I’m supposed to be a pilot, which means my eyes are supposed to be good.
My eyes are not that good. So I use labels.
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It is.
I have said it numerous times before, but finding other aircraft, looking from a moving aircraft, is tough!
And I’m spotting big bright airliners, aided by TCAS and ATC that gives me the BRA…
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If they were blocked by the cockpit I would agree.
The thing in general is: on a small monitor like the one on my notebook the dots are very small. I have very good eyes but that’s too small, even for me.
Once I am back to my big screen I will most likely be OK, like I was before my PC died. But in the meantime it would be cool to have the impostors back. Labels break immersion too much for my taste.
I think I posted somewhere pictures depicting that ’ dots = one or few pixels ’ representing distant aircrafts ( distance not changing ) are not rendered at some moments.
Loosing sight is one thing but rendering of things should be consistant.
Anyway it is what it is 
I mean we are just hesitant to adopt to the ’ game tactics '.
And as second note, we can always fight in MiGs against the Cat… spoting that ’ tenis court ’ should be easy busines 
Exactly!
I was thinking abut this the other day. I live about 3,950 m (2.1 Nm) from the threshold of runway 26 at Langley AFB. On a near daily basis, one can watch F-22s and occasionally F-5s (aggressor squadron I assume) come in to the break (or whatever the USAF calls it), swing around down wind, and land. The turn to downwind is away from me so lets call the farthest distance 6,200 m (3.4 Nm)
I still have 20/20 distance vision I can easily see them the whole time, without trouble and am easily able to ID the type of aircraft.
Yet on my monitor I can’s find a similar sized fighter at much more than 1500 m…I certainly can’t ID it.
I realize it is all about pixels vs reality, the larger relative spot size of an actual plane vs a computer depicted plane, catching movement against a background, etc.…which is why I use dot labels - I feel it somewhat compensates for the limitations of computer graphics.
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That’s one thing. Standing still on the ground, watching an aircraft in a predictable pattern.
Sitting in the cockpit of a moving aircraft, while maneuvering and try to find another aircraft is a different matter.
It isn’t just a matter of being able to see an object of that size. It’s also about focusing on the correct distance, which can’t be simulated on a 2D screen.
But this problem is as old as flightsims. It isn’t easily simulated, and it’s very dependent on visual hardware.
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Don’t forget aliasing. In the real world, human vision is drawn to motion. A still object can blend in easily, but even the best camo’d one will stand out when moving against a background.
On your PC, it’s not uncommon to have the terrain unrealistically “crawl” around, especially when the terrain is close to edge-on (such as near the horizon at low altitude). This can mask anything small quite easily. Then you have the color palette. Did the artists use the same color for the terrain and the camo? In reality matching something THAT exact is almost impossible. In a PC it’s cut and paste.
This is why I max out anisotropic filtering and FSAA as much as possible, to try and make the “computer graphics” effect as minimal as I can. For screenshots we’re more or less at photo real already, but when in motion the illusion can quickly dissipate when you get lines close to vertical or horizontal and those “stairs” appear.
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Yes, and when in a moving aircraft, everything you look at outside is moving. And on top of this, the fighter you’re looking at may be standing more or less still in relation to your view point.
Another problem is that the planet that presents a background to the tiny fighter, is much bigger and easier to focus on.
You can literally look exactly at the fighter, but not see it, because your eyes are focusing on the hills in the background.
Nothing of this is easily simulated…
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In DCS some patches ago, many planes gained smoke trails. Some are smokier than others but if I end up without labels, thats what I spot.
MiG-29. MiG-29 all day. I swear, the MiG-29 must be the plane that started all the contrail conspiracy theories.
I don’t know about fighters, (well the ones I flew past at close range were pointed out by atc) but I can have trouble spotting airliners in relatively close range even with the help of tcas. Dsimetimes I can spot them a long way out, other times I can’t find them until they are practically on top of me.
Maybe I should put the sudoku down?
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It’s hugly variable. I’ve seen airliners without contrails at 30 miles. A few days ago neither of us could see a Learjet pointed out to us until it was a few hundred feet off the nose and 1000’ overhead. Someone mentioned flashy pixels in sunlight to simulate glint. That is a great idea. Unlike @MBot, I cannot see anything in VR. I am totally lost in knife fights.
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I wasnt referring to contrails. No actual sooty smoke. The fulcrum and phantom have oodles of it, but almost every machine in DCS has some of it. Makes em just that tiny bit easier to find.
As for knife fights, once you see em, dont let go, at least not long enough for him to not be where you expect him to be when your gaze returns.
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There’s a long thread on ED’s board about this. Apparently smart scaling works well to compensate for this handicap (it’s a cognitive science to “simulate” when you would spot something on a 2D screen at the same threshold as in RL). It has been tried in 2.0 IIRC but from what I understand it doesn’t fit well in DCS as RCS is also affected. Anyway, a dot works as well, hopefully it will be masked by the cockpit someday.
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Transitioned to the carrier tonight. Spent the last few hours of virtual flying taking off, tanking and landing at Nellis to get a feel for the jet. It’s pretty awesome!
I have my stick sensitivity issues sorted. Looks like a calibration was in order. I had one of the new VKB Space Combat Grips that I was interested in trying out and forgot to re-calibrate when switching back to my Modern Combat Pro grips. Also, over the past 6 months I had gotten used to using the VKB stick centre mounted and without the 6-inch extension. I found that I wanted that extension back for the Tomcat but 6-inches was too tall. So, last weekend I went off to a metal shop in town and acquired some small pipe scraps that they had available and fashioned my own 3-inch extension. It provides a good balance in range of motion, vertical position and feel. Hopefully it works sell for the helicopters too.
Anyway, enough of that. Taking off from the carrier was pretty cool. You have to have the Tomcat lined up nicely of the catapult will throw you around (yaw) as you launch off the end. Keep that in mind. Tanking from the C-130 was a little more challenging than the KC due to the slower speed (at least if I have it set correctly in the mission, which may be incorrect on my part). Landing was … pretty simple. Granted I added a generous amount of space in the CASE I pattern - lets call it a CASE I+ pattern :-). I was high on the downwind but got it under control and it worked out with the extended groove shot. Nice line up and the DLC was very helpful when I started to float high - as I do all the time in the Hornet. Caught a 3 wire on my first try. No shot of the kneeboard however, as I am having ‘issues’ with my multi-monitor setup and the kneeboard position (I tried to mod it be something changed since the last patch and after my attempt, it was a 100x100 box in the top left of my monitor - too small to use
Lots of words, though. How about a couple screenshots.
Yes that OH Perry is close but it is there for the photo ops. The next one out is 1nm from the carrier - to help me visualize the CASE I pattern.
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I should have mentioned that I was enjoying a couple f cocktails on my back deck at the time…adds a degree of difficulty 
Hmmm 
I hadn’t thought of that…I bet that is actually a large part of the “equation” in real life. Even though the aircraft are a couple of Nm away, the clouds behind them are at least twice that distance…so a minor focus differential in the eye between the foreground and background may allow the brain to “lock” and see the aircraft … something that is imperceptible to our conscious mind.
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Mig-19 is a bit of a smoky beast. A large puff of black smoke as it transitions through Mil to AB…I’ll reedit this to add a screen shot.
The big puff of smoke just before a Mig-19 hits AB. This is also fairly visible in the air.
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This is how fighterpilots practise their aim, I’m told… Often in target rich environments.
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Mig 15 billows out smoke as well. When I went head to head with @schurem in my sabre the smoke in my mirror made me think I’d been hit already. But it was always just a precursor to some 37mm hammer and sickle of justice about to send me back to the earth!
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I flew a mission in the Hornet this afternoon and my attempt to land on the carrier went something like this…
First attempt, too short
Second attempt, too long
Third attempt… one wire
Then I hop in the Tomcat for some landing practice and nail the 3 wire on first try in foul weather. It definitely feels more stable on approach then the Hornet.
Here’s the AI coming in after me. The rain on canopy in the Tomcat looks soooo cool.
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