Is there a way to increase plane visibility? (online)

[MadTommy]

Is there a way to increase plane visibility for flying online that is within the rules of fair play?

One thing i really struggle with is visually picking up planes. It seems unrealistically difficult. I live under the flight path of a small airfield and i see very small planes flying about the whole time, on sunny days, (like every day in CloD), you can see them from miles away with ease, especially with the sun reflecting off them.. in CloD many many times i have been in the vicinity of a group of heavy bombers (on ATAG server) and not been able to locate them. Often i'll fly a 40 minutes sortie and never see another plane, even though i know there are 30 other players and many AI about.

I've seen mention of tweaks to files that is supposed to help.. but not sure what these tweaks are and if they are allowed in multiplayer.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I use a 22" monitor @ 1680x1050 res...

[U505]

Have the same problem and i have a 24 inch monitor with a resolution of 1920@1200.:(

[von Brühl]

Debatable about the fair play bit, but some members of this forum play at low resolution settings (1280x1024 or worse) so that their games display more pixels for far away contacts.

[ATAG_Doc]

Try lowering your resolution a bit and test for a while.

[nadasero]

There is a totally legal way to increase plane visibility. It was invented by Manfred von Richthofen about 95 years ago. You just need to paint your plane completely in red.

Unfortunately, this is only increasing the visibility of your plane. On the other hand, it might attract other pilots to close in and this is increaing the visibility of the other planes to.

[Frache]

I have had these issues as well. Only two things I know of lower the resolution and turn of AA. The drawbacks are its much more difficult to identify friend or foe.

[lonewulf]

I agree entirely with the original post. Aircraft visibility is a complete disaster in the game and in my view, one of the key reasons CLOD is struggling to take hold. Unless you are below or co-alt with an enemy you're unlikely to see him. Aircraft over the sea are virtually invisible. In all the trips I've made over the channel (maybe 60-80 or so I suppose) I think I've been bounced once! ONCE!!! That I think speaks volumes for the the 'challenging' nature of the graphical rendering of the aircraft. You could fly across without looking around once and in almost every case you'd be just fine.

People enter the servers, fly about in the general vicinity of the targets, have no luck finding a fight and leave. Combat sims that lack combat are always going to struggle to maintain critical mass. If the dev. wallahs do anything at all, I think they should fix the bloody aircraft visibility issue.

[Kranak]

People enter the servers, fly about in the general vicinity of the targets, have no luck finding a fight and leave. Combat sims that lack combat are always going to struggle to maintain critical mass. If the dev. wallahs do anything at all, I think they should fix the bloody aircraft visibility issue.

This is why I got bored with the game and haven't been back on. On the rare occasion I did find a plane to fight with they would disappear when I got close so I lost the will to get my TIR and controlers set up to fly about with no contact.

[Slipstream2012]

This is why I got bored with the game and haven't been back on. On the rare occasion I did find a plane to fight with they would disappear when I got close so I lost the will to get my TIR and controlers set up to fly about with no contact.

Most weekends on ATAG there are 30-40 + people on the server at times.
Hawkinge is usually a big mess, and the ships are hot with targets!
Could be worth you checking it out sometime. I've had endless hours fun in there.

[chantaje]

This is why I got bored with the game and haven't been back on. On the rare occasion I did find a plane to fight with they would disappear when I got close so I lost the will to get my TIR and controlers set up to fly about with no contact.

you sure have bad luck .
i fly often on atag and almost all fligths i do i encounter other aircrafts.

try lowering resolution, in my case i have a 1080 monitor, if i fly native i dont see much but since i lowered to 1600x900 i see them fine, almos like old il2.

against the ground is difficult to see them but i think this is historical, (i remember reading on the biography of adolf galland that in the spanish civil war the republicans flew low to the ground to avoid being spotted)
but against sea or the sky its easy to see contacts

on the other hand the lod transition of the spit is broken

[VO101_Tom]

This is why I got bored with the game and haven't been back on. On the rare occasion I did find a plane to fight with they would disappear when I got close so I lost the will to get my TIR and controlers set up to fly about with no contact.

Hi. Try this: open the conf.ini (1CSoftclub folder), and set the MeshShowLod= value to 1. It may causes performance loss, but it fixed my LOD-bug.

I opened a bugtracker ticket around 4 months ago:
http://www.il2bugtracker.com/issues/294

[ATAG_Dutch]

Have to agree with all points raised.

What really peels my banana is when you see a large formation of bombers at a distance, you go to gunsight view, and the formation disappears. You go back to 'normal' view, and there they are!! Then you go back to gunsight view and you see a very tiny collection of dots in the distance.

I refuse point blank to lower my screen res in order to 'game the game'. I didn't buy a GTX570 in order to lower my screen res.

Needs sorting out very urgently. So we might get it by December 2040. Sorry, sarcasm gets you nowhere. Love the game, really do. Hence the 'ATAG' bit. :grin:

[regen70]

I'm having the same difficulty and find that the solutions that used to work with IL2 - looking for AAA or tracer bullets - don't work with CoD.
As an interim measure perhaps ATAG and other hosts could drop their obsession with full realism settings to allow map icons. At least we would then know in which direction to head.

[MadTommy]

Hi. Try this: open the conf.ini (1CSoftclub folder), and set the MeshShowLod= value to 1. It may causes performance loss, but it fixed my LOD-bug.

I opened a bugtracker ticket around 4 months ago:
http://www.il2bugtracker.com/issues/294

I don't mind a performance loss... my fps is high, i'd happily half it if helped. I'll try this thanks.

Have to agree with all points raised.

What really peels my banana is when you see a large formation of bombers at a distance, you go to gunsight view, and the formation disappears. You go back to 'normal' view, and there they are!! Then you go back to gunsight view and you see a very tiny collection of dots in the distance.

I refuse point blank to lower my screen res in order to 'game the game'. I didn't buy a GTX570 in order to lower my screen res.

Needs sorting out very urgently. So we might get it by December 2040. Sorry, sarcasm gets you nowhere. Love the game, really do. Hence the 'ATAG' bit. :grin:

I notice the same.. i have the 3 FOV settings mapped to my HOTAS, when i 'zoom in' to try and ID a plane or group they often disappear. Its totally counter productive.

I love full realism.. but often wonder how much more fun the game would be in ATAG had some sort of modified labels were used where a plane was represented by a dot that was visible at a range that was in line with real world visibility ranges.

Flying a combat sims and not being able to find the combat is boring... how many times have you chased a line of flak and never seen what the hell the flak is firing at. This happens to me every time i fly.