Hard to see the aircraft
 

Just wondering if there's a way to see other aircraft a bit more clearly.

I'm not an old man, fyi, but I constantly lose aircraft when the ground is their backdrop. Not so much when I'm below, but when I'm above, sometimes I can't see them and I'm only a few hundred feet away.

Maybe I'm the only one, and if so, I suppose it's a matter of training my eye.

I also feel as though it's very hard to see aircraft at longer distances. The dots pop in a little too late, IMO. In real life, you can spot other aircraft (and vehicles, trains, etc.) at far greater distances than you can in this sim, so I don't feel like it's a "realism" thing. I know it was very common for pilots to lose each other, but I feel like that's more in the madness of a dogfight and less about blending textures and whatnot.

I didn't have too much trouble in IL2 1946, but I'm fully aware we are comparing vastly more complex systems, I'm simply saying I feel like a mole with the wrong prescription glasses on sometimes in CLoD.

Is there anything I can tweak in the config file, or perhaps there's a mod, to help me out?

Sorry if this has been addressed. I tried to find a post like this but couldn't.

I don't believe there is a way to make it easier to see the other aircraft. It is really reallllly hard to spot another aircraft in real life. I find it easier to see them in this sim than in real life. For the most part in real life you look for a reflection more than anything else. I am sure many pilots lost the plane they were chasing just from taking their eye off the target for one second.

Are you using a head tracker or are you using your mouse to look around? Head trackers will up your situational awareness 10 fold in this sim in my opinion.

~S~

If you have a system where AA does something then turning off AA helps a bit. Also turning off shadows can help as the blinking tree shadows can fool you when looking for an aircraft above them.

There are two issues. The first is dot visibility and this is difficult - you can lower your resolution but that's about it. The second is a bug where dots disappear at a certain range. Search for meshshowlod=1 in other threads. You can also turn of AA to fix this if the CPU hit is too high.

In addition to the above, If you are running a Nvidea GFX card try using the Nvidea GFX Desk Top Colour option and increase the Digital Vibrance slider - this gives more life to the colours and adds contrast depth to the AC lods.

Interestingly enough, I watched a documentary and the BoB pilot being interviewed made a point of saying that it was very difficult to spot ac once formations were broken up and fighters/bombers were scattered- on many occaisions it was by pure chance that he would see an enemy. He laughingly said that the only use flak had was helping him to locate where an enemy might be.......it's the same in game, so may be CloD has that aspect modelled correctly.....:grin:

Documentary: '13 Hours that Saved Britain' Historical account of Sept 15th 1940

This all makes sense.

I figured my eyes were just used to the slightly cartoonish looks of other sims out there.


After a couple of hours flying around today I did get used to it.

The more I play this sim, the more I love it. The patches are making it better all the time. Comms, AI, performance...bam -- this thing is going to be a killer.

I didn't realize how much my ability to spot aircraft had improved until I was showing the sim to a friend who was visiting.

I kept telling him "there's a bogey" and he had no idea where until I pointed out each one on the screen... and even then he was amazed I could pick out such tiny dots.

I guess it's the sim equivalent of real-life pilots developing their ability to spot distant aircraft.

Charlo

Yeah even barring the "ghost dot" problem, which is legitimately frustrating, it's very difficult to spot planes. Keep your eye on your opponent and it's often the difference between winning and losing. I don't think it needs much adjusting besides maybe a reflection tweak, not that I'm a pilot or anything, but it certainly shouldn't be easy and there are limits that technology presents. I think I'd rather it be too difficult than too easy. We don't play with icons on for a reason. ;) I'm sure I mosey on past 3 or 4 planes for every one I spot and/or engage, but then I get lucky sometimes too, seeing planes from a significant distance.

I too have noticed I have a keener eye for this sort of thing now. My girlfriend occasionally watches me play and usually can't see them even after I point them out. Not until I'm almost on top of them can she spot them often-times (less than 1km-ish anyway).

I have to concur also that I can't see on this sim quite close targets which shold be easy to spot. I think somehow the level-of-detail (LOD) thingy eats up the target dots at certain range.

I have a real hard time here with a hat-switch, I can only see them if they're really close, or when my nose is pressed against my monitor.