aircraft disappearing against terrain.

[SEE]

Open the canopy and take a look outside then close it. The effect of the canopy seems overmodelled in terms of reduced visibilty. I am constantly having to open the canopy to look around and soon as I close it the enemy ac seems to just disappear as I track it into my sights. It's tough without icons but unfortunately, using them is not an option for me. I would prefer to see some optimisation on the closed canopy effect - the world looks too flat and dull.

[Heliocon]

In WW2 werent like 80% of fighter on fighter kills made when one party was not aware of the enemy before they got shot down? I mean most kills resulted from people closing in and hoping the other pilot is distracted (I would be if I was sitting in a plane for 6+ hours, after a few hours I imagine your nerves calm down and you lose concentration).

Only problem is of course the AI doesnt operate based on sight which makes it a bit unbalanced.

[Blackdog_kt]

I don't have personal experience but i remember one of the devs (probably Luthier) stating that it's done on purpose based on real-world flying experience and pilot accounts.

I think it's a better implementation than what we had in the previous IL2 series, where you could pick up distant contacts just fine and yet you would lose them against the terrain if you closed 300m or less. In CoD it seems that it's easier to keep track of the closer ones but increasingly hard to maintain a visual as distance increases.

I too found it hard, until i realized it's better to look for movement and not for distinct silhouettes and shapes. I might not be able to pick up shapes and make a positive ID right away, but unless they are already a few km away i can easily perceive something moving over the landscape. If they do put some distance between me and them however it's much harder to spot them against the terrain.

Come to think of it, if that wasn't the case there wouldn't be so many examples in real life where ground attack missions were carried out at tree-top level. If real-world pilots were going into a combat zone at a complete altitude disadvantage, then there must have been some kind of advantage to offset that otherwise they wouldn't do it. It seems that moving low and fast was indeed effective in making aircraft hard to spot and even if spotted, make it easier to lose them.

As a final note, i remember reading an article on simHQ a few months ago where one of the website's staff members took up real-world flying lessons and started making comparisons between the real thing and simulations on the PC. The aim of the article was to explore if and how much of an advantage a sim flyer has when stepping into a real aircraft for pilot lessons and naturally, there were things that were easier in real life (orientation due to feeling the movement and so on) and things that were easier in the sim.

He talked in length about each aspect, for example he said that as a sim flyer he picked up a habit that's bad for RL flying, looking at the instrument panel too much and not enough outside the window, but on the other hand his simming experience made it very easy for him to use the controls with precision and so on.

At some point he talked about visibility and the way he put it was that "the graphics of the real world are in need of an upgrade". He then proceeded to describe how the ATC gave them a traffic advisory about another, larger aircraft in the vicinity that was at their 2 o'clock low or something similar and yet, even though they knew exactly where to look for it they couldn't see it for an entire minute, even though it was only a couple of miles away.

So,i think it's probably realistic the way it is in CoD, or at the very least more realistic than how it was in IL2.

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

I don't have personal experience but i remember one of the devs (probably Luthier) stating that it's done on purpose based on real-world flying experience and pilot accounts.

I think it's a better implementation than what we had in the previous IL2 series, where you could pick up distant contacts just fine and yet you would lose them against the terrain if you closed 300m or less. In CoD it seems that it's easier to keep track of the closer ones but increasingly hard to maintain a visual as distance increases.

I too found it hard, until i realized it's better to look for movement and not for distinct silhouettes and shapes. I might not be able to pick up shapes and make a positive ID right away, but unless they are already a few km away i can easily perceive something moving over the landscape. If they do put some distance between me and them however it's much harder to spot them against the terrain.

Come to think of it, if that wasn't the case there wouldn't be so many examples in real life where ground attack missions were carried out at tree-top level. If real-world pilots were going into a combat zone at a complete altitude disadvantage, then there must have been some kind of advantage to offset that otherwise they wouldn't do it. It seems that moving low and fast was indeed effective in making aircraft hard to spot and even if spotted, make it easier to lose them.

As a final note, i remember reading an article on simHQ a few months ago where one of the website's staff members took up real-world flying lessons and started making comparisons between the real thing and simulations on the PC. The aim of the article was to explore if and how much of an advantage a sim flyer has when stepping into a real aircraft for pilot lessons and naturally, there were things that were easier in real life (orientation due to feeling the movement and so on) and things that were easier in the sim.

He talked in length about each aspect, for example he said that as a sim flyer he picked up a habit that's bad for RL flying, looking at the instrument panel too much and not enough outside the window, but on the other hand his simming experience made it very easy for him to use the controls with precision and so on.

At some point he talked about visibility and the way he put it was that "the graphics of the real world are in need of an upgrade". He then proceeded to describe how the ATC gave them a traffic advisory about another, larger aircraft in the vicinity that was at their 2 o'clock low or something similar and yet, even though they knew exactly where to look for it they couldn't see it for an entire minute, even though it was only a couple of miles away.

So,i think it's probably realistic the way it is in CoD, or at the very least more realistic than how it was in IL2.

Yep you are correct. I do alot of diving and am kinda known for my excellent eyesight, even though it sucks horribly and I have to wear glasses to drive. Why? Because I have excellent vision, especiall for movement. Thats what you need when you are looking for a cuttlefish or octopus. Also a tip, dont look excactly where you think the plane is, just hold steady because your peripheral vision is actually much more sensitive to movement than what you are directly looking at (for picking up movement).

[SG1_Lud]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

Yep you are correct. I do alot of diving and am kinda known for my excellent eyesight, even though it sucks horribly and I have to wear glasses to drive. Why? Because I have excellent vision, especiall for movement. Thats what you need when you are looking for a cuttlefish or octopus. Also a tip, dont look excactly where you think the plane is, just hold steady because your peripheral vision is actually much more sensitive to movement than what you are directly looking at (for picking up movement).

Agree.

Maybe (and this is to ask for your opinions) the sea surface moves too much in the sim, and that makes more difficult than normal to distinguish planes movements from above?

[JG14_Jagr]

Originally Posted by Raggz

Problem is that there are no collision detection in trees. I've seen enemy fly low in trees many times making them impossible to see.

That can be fixes with some wire frame fences inside large wooded areas.. low system resources needed and the end result is SMACK

[Rattlehead]

One good thing about those God-awful arrows is that it has forced me to play without icons on, and I'm really happy that I can now play this game guilt free.
After all, pilots didn't have big friendly arrows and icons in real life, and if I'm playing the sim with realism in mind, why should I?

It's not easy to play with icons off...at first it's really daunting and a bit frustrating, but you have to learn to train your eyes to spot a hint of movement, a flash of cross or roundel as the enemy flashes past you, a speck in the distance, a hint of yellow nose (in the case of the 109) and also you have to learn to discern between the different shapes in the sky and what aircraft they represent - especially from the 6 o' clock.
Not easy.
But at the same time, so wonderfully rewarding when you bag a kill.

On the other hand, I've spent a fair bit of time tracking an aircraft only to find out he was a squad mate, and on more than one occasion I have killed a friendly by accident.
I remember shooting down this poor Defiant, thinking it was a 109, and as I realised my mistake I actually said out loud: "Sorry mate."

But to the topic of the thread...it's difficult to spot aircraft on the deck, but by no means impossible. As said earlier, if you really can't find anything, take a page out of Helmut Liepfert's book and dive to the deck yourself and look above. It's helped me many times.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

Yep you are correct. I do alot of diving and am kinda known for my excellent eyesight, even though it sucks horribly and I have to wear glasses to drive. Why? Because I have excellent vision, especiall for movement. Thats what you need when you are looking for a cuttlefish or octopus. Also a tip, dont look excactly where you think the plane is, just hold steady because your peripheral vision is actually much more sensitive to movement than what you are directly looking at (for picking up movement).

Now that's weird, i also use a similar method to pick up contacts and i also wear glasses.
Maybe people who wear glasses and have to look through a somewhat narrow field of view for the majority of everyday tasks have a more pronounced reflex reaction to movement outside it, who knows. Or maybe it's just that four eyes are better than two

[Romanator21]

I'm just going to echo what's already been said, and mention that it is indeed hard to spot planes in real life - and all the planes I've seen were glossy white, not camouflaged.

Scan just a certain "sector" of your field of vision at a time, using your peripheral view to detect moving objects, or even stationary faint ones (For instance, I tend to see stars better when not looking directly at them).

[xnomad]

This could turn into a problem in the full real servers. I just got off a server and everybody was flying on the deck. Hardly anyone above 1000 metres.
I wanted to go high but nobody else went up and planes at 100m are impossible to spot at 3000m.

We need some kind of incentive to force people to gain some altitude otherwise we are back to Eastern front scenarios.