In SoW will we be able to see planes at 40,000 ft away?

[Uriah]

In the old game European Air War planes will show up as far as 42,000 feet away. It makes for more enjoyment for me when I can see planes at such distances - even if just a dot or pixel.

As Sydbod said
"As an example, EAW has as its longest distance model for aircraft, a pixel dot. This pixel dot is the size of the aircraft. Once the size of the aircraft is smaller than the represented size of a pixel on the screen, then the aircraft representation can no longer be drawn on the screen.
Another flight sim may have much higher detail models for their aircraft. This other flight sim may actually use a simplified model as its longest distance model. It may keep wings and body shape of some form. By doing this, once the wing becomes more narrow in thickness than the represented size of a pixel, then the wing will disappear. The same applies with the cross sectional size of the body of the aircraft. Because of this, that particular aircraft representation can not be seen from a far a distance away.
From this we can see that long distance visibility is better in the old game because the programmer of the newer game has not thought out properly what has to be done to maintain proper long distance visibility. I know you already appreciate this point, but I am laboring it for the following particular reason.
Now if a modern flight sim was programmed properly and the programmer gave a dot the size of the aircraft as the longest distance model. AND..... The new computer equipment had the extra processing power to handle much larger screen resolutions, then a pixel representation at the higher resolution will represent an aircraft dot at a much longer distance away again. This means that the newer equipment allows one to see aircraft at an even longer distance away. "

Regardless, I would like Oleg and the community to give their thoughts.

[Letum]

I would imagine that as in IL2, you will be able to set your own dot distance.

[Uriah]

You can set your own 'dot' distance? How have I missed that all these year? How do you do that?

[KG26_Alpha]

In your IL2 installation folder you will see a file called

RCU
Open with note pad and edit so it look like this.


@set fast off
@set echo on
@set alias on
@set history 20
@file dosturmolog

@alias a alias
@a h history
@a s show
@a us user STAT
@a on fps START SHOW
@a off fps STOP HIDE
@a t1 mp_dotrange FRIENDLY DOT 15 COLOR 0.75 TYPE 0.5 ID 0.5 NAME 1.5
@a t2 mp_dotrange FOE DOT 15 COLOR 0.75 TYPE 1.0 ID 0.5 NAME 0.50


@a fdot dot FRIENDLY DOT 15 TYPE 2 COLOR 1.5 NAME 1.5 RANGE 0.5 ID 0.01
@a edot dot FOE DOT 15 TYPE 0.31 COLOR 0.31 RANGE 0.31 ID 0.2
@a ddot dot DEFAULT

Now you can set the range of icons dots etc etc by using the chat window and entering the following without quotation marks.

type">"hit enter type "t1"
type">"hit enter type "t2"

You can edit the RCU file to create icons that suit you.

You can access the FPS syntax here to with the same chat window entry as above.

on fps
off fps


An explanation of icons settings

[Former_Older]

40K feet...over 7 miles. Isn't that the distance to the visible horizon at sea level? I'm just saying that 40K feet is a long long way

[Flanker35M]

S!

Lot of factors to take in account there. Lighting, clouds, haze, plane size and attitude, color etc. What we lack in games is a realistic way of model reflections from canopies as of one way to spot a plane farther away or against the ground. What accounts tell the USAF bomber and fighter streams were not hard to spot, sheer numbers clouded the sky

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by Former_Older

40K feet...over 7 miles. Isn't that the distance to the visible horizon at sea level?

Apparently it depends...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon

[Dano]

Meh, ignore me...