10km render range bubble?

[[TWB]Pand]

Cheers Gents!   It's been many years since I've flown IL-2, and upon returning I've found what appears to be a very big bug in gameplay on MULTIPLAYER servers preventing the ability to maintain quality SA.   I play in VR--- and I have no issue spotting dots, I can easily see aircraft, track them, and kill them--- with the caveat that the aircraft have to actually exist on my client.

 

I would find myself starting an engagement on a set of bandits and before doing so, I would visually scan towards enemy territory to ensure no threats are inbound.   After confirming there are NO enemies there, It's on!  I mark the area as clear in my head and begin the engagement, only to find 10 seconds later a group of 4 bandits bouncing my fight from that very same direction where nothing existed before.  This has been happening repeatedly and I didn't understand how or why.  

 

As you can imagine this is super frustrating, so I started investigating how this could be happening.   After exhaustively tweaking and testing tons of graphic settings with no luck, I finally discovered the following.   As I'm flying towards the front and scanning intently towards where the engagements would be, I could see dots appearing and disappearing like a magic trick as they enter/leave what appears to be a 10km rendering bubble.  It's not graphic settings, it's the information being shared from the server to my client and how my client displays the the aircraft to me.  Now it all makes sense.

 

To confirm this, I took it a step further and went into the Berloga multiplayer server, hopped into a 262 and started recording a straight flight through the engagement area.  I created a gif of what I found (attached). 

 

 

My game client is IN FACT only rendering planes when they are within 9-10km of my aircraft.  Notice how aircraft appear when within range, and upon leaving the rendering bubble, the client no longer receives updated information for them from the server.  This means no matter how hard I try, even if they existed there seconds ago, and they are only 1 meter farther than the range bubble, all I see is an empty sky in game.  Not a great experience. 

 

When it's early war and the aircraft are flying slower, pilots have much more time to spot and react to contacts as they enter the bubble; however, this becomes far more problematic on late war server when aircraft are moving considerably faster. 

 

Example: Let's say one aircraft is heading east at 600km/h in a slight dive, while a second plane is heading west at 600km/h in a slight dive, which is 1200km/h closure.   With the 10km render range bubble being the maximum that each aircraft could see each other, each aircraft would have just 30 seconds to spot the other plane before traveling 5km and merging.  What if you were scanning left/right/checking your six during that time because you already cleared your 12 and nothing even existed on your client when you last checked--- or so you thought.  Not a great experience.  Note: These are conservative numbers, as we all know late war can be even faster in those dives, especially when you consider 262s sneaking up on people, taking full advantage of the bubble.  

 

IMHO, all that being said, speed isn't the overall issue, it is the ability to not even have the opportunity to spot anything beyond the 10km render range bubble because it doesn't exist on your client.  

 

Before I submit this as a bug in the bug reports forum:

   1.  Is the 10km render bubble a bug with my specific client?  Are there client side settings that could fix this? 

   2.  Is this only a multiplayer issue or single player also?

   3.  Is everyone experiencing this issue in multiplayer?   If so, could the solution be as simple as increasing the render range to 20km?

 

Thanks for reading, good hunting, and looking forward to seeing you all in the skies again.  Cheers!

 

Edited May 30, 2021 by [TWB]Pand

[SharpeXB]

AFAIK the 10km limit is gone. In either normal or Alternate aircraft visibility. 

[Jason_Williams]

Sorry this claim is false and misleading. See all the other threads on this topic in the forum. We adjusted visibility several updates ago and added an alternative settings that makes it even easier. 

 

You are using our TacView output to try and prove something when we probably simply don't report contacts to TacView beyond that range. You assume TacView knows everything, it does not and that's by design.

 

Jason

[[1Tac]DisCHQ]

Now from what I heard and see happen in game myself from time to time, is the reduction of render range by what I assume is the dedicated server client. When the server gets real busy the hardware can sometimes struggle to keep up.

 

(You might get sever overloaded messages in the chatbox.)

 

So what I think the server client can do is reduce maximum render range for players to save up resources.

 

(Maybe @Jason_Williams can confirm that).

[[TWB]Pand]

5 hours ago, [TWB]Pand said:

As I'm flying towards the front and scanning intently towards where the engagements would be, I could see dots appearing and disappearing like a magic trick as they enter/leave what appears to be a 10km rendering bubble.  

 

As per my original post, I can actually see the dots popping in and out as they reach some sort of render range limitation, which my original guess was 10km, based off ground references and audio confirmation from friendlies on the radio.  After looking at the tacview output, it matched what I was experiencing so I thought that would be the best way to share the issue.

 

Also to caveat ---- this 10km limitation that I am experiencing seems to appear ONLY on MULTIPLAYER.   Single player I have now seen and confirmed contacts beyond 10km with range markers and tacview.

 

I do have a couple questions, and with some clear answers, I believe it would make everyone's experience way better, as well as setting the appropriate expectations for us pilots!

 

In Multiplayer:

1.  What is the visibility range that the game will render other aircraft around your plane?  (5km, 10km, 15km, 20km, unlimited, etc?)

2.  Are we able to configure our clients in a way that will CHANGE the range at which aircraft are rendered?

3.  If #2 is possible, will someone please point me to what would need to be best settings to get the longest render range possible where the plane actually exists in the sky (not the best settings to see the 'dot').

 

As always, thanks for all who can help, cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[[1Tac]DisCHQ]

2 hours ago, [TWB]Pand said:

In Multiplayer:

1.  What is the visibility range that the game will render other aircraft around your plane?  (5km, 10km, 15km, 20km, unlimited, etc?)

2.  Are we able to configure our clients in a way that will CHANGE the range at which aircraft are rendered?

3.  If #2 is possible, will someone please point me to what would need to be best settings to get the longest render range possible where the plane actually exists in the sky (not the best settings to see the 'dot').

1. So the maximum render range is 100km

2. You have the option in your settings to select a maximum view distance. (and enable longer range rendering for buildings and such)

3. So there is no such thing as a dot for a plane. I think its best to quote the devs in this case.

 

Edited May 30, 2021 by [1Tac]DisCHQ

[Alonzo]

1 hour ago, [TWB]Pand said:

In Multiplayer:

1.  What is the visibility range that the game will render other aircraft around your plane?  (5km, 10km, 15km, 20km, unlimited, etc?)

2.  Are we able to configure our clients in a way that will CHANGE the range at which aircraft are rendered?

3.  If #2 is possible, will someone please point me to what would need to be best settings to get the longest render range possible where the plane actually exists in the sky (not the best settings to see the 'dot').

 

As always, thanks for all who can help, cheers!

 

I can only report on TacView behavior, which as Jason has pointed out above is not necessarily the same as the game client behavior.

 

In a TacView track, on multiplayer, you are only guaranteed to see aircraft within a 10km bubble, but if there is less going on near you, you may also see planes further than 10km. For example if you are flying alone in areas of little activity (far from objectives) then TacView will likely show you contacts 20km or more distant. If you are in the middle of a furball over an objective you'll only see contacts within 10km.

 

Client render range is something different than the range at which contacts are recorded in TacView. For that, you're asking "best spotting settings" which is Fenris' VR thread. But basically, shadows off/ultra (pick one depending on your overall rig performance), high overall settings, MSAAx2 (not FXAA), reduce other settings to get a constant framerate cap in your headset.

[[TWB]Pand]

Thanks all for the comments and the copy paste from the devs. 

 

So if I'm interpreting this information properly, essentially in the right conditions I *could* see rendered planes up to 100km (hence the improved distances I am seeing  in single player up to 20km); however, if in  multiplayer with many pilots, it will likely still only be 10km which makes sense as to why I'm seeing the planes actually disappear and reappear around that range while in the cockpit. 

 

Cheers all!

[AEthelraedUnraed]

8 hours ago, [TWB]Pand said:

Thanks all for the comments and the copy paste from the devs. 

 

So if I'm interpreting this information properly, essentially in the right conditions I *could* see rendered planes up to 100km (hence the improved distances I am seeing  in single player up to 20km); however, if in  multiplayer with many pilots, it will likely still only be 10km which makes sense as to why I'm seeing the planes actually disappear and reappear around that range while in the cockpit. 

 

Cheers all!

No, you're misreading Alonzo's post. Spotting is the same for multiplayer and singleplayer. Only in the TacView software there's occasionally a 10 km max range.

 

If you can't spot an aircraft beyond 20 km, it must be your graphics settings or the specific circumstances of that flight (e.g. fogginess, position of the sun etc.)

[DD_Arthur]

I have no idea how TacView works. I don’t use it myself.

 

I’m still in the VR Stone Age, still using a Rift CV1 and I know I can see contacts further out than 10km in multiplayer.

This is confirmed by other squad mates and by tracks I make.

 

 I can’t tell what these contacts are until they’re almost in the cockpit with me but that’s because I’m still banging rocks together!

[[TWB]Pand]

Someone articulated this very well and I'll post it here:

Render range is one thing, and that's graphics on the client, and I believe the engine is capable of quite distant rendering -- you can test this in single player.

The other range is "distance at which objects are reported to game clients by the game server" and that's not the same thing as render range. Most game servers report objects to clients only at some reasonable distance around them, to improve performance and reduce network traffic.

 

Look, I'm not here to cause any trouble---- I just want to be competitive and play the same game everyone else is playing.  Clearly I have something set incorrectly if I'm the only one experiencing symptoms 100% identical to the old 10km bubble.   To clarify, I do not experience the 10km bubble in singleplayer, only in multiplayer.

 

In this particular case for the video attached, data for aircraft is only being sent to my client up to a range of 10km, and you can see the aircraft become visible to my client once they are within that range.  (attached).

 

 

 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

1 hour ago, [TWB]Pand said:

Someone articulated this very well and I'll post it here:

Render range is one thing, and that's graphics on the client, and I believe the engine is capable of quite distant rendering -- you can test this in single player.

The other range is "distance at which objects are reported to game clients by the game server" and that's not the same thing as render range. Most game servers report objects to clients only at some reasonable distance around them, to improve performance and reduce network traffic.

 

Look, I'm not here to cause any trouble---- I just want to be competitive and play the same game everyone else is playing.  Clearly I have something set incorrectly if I'm the only one experiencing symptoms 100% identical to the old 10km bubble.   To clarify, I do not experience the 10km bubble in singleplayer, only in multiplayer.

I'm not aware of any such server rules, but of course that doesn't mean that they don't exist. It sounds plausible enough. Regardless, you should still "be competitive and play the same game everyone else is playing" as server rules are the same for everyone

 

If you're the only one who has problems, then maybe it's caused by your internet connection to that specific server, which makes the server decrease the amount of data it sends to you?

Edited May 31, 2021 by AEthelraedUnraed

[[TWB]Pand]

I'm wondering if I'm the only one having problems, or if others just aren't noticing. Everyone I talk to that runs servers and plays competitively, all explain they experience this same behavior, and there doesn't seem to be a way around it based off of how the Dserver in multiplayer  operates. 

 

If anyone can produce some video evidence and distance ranging that shows them seeing a furball of AIRCRAFT more than 10km out and distance detail to prove it on a multiplayer server (not singleplayer), I'd love to see it shared here. 

 

Cheers all and here's hoping to improve everyone's overall experience. 

Edited May 31, 2021 by [TWB]Pand

[Creep]

@[TWB]Pand can confirm that there still is an issue with aircraft disappearing and reappearing around some specific distance. In my experience it is always very brief, e.g. I am tracking a very distant contact that is 20km or more away and then as I close in, they disappear for a moment and then reappear. Maybe a gap in LOD rendering or something. Anyway, contact spotting is way way better than it has been in the past IMO.