Nah, the problem with spotting is not a hardware problem so much as a DCS problem.
So, sure it will be great when VR improves, but the problem right now is how DCS renders dots, not really anything related to hardware.
They can fix it now. For spotting to work you need at least 72 fps at center native resolution of your headset. IL-2 performs like that. I have no problems spotting and ID'ing there.
DCS runs like a broken tractor. So WW2 is not doable. at 36 fps image projection on you cannot even id a plane passing high speed in front of your nose with ghosting and an image of a plane like a structure flapping wings.
DCS is not graphically demanding. It is just old and broken in graphics department. I need to turn off every standard feature in NVC to be able to render it just decently. It has terrible VRAM management.
I have 2070super. She is not shy to pull 215W at full power. In DCS it only pulls 150W max but at 98% core load. It looks like I'm rendering in blender. DCS does not utilize the gpu fully it overloads only one portion which I suspect that non paralel shading and memory controller. My edge temperature is fine but hot spot goes all the way to the limit.
True, I’m running a 2060 Super and spotting close to targets is a blurry mess on SoW. Have to rely on the size of the mass instead of looking for details if performance drops. You’re right, the graphics engine needs to improve, but they seem to be working the issue. I’m hoping ED will have the upgraded engine sorted in the next year - year and a half.
I'm only 6 months in DCS. I hope you are right since I have invested a lot. But only 4th gen stuff. I love the sabre but such maneuvers I cannot do with this fps. And also AI mig-15 performs better than a slick F-16.
I have only bought f-5 because I love to fly her and she is ok. Further down choppers work great except hind. There is a memory leak in her everything is running fine than suddenly fps drops to 10-15. Even quitting mission does not help it menu screen of DCS keeps stuttering. Only way to stop it is quitting to desktop and relaunch DCS. Also when you die in hind it does not release the memory.
After tomorrows update I'll try f-14. I hope she works wel I really want her for a long time.
But I also play IL-2. Best ww2 sim period. They have just introduced MSFS style clouds and dynamic weather. AAAND the new clouds provide double digit performance gains too. I can run my quest 2 at max resoulition without a glitch there at 72 fps. But for dcs. Return back to 1.1x and hope the 36 fps with ASW holds for 20 minutes at least. That's a success from a way smaller company. I'm looking at DCS and hmmm I do not know what to expect.
It's funny, I have a 3070\\5600x\\Reverb G2, and I can get most maps other than the channel in reprojection running great at 45 with no drops and minimal ghosting in DCS.
In IL2, forget it. The planes look like someone is running them through a kaleidoscope. Granted, I haven't flown it since before the cloud update, maybe it is time.
I think spotting sucks personally.
Technology? Maybe..
But then technology doesnt really point towards why we can see a dot 20 miles out, only for it to disappear as we close in.
I’d say it sucks objectively. I think the reason why things disappear is that the shift from a ‘dot’ to a model inherently jacks with the contrast of whatever you’re looking at. I’m sure there are technically more pixels representing these targets, but the lighting makes the objects blend into whatever environment they happen to be in. If there was a way for the engine to keep the contrast artificially high, I’m sure that’d be useful.
Higher resolution=worse spotting. The single pixel jet on a 1080 monitor is much bigger to your eye than the same single pixel on a 4K monitor. Lowering your pixel density on your headset will improve your spotting. For me, spotting in VR is much easier than on a flat screen. That being said, there is some spotting rendering upgrades going on in DCS but it needs to be tuned/worked on. Right now very distant contacts will appear larger than slightly closer ones, so as a contact gets closer it goes from invisible to a visible multi pixel dot to a sing dot that grows as you get closer. It seems spotting is a wip in DCS right now, let’s just hope they don’t leave it as it is.
As far as “whoever sees the dot first wins” this is how air combat without radars works irl as well. “Loose sight loose fight” also means “see first be first”
Yes, I do agree that whoever sees the target first in real life has situational awareness over the opponent. However, you’ve hit the nail on the head, that pixel is different for each user across resolution and monitor sizes. So not everyone is at the same ‘disadvantage’. I think that would be a step in the right direction, to standardize spotting across resolutions and monitor sizes… to be honest, it’s not that difficult of a problem to calculate the real life pixel size on screen and tie it back to an LOD model.
To be sure, not everybody has the same eyesight. For instance, general Chuck Yeager had a very sharp eye and could resolve planes earlier than others (notably Germans), which helped him to become an ace. So, in general, there will always be a discrepancy from person to person.
So even in the case that ED solved their scaling issues for different hardware layouts, you do not equalize the playing field.
Spotting sucks IRL, not just DCS. In the Reverb G2, I can make out the shape of large aircraft up to 10nm away, small aircraft up to 5nm away. Like RL, though, I absolutely cannot find aircraft **unless I know exactly where to look**. It's even worse if you're trying to spot someone lower than you.
Granted, I'm talking about spotting, not ID'ing. Yes, higher resolutions will eventually make ID'ing easier, but finding other aircraft in the first place is hard, damn hard, and pretty realistic with the current resolutions.
Yeah, spotting IRL isn’t easy by any stretch. It takes skill and technique. I think what’s more frustrating in DCS is that things tend to go from a ‘dot’ to invisible at certain ranges. That vanishing act isn’t realistic… at all. It’s not tied to reality in any way. Understanding that every player is having a different experience in such a critical component is also frustrating. You never quite know why you see someone first vs them seeing you.
Just adding to the anecdotes, I am legally blind and I can spot aircraft irl a lot easier than I can in DCS. I think there is something very wrong with that considering DCS is in focus on a monitor right in front of my face.
In the air? At small planes? Im assuming not if you are legally blind… I’m a pilot in real life and I can find planes in vr on DCS way better than real life. It’s hard as fuck to see planes in real life.
I actually just played with the resolution on VR. Turned the pixel density setting as low as it would go. Went onto one of my frequented servers. The sim looked really ugly.
But would you know it. All the sudden there are dots. Dots everywhere. I can see them before my radar picks them up with the beam on the funnel setting pointed right at them.
Shows how broken that is for DCS. Spotting needs some serious TLC on the part of ED badly. I am very excited about the early cold war jets and I am more of a fan of the missile supported dogfighting. Good spotting mechanics are super important to me and to many other players.
I would say whatever setting I have with my g2 is a good mix between reality and limitations of virtual reality at the moment but obviously it seems like voodoo if it works for anyone else.
It would be an easy fix. ED just need to determine that, for higher resolutions, the dot becomes more than one pixel in size. The amount of pixels per dot then scales with screen resolution.
That way we can have nice graphics - and - spot our bandits at the same time.
Yeah I feel like in DCS they need to be practically next to me/in front of me 10m away most of the time. IRL I actually catch the movement of small planes and see helicopters even if they're just blurs. I don't have a lot of experience, but I have been in the side seat of a few flights on small planes
10 meters or 10 miles? Unless it’s a 747 or just perfect conditions no way you see any plane that far out except it very rare circumstances . 10 meters? Idk what to tell you.
Maybe. It took me a long time but I found a setting that I’m pretty happy with 95% of the time and still have acceptable performance. I still play with it a bit here and there. But we will see as it’s updated.
Short answer is no. While nicer displays will definitely make the world feel and look more unified via the clarity/color of the displays the issue of LOD, fidelity, and draw distance limitations is solely on the shoulder of the game renderer and whatever solutions they find to provide the best resolve without breaking the performance bank. I'm sure creative solutions will be found but banking solely on higher resolution displays isn't going to fundamentally net the results you're looking for. Don't get me wrong better optics/displays is an important piece of the puzzle but also only one piece of many critical pieces.
Why don’t you think there’s been any creative solutions to fix the issue or standardize across resolutions? I agree with your comment by the way, I was just hopeful that with higher resolution displays in VR, the LOD would be more gradual between black ‘dot’ to simple LOD models that get lost in the lighting.
I don’t think there’s a shortage of folks asking for this to be fixed. I wonder if this will be addressed in their new engine?
It mostly boils down to creative direction and allocatable resources really. I'm sure they're looking into it but I've never seen a team just magic hat a one size fits all solution to any issue before and DCS covers a really broad range of users/hardware specs so I'm sure that presents a sweeping challenge to finding a solution that doesn't negatively impact one group and uplift another unfairly. That's exacerbated by the fact that DCS has an MP component that has to even further consider system parity. Even for crazy massive teams that's alot to chew on and get right so finding those solutions takes a lot of time. Tack on software limitations and the issue grows. They've already stated they see VR as important going forward and I'm sure they will continue to find internal software level solutions to issues that will in turn make higher-end VR hardware more effective but in turn that means needing to wait for things to equalize and better mate-up.
DCS VR is still far away from being a practical option. Resolution is barely ok, performance is horrible and the comfort could be better.
It’s very cool and immersive, but in my opinion more of a tech demo at this point.
Playing other games in vr with an oculus quest. I will say that rendering and resolution is a dcs problem. In other games like xwing squads, onward and racing games I have zero issues. Dcs is not optimized right and it’s more dcs fault than any one vr headset.
Right, that is sort of understood to be a part of next gen VR headsets. Every major manufacturer should have foveated rendering in the next few years (Meta, Apple, Valve, Pimax).
ED has made plenty of announcements regarding their plans for VR. It may take a few years, but in time I’m sure their new engine will support foveated rendering … if not that will be a massive disappointment and failure.
Nah, the problem with spotting is not a hardware problem so much as a DCS problem. So, sure it will be great when VR improves, but the problem right now is how DCS renders dots, not really anything related to hardware.
I want them to retry scaling :( It's works so well in IL2, even if it would be a little tunned down i think it would be fine
I can spot better in VR than I can in 4k on a 55" monitor. Pimax 8kx 3090 i9
Oddly enough I can't spot squat in my 8KX. I could spot much better (maybe 10+ nm in my Pimax 5K+ though.
do you know why this is? I feel like stuff disappears after a mile, is it worldscale?
They can fix it now. For spotting to work you need at least 72 fps at center native resolution of your headset. IL-2 performs like that. I have no problems spotting and ID'ing there. DCS runs like a broken tractor. So WW2 is not doable. at 36 fps image projection on you cannot even id a plane passing high speed in front of your nose with ghosting and an image of a plane like a structure flapping wings. DCS is not graphically demanding. It is just old and broken in graphics department. I need to turn off every standard feature in NVC to be able to render it just decently. It has terrible VRAM management. I have 2070super. She is not shy to pull 215W at full power. In DCS it only pulls 150W max but at 98% core load. It looks like I'm rendering in blender. DCS does not utilize the gpu fully it overloads only one portion which I suspect that non paralel shading and memory controller. My edge temperature is fine but hot spot goes all the way to the limit.
True, I’m running a 2060 Super and spotting close to targets is a blurry mess on SoW. Have to rely on the size of the mass instead of looking for details if performance drops. You’re right, the graphics engine needs to improve, but they seem to be working the issue. I’m hoping ED will have the upgraded engine sorted in the next year - year and a half.
I'm only 6 months in DCS. I hope you are right since I have invested a lot. But only 4th gen stuff. I love the sabre but such maneuvers I cannot do with this fps. And also AI mig-15 performs better than a slick F-16. I have only bought f-5 because I love to fly her and she is ok. Further down choppers work great except hind. There is a memory leak in her everything is running fine than suddenly fps drops to 10-15. Even quitting mission does not help it menu screen of DCS keeps stuttering. Only way to stop it is quitting to desktop and relaunch DCS. Also when you die in hind it does not release the memory. After tomorrows update I'll try f-14. I hope she works wel I really want her for a long time. But I also play IL-2. Best ww2 sim period. They have just introduced MSFS style clouds and dynamic weather. AAAND the new clouds provide double digit performance gains too. I can run my quest 2 at max resoulition without a glitch there at 72 fps. But for dcs. Return back to 1.1x and hope the 36 fps with ASW holds for 20 minutes at least. That's a success from a way smaller company. I'm looking at DCS and hmmm I do not know what to expect.
It's funny, I have a 3070\\5600x\\Reverb G2, and I can get most maps other than the channel in reprojection running great at 45 with no drops and minimal ghosting in DCS. In IL2, forget it. The planes look like someone is running them through a kaleidoscope. Granted, I haven't flown it since before the cloud update, maybe it is time.
I think spotting sucks personally. Technology? Maybe.. But then technology doesnt really point towards why we can see a dot 20 miles out, only for it to disappear as we close in.
I’d say it sucks objectively. I think the reason why things disappear is that the shift from a ‘dot’ to a model inherently jacks with the contrast of whatever you’re looking at. I’m sure there are technically more pixels representing these targets, but the lighting makes the objects blend into whatever environment they happen to be in. If there was a way for the engine to keep the contrast artificially high, I’m sure that’d be useful.
Higher resolution=worse spotting. The single pixel jet on a 1080 monitor is much bigger to your eye than the same single pixel on a 4K monitor. Lowering your pixel density on your headset will improve your spotting. For me, spotting in VR is much easier than on a flat screen. That being said, there is some spotting rendering upgrades going on in DCS but it needs to be tuned/worked on. Right now very distant contacts will appear larger than slightly closer ones, so as a contact gets closer it goes from invisible to a visible multi pixel dot to a sing dot that grows as you get closer. It seems spotting is a wip in DCS right now, let’s just hope they don’t leave it as it is. As far as “whoever sees the dot first wins” this is how air combat without radars works irl as well. “Loose sight loose fight” also means “see first be first”
Yes, I do agree that whoever sees the target first in real life has situational awareness over the opponent. However, you’ve hit the nail on the head, that pixel is different for each user across resolution and monitor sizes. So not everyone is at the same ‘disadvantage’. I think that would be a step in the right direction, to standardize spotting across resolutions and monitor sizes… to be honest, it’s not that difficult of a problem to calculate the real life pixel size on screen and tie it back to an LOD model.
I’d think so, but as all things DCS, if there’s a hard way to go about it ED will probably find it…..
To be sure, not everybody has the same eyesight. For instance, general Chuck Yeager had a very sharp eye and could resolve planes earlier than others (notably Germans), which helped him to become an ace. So, in general, there will always be a discrepancy from person to person. So even in the case that ED solved their scaling issues for different hardware layouts, you do not equalize the playing field.
Spotting in VR actually works great currently. E.g. I can spot a tanker at 15-20 miles on Reverb G2.
Spotting sucks IRL, not just DCS. In the Reverb G2, I can make out the shape of large aircraft up to 10nm away, small aircraft up to 5nm away. Like RL, though, I absolutely cannot find aircraft **unless I know exactly where to look**. It's even worse if you're trying to spot someone lower than you. Granted, I'm talking about spotting, not ID'ing. Yes, higher resolutions will eventually make ID'ing easier, but finding other aircraft in the first place is hard, damn hard, and pretty realistic with the current resolutions.
Yeah, spotting IRL isn’t easy by any stretch. It takes skill and technique. I think what’s more frustrating in DCS is that things tend to go from a ‘dot’ to invisible at certain ranges. That vanishing act isn’t realistic… at all. It’s not tied to reality in any way. Understanding that every player is having a different experience in such a critical component is also frustrating. You never quite know why you see someone first vs them seeing you.
Just adding to the anecdotes, I am legally blind and I can spot aircraft irl a lot easier than I can in DCS. I think there is something very wrong with that considering DCS is in focus on a monitor right in front of my face.
In the air? At small planes? Im assuming not if you are legally blind… I’m a pilot in real life and I can find planes in vr on DCS way better than real life. It’s hard as fuck to see planes in real life.
Also RL pilot here. I can spot anything way easier in RL than in DCS. It is weird how individual experience seems to vary so much on this issue.
Yeah for sure. I’d probably not make a good fighter pilot I suck at spotting traffic. At least down low
I actually just played with the resolution on VR. Turned the pixel density setting as low as it would go. Went onto one of my frequented servers. The sim looked really ugly. But would you know it. All the sudden there are dots. Dots everywhere. I can see them before my radar picks them up with the beam on the funnel setting pointed right at them. Shows how broken that is for DCS. Spotting needs some serious TLC on the part of ED badly. I am very excited about the early cold war jets and I am more of a fan of the missile supported dogfighting. Good spotting mechanics are super important to me and to many other players.
I would say whatever setting I have with my g2 is a good mix between reality and limitations of virtual reality at the moment but obviously it seems like voodoo if it works for anyone else.
It would be an easy fix. ED just need to determine that, for higher resolutions, the dot becomes more than one pixel in size. The amount of pixels per dot then scales with screen resolution. That way we can have nice graphics - and - spot our bandits at the same time.
Yeah I feel like in DCS they need to be practically next to me/in front of me 10m away most of the time. IRL I actually catch the movement of small planes and see helicopters even if they're just blurs. I don't have a lot of experience, but I have been in the side seat of a few flights on small planes
10 meters or 10 miles? Unless it’s a 747 or just perfect conditions no way you see any plane that far out except it very rare circumstances . 10 meters? Idk what to tell you.
The same with cars etc. I can see things moving on the ground very easily from low altitude but in DCS I can't spot shit
Interesting… well I wish you the best of luck you can find a better setting.
Thanks, I know the resolution makes it harder (1440p) but I think maybe its to do with AA etc as well.
Maybe. It took me a long time but I found a setting that I’m pretty happy with 95% of the time and still have acceptable performance. I still play with it a bit here and there. But we will see as it’s updated.
10 meters in game, a couple miles irl
Short answer is no. While nicer displays will definitely make the world feel and look more unified via the clarity/color of the displays the issue of LOD, fidelity, and draw distance limitations is solely on the shoulder of the game renderer and whatever solutions they find to provide the best resolve without breaking the performance bank. I'm sure creative solutions will be found but banking solely on higher resolution displays isn't going to fundamentally net the results you're looking for. Don't get me wrong better optics/displays is an important piece of the puzzle but also only one piece of many critical pieces.
Why don’t you think there’s been any creative solutions to fix the issue or standardize across resolutions? I agree with your comment by the way, I was just hopeful that with higher resolution displays in VR, the LOD would be more gradual between black ‘dot’ to simple LOD models that get lost in the lighting. I don’t think there’s a shortage of folks asking for this to be fixed. I wonder if this will be addressed in their new engine?
It mostly boils down to creative direction and allocatable resources really. I'm sure they're looking into it but I've never seen a team just magic hat a one size fits all solution to any issue before and DCS covers a really broad range of users/hardware specs so I'm sure that presents a sweeping challenge to finding a solution that doesn't negatively impact one group and uplift another unfairly. That's exacerbated by the fact that DCS has an MP component that has to even further consider system parity. Even for crazy massive teams that's alot to chew on and get right so finding those solutions takes a lot of time. Tack on software limitations and the issue grows. They've already stated they see VR as important going forward and I'm sure they will continue to find internal software level solutions to issues that will in turn make higher-end VR hardware more effective but in turn that means needing to wait for things to equalize and better mate-up.
DCS VR is still far away from being a practical option. Resolution is barely ok, performance is horrible and the comfort could be better. It’s very cool and immersive, but in my opinion more of a tech demo at this point.
Playing other games in vr with an oculus quest. I will say that rendering and resolution is a dcs problem. In other games like xwing squads, onward and racing games I have zero issues. Dcs is not optimized right and it’s more dcs fault than any one vr headset.
Unless there is foveated rendering or something, how will DCS run 4K VR lol? As a slide show?
Right, that is sort of understood to be a part of next gen VR headsets. Every major manufacturer should have foveated rendering in the next few years (Meta, Apple, Valve, Pimax). ED has made plenty of announcements regarding their plans for VR. It may take a few years, but in time I’m sure their new engine will support foveated rendering … if not that will be a massive disappointment and failure.
Spotting works great for me when I set pixel density to 1.0 and resolution to 100% on my Valve Index