Not able to see planes in SIMULATION Mode...you also???

[Robotic Pope]

Originally Posted by ChankyChank

It's defintely not as hard to spot real airplanes. I spend hours looking for little cessnas and pipers every day without any trouble, and their usually painted white. These fighter aircraft were BIG (at least compared to most general aviation aircraft today. I think it's just hard to translate human vision capabilities into a video game. You have no peripherals on the game and due to the fact that everything seems animated it's harder to sight moving objects. As far as gameplay I just stay low and try to spot people on the horizon. During dogfights look for fires on the ground, I've noticed that most air battles happen over the same area and there will be a lot of crashes directly below the fight

Yes, It is so much easier in real life. Our eyes have evolved like many other animals eyes to be very good at spotting movement, so looking down from a plane at the ground which seems to pass by slowly at high altitude, it is quite easy to notice another plane moving against the background even if it is a tiny dot. Also with two eyes and full neck mobility you have the 3D of your vison which even at this long distance can really help. Oh and infinate screen resolution

Now with a simulation you are really looking at a smooth stationary screen so light and movement has to also be simulated along with the 3D to trick your brain into believing you are looking out of a planes window but even with the highest posible screen resolution its nowhere near as efective as real life. And then if you have a LCD screen you will have at least a small amount of movement blur to deal with.

When playing in sim I usually stay high at first and inspect the map to find the right direction of the targets, then I usually point the plane so Im looking out the side of the cockpit towards the target and hold the camera as still as I can to avoid screen movement bluring, then I consentrate and look for the slight movements of planes and zoom in on them if nesesary with the left trigger. Then i dive in.