aircraft visibility
 

some random facts to begin with:

• I moved this here after a mod locked it (rather than move it) and told me to put it in the right place without explaining where that place is. So if this is the wrong place then please at lest tell me where the hell to post it, and I will move it.
• 17 May 2012 in London was mainly overcast

This is merely a suggestion, and probably fraught with problems.. but I thought about proposing it anyways.


The problem:
As has been stated many times, there is a small visual issue that occurs when smaller aircraft change over from a dot, to rendered polygons. This changeover often causes the aircraft to effectively disappear, unless the observer reacts quickly with a FOV (“zoom”) change.

In my RL experience, no such sudden visual illusion exists. YES, sometimes one loses sight of an aircraft, but as a general rule, as objects get closer, they generally become more easily visible, provided no other objects or lighting conditions obscure the view.

Proposed solution:
Is it possible, or desirable, for the game engine to continue to render/ generate the DOT, even after the polygons have started to render? So that, you will see a dot, AND the polygon?

Because the view generation is relative to the observer (and is not actually part of the object) could the game ensure that a dot is generated on top of the rendered polygon, until, say 500m distance (at which point the dot disappears, and you get only the rendered textures/polygons)?

I would hope that this dot, if not too high-contrast would not diminish the skins too much (if at all - it's only 1 pixel?...), and would assist in smoothing over this abrupt visual transition between just-a-dot and just-some-polygons, thus hopefully reducing that moment when aircraft “disappear”, before reappearing much closer.

Obviously, the dot would need to respond to clouds (so that clouds could be sued to hide behind/ in)…

Any ideas about this? Worth discussing?

Did you try changing MeshShowLod=0 to 1 in conf.ini?

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=28085

The idea is good to keep track of the plane during the Lod transition.

But I'm afraid that many "full difficulty" lovers will hate this kind of "Icon" because it would ruin the immersion.

note well: I've said "full difficulty", no "full realism".

I will check tonight...

Yes agreed, it might impinge on "difficulty" as opposed to realism. I'm asking for it out of a request for "realism"....

Currently the "zoom/ FOV" method is less "realistic" I would suggest, given that humans do not actually have zooms, only focus, which is a kind of FOV modifier (in so far as conscious visual data comprehension is concerned).

I don't mind FOV/zoom, and I use it. But you lose your peripherals..... and the head turn (if using Track IR) becomes less natural/ controllable - because view is still set to the same rotational velocity, even though FOV is narrower.

I wonder if it's possible to bind the zoom in/out control to also reduce the 'speed' in TrackIR. That might help a bit....but only a bit. In reality seeing other planes is a real pain, especially one they're over land. :(

I've wondered about this... halving the Field of View should half the speed of the tracking, to maintain equal rotational velocity.

It must be possible to setup the zoom/fov hotkeys to chage the trackIR tracking speed. So you can manipulate it on the fly... I'm going to check tonight for this too....

Yes, you can by profiler.

In my Saitek profiles for IL2, ROF and DCS I created an advanced command who zooms and locks the TiR movement when pressed, while it set normal FoV and unlocks the TiR when released.

In your case you only need to switch the TiR's locking key with the precision key.

I use it mainly to operate the cockpit switches without getting nausea from the head's movement.

Altough i activated MeshShowLod=1 there is no good solution for the problem. The aircraft are particulary difficult to see at medium distance from line astern position. The aircraft appears "blinking" and it is very annoying thing. The devs should find a solution this high priority i guess.

I have struggled with this problem quite a lot.
I think it ties in the with the AA not working properly aswell.
When I look at a plane at range the wings flash as they disappear and reappear.
I think the same thing may be happening with the enemy aircraft dots.
The only way I can stop it is to play at low resolution.
I play online at 1360x786. My graphics card can go higher but I lose sight of the enemy for a few crucial seconds.