aircraft disappearing against terrain.

[patrat1]

is anybody else having trouble seeing aircraft that are around 1k or so away, against the ground. i know they had camoflage but this is like a cloaking device kicks in. im looking right at them and they fade from view if they drop below the horizon.

i have a good 400 dollar LG monitor and ive tried every setting,(100 bright and 100 contrast work best) but it doesn't stop their disappearing act.:(

i would really like to be able to fly no icons, but this makes it nearly impossiable.

[Heliocon]

Try fiddling with the resolution and see if it makes a differance, technically at 1 km if they are under you unless the background color doesnt match the camo I dont think you would be able to see them, if they dissapear its another matter though, maybe try watching or looking for turning planes which will expose their white under belly...

[reflected]

It's indeed VERY hard to see enemy aircraft, not only against the ground but against the sky too. A lot harder than in il2. Is this more realistic?

I noticed that at high FOV it's easier to spot them while they're far from you. as soon as you zoom in, they disappear.

[seiseki]

Yeah, it's really hard..

I even lose track of large bombers in formation..
One wrong turn, I look back and wait.. where did everyone go?

But for me it's most likely the unstable framerate which plays a big part too..

I read these war stories and it seems like spotting planes is really easy in real life..
Why is it much harder in games? A lack of depth perception? Low resolution?

[patrat1]

yep, i can lose a flight of 20 bombers by just glancing away.

i got fps avg in the 50s, min in the 20s over land and am playing in 1920x1080 res.

so in my case i doubt its res or fps.

[Raggz]

Problem is that there are no collision detection in trees. I've seen enemy fly low in trees many times making them impossible to see.

[xnomad]

It is very difficult to see them but they shouldn't necessarily be easy to see either.

I've read accounts of planes disappearing into the ground clutter a few times.

Helmut Lipfert in his war diary often resorted to diving down low and looking up. A few times when he did this he suddenly would see whole swarms of aircraft on the horizon that he hadn't noticed from above.

He also used to lie his plane on it's back to get a better view too. I do this in the sim and have always wondered if real pilots ever did this and it turns out they did.

So back to the topic, it's probably too hard in the game but shouldn't be too easy either, it's just harder to detect movement against the ground in a sim when the ground is so detailed like it is now.

[Pluto]

I can report the same experience here.
Good to read that I am not the only one.
I first thought I need again new glasses, because it is really hard to see aircraft on a distance, no matter if against the ground or the sky.

From the old IL2 I was used to see aircraft already from quite far away but you also had that rather unrealistic zoom option.

I dont know what is more realistic, the sight now in Cliffs of Dover or the old one from Sturmovik?
I have flown real planes (small ones 2-4 seats) from time to time, when the pilot allowed it but of course I never experienced a real air combat.
In reality I also didnt meet so many other planes in the air, so I have no "real" experience on how good and how far you actually see in reality.

Anyway, it is harder to see in CoD than it was in the old IL2.
Maybe some of the developers are real pilots who could judge that issue better?

:-|

[reflected]

Well, it's true that it shouldn't be easy. In many pilots accounts I've read that one they they were in the thich of it, then after a few seconds the whole sky was empty. It was quite common during the BofB. However, I do think it's way too difficult now in game.

[Skoshi Tiger]

From experience flying light aircraft, some times its hard seeing light coloured aircraft in the best of conditions.

"Wiskey India Foxtrot, join circuit down wind behind white Cessna", "Hmmm! OK!"

I think I remember reading Chuck Yeager discussing the technique he had for visually searching for E/A's, People kept on saying he had fantastic vision, he just put it down to focuing at infinity and mantaining a consistent search pattern.

That said In COD I've been flying around in circles right on top on an enemy aircraft and only saw it when it was attacked by another friendly. Once I saw it I could follow it, but had to keep direct visual contact.

That made me think it was modeled fairly good in COD.

Cheers!

[Pluto]

Something else about sights in CoD, ....

when I am for example flying the 109 and dogfighting with a Hurricane,
I do not loose it so quickly out of sight even if we turn and turn quite a bit, I still keep track of it. Of course harder against the ground than against the sky but still, I can follow it and eventually bring it down, if it does not bring me down first.

On the other hand, when I fly as the last bird in a formation and start leaving the formation just to fly behind it some barrelrolls or some other maneuvers, I loose the formation faster than the Hurricane in the dogfight, although, it should be easier to keep track of a steadyly moving big object like a formation of planes.

That happened of course also some times in the old IL2 but there you found your formation again very quickly, whereas in IL2-CoD you might need a few moments to find it again. If it takes too long, you have lost them for good.
:-)

[timholt]

As a (used to be) pilot in real life I think it is realistic.

[Winger]

It's indeed VERY hard to see enemy aircraft, not only against the ground but against the sky too. A lot harder than in il2. Is this more realistic?

I noticed that at high FOV it's easier to spot them while they're far from you. as soon as you zoom in, they disappear.

I second that. Could use some optimization.
Here is how i handle it: Against the heaven and high distances i leave FOV at 50. Once i spotted someone i remain at 50 FOV since zooming in doesnt help at higher distances. The actual rendered 3D model of the plane at higher diestances is less visible than the "visibility-dots" you see when zoomed out. Only when you get closer to the target (say around 800m or so) it helps to zoom in since the plane then is bigger than the dots you see while in 50 FOV.
Against the ground i think zooming in is the only thing that helps at all. Spotting enemies above ground at higher than like 1500m is almost impossible.
Another tip: Spotting the enemies shadow on the ground is easier than spotting the plane itself. So once spotted look up and realize where the sun is. Being aware of that makes its easier to locate the enemy plane above ground.
Other than that i can only recommend to just practice practice practice. That helps the most.

Winger

[patrat1]

As a (used to be) pilot in real life I think it is realistic.


is it realistic to have a bomber formation about 1k away, disappear as your staring at it?

[Winger]

is it realistic to have a bomber formation about 1k away, disappear as your staring at it?

They dont disappear at 1km. They just get that small that you loose them:)
I am certain that the distance at wich planes effectively dissapear is bigger than 1km depending on your resolution.

Winger

[Extreme_One]

...

I noticed that at high FOV it's easier to spot them while they're far from you. as soon as you zoom in, they disappear.

Yeah I noticed this too.

[timholt]

is it realistic to have a bomber formation about 1k away, disappear as your staring at it?

My experience in the game (so far) is they don't disappear, they just blend in with the ground (the reason for the camo paint schemes).

Try enemy view and I am sure they will be there. I will confess I have had to resort to this more than once )purely as an aid to my 64 year old eyes) for low flying a/c over land, especially around dawn and dusk.

[reflected]

The wonderfully made reflections on canopies don't help either, especially at dawn or dusk! Still, I love it ;)

[Buzzer]

Also find it hard. But I think its pretty realistic.
As someone else mentioned: in BoB pilots said they could one moment be in the thick of it - the next minute you were (ie thought you were) completely alone.

Also in RL its extremely hard to spot other AC:
Sometimes the easiest way is to spot a dot moving against the background.
Could be a white 737 - imagine this was a greenish spitfire: would be impossible to spot it.

But yes, its frustrating loosing sight of an enemy you know is there somewhere.
Been reading books about Dick Bong, Bruce Porter, George Barclay, Douglas Bader etc - and they rarely speak of 1on1 encounters. Guess its because its too hard to spot single AC, and also the usual operation was large groups in formations.

Funny to read how many times they had to return due to oil on the windshield...trying to find the way back...

But good to hear others having the same "problem" :) .

[djwolters]

The wonderfully made reflections on canopies don't help either, especially at dawn or dusk! Still, I love it ;)

I remember from the Mig Alley sim that it was often the canopy reflections of enemy airplanes which would give you an early indication that there was something 'out there'. Apart from engine contrails at certain altitudes, of course.

Perhaps this could be modeled as well in a future CoD patch, that canopy reflections can be a bother, but may also help you spotting bogies (and vice versa)?

[SEE]

Open the canopy and take a look outside then close it. The effect of the canopy seems overmodelled in terms of reduced visibilty. I am constantly having to open the canopy to look around and soon as I close it the enemy ac seems to just disappear as I track it into my sights. It's tough without icons but unfortunately, using them is not an option for me. I would prefer to see some optimisation on the closed canopy effect - the world looks too flat and dull.

[Heliocon]

In WW2 werent like 80% of fighter on fighter kills made when one party was not aware of the enemy before they got shot down? I mean most kills resulted from people closing in and hoping the other pilot is distracted (I would be if I was sitting in a plane for 6+ hours, after a few hours I imagine your nerves calm down and you lose concentration).

Only problem is of course the AI doesnt operate based on sight which makes it a bit unbalanced.

[Blackdog_kt]

I don't have personal experience but i remember one of the devs (probably Luthier) stating that it's done on purpose based on real-world flying experience and pilot accounts.

I think it's a better implementation than what we had in the previous IL2 series, where you could pick up distant contacts just fine and yet you would lose them against the terrain if you closed 300m or less. In CoD it seems that it's easier to keep track of the closer ones but increasingly hard to maintain a visual as distance increases.

I too found it hard, until i realized it's better to look for movement and not for distinct silhouettes and shapes. I might not be able to pick up shapes and make a positive ID right away, but unless they are already a few km away i can easily perceive something moving over the landscape. If they do put some distance between me and them however it's much harder to spot them against the terrain.

Come to think of it, if that wasn't the case there wouldn't be so many examples in real life where ground attack missions were carried out at tree-top level. If real-world pilots were going into a combat zone at a complete altitude disadvantage, then there must have been some kind of advantage to offset that otherwise they wouldn't do it. It seems that moving low and fast was indeed effective in making aircraft hard to spot and even if spotted, make it easier to lose them.

As a final note, i remember reading an article on simHQ a few months ago where one of the website's staff members took up real-world flying lessons and started making comparisons between the real thing and simulations on the PC. The aim of the article was to explore if and how much of an advantage a sim flyer has when stepping into a real aircraft for pilot lessons and naturally, there were things that were easier in real life (orientation due to feeling the movement and so on) and things that were easier in the sim.

He talked in length about each aspect, for example he said that as a sim flyer he picked up a habit that's bad for RL flying, looking at the instrument panel too much and not enough outside the window, but on the other hand his simming experience made it very easy for him to use the controls with precision and so on.

At some point he talked about visibility and the way he put it was that "the graphics of the real world are in need of an upgrade". He then proceeded to describe how the ATC gave them a traffic advisory about another, larger aircraft in the vicinity that was at their 2 o'clock low or something similar and yet, even though they knew exactly where to look for it they couldn't see it for an entire minute, even though it was only a couple of miles away.

So,i think it's probably realistic the way it is in CoD, or at the very least more realistic than how it was in IL2.

[Heliocon]

I don't have personal experience but i remember one of the devs (probably Luthier) stating that it's done on purpose based on real-world flying experience and pilot accounts.

I think it's a better implementation than what we had in the previous IL2 series, where you could pick up distant contacts just fine and yet you would lose them against the terrain if you closed 300m or less. In CoD it seems that it's easier to keep track of the closer ones but increasingly hard to maintain a visual as distance increases.

I too found it hard, until i realized it's better to look for movement and not for distinct silhouettes and shapes. I might not be able to pick up shapes and make a positive ID right away, but unless they are already a few km away i can easily perceive something moving over the landscape. If they do put some distance between me and them however it's much harder to spot them against the terrain.

Come to think of it, if that wasn't the case there wouldn't be so many examples in real life where ground attack missions were carried out at tree-top level. If real-world pilots were going into a combat zone at a complete altitude disadvantage, then there must have been some kind of advantage to offset that otherwise they wouldn't do it. It seems that moving low and fast was indeed effective in making aircraft hard to spot and even if spotted, make it easier to lose them.

As a final note, i remember reading an article on simHQ a few months ago where one of the website's staff members took up real-world flying lessons and started making comparisons between the real thing and simulations on the PC. The aim of the article was to explore if and how much of an advantage a sim flyer has when stepping into a real aircraft for pilot lessons and naturally, there were things that were easier in real life (orientation due to feeling the movement and so on) and things that were easier in the sim.

He talked in length about each aspect, for example he said that as a sim flyer he picked up a habit that's bad for RL flying, looking at the instrument panel too much and not enough outside the window, but on the other hand his simming experience made it very easy for him to use the controls with precision and so on.

At some point he talked about visibility and the way he put it was that "the graphics of the real world are in need of an upgrade". He then proceeded to describe how the ATC gave them a traffic advisory about another, larger aircraft in the vicinity that was at their 2 o'clock low or something similar and yet, even though they knew exactly where to look for it they couldn't see it for an entire minute, even though it was only a couple of miles away.

So,i think it's probably realistic the way it is in CoD, or at the very least more realistic than how it was in IL2.

Yep you are correct. I do alot of diving and am kinda known for my excellent eyesight, even though it sucks horribly and I have to wear glasses to drive. Why? Because I have excellent vision, especiall for movement. Thats what you need when you are looking for a cuttlefish or octopus. Also a tip, dont look excactly where you think the plane is, just hold steady because your peripheral vision is actually much more sensitive to movement than what you are directly looking at (for picking up movement).

[SG1_Lud]

Yep you are correct. I do alot of diving and am kinda known for my excellent eyesight, even though it sucks horribly and I have to wear glasses to drive. Why? Because I have excellent vision, especiall for movement. Thats what you need when you are looking for a cuttlefish or octopus. Also a tip, dont look excactly where you think the plane is, just hold steady because your peripheral vision is actually much more sensitive to movement than what you are directly looking at (for picking up movement).

Agree.

Maybe (and this is to ask for your opinions) the sea surface moves too much in the sim, and that makes more difficult than normal to distinguish planes movements from above?

[JG14_Jagr]

Problem is that there are no collision detection in trees. I've seen enemy fly low in trees many times making them impossible to see.

That can be fixes with some wire frame fences inside large wooded areas.. low system resources needed and the end result is SMACK :)

[Rattlehead]

One good thing about those God-awful arrows is that it has forced me to play without icons on, and I'm really happy that I can now play this game guilt free.
After all, pilots didn't have big friendly arrows and icons in real life, and if I'm playing the sim with realism in mind, why should I?

It's not easy to play with icons off...at first it's really daunting and a bit frustrating, but you have to learn to train your eyes to spot a hint of movement, a flash of cross or roundel as the enemy flashes past you, a speck in the distance, a hint of yellow nose (in the case of the 109) and also you have to learn to discern between the different shapes in the sky and what aircraft they represent - especially from the 6 o' clock.
Not easy.
But at the same time, so wonderfully rewarding when you bag a kill.

On the other hand, I've spent a fair bit of time tracking an aircraft only to find out he was a squad mate, and on more than one occasion I have killed a friendly by accident.
I remember shooting down this poor Defiant, thinking it was a 109, and as I realised my mistake I actually said out loud: "Sorry mate." :-P

But to the topic of the thread...it's difficult to spot aircraft on the deck, but by no means impossible. As said earlier, if you really can't find anything, take a page out of Helmut Liepfert's book and dive to the deck yourself and look above. It's helped me many times.

[Blackdog_kt]

Yep you are correct. I do alot of diving and am kinda known for my excellent eyesight, even though it sucks horribly and I have to wear glasses to drive. Why? Because I have excellent vision, especiall for movement. Thats what you need when you are looking for a cuttlefish or octopus. Also a tip, dont look excactly where you think the plane is, just hold steady because your peripheral vision is actually much more sensitive to movement than what you are directly looking at (for picking up movement).

Now that's weird, i also use a similar method to pick up contacts and i also wear glasses. :grin:
Maybe people who wear glasses and have to look through a somewhat narrow field of view for the majority of everyday tasks have a more pronounced reflex reaction to movement outside it, who knows. Or maybe it's just that four eyes are better than two :-P

[Romanator21]

I'm just going to echo what's already been said, and mention that it is indeed hard to spot planes in real life - and all the planes I've seen were glossy white, not camouflaged.

Scan just a certain "sector" of your field of vision at a time, using your peripheral view to detect moving objects, or even stationary faint ones (For instance, I tend to see stars better when not looking directly at them).

[xnomad]

This could turn into a problem in the full real servers. I just got off a server and everybody was flying on the deck. Hardly anyone above 1000 metres.
I wanted to go high but nobody else went up and planes at 100m are impossible to spot at 3000m.

We need some kind of incentive to force people to gain some altitude otherwise we are back to Eastern front scenarios.

[BlackbusheFlyer]

It is realistic, a fly-in to Perranporth airfield a few years ago there were 13 or 14 aircraft all within a couple of miles of the airfield whilst I joined the circuit, I could only see around 4 of them. Gliders (cloud huggers) particularly can be hard to spot. Sunlight glinting off hoods is often a good visual clue. Aircraft heading on an opposite bearing also can be tough to spot even when you have been warned by ATC services of their presence.

I do however believe pilots learn to spot them by developing a good scan. Passengers tend to not notice aircraft so easily.

[BlackbusheFlyer]

It is realistic, a fly-in to Perranporth airfield a few years ago there were 13 or 14 aircraft all within a couple of miles of the airfield whilst I joined the circuit, I could only see around 4 of them. Gliders (cloud huggers) particularly can be hard to spot. Sunlight glinting off hoods is often a good visual clue. Aircraft heading on an opposite bearing also can be tough to spot even when you have been warned by ATC services of their presence.

I do however believe pilots learn to spot them by developing a good scan. Passengers tend to not notice aircraft so easily.