you cheat). This completely changes decision making.

[Tipsi]

7 hours ago, zdog0331 said:

He is talking about performance of the game

sorry, I thought he was speaking about abilty to spot other planes with the new Deferred Shading. No one will know, not even the devs know how this will affect spotting at the moment.

[216th_Jordan]

10 hours ago, zdog0331 said:

He is talking about performance of the game.  A quick go over as to what is going on is in the next patch the Devs will start using a different lighting system called deferred shading.  This lighting should make the game look better and the developers believe that the performance will improve, however due to the fact that this is an entirely different lighting system its possible that it will be harder on the systems while easier on others.  As to the actual effect on performance, overall its unknown to us and speculation at this point so the answer is we really don't know.  But the devs have stated that we should see a slight improvement in performance.

 

In general resource usage will be shifted somewhat from CPU to GPU. So if you have a good CPU but a crappy GPU your results could be worse. However usually the CPU is the bottleneck. Also the technology itself might yield performance increases per instructions.

[Giovanni_Giorgio]

3 hours ago, Tipsi said:

sorry, I thought he was speaking about abilty to spot other planes with the new Deferred Shading. No one will know, not even the devs know how this will affect spotting at the moment.

Yes. If it is going to be a big change, it will likely to have many consequences, and no one can say if spotting will get better or worse as the results.

[peregrine7]

18 minutes ago, mincer said:

Yes. If it is going to be a big change, it will likely to have many consequences, and no one can say if spotting will get better or worse as the results.

 

Clarity of lit effects is lower in fully deferred rendering, but this doesn't necessarily mean it will get harder to spot. Any of you who have tried a game that lets you switch between the two rendering methods will know what I mean - it can be done well but is often done poorly. Also our main method of AA is not possible in a fully deferred rendered pipeline.

Look, at the moment we don't know what the devs have planned. Perhaps it will be forward+, perhaps not. Just wait and see (and keep your fingers crossed because spotting is abysmal)

[Lusekofte]

I haven’t  a clue what deferred rendering is or does. 
But my understanding is that this “thing” is implemented in DCS, and people have commented on it. 
I have not noticed any difference and the spotting in that game is not better. 
I fly with Rift S 

[CAFulcrum]

This mess is why I would prefer to have an intelligent icon system that simulated what the pilot would see or notice, rather than leaving it up to the user end and their equipment.  You're never going to simulate actual visibility with a screen, it's not just a matter of pixel size but parallax and the effect of seeing a moving object against a non-moving background vs a screen that is constantly moving around.

 

At least the devs are looking at it.  I don't think there is ever going to be a graphical solution that matches realism.  I'd argue that an icon system that doesn't cheat (ie you only see the icon when your pilot would see a plane, and it changes its fidelity of information depending on how well the pilot sees them) is better than a graphical system that does (ie altering the natural appearance of the aircraft to make it more apparent.)

 

Graphically, they could do something to make the outline of an aircraft more apparent, either a lighter or darker edge or a motion-trail/blur of the object to sort of cue the eye that it's seeing something moving rather than static.

 

Icons wise, they could use something less obtrusive than glowing red/blue letters, like dots or distance-lines, or they could to some sort of pure dot or aircraft outline, and have them fade in and out of view depending on the pilot's accuity.  It might look sort of terminator-ish but you'll end up with a more accurate simulation and the code could be used to improve ai visibility as well.

 

Though I think the community largely prefers no icons, so I'd hate to see them waste resources on something no one uses.  But then again, how much of that is simply due to the fact that we have a somewhat rudimentary icon system?

[zdog0331]

30 minutes ago, CAFulcrum said:

This mess is why I would prefer to have an intelligent icon system that simulated what the pilot would see or notice, rather than leaving it up to the user end and their equipment.  You're never going to simulate actual visibility with a screen, it's not just a matter of pixel size but parallax and the effect of seeing a moving object against a non-moving background vs a screen that is constantly moving around.

 

At least the devs are looking at it.  I don't think there is ever going to be a graphical solution that matches realism.  I'd argue that an icon system that doesn't cheat (ie you only see the icon when your pilot would see a plane, and it changes its fidelity of information depending on how well the pilot sees them) is better than a graphical system that does (ie altering the natural appearance of the aircraft to make it more apparent.)

 

Graphically, they could do something to make the outline of an aircraft more apparent, either a lighter or darker edge or a motion-trail/blur of the object to sort of cue the eye that it's seeing something moving rather than static.

 

Icons wise, they could use something less obtrusive than glowing red/blue letters, like dots or distance-lines, or they could to some sort of pure dot or aircraft outline, and have them fade in and out of view depending on the pilot's accuity.  It might look sort of terminator-ish but you'll end up with a more accurate simulation and the code could be used to improve ai visibility as well.

 

Though I think the community largely prefers no icons, so I'd hate to see them waste resources on something no one uses.  But then again, how much of that is simply due to the fact that we have a somewhat rudimentary icon system?

War thunder actually does a semi decent job at this.  Basicly they make it so every plane at over x distance is a large black dot.  Large in this case is relative, but unlike the current system its a lot more noticeable.  VR does help with spotting in the sense that you do get parallax, however even with the high end one, you cannot spot at the same distnanced as with a monitor due to Resolution even with the index, but when they are at around 6 knots out you can see them quicker than with a flat screen because of that parallax.  

 

Either way i like the war thunder solution because it works and is not as intrusive as the il2 visibility system which makes the planes very large at distances which just looks wierd because it seems that the planes are much closer than they really are, and in vr they look massive.  EX: an i-16 appears to be the size of a football field at distance.  Its one of those things that doesn't get used in any server due to how annoying that problem was for a lot of people and it for the most part disliked, though some did enjoy it.  So its an optional setting you can enable.

Edited May 14, 2020 by zdog0331

[CAFulcrum]

25 minutes ago, zdog0331 said:

War thunder actually does a semi decent job at this.  Basicly they make it so every plane at over x distance is a large black dot.  Large in this case is relative, but unlike the current system its a lot more noticeable.  VR does help with spotting in the sense that you do get parallax, however even with the high end one, you cannot spot at the same distnanced as with a monitor due to Resolution even with the index, but when they are at around 6 knots out you can see them quicker than with a flat screen because of that parallax.  

 

Either way i like the war thunder solution because it works and is not as intrusive as the il2 visibility system which makes the planes very large at distances which just looks wierd because it seems that the planes are much closer than they really are, and in vr they look massive.  EX: an i-16 appears to be the size of a football field at distance.  Its one of those things that doesn't get used in any server due to how annoying that problem was for a lot of people and it for the most part disliked, though some did enjoy it.  So its an optional setting you can enable.

 

I disliked the 'enhanced visibility' for two reasons, the first you mentioned about the planes looking huge, and the second being that it didn't quite synch with zoom, and it became incredibly difficult to guage how far away a plane actually was and their size changed with zoom so I kept losing visibility anyhow.

 

I agree, I'd rather have warthunder's approach.  It isn't perfect though.  I think they're too apparent (for il2 at least; for warthunder they achieve what the game needs) and they do sort of just hover for a long time, though the transition into LOD models is pretty good.  But it does make you feel like you can spot aircraft as well as a person could.  If the dots were smaller and slowly zoomed into shape it would work better though.  Most sims have used shaped dots at distance, I was surprised when they decided to fully model the aircraft instead.

 

I feel like losing close planes to the ground is more of an issue than distance spotting though.  I haven't had too much trouble seeing far off aircraft when they're in the air, like on the FC server where people like to fly high and you can usually see the dots against the sky.  Conversely I had a career mission in BoS with a bf109F escorting low flying he111s and was losing them constantly.

 

I've always heard that ground based camo was found to be largely ineffective in the air, and had more to do with masking them while parked.  In IL2 it seems to be extremely effective.  The devs intended this based on their comments, did they go too far?

[SharpeXB]

4 hours ago, CAFulcrum said:

This mess is why I would prefer to have an intelligent icon system that simulated what the pilot would see or notice, rather than leaving it up to the user end and their equipment.  

The trouble is, there’s no such thing as a “realistic icon” anything that’s done, even just a dot, is going to over-enhance the target and draw your eye right to it. 

[Giovanni_Giorgio]

I think I figured it out. Right now, in most lighting conditions, the best and only way to spot enemies is to basically hang around friendly aaa or traffic heavy areas waiting for someone to be highlighted with tracers. Everything else is just a pointless waste of time. The exception is dusk or sunrise, when visibility is actually decent one can be more creative in actions e.g. trying to intercept bombers en route to targets. 

[zdog0331]

3 hours ago, mincer said:

I think I figured it out. Right now, in most lighting conditions, the best and only way to spot enemies is to basically hang around friendly aaa or traffic heavy areas waiting for someone to be highlighted with tracers. Everything else is just a pointless waste of time. The exception is dusk or sunrise, when visibility is actually decent one can be more creative in actions e.g. trying to intercept bombers en route to targets. 

thats a good way to learn to spot the aircraft, but you can learn to see them at all times of the day.  Its just difficult, though entirely possible with a 24" 1920X1080p lcd 60hz monitor 3 feet from your face in a trackIR setup or with vr (thats the setups i have played with and other setups may legitimately not be able to).  Planes tend to be a moving texture and scanning various areas by pausing your trackir and looking for movement is usually the best route.  With VR you don't need to do any pausing since your eye can percieve it pretty well with practice.  You will also notice that the texture for the planes is slightly different than the terrain and sky so you will notice it.  The sun does make it  more apparent since they tend to  almsot shimmer slightly, though other effects are noticeable without the sun.  Its very difficult at first and I used to be shocked by the things people could see.  But with practice you will eventually develop an eye for it.

 

edit: your tactic is also important to know as its a quick way of seeing planes.  But there are other ways to stack on top of that to make your spotting abilities even better.

Edited May 15, 2020 by zdog0331
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