Friday 2011-02-04 Dev. update and Discussion

[zapatista]

you need to compare it at 1/2 your native resolution
and i am presuming you are changing the resolution in the game not just altering your monitor

[swiss]

edit:

Why don't you use your 25xx resolution on the screen of a movie theater, your pixel will have the size of a pack cigs(CHEATING!).
There is no way to determine who you display the game it within the software.

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by swiss

I cant go higher than 1680 or lower than 800.

if you cant 1/2 your resolution to compare how the il2 aircraft dot doubles in size,, you should be able to at least notice that with the lower resolution the larger pixels show a larger il2 aircraft "dot" on your screen now :]

that is the exact principle at work, and it really shouldnt be the case in 2011 with the next gen sim

btw, i just noticed that with the monitor size you are using this probably means it is a 6 bit colour monitor (TN technology based), rather then most other lcd's which are normally 8- bit color (and MVA/PVA or IPS technology). the people who complain the least about il2 distant aircraft visibility are oddly enough often people with inferior monitors (dont mean to diss your hardware there). because these 6 bit monitors have significantly more problems displaying shades of grey, they constantly flip between several states of grey in a more noticable transition (compared to the smooth gradient on an 8 bit monitor), with TN based monitors this is known to add a slight "glitter" effect to the grey/black pixels it is trying to display (and this makes these 2/4 pixels representing a distant il2 aircraft stand out more, particularly if it is a moving object against a differently colored background, like green tree foliage or snow etc)

didnt mean to go all technical in minor detail, but i can post some illustrations about this known effect on 6 bit monitors later if interested

for now, just notice how the pixel size has increased with the lower resolution, making the 2/4 pixel object physically larger and easier to see on screen (btw my earlier screenshots posted were taken in 4.08 iirc). i havnt noticed anybody commenting the dot's had changed to 2 pixels since then, but it is possible (dot visibility has not increased since then, if anything worsened, so i havnt looked at it any closer since). the argument is still exactly the same however, 1/2 your resolution and the "il2 dot" is 2x the size, giving you a clear advantage online in a competitive environment (if all else is equal)

[swiss]

Originally Posted by zapatista

if you cant 1/2 your resolution to compare how the il2 aircraft dot doubles in size,, you should be able to at least notice that with the lower resolution the larger pixels show a larger il2 aircraft "dot" on your screen now :]

that is the exact principle at work, and it really shouldnt be the case in 2011 with the next gen sim

the argument is still exactly the same however, 1/2 your resolution and the "il2 dot" is 2x the size, giving you a clear advantage online in a competitive environment (if all else is equal)

Again: What if someone uses a beamer? He will have a 100" screen, huge pixels.
Cheating, right?

giving you a clear advantage, if all else is equal

It will never be fair - ever.
Unless Oleg sells some standard systems too and locks out everything else.

I recently noticed you can exploit the fact some ppl play with crappy GPUs.
When they are close on your tail, fly low over the water surface and fire into the sea like there's no tomorrow.
In case he really has an old card, odds are he will get a sideshow when flying through the fountains.


You see everything is different.
GPUs, screensizes and and resolutions, internet connection etcpp.

there is however an even bigger problem then that. these little 4 pixel dots still dont accurately represent what most real ww2 fighter pilots could/would see from their cockpits ! if il2/BoB is claiming to be a simulator then it is critical in my opinion this most important issue has a high priority (and oleg in the last few years has answered positively he is aware of this problem and is trying to correct it for BoB/il2).

Are you seriously saying the size of a pixel, in relation to displayed distance in game, vs reality is wrong?
You had to consult an astrophysicist to notice?

This is absolutely of the highest priority!
How could anyone possibly enjoy the GAME with such a flaw???

Maybe you should consider moving, a real simulator is not going to fit on your desk.



6bit/8bit:
I have no idea what your talking about.
In the settings menu it says something about true color, 32bit.

[combatdudePL]

Zapatista thanks for posting You last informations (especially screenshots) its reveal the essence of the issue - my English is too weak to describe it so well.

[Blackdog_kt]

What he says is that some monitors don't have the capability of displaying all the colors at the same time, so they flip the pixels in question between color A and color B to give the illusion of color C. Hope it helps

[Kikuchiyo]

Zapa if you're really that hung up on dots quit playing online. This is a moot issue that no one on earth can do anything about. Way to many variables, and continuing to beat the dead horse will do nothing to make the problem go away. Every game where there is competition there will be people that will do unscrupulous things in game to make their small lives feel more important.

Originally Posted by swiss

I can only talk for myself, but the only reason for dumping all that cash into peripherals for a game is to get an (unfair as zappa thinks) edge over the others.
It's just like real war - better equipment wins(usually).

You feel you get an advantage by using a 60" screen @800*600 - go for it.

I realize this, but it seems lost on the gentleman that it's not so much resolution as screen size that is the issue. He is continuing to harp on something that can't be helped.

[KG26_Alpha]

Stuka LOD 2/3

With a resolution of 800x600 or lower these are like flying bricks with lower settings.

[swiss]

Originally Posted by Kikuchiyo

Zappa if you're really that hung up on dots quite playing online. This is a moot issue that no one on earth can do anything about. Way to many variables, and continuing to beat the dead horse will do nothing to make the problem go away. Every game where there is competition there will be people that will do unscrupulous things in game to make their small lives feel more important.

I can only talk for myself, but the only reason for dumping all that cash into peripherals for a game is to get an (unfair as zappa thinks) edge over the others.
It's just like real war - better equipment wins(usually).

You feel you get an advantage by using a 60" screen @800*600 - go for it.

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by swiss

Again: What if someone uses a beamer? He will have a 100" screen, huge pixels. Cheating, right? It will never be fair - ever. Unless Oleg sells some standard systems too and locks out everything else.

ahh the old reductio ad absurdum way of pretending to say something meaningful. if you dont understand the topic under discussion, how about you just limit yourself to forum discussions you do understand instead ?

You see everything is different.
GPUs, screensizes and and resolutions, internet connection etcpp.

and ? where you trying to say something relevant there ? news flash: you'r not you just seem to be waffling and being disruptive while others are trying to exchange meaningful information

Originally Posted by swiss

Are you seriously saying the size of a pixel, in relation to displayed distance in game, vs reality is wrong?

nope, you really dont get it do you ? i'll try and take it in smaller steps then, since previously even providing illustrations with explanations didnt seem sufficient for you

1) the topic we (you know, the "other forum users" here) were discussing is how realistically il2 can display the visibility of distant aircraft, compared to what a real ww2 aviator would/could see from his cockpit (point being, the game trying to "simulate" a ww2 pilot experience, for which accurate visibility of enemy aircraft and ground targets is crucial). several posters earlier in this thread were raising concerns that they hoped these errors and know major problems in the il2 series would now be corrected in BoB ( it has been raised multiple times before, including in this forum in the last few yrs). oleg in previous years has indicated he is aware of this issue, and is trying to address several elements of it in BoB/Sow (one of these improvements seems to be that distant LoD models now have "3D volume" to them, as can be seen in one of oleg's earlier video clips). this problem has been extensively discussed and debated for years in the main il2 forums, and is well recognized (even if you dont seem to be aware of it, yet you keep blabbering on trying to either dismiss it or interject with frivolous meaningless banter)

2) the problem can be broken down into various elements, some of which are

a) how visible the most distant il2 "dots" are.
- when the smallest LoD model transitions to just being displayed as a "dot" (which can be anywhere from around 1500 m for a fighter or 5 km for a large bomber), this dot stands out fairly clearly against the open sky, but it blends in way to much with the ground terrain (being just a simple 4 pixel flat little square that slides over a textured background).
b) how well/poorly the various LoD models stand out against the background (in many situations they blend in to much, and in some situations planes can become invisible even if only a few 100 meters away and directly in front of you)
c) how well/poorly ground targets like tanks, trucks, etc stand out against the background (as mentioned before, you should be able to spot individual tanks/trucks moving on an open road or in a field from 1200 to 1500 meters altitude, yet in il2 this is impossible, you need to be at around 300 meters (a BIG issue !)
d) as a fighter pilot the main experience a SIMULATOR should be able to display, is that we as virtual pilots can track objects around us correctly and represent the situational awareness a ww2 pilot would have of objects or targets around him. in il2 you effectively are flying in a mini bubble of 30* of this visibility, AND you have blinkers on because your screen size is limetd. currently as users we are stuck between having a "pretty" sim with nice detailed planes and scenery, but the designers did not deliberately use methods to compensate for the limitations we have imposed on us by sitting behind an imperfect display medium (our monitor in our living rooms) rather then look "out the window" at a live battlefield. yet many of those limitations can be addressed and improved.

Originally Posted by swiss

You had to consult an astrophysicist to notice?

ahh more meaningless banter from the ignorant

as you might not have noticed, the screenshot i posted of the gun sight showing the distant b17 had some calculations on it, they confirm that right up to the point of the most distant LoD model of the b17 transitioning suddenly to just a 4 pixel dot, that this last LoD model up to that point was indeed the correct size (because at the start of this debate we need to confirm the object itself is correctly drawn by the game engine). that specific post however was to confirm that these distant dots in il2 (4.0 are indeed displayed as 4 pixel blocks, and that you can simply double its size and significantly increase its visibility by halving your ingame screen resolution. now hold onto your socks, because here it comes the punchline ! the only reason that all this matters is because we need to compare visibility in the il2 game to what it would be in a similar real life situation ! eg, if i am looking at an me-109 1500 meters away in real life under good visibility conditions and can clearly see him, i expect a SIMULATOR to allow me to do the same, and if i keep my eyes glued on the little sucker to therefore be able to track him as a maneuver to engage him. and, wait for it, here it comes,........... in il2 currently you cant with the current way the dots work (unless seen against open sky, and even then it is much less clearly visible)

hence, in order to have any hope of tracking the me-109 many people with high resolution are resorting to halving their resolutions, and artificially increase the dot visibility (but at the same time make the whole sim virtual world ugly to fly around in, and wasting the precious $'s they spent on their nice hardware). the fact some people use the same method to "cheat" online is completely besides the point. the whole focus of these "discussions" is to end up with as realistic of a visual world as we can to fly in, no more, no less. iirc in the 3.02 patch oleg briefly introduced a fix to address this dot visibility issue, and he made these dots larger and more visible (using more pixels and making them all black iirc). it might not have been "pretty" (for those liking eye candy over realism), but it served the purpose to more closely represent distant aircraft visibility and improved your SA significantly. a large section of the crowd however seem to think "hard to see = i am playing a really neat game", and have no clue about what visibility should really be like, or what recreating a real ww2 fighter pilot's experience means. sadly the whiners won the day in the following months, and in the next patch oleg reversed his changes, hence you have ever since then been back to the myopic 30% il2 "SA bubble" we have now.

Originally Posted by swiss

6bit/8bit:
I have no idea what your talking about.
In the settings menu it says something about true color, 32bit.

you need to look into this yourself a bit if you want to learn more about pc's.

Originally Posted by wiki

Truecolor: 24 bits (16,777,216 colors, "truecolor")
Truecolor can mimic far more of the colors found in the real world, producing over 16.7 million distinct colors. This approaches the level at which megapixel monitors can display distinct colors for most true to life video and photographic images.... 24-bit truecolor uses 8 bits to represent red, 8 bits to represent blue and 8 bits to represent green. 28 = 256 levels of each of these three colors can therefore be combined to give a total of 16,777,216 mixed colors (256 × 256 × 256).

most medium and high level lcd's fall in that category, they are ususally refered to as 32 bit because of software enhancement on top of the 24 bit. the 24 bit allows them to display a very clean gradient in color, including grey's

Originally Posted by wiki

Almost all cheap LCD displays (such as typical twisted nematic types) use dithered 18-bit color (64 × 64 × 64 = 262,144 combinations) to achieve faster transition times, but they must use either dithering or Frame Rate Control to fake 24-bit-per-pixel truecolor, or throw away 6 bits of color information away entirely.

and because they have a stepwise display of color and greys, when a shade of grey it needs to display falls between 2 values it can display, it keeps "flipping' back from one grey tone display to another, a process referred to as "dithering", it is what makes those same monitors very poor in displaying shades of grey and black (for ex when displaying a movie in HD you can see this "glittering" in large black/grey area's and it makes them a poor technology for watching video). of course the salesman just told you "lookie here, aint it nice, and it is FAST (and cheap), why bother with them fancier ones ?". and fast is about all they are good for, except that for 10 yrs or so most lcd monitors have been below 8 msec refresh rates, making them perfectly fine for most gaming to (but you will pay 50% more for them)

except that in il2 when you are trying to track a little black/grey square of 4 pixels against a green/brown or white background, this "glittering pixel" (which cant make up its mind of exactly what shade of grey to display) stands out MUCH more then on a high quality monitor, pure coincidence, but it is why a select small group of people in these discussions keeps thinking the visibility problem is less severe (note: in the crt days we were all in the same boat, and most video cards and nearly all crt displays were 32 bit). so your video car might be able to display 8 bit per primary color, but if your monitor is 6 bit limited that is all it will display.

and one last thing,[b] do you even know how to setup your il2 FoV so that it is correct for your monitor size ?[/b[ (and the distance your eyes are from the screen). because many of the less informed people who keep saying they can see things most of us cant (pun intended), are in fact "gaming the game" by using lower FoV settings they they should and use it as a zoom magnifier to scan the ground or sky for things they actually would be able to see from a real plane cockpit

so either start informing yourself a little about how extensive this problem is, by searching the ubi forums for example (or simhq or combatsim), then setup your system FoV correctly, compare your TN 6 bit monitor it to a normal 8 bit monitor, and then find out what real visibility was like historically for ww2 fighter pilots and ground pounders. and then maybe look at what RL visibility is like from an aircraft cockpit to, just so you have an idea of what you CAN see in RL. failing all that, how about you go play somewhere else and stop interjecting in topics you know very little about its not a forum pissing contest, we are trying to exchange useful information and improve the SIMULATOR in its next incarnation.