HDR effect on spotting?

[=X51=VC_]

For a while I've had HDR turned on (and bloom manually disabled in startup.cfg), after reading in a guide that it provides extra contrast and makes spotting easier against the ground. I also like how it makes the cockpits look, so I would probably keep it on anyway even if spotting effect is minimal.

 

I don't have any problems spotting, but I'm wondering how true this is that it helps. In theory it sounds like it should but it's hard to test and I don't feel like flying without it. What are your experiences?

[RedKestrel]

12 minutes ago, =X51=VC_ said:

For a while I've had HDR turned on (and bloom manually disabled in startup.cfg), after reading in a guide that it provides extra contrast and makes spotting easier against the ground. I also like how it makes the cockpits look, so I would probably keep it on anyway even if spotting effect is minimal.

 

I don't have any problems spotting, but I'm wondering how true this is that it helps. In theory it sounds like it should but it's hard to test and I don't feel like flying without it. What are your experiences?

I have heard the opposite, that it makes spotting worse, but I have flown with HDR off for almost all the time flying and haven't tested it with the new rendering, which (IMO) changed spotting for the better. it may be that the bloom that turns on automatically with HDR is the only reason it doesn't work well, and having it off might help. Who knows?

Honestly there are a million and one tweaks that people use and most of them the improvements are marginal, so skipping one or two of the methods won't make an order of magnitude difference. Test it and if you don't notice a big difference, err on the side of quality of life and enjoy the look of the sim.

[Bilbo_Baggins]

By definition surely HDR means better spotting to some degree, as it increases the range of light to dark in a given image. This suggests it should make lighter contacts against a dark forest more prominent and vice-versa dark contacts against the lighter sky? Although I can't say for sure it does this to a noticeable degree and haven't done any controlled tests, I'm sure it does make the game more attractive for me, which is really what matters. 

 

This is, of course, with the awful bloom set to 0. 

[=X51=VC_]

Yes, that was my logic as well, and the logic of the guide (that I can no longer find). Bloom is indeed the culprit for poor visibility in this case.

 

I wonder though if the "dynamic range" includes the cockpit, would that actually increase contrast between objects that are at a distance, or decrease it in order to make the cockpit look darker? What about objects that have low contrast (e.g. green planes over forest), would HDR make them blend in more or less?

 

There is definitely a range at which contacts will briefly vanish, when the rendering changes from dot (that always seems to contrast with the background) to the actual plane colour and camouflage starts to do its job until you get even closer.

 

How would you even begin to controlled test something like this?

Edited July 2, 2020 by =X51=VC_

[RedKestrel]

5 hours ago, =X51=VC_ said:

 

 

How would you even begin to controlled test something like this?

That is the main problem with testing for spotting. If something doesn't make a night and day difference, its really difficult to say for sure if something improved spotting or if its just a placebo. By definition a controlled test must be reproducible, and that usually means that you will know where the aircraft are ahead of time, which may give you an advantage in spotting them...which ruins the test.

If you don't use a controlled test with the same lighting conditions, landscape, planes, etc. then there are too many variables to spotting. On top of that the sheer variety of difference between monitors, resolutions, GPUs, color calibration, etc. means that what works for one person may not work for others. 

When deferred rendering came in a lot of things changed and I, for one, noticed a significant improvement in spotting and tracking contacts. I've seen a few people say it's worse than before which is not my experience at all. I suspect that the dozens of tweaks people have used prior to deferred rendering to improve spotting are no longer valid and sometimes harm the ability to spot aircraft with the new rendering system. I found, for example, that my gamma setting of 0.8 actually made things worse in spotting on top of making the game uglier. But its a generally accepted truth in the community that lower gamma=better spotting, and I wonder if people are fiddling with a bunch of really esoteric stuff in the Nvidia control panel while leaving some base assumptions untouched.

And changing settings from session to session is really unhelpful as well. I think if you do change a setting you have to give it multiple sessions over a variety of sorties to really assess its impact and give your eyes the chance to get used to the new environment.

 

I don't think there is a magic bullet to incredible spotting in the sim for a player - outside of the devs making changes of course. I think that as a baseline the sim now has OK spotting (not great or fantastic, but OK), and you can improve this a little bit with things like slight sharpening, calibrating your monitor, etc. But I think overall its much easier to reduce your ability to spot by changing settings than it is to increase your ability to spot.

[MattS]

Personally I find the HDR to improve my ability to see the bad guys on my machine, particularly against ground clutter. I haven't done a bunch of controlled experiments, simply have played it both ways enough to have a preference.

 

I also have SSAO selected but can't tell if that matters or not.

[=X51=VC_]

@RedKestrel I think spotting in IL2 is in a good place, both from a consistency and quality of rendering point of view, and with respect to how confident I feel being able to find things. I wasn't looking for a magic bullet to get a competitive edge, I wanted to get some additional opinions since, as you say, people just make assumptions about this and dismiss the setting. In the end, like I said, I'll just keep it because I think it looks nice and I don't really feel like flying without it for however many weeks it takes for me to get an idea if it was good or not. I'm satisfied any difference is small anyway.

 

As for gamma, I fly in VR and find 0.8 acceptable but any higher too bright. That is one I might test to see how it affects visibility though.

 

1 hour ago, MattS said:

Personally I find the HDR to improve my ability to see the bad guys on my machine, particularly against ground clutter. I haven't done a bunch of controlled experiments, simply have played it both ways enough to have a preference.

 

I also have SSAO selected but can't tell if that matters or not.

 

Thank you for that.

 

I believe SSAO mainly affects cockpit shadows, but I leave that one off.

[216th_Jordan]

I turned SSAO and HDR off because it faded out small dot contacts (I tested that in 2017) - I have however not tested it with the new renderer.

[GOA_Karaya_VR]

I ran HDR on, and SSAO OFF , with 0.5 of gamma.. almost for my vr ( Oculus CV1 ) works pretty fine.

[=X51=VC_]

1 hour ago, GOA_Karaya_VR said:

I ran HDR on, and SSAO OFF , with 0.5 of gamma.. almost for my vr ( Oculus CV1 ) works pretty fine.

 

Thant's very low gamma, maybe I'll try lowering mine a bit as well.

[VR-DriftaholiC]

HDR in this game is mislabeled it actually seems to be a LIMITED COLOR SPACE. Thus makes spotting harder.

[=X51=VC_]

7 minutes ago, VR-DriftaholiC said:

HDR in this game is mislabeled it actually seems to be a LIMITED COLOR SPACE. Thus makes spotting harder.

 

Interesting, can you elaborate on this?

[VR-DriftaholiC]

1 minute ago, =X51=VC_ said:

 

Interesting, can you elaborate on this?

 

Take a screenshot of both at the same point of the same track and compare, it's obvious.

Edited July 4, 2020 by VR-DriftaholiC

[Bilbo_Baggins]

10 hours ago, VR-DriftaholiC said:

HDR in this game is mislabeled it actually seems to be a LIMITED COLOR SPACE. Thus makes spotting harder.

 

Seems like a critical mislabeling of this option. What about SSAO, does this have an effect on spotting?

[=X51=VC_]

There are a few screenshot and video comparisons with HDR on and off, see below, I don't have a lot of time to make my own. @VR-DriftaholiC it's not so obvious to me what you mean by "Limited colour space", I don't know what this term means so I would appreciate a more detailed description of what I am looking for.

 

To me, with HDR everything looks a bit lighter but dark things, especially shadows seem to stay dark and contrast more. In the first video, when he is dogfighting, in a few cases a contact crosses the split in the middle of the screen from the "HDR on" side to the "off" side and becomes immediately harder to see, but at other times it's not much difference.

 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2020 by =X51=VC_

[=X51=VC_]

So I flew a few sorties last night with HDR off. I will leave it off for a week or so to get more data and impressions. Firstly, without HDR the whole cockpit becomes dark and quite ugly, especially in German planes. But colours are more saturated and vibrant in the outside world. I thought this would drown out contacts, but it seems those are darker/brighter too. It's too early to say one way or the other, I think spotting quality did not change significantly.

[CountZero]

I think its easyer to make gold by alchemy then make setting for all that makes spoting better, what works for you dont work on other guys PC and so on... in end your gona have to do it that way, chage something and then spend few days checking if it made considerable differance. For me i have it off even after that bi update it didnt help having it on.

[PatrickAWlson]

On 7/2/2020 at 4:38 AM, =X51=VC_ said:

How would you even begin to controlled test something like this?

 

You would start by excluding aging men and women who depend on glasses ... so I'm out.

[MattS]

2 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

You would start by excluding aging men and women who depend on glasses ... so I'm out.

 

Same here. All of this stuff is very subjective; the only sensible approach is to try it with our own machines and our own dilapidated eyeballs and see what works better for us.

[[DBS]TH0R]

We need an in-game option to turn off bloom effect. Spotting aside it gives best visuals IMHO.

 

On 7/2/2020 at 7:52 PM, =X51=VC_ said:

@RedKestrel I think spotting in IL2 is in a good place, both from a consistency and quality of rendering point of view, and with respect to how confident I feel being able to find things.

 

I disagree it is in a good place. It needs a complete overhaul and different approach / thinking to modeling spotting mechanics. Points 1 and 2, as described here:

 

 

That is why all these graphical option changes have a marginal / placebo effect and only give advantage in certain scenarios, if they do.

Edited July 11, 2020 by [DBS]TH0R

[=X51=VC_]

OK fine, there are some rendering issues, for example a plane that you can see clearly disappears even though you are getting closer and it should be getting bigger and easier to see. But for example, a dark green plane blending into forest and not being visible I can accept as camouflage working realistically. Even if the actual render engine is not ideal in this case, the result is acceptable.

 

The invisibility bug sounds really bad, I am lucky I don't think I have experienced it. But latest patch notes said this is fixed or at least on the way to being fixed, so good news anyway.

[[DBS]TH0R]

I didn't think much about the invisibility bug, until we as a group experienced it first hand:

 

 

[Capt_Stubing]

I've tried dozens of different settings with very little luck in spotting distant airplanes.  I've got as far as lowering my rez to 1080p on my 2K monitor which helped a tiny bit.  For me my biggest issue with the sim is the spotting.  We never had problems like this in IL2 1946.  You could see the dots.  At 2k and certain distances the dots disappear and no longer render at all for me.  1080Ti.  I've played with AA both in game and out.  What I have noticed online is VR guys see stuff way before I do.   

 

Sigh

 

Edited July 16, 2020 by Capt_Stubing

[=X51=VC_]

Well, I have continued to play with HDR off and I have not noticed any major change in my ability to spot. In a few cases I felt that I lost targets against the ground too easily, but that could be placebo or dozens of other factors. I got used to how the game looks without it, turned up gamma just a tiny bit to compensate for the darker cockpits.

 

@Capt_Stubing I have never played IL2 on a monitor, so I don't know about resolution and dot spotting, but for me that relationship sounds backwards. In VR at least, when I upgraded my headset to better resolution my spotting also got a lot better. But I fly with a guy who plays on a 1440p screen and has all settings max and eye candy turned on because he likes the game pretty, and he has no problems spotting either.

Edited July 16, 2020 by =X51=VC_

[TAIPAN_]

5 hours ago, Capt_Stubing said:

  I've got as far as lowering my rez to 1080p on my 2K monitor which helped a tiny bit.  For me my biggest issue with the sim is the spotting.  We never had problems like this in IL2 1946.  You could see the dots. 

 

 

Lowering res has the issue of making planes harder to identify, so even if you spot them you have to get very close to ID because they have less detail. I also tried for a while with lower res to see what it's like. In the end it's just not as pretty either, and I want to be able to see the markings/shapes clearly as they get closer so I can attack earlier.

Re 1946 - the dot spotting at distance is available as the realism option "alternate spotting" I think it's called. Dots are bigger at distance, but it looks a bit strange when you zoom in they shrink back to normal size.

Also in 1946 there was alot less detail in terms of sky, clouds, ground, smoke/haze, canopy etc. It was more of a game in terms of graphics, which is definitely easier to spot targets against. Difficulty spotting is realistic, and has claimed lives in General Aviation from collisions.

 

Regarding HDR - is it necessary to disable Bloom in the config file? Or does one of the HDR options not have it? Also what's wrong with bloom - does it make spotting harder?

 

Do you find the Canopy reflections hurt spotting as well? They seem a bit distracting sometimes but I'm not sure if it's a real issue or not

Edited July 17, 2020 by Dan_Taipan

[LLv34_Flanker]

S!

 

@Dan_Taipan Bloom creates this ugly yellowish glow. Have always had it disabled. What I noticed regarding spotting was that with VR planes did not disappear in plain sight against forest etc. They stood out as an object moving between the forest and you thus easier to see. On a screen they blend very easily against background or outright disappear. VR also made shooting easier as you can actually see where your shots are going in a 3D space. So in that matter I give props to VR.

[TAIPAN_]

1 hour ago, LLv34_Flanker said:

S!

 

@Dan_Taipan Bloom creates this ugly yellowish glow. Have always had it disabled. What I noticed regarding spotting was that with VR planes did not disappear in plain sight against forest etc. They stood out as an object moving between the forest and you thus easier to see. On a screen they blend very easily against background or outright disappear. VR also made shooting easier as you can actually see where your shots are going in a 3D space. So in that matter I give props to VR.

 

Thanks, interesting.

I'll probably leave HDR off then as I don't like making my config file read-only (often change settings).

Wish there was a way to disable bloom in the GUI..

[=X51=VC_]

5 hours ago, Dan_Taipan said:

Regarding HDR - is it necessary to disable Bloom in the config file? Or does one of the HDR options not have it? Also what's wrong with bloom - does it make spotting harder?

 

Do you find the Canopy reflections hurt spotting as well? They seem a bit distracting sometimes but I'm not sure if it's a real issue or not

 

A Flanker said, Bloom adds a glow/halo effect to objects, supposed to simulate how light "creeps" around the edges of things that are back-lit. What this means is it blurs the light into the edge of the object, so for small objects that makes them smaller and more smudged. So yes, it makes spotting harder. It also does it to your canopy frames making them glow.

 

I found the canopy reflections ugly and too flat to look realistic. I didn't keep them on long enough to see how much they hurt spotting. ?

 

2 hours ago, LLv34_Flanker said:

@Dan_TaipanWhat I noticed regarding spotting was that with VR planes did not disappear in plain sight against forest etc. They stood out as an object moving between the forest and you thus easier to see. On a screen they blend very easily against background or outright disappear. VR also made shooting easier as you can actually see where your shots are going in a 3D space. So in that matter I give props to VR.

 

In VR I still have planes disappearing at <1km range against forests. This is originally why I turned HDR on, hoping that it would increase the contrast between the plane and the forest in these situations. I might turn it back on to check, but there are so many other conditions it's hard to tell.

 

I also think it's related to the propeller. The blurred disc never bothered me, even when it was allowed I did not use migoto to remove it, I have no ugly artefacts. But it's not unusual for me to spot a target perfectly on my 3 or 9, turn to engage and immediately lose it when it's in front of me. ?

 

1 hour ago, Dan_Taipan said:

Wish there was a way to disable bloom in the GUI..

 

Yup! Maybe make a suggestion thread? I'm sure it would get support.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On 7/2/2020 at 9:31 AM, Bilbo_Baggins said:

By definition surely HDR means better spotting to some degree, as it increases the range of light to dark in a given image. This suggests it should make lighter contacts against a dark forest more prominent and vice-versa dark contacts against the lighter sky?

Not entirely true. The range of light to dark in an image (the so-called "dynamic range") is entirely dependent on the screen. Which is actually *much* less than our eyes can perceive - a black pixel is much brighter than a dark night, and a white pixel is much dimmer than a bright sky. This is especially apparent when both light and dark areas are present; our eyes are perfectly capable of distinguishing detail in the shades on the ground while a bright sky shines above. With computer screens (and also digital camera sensors), this is impossible to recreate.

 

What HDR does is decreasing global contrast while keeping local contrast intact. What that means is that large dark areas such as the cockpit become brighter, while small local dark areas (a black instrument on a bright-coloured panel, or also a distant plane against a bright sky) remain dark compared to the surrounding area. Hence, in theory, HDR should have no impact on spotting as the contrast between a faraway plane and the sky should remain untouched.

 

Now, real HDR is a computationally expensive process so I'd be surprised if they actually use true HDR for their effect. However...

On 7/5/2020 at 12:29 AM, VR-DriftaholiC said:

HDR in this game is mislabeled it actually seems to be a LIMITED COLOR SPACE. Thus makes spotting harder.

...is also not true. You can see clearly in the videos posted by =X51=VC_ that both the darkest areas and the brightest areas have equal counterparts in the "HDR" version of the game, as it should. The colourspace is equal to the colourspace without HDR, but a greater range of colours is compressed into that colourspace, leading to an overall "flatter" look. Which is the case for HDR in general.

 

TLDR: while it's unlikely that the effect employed is HDR in the truest sense of the word, it does show some characteristics of HDR and is not a limited colour space. What algorithm they use to achieve the effect remains unknown, as well as any theoretical implications this has on the visibility of aircraft. Hence this entire post that I just put so much effort into writing is completely useless ?

[Ribbon]

One of the biggest issue i find is spotting plane against ground!

Those plane camo skins blend too well in ground textures and hardware limitations doesn't help there, colour variations are too small to distinguish them and pixel transition comes in question when moving object have same colour pattern as background.

 

In real life our eyes are much more capable to spot and distinguish moving object vs the ground never mind the camo skin.

I remember devs used RL picture of fighter with camo pattern for reference and indeed it was hard to spot it, but problem is that picture is static while if it was high definition video or RL situation it would be much easier to spot it.

As i said many times using real life data in video games and ignoring hw limitations can make them unrealistic as end result.

 

[=X51=VC_]

57 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

What HDR does is decreasing global contrast while keeping local contrast intact. What that means is that large dark areas such as the cockpit become brighter, while small local dark areas (a black instrument on a bright-coloured panel, or also a distant plane against a bright sky) remain dark compared to the surrounding area. Hence, in theory, HDR should have no impact on spotting as the contrast between a faraway plane and the sky should remain untouched.

 

So does that mean that the contrast of a green plane to a green forest is also untouched, in theory? The forest just looks a bit lighter and more washed out but the plane is lighter too to preseve that local contrast?

 

 

5 minutes ago, =VARP=Ribbon said:

One of the biggest issue i find is spotting plane against ground!

Those plane camo skins blend too well in ground textures and hardware limitations doesn't help there, colour variations are too small to distinguish them and pixel transition comes in question when moving object have same colour pattern as background.

 

In real life our eyes are much more capable to spot and distinguish moving object vs the ground never mind the camo skin.

I remember devs used RL picture of fighter with camo pattern for reference and indeed it was hard to spot it, but problem is that picture is static while if it was high definition video or RL situation it would be much easier to spot it.

As i said many times using real life data in video games and ignoring hw limitations can make them unrealistic as end result.

 

 

I think camouflage should work to help hide planes, it's what it was supposed to do.

 

But I do agree with you that HW limitations cause issues when implementing RL data. What I always belived should be the case is realism of result. So if an average real person can see something at a certain distance, or contrast combination, then make the renderer show it to everyone at that range regardless of HW, even if the method of rendering is not realistic in this case. But I think this is a nearly impossible workload.

 

Anyway, I want to say again I am not complaining about spotting quality in IL2 overall. I feel comfortable with my ability to spot with HDR or without, and from being at airshows and seeing planes fly around I do not think I could spot a contact much sooner IRL than in game. I think a lot of people greatly overestimate what a real person can see in real conditions and expect too much for in-game visibilty. And if an older sim had easier spotting that means nothing really.

Edited July 17, 2020 by =X51=VC_

[Ribbon]

7 minutes ago, =X51=VC_ said:

 

So does that mean that the contrast of a green plane to a green forest is also untouched, in theory? The forest just looks a bit lighter and more washed out but the plane is lighter too to preseve that local contrast?

 

 

 

I think camouflage should work to help hide planes, it's what it was supposed to do.

 

But I do agree with you that HW limitations cause issues when implementing RL data. What I always belived should be the case is realism of result. So if an average real person can see something at a certain distance, or contrast combination, then make the renderer show it to everyone at that range regardless of HW, even if the method of rendering is not realistic in this case. But I think this is a nearly impossible workload.

 

Anyway, I want to say again I am not complaining about spotting quality in IL2 overall. I feel comfortable with my ability to spot with HDR or without, and from being at airshows and seeing planes fly around I do not think I could spot a contact much sooner IRL than in game.

IRL camo will do it's job but it mostly goes when you're not aware of enemy presence (harder to spot), once you spot it you can trace it nevermind the camouflage.

Now in game you spot plane and he dives down and even you have eyes on him and his location knowing his moving vector and location he completley dissapears versus the ground.....that's where hw limitation kicks in making it an issue.

[=X51=VC_]

1 hour ago, =VARP=Ribbon said:

IRL camo will do it's job but it mostly goes when you're not aware of enemy presence (harder to spot), once you spot it you can trace it nevermind the camouflage.

Now in game you spot plane and he dives down and even you have eyes on him and his location knowing his moving vector and location he completley dissapears versus the ground.....that's where hw limitation kicks in making it an issue.

 

I agree that this is annoying and maybe it happens too easily. But... did you never chase a fly around the room, and when it flies in front of a dark shelf it just disappears? ? human eye is not as perfect as you think either.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

1 hour ago, =X51=VC_ said:

So does that mean that the contrast of a green plane to a green forest is also untouched, in theory? The forest just looks a bit lighter and more washed out but the plane is lighter too to preseve that local contrast?

As HDR is all about real and perceived brightness, in theory it should do nothing with colour. Although a change in brightness generally means a change in (perceived) saturation. Look up the difference between HSV and HSL if you're interested.

 

Regarding brightness, HDR should keep local contrast intact. Whether that results in increased perceived contrast should depend on their relative brightness to begin with, and the processing used to obtain that brightness (e.g. gamma). For instance, a plane of the same colour as the forest in the background shouldn't have increased contrast as they have the same colour to begin with. An instrument on the panel of an LA-5 should, as is visible in the second video, because in this case the panel is dark because of the lighting while the instrument is painted black. Here, the lack of contrast comes because the screen cannot display the difference between "dark" of the brightly painted panel and "darker" of the black instrument properly when they're in the shadows, which is fixed by HDR.

[Ribbon]

29 minutes ago, =X51=VC_ said:

 

I agree that this is annoying and maybe it happens too easily. But... did you never chase a fly around the room, and when it flies in front of a dark shelf it just disappears? ? human eye is not as perfect as you think either.

No, but i did mosquitos and you're right those bastards can easily disappear!

I agree human eye isn't perfect but i wouldn't use it as a reference from several reasons;

-flies and mosquitos have very tight turn rate ("bloody" turn fighters?‍♂️) and are very unpredictable regarding flight directions so you easily lose sight on them.

-thier wings are transparent too ?

-room is never lighten enough as outside  world on broad daylight

-plane can't change flight path as bugs so it's easier to trace and spot them once you know their flight vector and here ingame i reffer to distances where plane disappear on 1km or even less bellow you. 

 

I do fly a lot (panoramic flights as AME) and moving objects tiny as animals, ppl and other crazy details always get stuck to my eye.

Now you're right human eye is not perfect but i think hardware limitation in here takes a bit big chunk out of spotting and visibility.

I may be wrong, it's just my feeling and opinion, i'm sure there is ex military pilots here somewhere that can enlighten us.

 

S!

 

[O_DesoLunatic]

If it is of any help in VR I noticed good results when turning off shadows completely, same for HDR, SSAO. No antialiasing, sharpen turned on and ground filter set to sharpen also.  Not sure if it translates to 2D screens at all tho. 

[RedKestrel]

41 minutes ago, =VARP=Ribbon said:

No, but i did mosquitos and you're right those bastards can easily disappear!

I agree human eye isn't perfect but i wouldn't use it as a reference from several reasons;

-flies and mosquitos have very tight turn rate ("bloody" turn fighters?‍♂️) and are very unpredictable regarding flight directions so you easily lose sight on them.

-thier wings are transparent too ?

-room is never lighten enough as outside  world on broad daylight

-plane can't change flight path as bugs so it's easier to trace and spot them once you know their flight vector and here ingame i reffer to distances where plane disappear on 1km or even less bellow you. 

 

 

Agreed, the FM for mosquitoes is completely broken. And don't get me started on the g-force modeling. 

Hey, Maybe all those invisible planes were flown by No See'ms? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceratopogonidae

[216th_Jordan]

I found that HDR (bloom off) does enhance spotting ability in some cases and decreases in others - overall I found it more useful in the recent time and it looks a lot nicer. I think this effect is enhanced by the new lighting for distant objects.

Edited July 17, 2020 by 216th_Jordan

[Capt_Stubing]

20 hours ago, =X51=VC_ said:

Well, I have continued to play with HDR off and I have not noticed any major change in my ability to spot. In a few cases I felt that I lost targets against the ground too easily, but that could be placebo or dozens of other factors. I got used to how the game looks without it, turned up gamma just a tiny bit to compensate for the darker cockpits.

 

@Capt_Stubing I have never played IL2 on a monitor, so I don't know about resolution and dot spotting, but for me that relationship sounds backwards. In VR at least, when I upgraded my headset to better resolution my spotting also got a lot better. But I fly with a guy who plays on a 1440p screen and has all settings max and eye candy turned on because he likes the game pretty, and he has no problems spotting either.

I have both a flat panel and a Rift S.  I can say in VR it's easier to detect and see planes because of the lower rez.  My only issue then becomes IDing the plane unless I get a good plan form or colors which tells me what it is... So will wait for the next gen HMDs before jumping back into VR.  Don't get me wrong I love it but the rez just isn't quite there for me.  The best way to describe what I see on the Flat Panel has everything to do with distance.  So being in trail with someone.  If I pull my zoom back from full zoom at one point they completely disappear.  I don't know if that has anything to do with AA and I've even heard it has something to do with Gsync which I do run instead of vsync or fast sync.  But I can assure you the dot and plane vanish when I pull back.  Zoom in again and I can see them again.  Very frustrating.  

[=X51=VC_]

21 minutes ago, Capt_Stubing said:

I have both a flat panel and a Rift S.  I can say in VR it's easier to detect and see planes because of the lower rez.  My only issue then becomes IDing the plane unless I get a good plan form or colors which tells me what it is... So will wait for the next gen HMDs before jumping back into VR.  Don't get me wrong I love it but the rez just isn't quite there for me.  The best way to describe what I see on the Flat Panel has everything to do with distance.  So being in trail with someone.  If I pull my zoom back from full zoom at one point they completely disappear.  I don't know if that has anything to do with AA and I've even heard it has something to do with Gsync which I do run instead of vsync or fast sync.  But I can assure you the dot and plane vanish when I pull back.  Zoom in again and I can see them again.  Very frustrating.  

 

I'm afraid to say what you're expecting is unrealistic. It is normal for planes to disappear as you zoom out, because you are increasing your field of view and indirectly you are making the planes smaller. You are squashing more "world" into the same number of pixels so something will get lost. You should not be expecting to spot well flying zoomed out.

 

VR has a natural field of view, but on a screen you will be surprised how "zoomed in" you have to be to reproduce a realistic FoV. A WWII fighter windscreen is a similar size to your real screen, and similar distance from your face. Zoom in until the plane windscreen in game fills your whole screen, now that is a natural field of view, and that is the condition in which you should compare spotting to VR, or real life.

 

Also a Rift S has exactly the same resolution as a 2k screen (2560 x 1440).

 

I know VR experience is a very personal thing, but I played on an original Vive (2160 x 1200) and found it very immersive and acceptable for both spotting and ID. I recently upgraded to a Vive Pro (2880 x x1600, slightly higher resolution than Rift S) and both my spotting and ID improved significantly.