aircraft visibility

[pstyle]

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?