Yes but he talks about visual identification.

I'll try to make him post there (he's soo lazy :-) )

I agree with you guys that we need a fix for the contacts disappearing at medium / short range but i'm really disappointed on reading about the "active label" stuff explained by Manu.
You can't simulate what the pilot see that way just because every pilot is different!
They were not able to see all the same thing at the same distance.
The best would be a progressive LOD that's trimmed with distance increasing/decreasing based on current distance from each object (ground, static, A/C etc.).
This would allow you to see what your eye can see (if your eye can see 1 pixel you will see it, if you cant see things smaller that 2 pixels you wont see it and so on).

S!

In IL2 I started to fly at different resolution (1280 instead of 1920) because I can't stand anymore to be a blind pilot... that or I had to uninstall the game.

LoBi, what about my idea? Have you an opinion about that?

+1

Well, I can fly OK in 1680X1050 in IL-2 1946 in a 22 inches monitor, so, I believe that IL-2 "pixel system" is OK.

Your solution is intersting, but I believe we can achieve a better solution with some more "real life" visual clue of distant aircraft and more smooth transition from this "clue" to the first VISIBLE LOD...

I really don't know what is the best solution.. Maybe some "glare", some "contrast" against ground/sky... :confused:

Just to point 6S.Manu suggestion. It's intersting.

What about using the sight skill of an average WW2 pilot?

Anyway, for example, the ac is a pixel at 20km, at 15km, at 10km, at 2km: after that distance you have the first LOD who's still so little that it's melted with the ground. You don't see the ac if his LOD is flying over the ground and the texture of this is not flat: it's still a moving pixel between thousand moving pixels. It happens a lot with detailed maps of IL2 (the new ones)... in the oldest map we had not this problem until if not over the forest. The hardware and our eyes are so different since the last have so many functions to keep definition and focus on a object.

The LOD method you are talking about is the one they use since IL2: use 3 level LODs or 10 level LODs you still have the plane melting with that ground if you're at more than 500m... damn, during the "Big Week" SEOW we fled together I had P47s diving from 6km and after 5 seconds (since they were faster than me) they were disappearing! The second time I landed in the middle of the mission since I wanted to launch the monitor our of the window. And what about the direction of the bombers? we had a only pair of seconds to align ourself because the transition between single pixel to first lod was so violent and you have not enough time to make a good headon.

And anyway if you have not a dedicated SDK for LOD management is really a lot of work for the 3d guys: in that way you can forget the number of ac we have in IL2. Of course I hope that they have an SDK for this purpose...

However it's not that my idea is easy to develop... I'm quite sure it's not, but at least it can reproduce a more realistic hunting experience. That's not "pixel" hunting...

On the plus side of the argument for the dots: I was delighted by the change in dotrange settings on ATAG. The other night I saw a formation of bombers at altitude, the dots seemed to almost merge in a similar way to RL when you can't quite resolve the dots.

It really felt like BOB at last.

Still some phantoms to get rid of though.

56RAF_phoenix

Quick fix?
 

A quick fix would be a MIN_DOTRANGE and MAXDOTRANGE with a smooth alpha transition between them.

56RAF_phoenix

+1

It happened to me on the ATAG server yesterday.
I was following a dot, I had an alt advantage.
Then, closing in, the dot disappeared. I made two rounds trying to find out whether it was my eyes that were playing jokes on me or whether it was a ghost dot.
Not seeing anything, I changed course going back home....only to find out 30sec later a bandit on my tail :(


It really needs some improvement!


~S~