aircraft disappearing against terrain.

[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.

[BlackbusheFlyer]

It is realistic, a fly-in to Perranporth airfield a few years ago there were 13 or 14 aircraft all within a couple of miles of the airfield whilst I joined the circuit, I could only see around 4 of them. Gliders (cloud huggers) particularly can be hard to spot. Sunlight glinting off hoods is often a good visual clue. Aircraft heading on an opposite bearing also can be tough to spot even when you have been warned by ATC services of their presence.

I do however believe pilots learn to spot them by developing a good scan. Passengers tend to not notice aircraft so easily.

[BlackbusheFlyer]

It is realistic, a fly-in to Perranporth airfield a few years ago there were 13 or 14 aircraft all within a couple of miles of the airfield whilst I joined the circuit, I could only see around 4 of them. Gliders (cloud huggers) particularly can be hard to spot. Sunlight glinting off hoods is often a good visual clue. Aircraft heading on an opposite bearing also can be tough to spot even when you have been warned by ATC services of their presence.

I do however believe pilots learn to spot them by developing a good scan. Passengers tend to not notice aircraft so easily.