HDR effect on spotting?

[[N.O.G.F]_Cathal_Brugha]

I have been having a few stutters and lower frame rate in general since the last updates. I had to turn a few settings down to slow down the micro freezes.

[Stoopy]

My frame rates are slightly up since 4.005 except for when they went slightly down in 4.006 and then slightly back up in 4.007 but then my foot has been hurting ever since 4.008.

 

[RedKestrel]

2 minutes ago, Stoopy said:

My frame rates are slightly up since 4.005 except for when they went slightly down in 4.006 and then slightly back up in 4.007 but then my foot has been hurting ever since 4.008.

 

That’s the deferred foot rendering

 

[Avimimus]

It definitely seems to run better for me - although I do have a perceptible stutter when flying over cities in BoBP... I'm not sure what causes that?

[dburne]

The Devs have made some nice performance improvement to the sim in the last year or so.

[flagdjmetcher]

4 hours ago, Firdimigdi said:

I too have little issue spotting - it's the IDing that makes me lose time... are those 5 pixels friendly I wonder?

 

I read an account recently (I think it was in a book on the Schweinfurt/Regensburg raid) about a Fw190 sneaking into a formation of escort fighters.  The flight leader only realized what was up by counting the number of planes and finding he had an extra, who dove away as soon as he turned towards it.  It must have been a fairly open formation, but still it's clear that ID at moderate ranges wasn't always straightforward.

[RedKestrel]

3 hours ago, Avimimus said:

It definitely seems to run better for me - although I do have a perceptible stutter when flying over cities in BoBP... I'm not sure what causes that?

I get that too... i suspect it is the texture loading is still a little problematic there due to the detail of the cities.

[SJ_Butcher]

It runs better but spotting is worse than ever

[SJ_Butcher]

I played the Cliff of Dover today to prepare myself for Tobruk, and the spoting is waaaaaay better, sharp contacts, not overdone, you could spot the colors of planes easily, at distance they don't shimmer or just disappear, I hope the devs can do it better....but it looks like it's more a engine renderings issue, colors are nicer there too, here is dark and opaque.

Edited August 1, 2020 by SJ_Butcher

[GOA_Karaya_VR]

9 minutes ago, SJ_Butcher said:

I played the Cliff of Dover today to prepare myself for Tobruk, and the spoting is weaaaaaa better, sharp contacts not overdone, you could spot the colors of ola es easily, at distance they don't shimmer or just disappear, I hope the devs can do it better....but it looks like it's more a engine renderings issue, colors are nicer there too, here is dark and opaque.

Indeed.. Clod spoting is superior than Box.

[LizLemon]

It should be done in a way that maintains the apparent size based on screen resolution and keep it constant regardless of zoom (fov).

 

Ie 4k = 3840 horizontal pixels and 720p = 1280.  Human FoV ~190. A plane 1 degree wide in real life would be 1/190th human Fov, so 20 pixels for 4k and close to 7 for 720. Making this a constant regardless of zoom might look weird and could cause some spacial problems, especially in VR, but it would make things close to irl perception.

[MasterBaiter]

Same for me. Im kinda happy with spotting at the moment.

[357th_KW]

I think spotting definitely improved with the addition of deferred rendering, but I find I still need to use reshade to get things dialed to where visibity in game approaches what I see when flying IRL.  Without reshade, multiplayer is largely just flying around until I see some tracers or puffy flak or my airplane explodes.  With it, I can actually find enemies and sometimes bounce them if I'm being disciplined with my visual scan.

Edited August 1, 2020 by KW_1979

[216th_Jordan]

14 hours ago, JG300_Faucon said:

 

So I may be the only one who think that but... contact spotting is one of the strong point of IL2 (not saying it's perfect of course). Depending on the conditions, you can spot someone more than 10km away, while in the worst conditions, you will kill your eyes trying to find it few kms away. 

 

 

 

I'm sorry to say but it seems that I only get the "worse" part of it. Spotting is not easy IRL but currently it feels worse than IRL (and in my mind it should rather be the other way around, because in the end we do this for fun).

 

The thing is I love this game and I love what the devs have developed and I'm just sad that I can't really enjoy it because I get a headache playing it.

[Lusekofte]

I was following a small camera drone climbing and I swear I could follow it longer and better than this game. 
This leads me to believe we can not expect spotting to be like real life ever. 
What we se irl can never be duplicated on a screen or VR without a editing program taking care of every frame we see

[CountZero]

On 7/31/2020 at 12:37 PM, THERION said:

 

Well, I wouldn't compare the situation you described here with the situation we actually have/simulate. Don't forget, as you stated at the beginning of your first sentence - you are lying on the beach. This is a quite different situation, if you ask me. You observe these planes / choppers from a fix position, you don't move.

And even if you have a glance at other things like flora or fauna, from your fixed position it is much easier to regain sight on those flying objects, because you

do not move, you do not change your position.

 

Even if I'm not a real pilot, I think this is a crucial point. I'm a motor biker and on the road, it is easy to focus on something fix/static or if I have a break and

observe vehicles passing by from quite a distance. But as soon all is moving/driving the situation is not the same, it is more likely to loose "contact".

When im spawned on server and try to locate others that are on ts3 with me i can bearly see them only when they come few kms from me, im also static there, its nothing like i can observe in real life, its not even close. And its same cler skyes.

 

7 hours ago, SJ_Butcher said:

I played the Cliff of Dover today to prepare myself for Tobruk, and the spoting is waaaaaay better, sharp contacts, not overdone, you could spot the colors of planes easily, at distance they don't shimmer or just disappear, I hope the devs can do it better....but it looks like it's more a engine renderings issue, colors are nicer there too, here is dark and opaque.

Yes and servers can chose up to 25km what max distances contacts are visable for players, by default is at 14km if i remenber. Also there is more options for icons like it was in old il-2, when visability is compared its clearly supirior product. 

[LLv34_Flanker]

S! 

 

Biggest issue to me in the discussion is that many claim realism MUST be hard, to such extent that it actually becomes harder than in real life. Why? 

 

We play a game on hardware and software that both have their limitations and challenges. Realism should be injected in a such way that the game is actually playable without being arcade. In this matter CloD is way ahead of BoX.

 

The CloD engine is not stuffed with shaders over shaders with post-processing effects there, just because they exist. Graphics are crisp and lighting is great.

 

BoX went south in this when devs decided we are too stupid to use advanced graphics settings and force fed presets. Had no problems with those settings in RoF. BoX had similar menu in the beginning and no issues for me..go figure. 

 

 

Edited August 1, 2020 by LLv34_Flanker

[Bremspropeller]

Playing on a 17'' laptop. Go figure... ?

[Avimimus]

19 hours ago, Firdimigdi said:

I too have little issue spotting - it's the IDing that makes me lose time... are those 5 pixels friendly I wonder?

 

SWOTL did this by having the single pixel aircraft in the distance wink through a series of colours... from the colour code you could often tell the type of aircraft it was (e.g. German fighters often had a touch of colour on their cowlings, American aircraft were just shades of silver or one colour of brown).

[Ram399]

I've always found spotting in IL-2 to be much easier than in reality, especially after they reworked it with that update last year.
Though I've got a fairly high resolution monitor so that definitely helps.

I got a Valve Index a few months ago though and I've found the spotting in VR to be far harder and far more realistic, funnily enough after spending a number of hours in VR IL-2 I've found that my real world abilities to spot aircraft have seemingly improved.  Not sure if this is because I've been focusing on spotting much more than I used to, or if the challenge that is tracking camouflaged aircraft through forest ground clutter has just made spotting white 172s relatively easy.

Regardless, its always nice to already have traffic in sight when tower tells you to start looking.

[BornToBattle]

An entire year without playing? Whoa. Well welcome back, nonetheless! Hopefully the improvements made over the last year are now enough to keep you in the cockpit more often than not. As usual, just check in here if any questions but the dev diaries should get you up to speed as Jason posted above. Tons of items to go over for the past year if one cares to know all the details.

 

 

[[DBS]TH0R]

On 7/31/2020 at 8:22 PM, JG300_Faucon said:

So I may be the only one who think that but... contact spotting is one of the strong point of IL2 (not saying it's perfect of course). Depending on the conditions, you can spot someone more than 10km away, while in the worst conditions, you will kill your eyes trying to find it few kms away.

 

Not discerning the attempts to realistically model different spotting conditions under various light and time of day conditions, when the game can't do it right under ideal conditions - how is one to expect a realistic rendering under not so ideal conditions?

 

Spotting is by far the weakest point of this flight sim IMO.

 

Especially when compared to the previous two titles that have done it better (as in have a system that works across wide range of hardware), like CloD:

 

On 8/1/2020 at 4:58 AM, SJ_Butcher said:

I played the Cliff of Dover today to prepare myself for Tobruk, and the spoting is waaaaaay better, sharp contacts, not overdone, you could spot the colors of planes easily, at distance they don't shimmer or just disappear, I hope the devs can do it better....but it looks like it's more a engine renderings issue, colors are nicer there too, here is dark and opaque.

 

Edited August 2, 2020 by [DBS]TH0R

[LLv44_Damixu]

Spotting is broken right now and has been since forever. I guess RoF hereditary might come in play for less than satisfactory spotting of targets complemented with half-assed attempt to remedy the situation and leaving us to disappearing targets when closing in....    

[lipstickonapig]

Spotting is also my #1 complaint. I love BoX, but since I joined the community 5 months ago, multiplayer has remained a real problem for me due to inability to detect enemies. On my 2560x1440 monitor (with trackir), my only reliable way to spot enemies has been to loiter around friendly targets and wait for tracers or AA bursts. In real life, it must have been possible for pilots' eyes to catch movement against the ground but something about the representation of the world in this game makes it terribly difficult. It almost hurts my eyes the extent to which I try to overcome this staring at the screen. I hope this is improved... I'd much rather that tactics, rather than ability to see within a 10km radius, was the primary factor in ones success.

Edited August 2, 2020 by lipstickonapig

[nervenklau]

I haven’t play this game almost 7 month, I found that I almost can not spot any bandit after I come back. Anything changed or because I updated my Reshade version? 

[nervenklau]

I guess all this spotting issue is caused by the reflection effect is tuned down in recent patch. I give up now until something done by develop team.

[Lusekofte]

Flying SP I wish AI could spot as bad as me. That is the only thing I find unfair. 
There is no way of hiding or getting away. 
I have no problem ID a friend or foe before getting in shooting distance. 
 

[SJ_Butcher]

I have been testing the difference between alternative spoting checked on and off on my new monitor 1440p nanoIPS LG 27GL850-B and in both situations I can't see the contacts at 4km, both disappear at same distance, what's the difference then? If both sucks

[Hawk-2a]

17 minutes ago, SJ_Butcher said:

I have been testing the difference between alternative spoting checked on and off on my new monitor 1440p nanoIPS LG 27GL850-B and in both situations I can't see the contacts at 4km, both disappear at same distance, what's the difference then? If both sucks

The most noticeable thing is with alternative spotting, contacts can be seen way over 50km away and at about 10km+ they seem to be scaled up by about 50% so they appear larger. If you zoom in on them, they shrink again. This does not change how contacts between 0-10km are rendered, this is equally bad in both settings.

Edited August 4, 2020 by HBG-H_Stiglitz

[CountZero]

13 minutes ago, SJ_Butcher said:

I have been testing the difference between alternative spoting checked on and off on my new monitor 1440p nanoIPS LG 27GL850-B and in both situations I can't see the contacts at 4km, both disappear at same distance, what's the difference then? If both sucks

The thing is when devs decided to incresee bubble of 9,5km they planed to not tuch visability to 9,5km but onlly add ability to see contacts mutch furder. BUT something got wrong so visability up to 9,5km got messed up and they didnt even know how as they planed not to mess it up, and on top 9,5+km visability in first patch was messed up also so contacts got extra big ( this is what is caled alternate setting now). So fix to that extra big contacts abow 9,5km was made and its expert visability.

 

Basicly there should be no differance betwen thouse two settings up to 9,5km, then with alternate contacts that are far from 9,5 are mutch bigger.

Problem with messed up visabitlity up to 9,5km is not solved by any settings.

[SJ_Butcher]

1 hour ago, HBG-H_Stiglitz said:

The most noticeable thing is with alternative spotting, contacts can be seen way over 50km away and at about 10km+ they seem to be scaled up by about 50% so they appear larger. If you zoom in on them, they shrink again. This does not change how contacts between 0-10km are rendered, this is equally bad in both settings.

 

But how those that works if I can't see or they disappear at close distances...

[LeftyHC]

Sad to say but now that Desert Wings is coming, i'll most likely stop playing BoX completely until the spotting issue is fixed. To me spotting in BoX is so bad right now that i just don't enjoy playing it anymore. I have tried all kinds of settings, but the effect has always been marginal. I do hope it will be fixed in the future.

[Hawk-2a]

i recently tried Clod. the one thing i noticed immediately was that contacts below 10km are much much easier to see, even against different darker backgrounds. above 10km, it seems to be about the same as in BOX to me.

[nervenklau]

I spent whole night yesterday to try to exercise spotting with my 2560x1440 screen and check different Reshade setting but with no success.  I still can feel my eye pain now. I have to stop this game for keeping health.

[KoN_]

On 7/25/2020 at 6:50 PM, BladeMeister said:

Well, persistence has payed off in the past. Look how BOS started out. Jason reads all this stuff and he knows what the community wants. TGBS has far more good points than bad, but the Devs need to do something about these two critical issues sooner than later. With proper spotting and intelligent/challenging AI, I would have to think sales would explode. Maybe a reevaluatin of where these two items are on the priority/to-do list would land them high up there and instill a sense of ergancy to do the footwork and solve these critical issues. Hopefully persistence will pay off again.

 

S!Blade<><

VR is on the increase and the new generation are looking at VR . 

VR today is now at 4k res . GTX 3000s are coming out . Vulkan . 

But this spotting issue needs a fix . 

I would like to here what the Devs are doing or any news on this issue . 

Its good to pump out content but basics need to be stable . 

On 7/27/2020 at 4:48 PM, Atomic_Spaniel said:

 

I used to wonder why the game kept the ludicrous bright tracers - but I now think they have to be kept because finding other aircraft would be almost impossible without them. 

Correct . 

On comms its a common thing . ``I don`t see shit oh look tracers . `` Tallyho . !!

On 7/23/2020 at 7:14 PM, Rattlesnake said:

Here mate, the flyspeck effect is fairly visible at the outset of this one. Keep in mind the standard caveat that due to compression the YT quality is far grainier than what actually appears on the monitor.

I play the game on a 1080p monitor, but with super sampling turned on, no antialiasing. This results in a VERY sharp image on my screen for easy spotting of both tanks and planes, albeit I have to turn off some of the eye candy (shadow effects) to keep the 80 or greater frame rate I consider ideal for dogfighting performance. If I was willing to put up with 50-60 average I could play with a lot of that stuff on.
Pea Shooter vs. Biplane

Just watched your video . Really cant fly like that . Them graphics are bad my eyes would bleed . ?. 

Its 2020 hardware faster than NASA .

$1000s of dollars and pounds on hardware to fly like that . ?

People should not be playing like this . 

On 7/27/2020 at 4:22 AM, JG7_X-Man said:

 

Which is my point - that pixel size you see depends on how close you are to the TV.

Arm length away . 

[KoN_]

On 7/31/2020 at 7:45 PM, Noisemaker said:

Spotting by me is also no problem.  GTX 1080 with a 1080p resolution flatscreen.  I always see the contacts long before the markers appear (No trackIR or equivalent yet, and just getting back into flight sims, so cut me some slack).

buy the Ps3 camera track for tracking cheap and it works 

On 8/4/2020 at 9:57 AM, nervenklau said:

I guess all this spotting issue is caused by the reflection effect is tuned down in recent patch. I give up now until something done by develop team.

Give re-shade another try remove some of the shade layers . 

Try:

lumasharpen 

clarity . 

colour-fullness

[Otto_bann]

HDR will burn your retinas :-( especially when the sun is low above the ground. Be careful with this option!

[Noisemaker]

7 hours ago, KoN_ said:

buy the Ps3 camera track for tracking cheap and it works 

 

Next on the list.  Just got rudder controllers and a throttle quadrant.  Learning how to fly all over again.

 

[SJ_Butcher]

I check DD every Friday to see finally that fixed but looks like is not a priority for devs...sadly for them people will stop buying their products( I refuse to buy Normandy) until they fix the critical things in the sim.

[[DBS]Browning]

It's the only thing I check DDs for these days.