A/C Sighting Distances

Does anyone know if it is possible to change the distance at which another distant a/c first appears?

I don't normally fly with labels on. But sometimes I'll click them on to see who may be lurking. I can't ID a craft itself, until it is about 950-1000 yards(about 910 meters) away; according to the label ID.

From what I have read and from real world pilot posting..I think one should be able to see, not necessarily identify, another a/c at 3-4 miles.

Is there some file that can be changed to make the grey dot of an a/c, show up when it's further away then it now does?

If you mean the little dots that you can turn on or off with the period key, for me those do show up further away. I have chased them a while and finally turned on labels to find it was a friendly 24 km away! If anything, I wish they would limit them to the 5 to 6 km you're talking about.

Edit: I think I read your original post wrong. Yes, you can press the period key to turn on dots, but the devs should limit the dot's visibility to 7km or less instead of the extreme ranges they have now

So, just did a little test.

Against a clear sky, I can just see a B.E.12 (upper wingspan 36 ft 7.5in) as a dot at 2.5 NM.

Fokker DVII (wingspan 29 ft) at 2.2 NM

Nieuport 17 (wingspan 26 ft 9 in) at 1 NM straight on. Against clouds above almost 2 NM.

Fokker E.III against clouds at 2 NM.


So I think the best background for long distance is white. Against a blue sky you can see some larger/darker aircraft further, but the smaller/lighter (like a white Nieuport) will be harder to see. It may also depend on how far you are from your monitor (I was a bit close).

Didn't try against ground, because I think that's about impossible until you're almost on someone.

The only odd thing I noticed was that setting distance in miles in the workshop between you and your enemy doesn't scale right. I had to set the miles at 10 to get them to start at just over 3 NM.

Very cool that target size actually effects sighting distance - that's not always the case in sims.

Another kudo to OBD.

A solution, maybe not the best though, is to have dot labels activated.
If you go into your Uires file in your main WOFF folder, you can set at the line with dots shadowing to "n" which is no. That means that ingame you won't have the black/yellow dot anymore but just a greyish one which pretty much is looking like distant specks. Since it is just a label and not a real speck you can't really estimate the distance, so you might have your TAC activated, set to aircraft, and set to 4 km. So when you see a speck in the distance, and it's still outside TAC 4km, then you know it is too far to stalk or something. When you also see the AC in your Radar, then you'll know that it's close enough and maybe worth checking.
As I said, maybe not the best solution but it should work.

Thanks for the replies.

I didn't know there was a key to turn the a/c dots on/off at distance. I guess I was inquiring about having the a/c dots become visible as any a/c at around three miles in clear weather, without having the labels on..which I do not like to fly with. At least for me now, they don't become a/c dots before 1000 yards or so.

Was wondering if there is an editable file to change this function?

I've done a few 'tests' like Glubber and beyond about 3 km aircraft will not show up for me; there is literally no dot on the screen because the computer calculates the plane to be smaller than a single pixel. That won't be easy to change. If you fly with a wider FOV (zoomed out one or two steps) then the rendering distance is even worse, maybe down to 2km.

The AI pilots can see planes much further away (they go chasing after planes I can't see until we get much closer). So if you play full-real, you just have to get used to the fact that you're half-way blind compared to the AI pilots. Role-playing that you are the handsome but visually challenged new recruit helps (grin).

Maybe there will be something the devs can tweek someday to give us a bit better long-range vision, who knows? I find that balloons can be spotted at a pretty nice distance so maybe there is something there? And hey, maybe the new super-definition displays of the future will solve all our problems.

I do appreciate the 'label dots' idea, which is a great improvement of full-labels. But don't use them as they are a bit too magical for me (they show through plane parts for example). For me it will have to be 'full-real' and I'll just live with being a bit visually challenged.

When I use labels it shows:

at 8 km - aircraft are dots, buildings and balloons have label IDs

From 3 km to 1.5 km - aircraft show their label as "unknown"

at 1.5 km and less - aircraft show full label IDs

I agree with scout that I wish the labels wouldn't show through the plane structure.

Seems pretty resolution dependent as well.

Here's what I found using only the B.E12s.

1920x1200 - 2.7 NM
1680x1050 - 2.5 NM (my original testing resolution above)
1440x900 - 2.1 NM
1280x768 - 1.8 NM

I am definitely going to be playing at 1920, since the recent optimizations have really helped with performance. The lowest setting loses almost a mile in potential visibility.

Some of us, in this day and age, don't have a choice about running 14x9 since it's dictated by the space available in our corner computer desk...

Meant no offense Dave, and was referring not very specifically to 12x7. I removed that little blurb as I'm aware people just have to use what they can.

No worries.

Yeah I think the goal should be for a single grey pixel to be displayed at about 4 to 5 miles WHEN FULLY ZOOMED OUT

This would be about right for a fighter sized target.

I hate how stuff magically appears when you zoom in. I feel like we are Mr. Magoo right now.

I'm sure there's probably better stuff out there, but this I all I could find in my short search for anything officially related to this topic:



Seems to indicate that a pilot wouldn't likely see a T-33 (39 ft wingspan) til about 3 miles. Found the doc here if you want to print it out and try the 12ft test, though it looks like many times copied copy of a doc, so probably not as useful as the original:

http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/...ocumentID/23090

Looks fine here, no odd dramatic magical "popping" in, very smoothly appears as expected natural.
(also make sure aircraft settings are set on 5 in workshops graphical setting).

Of course it's resolution dependant absolutely - that's what "resolution" means.

If it looks perfect for you at the range you think is perfect someone else will say no it's wrong on his monitor/prefs.

Also note WW1 craft are smaller than WW2+
For example Camel is 5.71 m
Spitfire is from 9.12 up to 9.96 or something

So Camel about 0.6 the length.

Just thought I'd point it out in case some people felt it had something to do more with the game itself. I tend to think it's safer to assume that not everyone knows what some might think everyone should know... ya know?

Hey Pol, is it possible to limit the distance in which the dots show up to say seven nautical miles? The idea for them is great they just seem to show up too far out. Bye dots I mean the label dots when you press the period key.

We should really strive to eliminate "label dots" all together and just have light grey (hard to see) dots rendered at around 4 to 5 miles WHEN ZOOMED OUT FULLY.

Pol-

My original question was, is there a way to individually control the distance that an a/c shows up to the player, without having labels on. Apparently it seems that some feel they show up to far away..I see them first show up, too close. I would like to see an a/c without labels on, clear weather at about 3-5 miles. Just didn't know if there was a file to edit. My resolution is 1920x1080.

Nothing to do with the above, but might be something you want to examine; in experimenting in QC combat to see if my in campaign impressions were accurate, I set up a Turkey Shoot and set the distance at 5 miles in the QC set up screen.

When the QC initiated, the target a/c were there in front of me and showed at a distance of 450 yards not 5 miles. Just wanted to pass that along if there is a glitch or something.

Yeah, I have to set 10 miles in workshop to get enemy planes to start 3.5 miles out.

No.Some feel they are too far, some feel they are too near, it's all so variable on monitors resolution, people's eyesight etc.

Turkey shoot is turkey shoot, i.e you are close and behind that's the idea of it.
If instead you just want to be above/behind at long range choose something like dogfight and set it to "Advantage"

Lazfield, put it in Wish list. It is what it is in WOFF right now.
That's your personal wish/preference so add it there.

Pol-

Thanks for the reply

Will do Polovski.

It is my wish and it is a bit of a fact. I have 20/20 vision and I can spot a WWI sized aircraft 4 to 5 miles away (air to air). This isn't one off but a constant thing over the coarse of years and years. I have seen that most people with good vision can do this.

Now people with little flight experience may not spot these aircraft but those same people will not spot them in the sim as they wont scan as a more experienced sim pilot.

I've been behind a piper cub in the pattern at about 1 mile and it was like a pencil dot until he turned and showed me some wing. So dead on or behind, you're not going to see them that far away. Until they present a larger profile as in wings or side, or if they're light colored, a sunlight reflection, they are not going to be easy to spot. Esp. considering monitors and computers which restrict visibility distance.

I also developed a habit when in the pattern, esp. on long legs like downwind, when I hear someone radio in I do a quick bank to present my wing to view to help make sure they see me.

I missed this the first time.

Creaghorn, I went into the Uires file but I see nothing that talks about "dots shadowing". Could you please elaborate about where this file is and what to do? I am very interested in making the "dots" just grey instead of black as this would cure my spotting problems.

EDIT: Found it. It is not under Uires but it is in the main folder s "ui". I changed it and now I will test it.

yes, sorry. Was writing from work so tried to explain it from top of my head without being able to check it first. Glad you found it. Not a perfect solution, but works for me so far.

I would like A/C contacts to be consistent with TAC range, that is, if TAC is set to 8nm why are there dots visible at 20+nm...inmersion killer.I know, if you want inmersion switch ALL labels OFF. But, devs, you know, we are never happy:)

Add it to the wish list ArisFuser.

How do you guys get to see anything at these distances with labels or am I misunderstanding what's going on??

This is what I have.

Airfield not visible at greater than 4.2NM




Airfield visible less than 4.2NM




Aircraft not identified at more than 1.5NM, and a dot with no labels beyond that distance




Aircraft identified at less than 1600yds

Okay I played with this setting but I still get bright black "dots" that are too easy to see.
There is a line in there that sets the color of the "dot". It is currently "0xFF505050". If someone knows the code for the color grey (like the color of the clouds) we could put that in and the "dots" will appear far away but it will be very hard to spot them. So we would have "label dots" on but instead of a black dot we would have a grey dot which is harder to see so you have to really scan. Also you can see it when zoomed fully out!

We need the code for the cloud color grey!

You can experiment with different colors by opening your Paint program that comes with Windows and entering numbers from 0 to 255 for the boxes (RGB values) for red, green, and blue. The number (hex value) for a medium, light grey is approximately 190 for each color, or in hex "0xFFBEBEBE" Try that. If you want it slightly lighter or darker, increase or decrease the numbers.

You can also use your Windows calculator to translate decimal numbers to hex and vice versa.

Why would black be a number (505050)and grey letters (BEBEBE) in your example?

Thanks

How would I make, say 200,200,200 (grey) into this "hex" that you talk about?

UPDATE: Okay I found a website that makes RGB to hex but what about the "0xFF" part in front of the color? Do I leave that as is?

Also, what about the # in front of the RGB to HEX answer?

It was posted in another thread. It refers to the opacity.

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3893599/Transparent_labels_with_no_bac#Post3893599

AWSOME!!!

I will start with 0xFFE1E1E1

This should make light grey dots that are hard to see!

Now I can fly around zoomed out and scan for targets.

EDIT: too light...trying b4b4b4

I'm still mucking around with it, but just an FYI that if you modify the distance factor you can make the activity AND dots vanish at much shorter ranges. I'll test it some more, but in QC the labels are going away on 7KM.

Just changed this one setting to distanceFactor="0.1" it was set to 1.0. Looks to be a multiplier, but I could be horribly wrong about that. I'll do some more testing and provide feedback. It would be hilarious if this is on previous pages, but I haven't had time to read backwards.

Just keep going, chaps.

I think I posted that too soon. Still messing around with things. *Edit* Ya scratch that idea. Darn it.

That setting only effects the identify setting. If you set it to something like 7 you can identify stuff very very very far away. My kingdom for that setting on dots. (And yes I tried adding that setting for dots and bad things happened. )

Well I am having luck just changing the color of the "label dot" to a dark grey to match the clouds (see above.) This way even fully zoomed out you can spot(if you try really hard) bandits at 5 to 6 miles.

Still have the problem of the dot showing through our airframe but this is a nice balance between black dots at 9 miles and zoomed out blindness.

Lanzfeld113:
I assume you will give us your setting and what file to change them in when you finish your testing !!!

Yes.....trying different colors (hexes) to see what is the best setting.

I wonder if I should mess with the transparency too? The key might be to have a grey dot that is also a bit transparent to make it really hard to see at 5 miles.

Of course this will be subjective work but I will post what I like when I'm done.

Excellent work, Lanzfeld!

I'd be curious, too, about altering the transparency. I think FF means the dot is totally solid, with 00 being totally transparent. Try lowering it to "CC" instead of "FF" to see if it makes the dot harder to see at distance or if it makes it disappear behind a cloud, etc.

Octavious have you tried to change the "Labels mode" in this line of ui.xml?
<Labels mode="Identity" distanceFactor="1" fontSize="VerySmall" backgroundScreen="n" dropShadow="n">

Just a shot in the dark, but maybe changing it from "Identity" to "Dots" would get rid of the verbose labels and give only dots, with the distance setting currently used for labels, which would be a great option.

Herr_Prop_Wasche the level of transparency can be adjusted from FF (=255 in hexadecimal notation, 100% opaque) to 00 (=0, 0% opaque, i.e. transparent). 2F corresponds to 47/255= 18% opacity, 4F to 79/255= 30% and so on

Yeah good job RexH put all that in already as we asked eh ?

REMEMBER with regard to the DOTS - these are "LABELS" that show DOTS. Nothing more.

Yaan,

How are you getting these settings? I would love to be set up the way you are where you are getting different information at different distances. Dots and labels at the same time depending on distance...can't figure out how you're getting all this so please share your settings!

This would be a huge improvement in game play and I didn't know it was already available.

Thanks

Stickie these settings, please?

I dunno.

I thought it was already available in the game since patch 1.11. Before that, the labels would show everything 25km away, but then when I applied the patch, I noticed that everything had changed. Also, I even posted my observation here:
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3892635/Re_New_patch_V1_11#Post3892635

One thing I can think of is that I don't use the TAC, but I have it set to 0.5NM and close it. I played around with the configoverrides xml file a bit, but didn't change anything that would affect this.

Other than that, there is nothing I can think of that I changed.

Well, it's 3am here and I'll try to rack my brains tomorrow to think of anything else.

AFAIK those settings have always been available...

L toggles labels, while Shift L cycles label types among the following 4 modes:

1) Dots - only dots at all distances, starting from 25 km away until the a/c becomes visible, then nothing

2) Identity - grey generic labels as soon as the a/c becomes visible, then as the distance progressively decreases, the labels display a/c identification, and finally the pilot's name

3) Activity - all contacts are identified, regardless of distance, up until 25 km away; the label displays the a/c type and the activity the a/c is engaged in (transit, escort, fighting so and so, going home, etc.)

4) Identity+dots - combination of the first two modes

I mostly use Identity

Thank you Nibbio (and Yaan for showing this in the first place). This is breakthrough information for me, and what Yaan showed in his pictures is Mode 4. I just tried it and it works great!

This should be in the FAQ and maybe even an FAQ Sticky as I think there might be a lot of us that either had a gazillion labels showing or none. Mode 4 is excellent IMO with just the right amount of information without a cluttered screen.

Thanks again

You're welcome. I just realized that maybe these features are not fully documented in the FAQ, and so may not be so obvious to most of the players who don't care much about labels because they fly with labels off. On the contrary I'm very interested in visual aids (my right eye is practically useless) and explored extensively the label options.

I found the original labels and dots a bit too intrusive for my tastes, fortunately there is a way to make them less so by tweaking their opacity and removing the background. This of course makes them less readable, but since the only info I really need is nationality and visual help for locating the contacts, just a smudge of red is fine for me.

What I would like is to be able to choose the info displayed in the labels; in that case I would leave only the distance, and the color. Also it would be nice to have the dots display in a more limited and realistic radius (say the 8km radius of the TAC)

I'll put it in the wishlist.

I am making headway with the dots. I have them a good color grey and I am still playing with different levels of transparency.

DEVS or anyone who knows: Is there a value in any of these files that controls the distance the "labels: dots" will draw? I want to eliminate the "dots" at distances over 4 miles. Maybe 5. Please help.<------This really is a big part of fixing the view problem.

Hi there

While it doesn't let you control the content of labels directly, this info will help a bit in reducing the size of your labels.

The content of Identity labels varies with range from the player. The further the aircraft is the less info in its label. So you might see this sequence of labels with increasing range
William R Pilot RAF.SE5a - 365 m
RAF.SE5a - 789 m
Aircraft - 1170 m
dots

The ranges at which the content is reduced are determined by the real world size of the aircraft and a setting in UI.XML called UI.Labels.distanceFactor. DistanceFactor="1" is the normal setting. If you make it smaller the transitions will occur sooner and the labels will become smaller sooner.

You could try setting distanceFactor="0.5".

...rex

Great info, thx a lot!

We will be putting some of this into the workshops for 1.14 to make it easier to work with these (obviously some guys aren't good editing files).

Most responsive Dev team anywhere. Awesome news, Pol.

How about dot distance?

Let's wait and see what they have cooked up for us. Christmas is no fun if you know everything that you are getting ahead of time.

What Hellshade said

At least we are here and adding features and fixing issues (most of them minor now). A lot of developers in other companies wouldn't even be around let alone bring out updates and free features. Can't think why

The dot labels are of course only labels, but they aid you to see that there is an active world around you without being as intrusive as full textual labels. That was always their purpose.

Of course the low level LOD model of the objects themselves is always visible at a realistic 'visible distance'.
Turning the dot labels off you will notice you can see the aircraft model's low level LOD real 'dot' at approx 2 miles.

In version 1.14 you will be able to vary the distance the dot type labels are seen as well as the the other label types.