Dot Visibility in COD and Other Flight ims.

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by ytareh

Its fairly well known that in IL2 its waaaay harder to see 'dots' (distant planes) at higher resolutions .I play exclusively at 1024x768 online as I simply am not competitive at higher res.I cant even see planes take off from airfields directly below me at 1km alt or less at higher res...

you have put one of the elements of the "il2 visibility problem" in a nutshell, but to try and find a solution you need to differentiate the different elements that cause the il2 visibility problems.

the way il2 currently works you have several mechanisms at work to display a progressively smaller aircraft on your screen:
a) the aircraft itself that you can view in external view, with all its detail displayed in its full eye candy glory in closeup
b) as you zoom away from the object this initial high detail representation of the airplane/ship gets replaced by a LoD model, a transition which occurs in 3 LoD steps right now, displaying progressively smaller LoD models with significantly less detail but keeping the rough shape of the aircraft. since the smaller LoD models are a cluster of pixels approximating the shape of the aircraft,
c) for a small fighter aircraft, somewhere between 1200 and 1800 meters this smallest LoD model will be replaced by a "dot" (in 4.08 this was a 4 pixel square dot).
d) for a large aircraft like a b17 this small dot will completely disappear somewhere around 5000 meters (depending on the il2 version you are using, the latest 4.09 has extended this visibility to 10.000 meters or even further iirc)

So the problems we are dealing with in il2:
1) how well/bad distant "dots" are visible ? at original release in il2 (2001 ?) these dots in their smallest form were a block of 9 black pixels that stood out like the proverbial dog's balls. soon after this size was reduced, but it briefly increased again in patch 3.01 or 3.02 because people complained they could spot them well enough. but on release a small vocal minority whined they were to visible, and in the next patch oleg reduced it to a 4 pixel square of 2 black and 2 grey pixels, which stayed till il2 version 4.08 iirc. around the time oleg changed those dot sizes several times, people were transitioning from crt's to lcd's in the west, and this resulted in a very varied set of reporting of how visible/invisible the dots are. it is possible that from 4.09 this was further reduced to 2 pixels (i havnt tested it in 4.09 or 4.10). the context of these changes is that the earlier pc technology was not powerfull enough to display highly detailed LoD models for multiple aircraft very far out, and as a way to reduce cpu/gpu drain they transitioned to the Dot's we currently have.
2) how well/bad medium distance LoD models are visible (particularly the 2e and 3e smaller ones for more distant aircraft). these pixel clusters are flat little pixels on a 2D display medium (your monitor), the fact the distant object is the right size does NOT mean it is as visible as the same plane would be in real life circumstances.
3) how well/bad the end result situational awareness is of an il2 virtual flyer (sitting behind a small monitor in his living room), compared to a real ww2 pilot in the same situation looking at the same distant objects. a major part of this is indeed how accurately we can "spot" nearby threats and potential targets (by looking at some parts of the sky/ground) and how well we can keep track of them once visually acquired

the presumption in a discussion like this is of course that we are trying to reproduce the visibility real pilots had during ww2, both of aircraft in the sky and for seeing ground targets (eg, we are NOT just playing a shoot'em up game of "hard to see and hard to find aircraft" where we believe the fact they are hard to find or nearly invisible when out further then 300 meters means this is realistic and represents the experience of real ww2 fighter pilots)

another presumption is that virtual pilots have correctly callibrated their displays, and have setup the correct Field of View (FoV) for their monitor sizes (which is rarely the case). lastly, they need to have reasonably normal vision to start out with, and have compared il2 being displayed on a few different mediums (like crt, cheap TN lcd monitors, normal average quality MVA/PVA or IPS displays, etc..). note: there are now newer oled screens, or people using large flatscreen tv's or projectors, but those are not commonly used yet. lastly people need to be honest and objective about reporting what they see in those comparisons.

Originally Posted by ytareh

Needless to say Im acutely aware this is kinda a crying shame on a screen with a 2560x1600 native resolution!

it sure is, and many people experience the same problem with smaller monitors to (the main exception being those that use inferior cheap TN based computer screens)

Originally Posted by ytareh

My question is will COD be the exact same .Is this a game engine issue or simply due to the number of dots used to show distant planes and 'pixel size'?

there are several elements in il2 that contribute to the problem, some of them have been specifically addressed by oleg to try an reduce this problem (like giving LoD models "3D volume" so they stand out more, rather then flat pixel clusters that keep changing shape). it is uncertain at this stage if other important aspects have been addressed (and they need to be !)

Im also aware that the 'pixel density' on monitors affects this ie a 'dot' on a 17inch 1280x1024 will be harder to see than a 19 inch 1280x1024 as pixels are 'clumped' closer together and hence smaller

you are correct that is one part of it, but it is not the main one

Id appreciate some sound advice on this topic as I wont have any need to upgrade if its the exact same I reckon...

we have only had glimpses of the BoB/SoW game in action so far, but your high end monitor will be more effective at displaying distant bandits in BoB/Sow (just track down one of the earliest BoB video's with the english fighter overflying the cluster of german bombers, you will see the targets stand out much more correctly because they look like little "blobs" instead of flat pixels. if now it will be more accurately representing a ww2 pilots experience is to early to tell (but the indications are positive), neither do we know if a more level playing ground will be provided for competitive online flying.

ideally you'd want a dedicated detailed thread that looks at the technical issues behind this visibility problem in il2, so we know exactly what needs to be remedied. i only know part of the answers, but i'll try and make some specific comments in some of the posts in this thread to clarify the parts i do know about