A potential fix for the Aircraft visibility problems?

[SlipBall]

OK, from 1200m sun high, aircraft can still be spotted, but its more of a particular one that glitters and gets your attention. Moving mid size ground vehicles are easy to spot and track, but you would need to drop down to be able to identify exactly what it is.

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

I saw the planes at ease, the car was a bit harder to spot. I do not use a 120Hz monitor.

thx flanker,
http://www.prad.de/en/guide/screen7358.html
so again another TN monitor (giving the better distant LoD/Dot visibility)

[David198502]

Originally Posted by zapatista

david,
aside from the other issues you mentioned, you seem to indicate you dont have a significant issue with locating and identifying/tracking distant aircraft or ground targets.
i looked up your monitor (couldnt see the exact same model, but all 19' monitors from the Aldi store in the last few years are again TN based monitors), and we can fairly safely assume yours to is a TN monitor (being the type of monitor that has the least problem with distant object visibility

a good place to find monitor specs and panel types is at http://www.prad.de

i dont want to hammer away to much at this TN panel issue, but it is a significant variable, and is used by most people who claim good visibility for these distant objects (and they being the lower cost monitors, are probably also used in the russian office where CoD/SoW is being created (except for the grafix artists who would have higher quality displays so they can correctly paint/illustrate scenery and objects.

yeah thats pretty much it, even if i fly in native resolution, the dots in the far distance are smaller, but still good visible....unfortunately i have to fly in low res, but that doesnt give me a real advantage...

as already mentioned, my problems start in medium distances, where contacts start to flicker and disappear...

interesting about TN monitors....as i have no clue about it, it was something new you mentioned.

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by SlipBall

OK, from 1200m sun high, aircraft can still be spotted, but its more of a particular one that glitters and gets your attention. Moving mid size ground vehicles are easy to spot and track, but you would need to drop down to be able to identify exactly what it is.

perfect slipball, that one suits our purposes well with no low sun, the glare caused by the reflecting sunlight plays much less of an issue, and we can (try) to just make out the stationary single engine aircraft or moving vehicles.

i basically cant see ANY aircraft on that airfield from that altitude and distance on my screen (a corectly calibrated 27' 8-bit color screen). what i can occasionally see is a few little specs that briefly glitter a little and then disappear from view. i cant make out if its a latrine, a lunch soup van, or an enemy fighter, or potentially even a person holding a little survival mirror and reflecting the sun back at me to attract my attention. from some angles i can occasionally see a dark dot in the same spot where there was glitter before, and that presumably is the same object, but then whatever it was is invisible again a few sec later and no black dot or glitter at all.

if we game-the-game, then knowing something glitters on an open enemy airfield i can safely presume it is going to be an enemy fighter/plane, but i cant SEE it is. eg if there were a few vehicles/planes parked in fields somewhere on the map, with other glittering house/objects spread throughout the map, i have no way to identify one of these objects might be a tank or a parked enemy plane. you can then further use our artificial zoom method (narrowest FoV setting) to scan the ground and look for objects, but that is the same as a real pilot using a pair of binoculars (which obviously wasnt used historically).

now compare this lack of visibility with what you can see from a small modern prop plane at the same altitude, looking either at vehicles or roads, or parked aircraft at your local airfield, the visibility is completely different (and much better, allowing you to identify the individual planes shapes and silhouettes, even color often). and that gentlemen, just about sums up our current problem in CoD. from the multiple threads on this topic over previous years, most experienced pilots of small aircraft will concur with that last "visibility summary" of what it looks like in real life in comparison to the visibility problem we have right now in CoD.

it would be helpful if other people could comment on the airfield object visibility in that last slipball track (so see how much it varies from person to person), and if those with real life flying experience in small aircraft at a similar altitude/speed could comment on what they can specifically make out on the ground compared to what they see in that track (IvanK ?)

note: i suspect the slipball scenery detail is set to medium ? it can obviously be another variable if the scenery is set to very high or low, since in a very bland and sparsely drawn scenery these plane/truck objects will stand out more. but at least we are now all looking at the same tracks and can compare apples with apples

the good news is that CoD now runs well enough for most people, that we can actually start to worry about these types of issues and focus on creating a SIMULATOR rather then a "game".

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by David198502

interesting about TN monitors....as i have no clue about it, it was something new you mentioned.

TN based monitors were a good choice many years ago for gamers when most lcd's were still pretty expensive. and initially many of the the mid-range better quality panels (MVA and PVA, both 8 bit color) where not quite fast enough for fast moving games like FPS. but within a few yrs these 8 bit monitors also improved in speed and came down to around 8 - 12 msec (and hence speed wasnt an issue anymore), but they always stayed 30 - 50% more expensive then the TN technology. in the last 3 or 4 yrs with prices having come down so much further, still buying a TN screen is not really justified anymore (unless price is the only selection criteria). if you hear/see a sales pitch of how fast a particular monitor is they are trying to sell you, your next question should always be "sure, but how good is it at doing anything else" (eg, how good is it at displaying video, the color and tone quality for detailed images, and what problems does it have with "display artifacts"). and even then dont trust the sales person, go and look for some in depth online reviews from reliable sources.

its all horses for courses tho. if you dont want to spend much money and want as large of a display as you can get for your $, you by very definition will land in the TN price zone. but with more careful background reading you could well end up with a significantly better display at 25-30% more money.

the best type of lcd's (with the most true color fidelity) were always IPS, but at roughly 2 or 3x the price of MVA and PVA only professional gfx artists etc could justify the cost initially. in the last 6 yrs or so prices have radically come down for lcd's, and you can now even buy a cheap korean 27' IPS screen for around 300$ or so for ex (but buyer be aware, not all IPS screens are as good as the specs might sugest). btw, one of the things that makes the screens on the recent iphone series (4, and 5 i think) so nice to look at is not just the higher resolutions they started making them, but they deliberately chose IPS technology (same with Imacs). a similar issue with the new high quality samsung lcd tv's in the last few yrs, the series 8 (top of the line, highest price) uses IPS technology, the series 7 (still very good but one notch lower) uses a MVA type panel i believe (and the soon to be released series 9 is also IPS). for the average TV viewer this might not matter much (most LCD tv's are not properly calibrated or setup anyway), but if you look at good quality source material on a well calibrated panel, the differences can be very significant (a bit like the difference between 480p and 720p). for us, hunting little grey/black dots and "little clusters of jumbled pixels" sliding across the screen against a terrain background, that difference in display technology can be all the difference between "now you see the distant aircraft" and "now you dont" (with in our case, "display artifacts" helping to identify that distant aircraft, so the worse the panel, the easier you can see it)

[SlipBall]

My settings,...zapatista did you notice fighters on the hanger pads, are always visible.

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by SlipBall

My settings,...zapatista did you notice fighters on the hanger pads, are always visible.

yea i did, having them contrasted against the uniform color of the concrete makes a big difference, but i cant specifically make them out as individual aircraft, or even that they are aircraft. what i can see is that the little black dots (multi-pixel) representing them stay pretty much constantly visible as you fly around the airfield

btw, you seem pretty comfortably flying that me109, no sense of nationalistic guilt bothering you

Originally Posted by SlipBall

thanks

[SlipBall]

Ha ha funny...I am of full German decent, but the reason I enjoy the 109 is because of the engineering. I fly red very often too, I love the guns, awesome!

[Reaper leader]

Hi all.

Easiest solution and most realistic solution, turn icons on, not red for allies nor blue for axis just plain grey for both sides with aircraft type from like 5 miles out and you would react realistic to what you see. From that distance, in RL, you can even dinstinguish a Cessna 150 from a 172 and even easier a 109 from a Spit or a Hurricane.

Then it wouldn't even matter what kind off monitor people use nor what resolution they use to spot other planes. To me, a long time glider pilot and PPL, "full switch" = full realism is nonsence due to the fact that you can't id anything more than some hundred yards away without icons.

Regards

[4./JG53_Wotan]

One of the most important aspects of WW2 era ACM has to be the visual cues we get from other aircraft prior to engaging.

Going back to the original Il-2 one of the major failings of that game, and more so in CloD, is some planes simply vanish “right in front of you” as the LOD changes. Not only that spotting contacts (read as “dots”) at real life ranges is much more difficult – not just because of our 2-D monitors. Some of the issues with visual cues in CloD rest with the programmers.

Even so there is an idea that, no matter what, more difficulty means more "realism". Given the limitations of our PC hardware the visual cues we get from other aircraft are already significantly less informative and thus "harder" than real life – less realistic.

As a result of the limited visual cues its my opinion that we see less “realistic” air combat in these games as a result. I heard some folks complain about their inability to find combat on a highly populated server – they simply can not find the “dots” and when they do the dots vanish. Some of that has been posted on this forum. Others simply give up on “air combat” and race across the channel to the closest enemy airfield to “vulch”.

Icons are not the answer and I would never fly with icons “on”. However, in a “certain” way icons do allow for more realistic ACM.

I don't have a “solution” but there has to be a better way to represent aircraft at different ranges then what we currently see in CloD - something that would result in better “true to life” air combat.

Wotan