The argument for more widespread use of Alternate Plane Visibility in VR

[VR-DriftaholiC]

Edit: In the testing done in this thread I realized that with optimal graphics settings you can spot planes outside the 10KM "bubble" regardless of Alternate Visibility being on or off. The main problen is the graphics settings required to do this leaves the game looking sub par and requires strong hardware. This is especially true in VR.

 

The 10 kilometre bubble is a myth!

I can reliably spot planes to 25km and further WITHOUT Alternate Visibility.

 

Alternate Visibility mainly allows people with under performing computers and headsets to spot at the same distance as someone with a very optimized setup. By making the planes physically render with more pixels it becomes possible to use FXAA or a 40KM draw distance and still see the aircraft beyond 10KM. 

 

With VR headsets slowly gaining resolution and FOV this will inevitably become invalid. However, as it stands right now it's very difficult to find targets without in-game aids. The main reason is the available pixels per degree of view (PPD). I've seen it said that the equivalent level to real human vision would be about 60+ PPD with about 220+ degrees FOV. The current flagship headsets offer around 10-17 PPD. For reference this is more than the difference between a HD (1920x1080) display and a 8K (7680 × 4320) display of the same size. To understand what I'm trying to describe to any non VR users reading this thread imagine a large format display like a 75" TV at 1080p vs 8K. 

 

VR zoom negates this lack of detail by enlarging your view and thus the target and number of pixels rendering it by approximately 10X. This works for targets in close to medium ranges in game. You may have noticed that in some cases the target is far enough away that zooming in only "brings the background closer" and doesn't increase the size of the target. This seems to be an instance where the polygons that make up the target are only a fraction of a pixel wide and thus much of that zoom is "lost" for lack of a better word, by not increasing the amount of pixels that render the plane. These are the ranges that Alternate Visibility would be increasing the size of the polygons that make up the plane so that it will render it in with more pixels. While this makes the planes larger at far distances, that additional size only further simulates the 60+ PPD that you would be able to resolve a target with your human eyes at the cost of it appearing enlarged. 

 

I understand there is some weirdness about the distances alt-vis engages at and how it's affected by zoom. Zooming in can pull the target into the "range" that alt-vis no longer expands the target size if they are just on the edge of the effect. While it can be off-putting you wouldn't be able to identify a target at those ranges so it may be more realistic despite the jarring effect. The fact that you can't combine FOV zoom and alt-vis on far targets it probably a good thing even though it's something that seems to be misunderstood by the community as a whole. 

 

-Alt-Vis caters to a wider range of PC hardware.

 

I think that fact is very important. It will allow someone to spot planes at the same distances regardless of the resolution or quality of their headset or monitor or graphical settings as some may be limited by their ability to run MSAA vs FXAA or have a Horizon Draw Distance at this level. 

 

I hope that server owners take this into consideration and enable alt-vis on their servers. It only increases accessibility to multiplayer by those in VR as well as respects the time spent flying around looking for a fight.

 

I hope that developers will consider options that allow alt-vis to potentially be set by servers as: on, off, vr-only. This third option may address some complaints that many players on screens may see as an undue advantage on 2D screen. I want to thank the developers for the fixes to VR in the most recent patches and not discounting the VR community.

 

To those doubters users on steam are now nearly the same percentage as those with 4K monitors. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

Edited June 11, 2020 by VR-DriftaholiC

[Mewt]

The problem is that not all VR users agree that the Alternate Visibility is "better".

 

I'm fairly certain that Red Flight; the guys that run Combat Box, who are all mostly VR users, created a poll for their servers VR users.

 

The poll came down heavily in favour of using Standard Visibility.

 

@Alonzo is that roughly right?

[FTC_Mephisto]

Fully agree. Alternate Plane Visibility is really a godsend for VR users. I really see huge positive difference between my coop server where I train with my wingman / Berloga and over servers which do not have Alternate Plane Visibility.

 

One reason I thought Alternate Plane Visibility is not so widely spread is the hit on performance. Is this in case? 

[Beazil]

I don't think so Mephisto.  Not the performance hit ( actually this is the first time I've heard that argument) so much as some feel strongly that it is "gamey" to be able to see artificially enlarged planes across the map.

 

I heavily caution differences between monitor and VR user as much as is possible - .  That's just my opinion, but I believe it will be reflected by the majority of the community.

Decisions about whether to enable or disable alternative visibility is left to the server administrators to decide, and I'm assuming they do so based on feedback from other users and of course the type of environment they want for their servers.  The general feedback from users I've observed is that alternate vis not generally liked by many.  For me it's not an issue.  If I'm playing on an icons on server for example, I accept my opponent can see me as readily as I can see them.  Same for any setting.

[SharpeXB]

14 hours ago, VR-DriftaholiC said:

 

I hope that developers will consider options that allow alt-vis to potentially be set by servers as: on, off, vr-only.

I can’t imagine most players want to let only the VR users see targets from across the map. Whatever setting is used should apply to all. 
Also as far as I can tell with AV, although it’s hard to test, the more you increase resolution, the less effect it has. Meaning in 4K I can’t see any difference (Berloga is running AV right?) that would also mean users of an HP Reverb or other HMDs running a high pixel density would see no difference with AV. I don’t know if anyone has tested that. AV is a dysfunctional setting to begin with and wasn’t really intended for release. Most players do not prefer it.

14 hours ago, VR-DriftaholiC said:

 

To those doubters users on steam are now nearly the same percentage as those with 4K monitors. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

Steam is of course sampling every user and casual gamer. The usage % for VR in flight sims is certainly much higher than the overall 1.92% shown on their survey. Navigraph has it at 11-12%

Edited June 3, 2020 by SharpeXB

[HansBlitz]

Have used a Rift CV1 since July 2017. I spot better than the friends who fly on a monitor. All.i can say about alternative visibility is Hell No. When that was first introduced, I could take off from rear field and see enemies take off from their fields - online MP. 

 

Bummer some VR users have issues spotting but making the visibility absurd is not a good thing.

[apollon01]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

Navigraph has it at 11-12%

True. And let's not forget that their survey was aimed primarily at civil simmers (and tube-liners above all).

 

For instance Il2 almost never figured among possible answers and DCS time to time.

 

So I think the real VR share stands still a bit higher.

[Alonzo]

13 hours ago, Mewt said:

The problem is that not all VR users agree that the Alternate Visibility is "better".

 

I'm fairly certain that Red Flight; the guys that run Combat Box, who are all mostly VR users, created a poll for their servers VR users.

 

The poll came down heavily in favour of using Standard Visibility.

 

@Alonzo is that roughly right?

 

I don't think we did a poll, it was more that the admin team, Red Flight, and prominent/skilled pilots in the community helped us evaluate both modes and we ended up choosing alt-vis off. But there was more to it than that -- the dev team released a patch with new visibility in it, the community went bananas, and the dev team ended up saying "we don't have time to fix this, every time we try to do something the forums descend into chaos, we'll leave the mode as an on/off option." (Remind you of anything more recent?)

 

Alt-viz has some pros and cons. The 'pro' is that because it balloons far contacts, you can see more, the server feels more lively, you can find fights and action more easily. The 'cons' are that because it messes with LOD scaling you get some really weird effects -- sometimes zooming in on a target makes it shrink in size -- and because you have so many contacts to worry about your SA is arguably reduced because you're tracking contacts that are a long way away and not a threat to you. And if you're a ground attacker your job is super hard because people can literally see you taking off from your airfield before heading to target, there's no hiding.

 

So we turned it off, and other servers followed suit.

 

I get very frustrated when I see forum users arguing with each other about spotting and ID because alternate vis is an excellent example of what ends up happening. I think a spotting solution roughly halfway between standard and alt-viz would be great -- slightly enhanced viz of targets at range without some of the more strange effects. But because the community had posted nasty crap on the forums and descended into childish yelling, the dev team said "we're not going to develop that feature any further, we just get shouted at, it's a lose-lose, we'll spend dev time on something else."

 

As for performance, I believe this is client rendering, not anything to do with the server. So as long as you don't have a potato PC, performance is going to be identical in either mode, more or less.

[dburne]

Alternate Plane Visibility - what is this, something to do with multiplayer?

[TheSNAFU]

1 hour ago, dburne said:

Alternate Plane Visibility - what is this, something to do with multiplayer?

 

1 hour ago, dburne said:

Alternate Plane Visibility - what is this, something to do with multiplayer?

Dburne, it’s a setting the devs added to the game that changes visibility so things appear a bit larger so they can be seen better. It has some impacts such as when zooming in planes at certain distances disappear. It’s in one of the game setting menus but I don’t recall which. 

[VR-DriftaholiC]

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

I can’t imagine most players want to let only the VR users see targets from across the map. Whatever setting is used should apply to all. 
Also as far as I can tell with AV, although it’s hard to test, the more you increase resolution, the less effect it has. Meaning in 4K I can’t see any difference (Berloga is running AV right?) that would also mean users of an HP Reverb or other HMDs running a high pixel density would see no difference with AV. I don’t know if anyone has tested that. AV is a dysfunctional setting to begin with and wasn’t really intended for release. Most players do not prefer it.

Steam is of course sampling every user and casual gamer. The usage % for VR in flight sims is certainly much higher than the overall 1.92% shown on their survey. Navigraph has it at 11-12%

 

-I don't see Alt-Vis on Berloga, Go play some SP campaigns with it on and then come talk.

 

-The game renders planes at the same distance regardless of alternate visibility on or off. 

 

-The resolution has zero effect on the size planes appear with alt-vis. You can test this yourself by running the game at a lower resolution. I've run with SS beyond the resolution of a Reverb and the sizes remain consistent. 

 

I really gotta say it sounds like you haven't spent any time using the setting or testing with it. It's nice to see you on multiplayer servers lately though!

 

edit: Actually, it sounds like a lot of commentators on this thread are referring to an older state of alt-vis. Please go test. Try with icons enabled so you can switch them off and actually see the distance they render in and the sizes. Your opinions may change. 

 

@Alonzo I'm not advocating anyone shout at the server owners. We should hold them with the upmost respect. They enable this multiplayer action as much as the developers of the game do. I don't think making an argument for a setting is necessarily a bad thing.

 

Edited June 3, 2020 by VR-DriftaholiC

[dburne]

54 minutes ago, TheSNAFU said:

 

Dburne, it’s a setting the devs added to the game that changes visibility so things appear a bit larger so they can be seen better. It has some impacts such as when zooming in planes at certain distances disappear. It’s in one of the game setting menus but I don’t recall which. 

 

Ok thanks, I did not see anything in the game graphics menu when I looked earlier, will have another look in it tomorrow.

[Alonzo]

50 minutes ago, VR-DriftaholiC said:

 

@Alonzo I'm not advocating anyone shout at the server owners. We should hold them with the upmost respect. They enable this multiplayer action as much as the developers of the game do. I don't think making an argument for a setting is necessarily a bad thing.

 

Oh I wasn't taking it that way, I was recounting a story of when the developers tried to improve spotting and the community reacted badly, so the developers stopped investing time in that feature. You make a perfectly reasonable suggestion about servers maybe considering alt-viz. I have to admit I have not tried it since it originally came out, so it might have been tweaked since then.

1 minute ago, dburne said:

 

Ok thanks, I did not see anything in the game graphics menu when I looked earlier, will have another look in it tomorrow.

 

It's in the Realism settings, not graphics. It's basically a difficulty setting, like alt (old) physiology.

[dburne]

7 minutes ago, Alonzo said:

 

It's in the Realism settings, not graphics. It's basically a difficulty setting, like alt (old) physiology.

 

Ah ok thanks, I will have to check it out.

 

Edit: Just had a quick look, yeah I see it there - mine is checked by default.

Edited June 3, 2020 by dburne

[SharpeXB]

3 hours ago, VR-DriftaholiC said:

Go play some SP campaigns with it on and then come talk.

I think I did try a Career mission with it on but didn’t notice anything. And played online when it was on servers and didn’t notice any effect there either. It’s a hard feature to test because the Quick Mission has a max range of 10km which is too close to see the effect. 
 

It wasn’t just the community reaction which caused AV to be made optional. The Devs themselves particularly AnPetrovich didn’t like it either. They felt it wasn’t realistic. 

Edited June 4, 2020 by SharpeXB

[VR-DriftaholiC]

Quote

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.

 

We don't have a DC-3 yet but the JU-52 is the about same wingspan. I've never used the editor but maybe someone can whip up a test mission and see which setting allows for 17.3-23 km detection distance knowing it will arrive on a collision course.

Edited June 4, 2020 by VR-DriftaholiC

[Alonzo]

15 hours ago, VR-DriftaholiC said:

 

We don't have a DC-3 yet but the JU-52 is the about same wingspan. I've never used the editor but maybe someone can whip up a test mission and see which setting allows for 17.3-23 km detection distance knowing it will arrive on a collision course.

 

Here you go. Crack it open in the editor if you want to change the plane types. Current missions is a G14 trying to spot incoming Ju-52s.

 

I think you're going to have trouble at > 10km, I'm not 100% convinced the engine is rendering planes further than that in single player. But give it a go.

 

 

Ju-52-Spotting-Test.zip

[RedKestrel]

21 hours ago, VR-DriftaholiC said:

 

-I don't see Alt-Vis on Berloga, Go play some SP campaigns with it on and then come talk.

 

-The game renders planes at the same distance regardless of alternate visibility on or off. 

 

-The resolution has zero effect on the size planes appear with alt-vis. You can test this yourself by running the game at a lower resolution. I've run with SS beyond the resolution of a Reverb and the sizes remain consistent. 

 

I really gotta say it sounds like you haven't spent any time using the setting or testing with it. It's nice to see you on multiplayer servers lately though!

 

edit: Actually, it sounds like a lot of commentators on this thread are referring to an older state of alt-vis. Please go test. Try with icons enabled so you can switch them off and actually see the distance they render in and the sizes. Your opinions may change. 

 

@Alonzo I'm not advocating anyone shout at the server owners. We should hold them with the upmost respect. They enable this multiplayer action as much as the developers of the game do. I don't think making an argument for a setting is necessarily a bad thing.

 

I believe Berloga does use alt vis. Big contacts at long range, shrinking as you get closer, inverted zoom effect, etc. Wildly different from how contacts appear on other servers like CB. I don't think there's been a new version of alt vis or any work done on it, at least it has not had any patch notes. Though the deferred rendering may have had a big impact on how contacts look at long range - maybe it got rid of the 'white butterflies' effect? If so one of my biggest beefs with it is gone.

@AlonzoI think you are probably right when it comes to alt vis. I don' t believe that alternate visibility is truly a fundamentally different spotting system, to me its pretty clear its just scaling applied at far distances overlaid on the system we have now. When I flew with it on during CB's 'test phase' I had all the problems regular visibility has with contacts getting lost against clutter at close range or disappearing near clouds, etc.

 If the scaling were dialed down so we didn't get that weird sense of not knowing how far a plane was from us (which as you said made SA worse because it was never clear what was a threat) and we got a 'happy medium' things would be great. As it is the new rendering has IMO made spotting contacts against the ground quite a bit easier, and reaquiring lost ones as well. Combined with an alt vis at long ranges that wasn't so over the top I feel like we might have an ideal spotting system. Like, juuuuust enough scaling that you could pick something out at a reasonable range and track it, but not so much it got stupid - we would have to have patience with feedback and tweaking. Of course anything with a whiff of subjectivity is a minefield and I don't blame the devs much for not whistling as they walk through it.

[VR-DriftaholiC]

It's impossible to spot a plane further then 9.8km for me with regular settings. 

 

With Alt-Vis I've been able to spot the plane at 23km and 30km knowing where to look buy using the radar first. 

 

With regular knowing where the plane was at on radar first and looking to find it, even cheating and sticking my head out of the cockpit it visually pops in just under 10km. The 10km bubble is very real without Alt-Vis

 

With Alt-Vis at 20ish km out the plane is a hazy spot hollow in the center if I didn't know where to be looking I would have missed it and zooming in makes it dissapear. 

 

We can confirm planes do exist outside the 10m sphere with alt-vis so I assume they do without. 

 

I'm going to have to pull the starting distance further back to see if these 40km accounts are true but I doubt it by how blurry and feint the plane was a 30km. Did migoto exist at the same time?

 

I'll try some blind testing by not looking where to find the plane as well. I'm sure it will be quite a bit harder. But I've gotta say alt seems more alike to what I can spot in the real. It was crazy looking over Antwerpen knowing there was a plane there somewhere and not being able to even catch a glint until it poped in.

 

Edited June 6, 2020 by VR-DriftaholiC

[SharpeXB]

I tried that test mission and honestly I can’t tell the difference either way. There are so many variables to spot something even in a simple mission like this, like just the way I happen to be looking it’s impossible to make a conclusion. Maybe half the attempts in either setting I don’t see the 52 at all. 
With AV on, I don’t instantly see some big blob on the horizon and all the times I ran AV I didn’t see it at all. The time I saw it in normal vis I just happened to look that direction and it was very close. 
Like I said, this setting is very hard to actually test. For me anyways. 

[dburne]

I fly SP, and find I like the alternate visibility myself.

[SharpeXB]

I tried this in 1080p too (upscaled to 4K though)

still can’t tell any difference between Normal and Alt Visibility. Hmmm

I see the 52 at about 9km either way. That’s just the range I happen to see it at, not maybe the max range. Maybe the test should have a whole row of 52s. You may just miss seeing the single aircraft at all no matter what setting so it’s hard to compare. 

Edited June 6, 2020 by SharpeXB

[[DBS]TH0R]

Alternate visibility is flawed because it renders contacts at unrealistically long distances, and it does it in a very ugly way (i.e. ballooning effect).

 

It does have one feature that I and many others feel should be a standard feature across all flight sims today, especially with lessons learned from past titles - that is rendering contacts visible no matter the zoom level. Also known as "inverted zoom". This gives the players ability to use wide zoom and more closely mimic real peripheral vision. Not ideal and not perfect, but it works and has been working for years in other sims.

 

The current default visibility is lacking in many areas, with which I will not soil this thread with. In light of the above, contacts tend to disappear depending on zoom level being the most glaring fault of the "default" system.

 

TL;DR investing resources in further enhancing either systems is a waste. A compromise is sorely needed, one that simulates realistic visibility and more importantly doesn't split the community like the two we currently have. Frankly, I don't know of any other sim that took this route...

Edited June 6, 2020 by [DBS]TH0R

[VR-DriftaholiC]

10 minutes ago, [DBS]TH0R said:

Alternate visibility is flawed because it renders contacts at unrealistically long distances, and it does it in a very ugly way (i.e. ballooning effect).

 

I would argue that:

On 6/3/2020 at 9:08 PM, VR-DriftaholiC said:

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.

Shows that it's

 

actually not unrealistically long. Maybe it is ugly but maybe better than a icon or a mask like Warthunder.

 

14 minutes ago, [DBS]TH0R said:

It does have one feature that I and many others feel should be a standard feature across all flight sims today, especially with lessons learned from past titles - that is rendering contacts visible no matter the zoom level. Also known as "inverted zoom". This gives the players ability to use wide zoom and more closely mimic real peripheral vision. Not ideal and not perfect, but it works and has been working for years in other sims.

I'm confused by this. It does not render contacts at Alt-Vis size when you zoom in when they are affected by Alt-Vis. This may be a good thing as it might allow Identification at these long ranges if it did. Despite the fact that it's odd and feels like a bug.

 

17 minutes ago, [DBS]TH0R said:

TL;DR investing resources in further enhancing either systems is a waste. A compromise is sorely needed, one that simulates realistic visibility and more importantly doesn't split the community like the two we currently have. Frankly, I don't know of any other sim that took this route...

I'm not sure some light modifications to the current implementation would be a waste of time. I do agree a compromise could be made. Actually I'm not sure there are any modern sims that don't use some system simulate visibility. DCS sure has it and you can sport even further then here.

[SharpeXB]

Wow I did find an interesting bug I’ll have to post separately. I can see the 52 beyond 10km in Normal Vis. But when I zoom in it vanishes. I can make it appear and reappear by zooming in and out. I’ll post a track of it. It’s visible at about 95% zoom and then just vanishes at 100%

[VR-DriftaholiC]

Thanks to this test mission I've discovered the Horizon Distance has a profound affect on spotting aircraft on the horizon. With 150km I can now see the aircraft at the same distances as alt vis. I can conclude that alt-vis does not render the plane at a further distance. It's purely the larger size that allows it to have enough contrast to be more easily spotted. I still prefer alt-vis and I think it caters to a wider range of pc hardware. I think that last fact is very important. It will allow someone to spot planes at the same distances regardless of the resolution or quality of their headset or monitor or graphical settings as some may be limited by their ability to run MSAA vs FXAA or have a Horizon Draw Distance at this level. 

Edited June 7, 2020 by VR-DriftaholiC

[III/JG52_Otto_-I-]

On 6/3/2020 at 9:19 PM, Alonzo said:

get very frustrated when I see forum users arguing with each other about spotting and ID because alternate vis is an excellent example of what ends up happening. I think a spotting solution roughly halfway between standard and alt-viz would be great -- slightly enhanced viz of targets at range without some of the more strange effects. But because the community had posted nasty crap on the forums and descended into childish yelling, the dev team said "we're not going to develop that feature any further, we just get shouted at, it's a lose-lose, we'll spend dev time on something else."

if they are developing a true simulator, they must think who is his "target customer", and forget all child comments. We are many aviation professionals and real pilots here, who enjoy flying a warbird in combat, as reallistic as possible. We want to spot an airplane in game at same distance that we can see it in reality.. Are we asking an impossible thing?

[SharpeXB]

Here's a link to the bug report for the disappearing plane. you can try the track yourselves and see if you get the same result

 

[VR-DriftaholiC]

6 hours ago, III/JG52_Otto_-I- said:

if they are developing a true simulator, they must think who is his "target customer", and forget all child comments. We are many aviation professionals and real pilots here, who enjoy flying a warbird in combat, as reallistic as possible. We want to spot an airplane in game at same distance that we can see it in reality.. Are we asking an impossible thing?

I agree, are you a real pilot? Please take the test track try it a few times and weigh in.

[III/JG52_Otto_-I-]

5 hours ago, VR-DriftaholiC said:

Please take the test track try it a few times and weigh in.

i'm boring of so many experiment, with high and low resolution, many graphics set up´s, reshade ON/OFF , ..and new 1.000€ progressive wide fov reading glasses too...

finally the problem is the same; a big dot contact at about 4 km in the horizon become tinier with zoom in, even disappear.
I'm able to see in my job an ATR-72 (similar size of a B-25) at 5 to 10 km of distance without problem, in the game it´s not possible.
By the way the zoom works better at distances below 2 km, after the 4.006 re-re-re-patch, but i think the airplanes still looking smaller in game than in reality, at same theoretical distance.

[Blitzen]

Does anything here apply to those of us with Pimax5K that only fly SM's? If so how? Is there a setting that might apply somewhere or this this topic primarily for online players? Just asking...?

[dburne]

55 minutes ago, Blitzen said:

Does anything here apply to those of us with Pimax5K that only fly SM's? If so how? Is there a setting that might apply somewhere or this this topic primarily for online players? Just asking...?

 

No applies to single player as well for spotting as I  noted earlier.

Of course I have no idea how it looks in a Pimax unit myself.

 

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, III/JG52_Otto_-I- said:

I'm able to see in my job an ATR-72 (similar size of a B-25) at 5 to 10 km of distance without problem, in the game it´s not possible.

I am able to see the Ju-52 in that test mission way past 10k. Now of course there is a big difference between what is possible to see and what range you do see it at. In the front on merge, in maybe half the attempts I don’t see it until it’s very close because I don’t know where to look. That’s what I do see. If I follow the target once I’ve seen it I can see it way past 10k (until I actually encounter a bug that’s reported) that’s what it’s possible to see. 
We all want realistic visibility in the sim but a PC game is never going to duplicate real life 20/20 vision and perception. It’s not an easy task or it would be done already. . 

[III/JG52_Otto_-I-]

3 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

We all want realistic visibility in the sim but a PC game is never going to duplicate real life 20/20 vision and perception. It’s not an easy task or it would be done already. .

A PC game can "emulate" the real visibility with several technical tricks. I think it is not easy, but is possible. Of course, if devs focuses in fixing the problem prior to generating more and more new contents.  I think spotting and visibility it is very important in an air combat simulator, because the first to see the enemy, have the advantage in the combat.

Edited June 7, 2020 by III/JG52_Otto_-I-

[VR-DriftaholiC]

3 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

I am able to see the Ju-52 in that test mission way past 10k. Now of course there is a big difference between what is possible to see and what range you do see it at. In the front on merge, in maybe half the attempts I don’t see it until it’s very close because I don’t know where to look. That’s what I do see. If I follow the target once I’ve seen it I can see it way past 10k (until I actually encounter a bug that’s reported) that’s what it’s possible to see. 
We all want realistic visibility in the sim but a PC game is never going to duplicate real life 20/20 vision and perception. It’s not an easy task or it would be done already. . 

In the study the pilot knew the intercept course and was looking there for the target. In this case they could reliably spot the plan 17-23km 

They also tested the pilot not knowing the intercept course and the range was 5-8km

You can check the map and see the plan one radar if you wan't to test by knowing where it's comming from. This is how I conducted my testing. 

[firdimigdi]

IMO an alt vis system would be nice if it:

1. capped the size of the plane at is minimum "useful" size; instead of making it a largish blob at long distance (where "long" depends on weather conditions)

2. made the those visible pixels glitter/shimmer if it's not under cloud level or night time (not nonstop - but randomly once in a while to simulate sunlight shining off a panel or canopy)

3. did not bring out the plane in full detail when zoomed but also did not make it disappear entirely

[SCG_Wulfe]

The biggest problem with alternate visibility based on my own personal impressions is that it absolutely ruins the historical concept of ww2 aerial warfare. The way it stands, it completely removes the cat and mouse game of sneaking and trying to spot contacts before they spot you. Instead, it really turns into: take your pick of the fur-balls that are visible across the entire map and head on over. Its basically a choose your own adventure version of Berloga.  What I've said also completely ignores the problems it causes for gauging distance. 

 

If anything is to be done, I actually think inverting the system to inflate nearer contacts more and further contacts less (or not at all) would be much, much, better for an alternate-visibility system. This would prevent it from really helping anyone see anything further away while simultaneously making it easier to spot and ID contacts that are close and pose a threat.

 

While I think this would be the best solution to this sort of system... I'm still generally opposed to the idea of a dual visibility scheme. There should not be options for visibility (except maybe for single player only) as Alonzo has stated and the dev's found out. It massively divided the community and in the multiplayer community, the last thing we need to do is divide players up between servers further. So... if anything changes going forward, I think it needs to be 'the one and only' visibility system.

 

 

Edited June 8, 2020 by SCG_Wulfe

[Mewt]

 

@VR-DriftaholiC and @Alonzo I'm going to siderail the discussion a little from the subject of Alternate Vis vs Normal Vis after this revelation (to me):

 

On 6/7/2020 at 1:58 AM, VR-DriftaholiC said:

...Thanks to this test mission I've discovered the Horizon Distance has a profound affect on spotting aircraft on the horizon...

 

 

After testing on your awesome mission @Alonzo (thank you!) I can absolutely confirm for me the absolute same results as @VR-DriftaholiC; spotting for me is massively extended by the Horizon Distance setting.

 

So my setup for testing was 100% SS and 4x FXAA on my Index... but I'm not sure that really matters. What matters is test after test the same results.

 

Now, I'm always looking towards where I know (via the map) the Ju-52 will be. I'm not testing for SA or recognition; I'm testing for in game rendering. 

 

Horizon Distance 70K = avg 9.5K distance spotted

Horizon Distance 150K = avg 23.5K distance spotted

 

In other words; doubling my HD doubles my spotting distance.

 

Now, the million bazzlion dollar question: Does the above work in Multiplayer? (I don't play Single Player).

 

It's VERY difficult to do these controlled conditions in multiplayer,

 

[HunDread]

Also a question if this is a sideffect (bug?) coming from the new patch or intentional?

[VR-DriftaholiC]

2 hours ago, Mewt said:

So my setup for testing was 100% SS and 4x FXAA on my Index... but I'm not sure that really matters.

It really matters. The difference between FXAA and MSAA or No AA is nearly the improvement I found with horizon distance. Which is why I say that Alt-Vis levels the hardware playing field as it allows for a wider range of graphics settings. you may not have the hardware to run MSAA with a good frame rate and many don't . I don't think graphics settings and hardware should be the solution to equal spotting. I want to invite my friends with lower end systems to play this game and not leave them disappointed by being blind. 

 

/rant

 

Thanks for verifying horizon draw distance.

 

  

49 minutes ago, HunDread said:

Also a question if this is a sideffect (bug?) coming from the new patch or intentional?

 

I think the haze is blending with or masking the object some way or another

Edited June 8, 2020 by VR-DriftaholiC