Been flying on the WW2 server, and I don't think I've ever flown a sim so hard to see planes even when they are supposed to be within visual distance. Especially when they fly over terrain.

Makes for flying simply frustrating. Can they not just make them bigger? If I see a single engine prop flying overhead in real life at 10,000 feet, he's easy to spot. DCS, not so easy. Hard to detect even at 3000 feet. I'm really thinking about not flying this any longer till something is done. Not everyone is playing on 40 inch 4K monitors either.

Go into the settings and make the planes bigger. It works great.

-C-

Besides the settings it's also helpful to use spotting techniques. For example, instead of searching frantically all over the sky, I like to pick a quadrant of sky that I think the plane may be in then let my eye focus off in the distance and wait for movement. Supposedly human eyes are good at picking up movement relative to the ground and sky. At least that's what my instructor told me. Works well in real life. Obviously a PC sim has its limitations, but it still seems to work ok.

I've been AA gunner in the Swiss army.
It was also very hard to spot Hunters flying against the mountains or the forests.
So it looks to me that DCS is quite spot on on the subject.

NM, just saw the thread at DCS forums about aircraft visibility. Hopefully they'll incorporate something that allows targets to be "less" camoed. It's not just about spotting, but tracking one as well even when it's in front of you. As soon as it turns into the terrain, it blends in way too much to the point of being virtually invisible. I think most sims get this right such as Aces High and IL-2.

TT,
I want you to know that your concern is shared with the rest of us. I too flew IL2, BoS, RoF ect. DCS has it spot on. The distances due to the speeds at witch we fly can be overwhelming. There is a stat out there that says 80 percent of pilots shot down never saw their opponent. Unlike BoS where I can visually track my opponent, DCS can be very frustrating. If you think WW2 is bad, try MiG-15 vs Sabre. It is crazy. To make your experience less frustrating, make sure you as the other posters have stated. Make absolutely sure you have "Make planes bigger" checked. These guys are absolutely spot on in their advice, so just keep at it. Eventually you will find your shooting eye.

Good Luck!

Most pilots shot down never saw their opponent because they were jumped when cruising along not expecting anything, not because the very short spotting distances in DCS are remotely realistic.

The enlarge objects option works very well for me. Together with EDGE this makes for a vast improvement in your ability to spot other aircraft. We regularly fly coop missions and keeping track of a wingman in combat spread formation at ~ 1NM distance has become far easier than it was before.

Same holds true for dogfights.

Also, most pilots were in their 20's or early 30s with above average eyesight (or they wouldn't have been approved to become combat pilots).

How many of us can claim the same?



The Jedi Master

I've recently started flying online and it is weird how I'll see a flash off in the distance, a momentary silhouette and I'll fly toward it only to find what I'm chasing behind me, in fact sometimes I'll even see the aircraft streak by me in reverse and appear behind me. Yes it is very hard to see planes that are well within spotting distance, at least in Cliffs of Dover you see glints of reflected sunlight off canopies which helps a lot even though it looks a little crude.

It is a shame that neither the DCS nor the BoS devs could be bothered to include something as basic as canopies reflecting light, by many accounts that was one of the primary methods used to spot other planes during WW2.

It may be real as far as plane size at distance, but it's not proper to be this exact for a computer screen.

It's seems a bit ironic that DCS wants it to be "real" yet they incorporate a zoom feature.

But that's a minor thing. A planes at 3000 feet shouldn't just blend in with the sky above and the terrain below. Sometimes I wonder if I am experiencing severe lag the way they are here one sec then gone the next. I'm not of course, but this is one area where we do not need to simulate.

I also notice one more thing, most combat I am seeing is very low. Now in real life, much of the combat took place at higher altitudes. But in DCS everyone wants to gravitate to the terrain because they know they can't be seen, they can blend in. Other sims have it right. Aces High is great for this where much combat actually takes place nice and high. Boom and zoom at 20,000 feet, just like in real life ww2 combat.

Real planes had different strengths and weaknesses when flying high or low, most sims seem to gravitate towards planes floundering at high alt so you naturally go low. Plus, diving for speed of course.

Human eyes detect motion very well, a camo'd tank that isn't moving will not be seen, but when it's rolling it becomes a lot easier to see.
In a PC screen, if its actual size is a pixel or two, while terrain details won't stay static as you move with colorization and lighting often giving you a "shimmer" or "crawl" effect due to aliasing and whatnot, you have zero chance of detecting it that way.

My eyes were never good enough for me to be a pilot. Making a sim display "realistic" means I likewise will never be able to survive, so I don't bother with attempting it. I need assistance from the program to compensate for all these limitations, but because too many simmers consider them "cheating" I don't play online.

Simple as that.




The Jedi Master

Yeah, it's very frustrating. I got all the leet skills ya know, just dying to eat me some krauts, next thing I know he disappears as he dives, look around can't see him anywhere, then boom on my tail. You know the rest of the story. Nobody gets to experience my leet skills...


Seriously though, I'm considering just going back to Aces High for a while until DCS ever implements something else. It's too bad, it's such an outstanding platform to base a WW2 sim on.

I am on the other side of the coin. In reality, spotting the enemy was always the problem. It is a fact that 80% of aircraft shot down never saw the attacker. So, if I have to choose between the limitations of PCs meaning that I have a harder time than reality versus using icons, labels, or other techniques that simply don't happen in reality, I will choose the more difficult path. If I can succeed while handicapped, then I am doing as well or better than reality, which is a good thing for me.

In Aces High, neon icons are great for gaming and teamwork and the oversize dots and radar maps help ensure you can spot contacts as far or farther than Chuck Yeager who had incredible vision. I enjoy Aces High for the range of aircraft and decent flight models. But as someone who likes to recreate historical missions, I haven't subscribed in years.

SFP1 worked great for me. If you learned scan discipline, you could spot that one pixel at the same range it would be visible in reality. Then TK started playing with the game mechanics in SF2 for a variety of reasons and broke the visibility system so bad that B-52's just pop into view at the same range as small MiG-17s. At the same time, he nerfed missile reliability to placate all the people complaining about missing so much. The plane set and flight modeling remain great, but the simulation value of SF2 went down.

Because different people have different needs, I am always in favor of player selected options. Labels? Icons? Oversize LODs? As long as I can turn those off, on, or somewhere in between according to my preferences, I have no complaints at all. So far, DCS allows me to play the way I want, so I am pretty happy with it. Multiplayer servers are different. Everyone needs to play by the same rules, as determined by the host/mission. Don't like a hosts settings? Feel free to host your own missions or stick to single player like Jedi Master.

I found a host I liked after the F-86 was released. I tried to spend at least an hour or two on that host every night. I enjoyed flying co-op and pvp. However, after the release of the MiG-21bis, the host disappeared to focus on the MiG-21. I have a MiG Alley mission and MiG-21bis mission I was developing to host myself, but I get bored with debugging the problems caused by patches. So I either play them solo or just ignore them and stick to conventional single player missions.

Again, those 80% were shot down cruising, expecting nothing to happen, or because they were target fixated and so didn't spot the bandit on their tail they could've avoided if they'd just looked back briefly. They were not shot down because a MiG-15 becomes invisible 300m away from the 6 o'clock position, which has been the issue with DCS for years. Though it's to an extent rectified, the openly demeaning attitude ED has put on about it and the complete and utter lack of e.g. canopy reflections means that spotting planes is still an issue.

It's a cheat, but IMHO acceptable since your monitor doesn't have the same resolution as Real Life™ - label mod. For example here: http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/270020/
You can tweak the colour to make it more or less visible depending on what you find acceptable.

Any of the cheats make aircraft far more detectable than they ever were. In reality, MiG-21s were a tiny speck at 2 miles when approaching with a head-on aspect, as they did in Vietnam with good GCI direciton. Make any excuse you want about degraded situational awareness, most pilots reacted to break calls from wing men, tracers, or thumps on their planes. If you want to simulate reality, you would always start with a threat within firing parameters on your six at least 80% of the time (or start on their six at short range if you are the aggressor).

I have the Red Baron reports from Vietnam and used them to make several historical missions SFP1/SF2. By far the majority start with spotting MiGs past the beam approaching firing range/position (less than 2 miles), even with flights that were dedicated CAPs continuously scanning for fighters. It is documented history versus speculation and theory.

I hope the agreed upon goal is "lifelike results." There's perhaps a distinction between "as if we were there" or "as if our trained professional counterparts were there" to be made.

I liken the two methods of achieving simulation: getting all the details right and the real life big picture will emerge and keeping the big picture result as the primary motivator and doing what's necessary to further that as "push" or "pull" method. "Push" like pushing a rope is in danger of going the wrong way. There is also a danger of putting effort in inefficiently, improving something where really some other category could provide more proverbial bang for the buck.

"Pull" development is in general more results focused and efficient where effort is allocated. Given a competent director (danger Will Robinson) and cooperation (fat chance) it's a good method. With poor or misguided vision pull development can be steered down the wrong path.

I've read some of the value tweaking in the model enlargement and it's seeing how sausage is made. There are a lot of ways to do it wrong and great intelligence and insight to get it on the right balance in the multitude of possible factors (air ground sun-glint aspect camouflage) involved.

Not really. You're saying, even by your own claims that all missions should start with either the player getting shot down, or immediately upon starting the mission shooting someone else down. How is that supposed to be realistic?

The fact that 80% of shoot downs occurred when the victim was unaware of his foe does not mean that the odds of spotting another plane by default are 20%. That would be paramount to claiming that every encounter in the skies above North Vietnam ended with at least one plane shot down. The only thing that the 80% figure means is that it is easier to shoot down someone who is unaware of your presence until he's frantically calling "Mayday" and pulling his ejection handle.