Blur background around planes to improve spotting

[coconut]

A hot topic these days is the difficulty of tracking planes at relatively close distance. For me, it has always been problematic to follow planes that I have spotted when they fly over a forest. I believe the problem is due to the noise introduced by rendering contrast-rich shapes such as trees at a resolution that can't properly render all details. When the plane and its camouflage become small enough that rendering them also produces noise, it becomes very hard to distinguish the two, as noise blends with noise.

 

Here is an attempt to address this problem by reducing the noise of the background, using blur.

 

First, the original screenshot

 

Then with a small blurred circle around the plane

 

Using a larger circle

The proper solution might be to apply a low-pass filter on the textures and shapes to render before rendering them, but I can't easily reproduce the effects of doing that, and I'm not sure how that would be implemented. Applying blur as a post-processing step, but only on the ground, may be easier to implement, and I think it helps.

 

The controllability of this effect using user/server settings is a point I'm intentionally leaving out.

[[DBS]Browning]

I had a play around with other possibilities.

Of course, some may not work as well against other backgrounds. If someone wants to provide me with suitable screenshots of planes, I can make any effect requested against any background.

Default

Extra dark halo

Darker plane

Dark Halo

High contrast plane

Brighter plane

Bright halo

Fog removal (bit of a guess)

Edited May 9, 2020 by [DBS]Browning

[Lusekofte]

I answered another tread , and have to bump this one up again. I hope your into something, but this will probably not help with disappearing planes and zoom I guess. 
For me it is also important that one do not see planes on the other side of the map as white giant butterflies 

[coconut]

I'm not fond of playing with contrast and colours of planes, because 1) you can't make it work in all lighting conditions 2) it's hard to maintain, every time you change something in the rendering engine you risk adverse effects and 3) plane looks are important, and good looks are typically achieved by realistic physical light modelling, which all forms of fiddling with colour and contrast risk messing up.

[[DBS]Browning]

I think the ideal solution is one that goes completely unnoticed by anyone who isn't aware of the technical details of it.

[Velxra]

The only feasible bypass of the spotting issue is the black halo outline combined with a light white halo outline to reduce the thick black outline around the plane. It looks horrid, however it does allow you to see planes out to 10k and black outline helps with making planes more distinctive over forested areas. Until the new render is released there is little else we can adjust within the limitations of the game itself. For those curious to try my settings out, just check my performance guide and then read the reshade 2020 section. 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Geronimo553

[SharpeXB]

No. Just no...

There are better ways I’m sure with color depth and shading etc. but nothing artificial. That would have the effect of over-enhancing the targets

 

It’s really apparent, with the number of times I get zapped in MP that nobody sure has any trouble seeing me.

 

 

[Velxra]

1 minute ago, SharpeXB said:

No. Just no...

There are better ways I’m sure with color depth and shading etc. but nothing artificial. That would have the effect of over-enhancing the targets

 

It’s really apparent, with the number of times I get zapped in MP that nobody sure has any trouble seeing me.

 

 

 

Sure there are other and more better ways. But that is what we are limited to adjusting. We can only adjust the outline of planes via black/white sharpening. If there is another method that works, I am unaware of it. Of course we can alter all shades to be a little darker however that becomes counterintuitive very quickly. 

[Chief_Mouser]

I don't have a beef with spotting aircraft over trees; it should be difficult IMO, especially if the plane is camouflaged. What I don't like is not seeing an aircraft fairly close to me against a bright blue sky. ? I HATE having icons on, but watching after action tracks with them showing I'm simply amazed at all of the stuff that I didn't see around me, and not of all it is down to bad situational awareness. ?

[Lusekofte]

I would not mind a blue and red dot appearing in a distance you should be seeing a airplane and that dot only shows in windows and not panels.  
As a option for servers and difficulty. 
I often use that in DCS. It would make things much easier an fair. You can still sneak in to someone and bombers can still get through. 

[coconut]

54 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

No. Just no...

There are better ways I’m sure with color depth and shading etc. but nothing artificial. That would have the effect of over-enhancing the targets

 

It’s really apparent, with the number of times I get zapped in MP that nobody sure has any trouble seeing me.

 

 

 

The probability of being seen by someone is higher than the probability of seeing a particular plane. And increasing the probability of seeing a particular plane will also increase the probability of someone seeing you. But that's not a problem. From a fun perspective, I'd rather see and be seen that be blind amongst the blind. Looking at replays, blind among the blind seems to be the more common scenario.

 

From a realism perspective, I think we would benefit from increasing the probability of spotting/being spotted.

 

I'm not sure if people understand that, but the relatively low resolution of screens (including 4K) with respect to the amount of details that is rendered produces what is effectively noise, which makes it hard to make out silhouettes. Try to force a relatively high detailed model and texture of a tree in 10x10 pixels, and you end up with a forest that looks a bit like lichen, or mould, IMHO. I suspect GPUs, memory and rendering algorithms have gained in power faster than we have gained in pixel density in our screens.

People sometimes reflect on how easier it was to spot planes in older sims. This disparity could be the reason.

 

 

24 minutes ago, 216th_Cat said:

I don't have a beef with spotting aircraft over trees; it should be difficult IMO, especially if the plane is camouflaged. What I don't like is not seeing an aircraft fairly close to me against a bright blue sky. ? I HATE having icons on, but watching after action tracks with them showing I'm simply amazed at all of the stuff that I didn't see around me, and not of all it is down to bad situational awareness. ?

 

Regarding camouflage: Right, and I think/hope the second image achieves that. I would need to see it animated to get a better idea of whether the blurry area is easily seen when not looked directly at (ideally it wouldn't).

 

For the problem of plane against sky, I think new lighting algorithms might affect the result, and at the point we are, we'd better wait and see. But the noise-on-noise problem isn't going away unless trees are made "smoother".

Edited May 9, 2020 by coconut

[[DBS]Browning]

For my money, the dark halo is the best so far. I suspect this will work well against all backgrounds as well.

I don't think it would be especially noticeable either.

Edited May 9, 2020 by [DBS]Browning

[Lusekofte]

15 minutes ago, [DBS]Browning said:

For my money, the dark halo is the best so far. I suspect this will work well against all backgrounds as well.

I don't think it would be especially noticeable either.

Black flags are most popular among fishermen in Northern Norway to mark their equipment at sea
they show against any background. In any light and lack of it
So you might be right

Edited May 9, 2020 by 216th_LuseKofte

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, coconut said:

From a fun perspective, I'd rather see and be seen that be blind amongst the blind.

Then play with icons enabled. But this game doesn’t need another divisive visibility setting. The visibility “issue” is mostly a self induced problem created by players themselves and not the game. Again it’s totally clear to be after getting zapped multiple flights in a row that none of my opponents have any trouble seeing me. And I don’t have trouble picking them out either. 
Sure anything can be improved on and if you ask me what could be done to solve green planes against green trees, the answer is moving to HDR and a 10-bit color gamut. Many current games have this, in fact the only games I own which don’t are these flight sims. 
And it’s supposed to be difficult to see aircraft like in the OP screenshot (which I can see) because it’s camouflaged! Why do you think it’s painted like that? To make it harder to see! 

[DD_Arthur]

3 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

No. Just no...

There are better ways I’m sure with color depth and shading etc. but nothing artificial. That would have the effect of over-enhancing the targets

 

I agree.

[[DBS]Browning]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

my opponents have any trouble seeing me. 

 

That would be because your opponents are usually the AI. 

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, [DBS]Browning said:

 

That would be because your opponents are usually the AI. 

No in multiplayer. 

[[DBS]Browning]

What server do you fly on most?

[SharpeXB]

54 minutes ago, [DBS]Browning said:

What server do you fly on most?

Combat Box