Target visibility

[Untamo]

I have never undestood the use of these artificial dots. Why not just use a really simple 3D model (just a few polys) when the aircraft is far away, the 3D engine (if it works correctly) would render the target as it should be seen. What we are after here is the right amount of degrees/radians the aircraft occupies on our screen at given FOV.

When an aircraft gets further away, eventually it is rendered as one pixel, and as it get more distant, this one pixel gets more faint (opacity drops).

At lower resolutions the aircraft would be one pixel at closer range and at higher resolutions further away. Detection wise neither one would have advantage against the other, as at lower res the pixel is larger and at higher res smaller but the target may still be several pixels at the same distance when the lower res screen shows just one pixel. But the size (the degrees/radians it occupies on the screen) of the target would be the same on both screens (assuming the physical size of the monitor is the same).