So, about that little red light...

[Rama]

Another quick look at your post, and I saw this

Originally Posted by zapatista

and as another example why dont you try and use that 30 FoV you claim is "normal" and do some formation flying in il2, its impossible. try and keep 100 m separation to the lead aircraft on your 10 or 2 o'clock position for ex, with a 30 FoV setting your vision is jumping about so much its impossible to keep an eye on him. similarly if you mainly use the 30 FoV for combat flying and have to scan the skies around you, its impossible because the sky sections you see are so small and you are completely vulnerable.

I agree with this, but this is irrelevant to assess which FOV correspond to your normal real FOV to the monitor.
This is another example of (and perfectly illustrate) the fact that a standard monitor can't give you a peripheral vision AND respecting at the same time the object size according to the FOV.
Either you have correct object size accoring you narrow field of view allowed by the narrow window of the monitor OR you have peripheral vision and reduced size of objects.
You can't have both at the same time EXCEPT if you're using a semi-hemispheric screen (what you have in real prophetional simulators).

As we say here, you can' own at the same time the butter, the money of the butter, the milk, the cow and the cowgirl...

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by Rama

Either you have correct object size accoring you narrow field of view allowed by the narrow window of the monitor OR you have peripheral vision and reduced size of objects.

that is not the point of the discussion here, and the hope is that if you are posting in this thread you are trying to participate in a meaningful manner in the topic under discussion.

the point is, for the average il2 user with a normal lcd pc monitor, and their FoV set correctly for their monitor size, they will NOT be able to spot in game objects (trucks, tanks, planes) at the same distances as you can spot them at in real life. in il2 your "spotting or tracking distance" is roughly 30% to what it is in real life.

try it for yourself, sit at a normal distance (say 60 or 50 cm) from your 22' lcd, set the il2 in-game FoV to the correct setting for you, then fly at 1500 meters over a map that has some single tanks or trucks place in a field, a small collum of trucks on a road, or a single aircraft placed on a grassy strip. you will NOT be able to spot them or track them.

then the next time you are in a real aircraft at about 1500 meters, look down if you can see a tractor in a field, cars/small-trucks on the road, or individual aircraft placed at an airfield. unless you have serious vision problems (because your eye sight is poor or because weather conditions are bad), you will be able to see them ! a simple solution for il2 would be to paint/color/shape the 2e and 3e LoD models so they stand out more when viewed against a background terrain.

the "climbing flight of hurricanes" at 1500 m below you in il2 is also impossible to spot in the normal view setting, so it is not SIMULATING what a real pilot could see in ww2, we are flying right now in a mini-bubble of situational awareness compared to the real experience in ww2.

yes in il2 you could use the 30 FoV zoom function to scan small sections of the ground or sky, but that is a snap view intended to be used for very brief moments to look at something in extra detail because it gives an artificial degree of magnification, we should not and can not rely on that view to fly in 100% of the time because it is such a disorienting tunnel vision view of a small section of the virtual sky we fly in !