someone please school me on the dots settings

hi all could some of you please school me on the dots settings for viewing the planes from distance and share some of the settings you use?

i can't make sense of some of it and not sure of a few options to get it set up in a succesful manner

thanks in advance

regards, Ron

I use the dot visibility set to 6000 meters. That means when they are close enough (2-3km) you can see the AC LOD, when he goes further away the dot appears and the LOD becomes smaller and smaller. The dot is to emulate the distant speck. 6000 meters is how far you can see the dot. Further away the dot disappears. Makes no sense for me to have more than 6000 because then I wouldn't know if the bogey is 6000 meters away, or 8000 or 10000 etc. When so far away I wouldn't have been interested in him anyway and vice versa. Less than 6000 meters is also not practicable for me since the LOD grows bigger anyway so no need for dots. HTH

I found at 6K that just as you lose sight of the plane the dot shows but then quickly disappears so I chose 8K.But now that you pointed out that it can relate the distance to when at 6K,I might just try this out.

Got a question for you Creaghorn,what does HTH mean?Keep seeing that posted here.

thanks, i'll try 6000

hth i think is like S! (salute) ... hth hand to head?

HTH means Highway to Hell ;-)




no, that means Hope This Helps :-)

LOL

what is distance factor? and what to you guys set it at?

Well based upon my testing, increasing the distance factor makes more "stuff" show up depending on the Labels you have called up. I tried something like 3 or 4 and when I had Identity called up I could see nothing but endless text of airfields, army bases, observation balloons SMOTHERING the horizon. With Distance factor at 1 it appears that these facilities show up right at 4.3NM. So a little goes a long way, so to speak. I leave it at 1.

I on the other hand have dots set to 12000. It's my crutch to my younger days when I could get a tally a long way out.

And what is "Ta"?

Ta means thank you.

Yep. The Distance Factor increases the three ID Levels' ranges.

You can see those first three ranges change in the Workshop as you use the up/down arrows on the Distance Factor. I believe the first range is the distance where the labels change to Full ID, the middle is where it switches to friendly/enemy, and the third is how far away the unknown label first pops up.

The fourth distance is the manual entry field relating to how far away Dots will show up, of course. This one is unaffected by the Distance Factor setting; you must enter it yourself. The first three are all controlled by Distance Factor, so they're tied together.

The appearance of how far you see the Label depends on if it's set to "identity" or "activity". I think you see "activity labels" further out than the other.

Even in your younger days, I doubt you could spot a WW1 airplane in the sky 12 kms away. Unless you change your handle to Superman !

For info to the OP I have mine set at 4000 m, which I consider believable from what I have read about WW1 air war from real pilots. I also play with dots because of old age...

For me more than 6000 meters dots would make no sense, since if very much beyond that you wouldn't know if he is actually 12000 meters away or just 9000 or 7000 etc. so seeing a dot, stalking him without knowing how far he actually aproximately is, would be pointless IMO. So i set it to 6000 meters. When I see a dot, I know he is 6000 meters away max., if not closer, so close enough to investigate or being at least cautious and ready for some action.

Maybe you can emulate being a novice pilot. When entering as a new pilot, no dots allowed. After every hour of flight you might add 100 meters more. Or after every 10 hours adding 1000 meters. So eventually if surviving long enough, you will reach 6000 meters after 60 hours flight. You might extend it how far you wish but I would stop it when reaching 6000 meters. That would emulate gaining experience and actually learning how to spot enemies.