Target visibility

6S.Manu · #1 10-26-2011, 11:04 AM

I've found a gem!
"Visual Search in Air Combat" (1990)
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc...f&AD=ADA241347

Here a really interesting graph (page 6 of the original document):

Of course there are factors like camos, sunlight, haze ect...

I'm going to do some calculations to get the positions of ww2 fighters on that curve.

I would only remember to you that it's not a personal problem: all this discussion its to greatly improve the sim.

#2 10-26-2011, 11:27 AM

Great find, Manu.

This is quite in accordance to what I guessed would be a reasonable limit for fighter visibility (when seen from the side) that is about 7-10 km. From front one would see it from perhaps 3-4 km. From belly perhaps from 15km. From top view over land my guess is that the visibility will be worse.

Interesting is also that apparently aircraft type plays a big role in visibility ranges and tendencies can get reversed depending on view angle.

Insuber · #3 10-26-2011, 12:14 PM

Here is the Manu's post with US Navy study I was referring to (Naval Air Development Center, Guide to Aircraft In-Flight Camouflage, 1969), : it speaks about fighters, not airliners, and 10-15 miles under "moderate visibility", or 30-40 miles under "high visibility". This matches better with the day to day experience.

Cheers!

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...1&postcount=43

#4 10-26-2011, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Insuber

Here is the Manu's post with US Navy study I was referring to (Naval Air Development Center, Guide to Aircraft In-Flight Camouflage, 1969), : it speaks about fighters, not airliners, and 10-15 miles under "moderate visibility", or 30-40 miles under "high visibility". This matches better with the day to day experience.

Cheers!

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...1&postcount=43

ty. Will read it soon.

I just hope we do not go back to old IL2 times with its ridicuously high visibility.

JG52Krupi · #5 10-26-2011, 01:28 PM

Stormcrow u should try out the ATAG server bliss recently changed the settings and it's much better than what it was like before

6S.Tamat · #6 10-26-2011, 03:07 PM

talking about the FOV actually to have a feeling like the real one we should have a grid of monitors with the single monitor FOV calculated on a certain standard distance from the head.
Probably the Fov could be less than 40.
Modifying the lod to see like the reality would be impossible tecnically i suppose and would mess everything and probably let us feel to be in a platform game for the perspective aberration.

My thoughts changed alot studying with manu the difference between the real sight and the monitor one.
I have to say that despite my own dislike about icons we should think more about that.

First of all the black dot is an icon, because on the monitor without the help of the "artificial dot" the contact would have been invisible also for reasonable distancies. Talking in the wing someone suggested that if the dots are appearing too close a solution could be to give for further distancies a dot with a more gray colour, to let it difficult to see, but not impossible.
That could be a solution, but for greater ( in degrees) contact like a ship from far or an airplane from closer we should think about something different. The label "ship" with the distance is horrible and helping too much, but everyone understand the difference between a ship and an airplane also at 20 km away and between a spitfire and a wellington from 4 km. something like one dot for fighter, two for bomber and five for ship could be something.

I know that everything added ruins a bit the feeling to be in a simulator, like the speed bar in Il2, but we need to think also that some instruments like the compass are really more difficult to understand on the simulator than in the real life, and anyone that flew once in a real little aircraft can say that without problems.
We (as we can be help, but really the developers) should think more about a simulation than a feeling, because we need to think on the precedence list:
physic simulation, manouver simulation, navigation simulation, feelings etc etc etc.
At the end it is the same that everyone does comparing different simulators like xplane and flight simulator each other.
Let me give another example: i don't think that in the reality there were alot of people able to physically sustain a long dogfight at high G like all we do in il2.. so now, should we calculate that or not? Should we do real aircraft limits and let us feel all like superheroes hartmanns (like it is) or should we avoid with some limits (the dark sight is not enough, cause don't simulate the physical stress and the muscle fatigue also in pulling the bar)?
Obviously i don't have the perfect answer, but would be interesting, retourning to the sight argument, to fing a compromise that would let us to "see like in the real world" but without hurting nobody's feeling..

6S.Manu · #7 10-26-2011, 04:19 PM

Update...

I've done some calculations today...

From the blueprints of the planes and the help of some tool here's what I got.
Sadly some weren't really detailed (he 111 was a image of 1400 x 1000) so there could be some marginal errors.

squared meters squared feet
Plane front side belly front side belly
bf109g6 7,9 9,9 23 85,03 106,56 247,56
spit mk1 8 11,3 28 86,11 121,63 301,38
He 111 17,2 36,5 124 185,13 392,88 1334,72

Our engineer has drawn a mathematical function for the graph:

y = 1,833 + 0,0167x (100<x<190)
y = 0,011x + 2,9 (200<x<300)
y = 0,009x + 3,5 (400<x<500)
y = 0,007x + 4,6 (600<x<700)
y = 0,007x + 4,5 (800<x<900)
y = 0,006x + 5,3(1000<x<1100)
y = 0,005x + 5,8(1200<x<1300)

Here is the new graph with meters and the new planes:

FV = front view
SV = side view
BV = belly view

6S.Manu · #8 10-26-2011, 04:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 6S.Tamat

Let me give another example: i don't think that in the reality there were alot of people able to physically sustain a long dogfight at high G like all we do in il2.. so now, should we calculate that or not? Should we do real aircraft limits and let us feel all like superheroes hartmanns (like it is) or should we avoid with some limits (the dark sight is not enough, cause don't simulate the physical stress and the muscle fatigue also in pulling the bar)?
Obviously i don't have the perfect answer, but would be interesting, retourning to the sight argument, to fing a compromise that would let us to "see like in the real world" but without hurting nobody's feeling..

During the development of SoW:BoB (not cliffs of dover...) there were many discussion about combat fatigue... some posters were claiming that it could be interesting to have different avatar with different skills: the one with more visibility skill, the one with more stamina and so on... like it was real life. And looking at the AI settings in FMB this should not really be a problem for the developers.

I think that this could be interesting, but before having different skills for each pilot I think we need that the sim works correctly with the default skills (average pilot).