Visibility

[Hedgehog]

At this point, I'd say that the most unrealistic aspect of DCS World is object visibility, or, more clearly, the lack thereof.

In last night's mission, the action took place over and around a small 3x4 nm island. Orbiting at 1000 ft, you couldn't make out much of anything. Armed speedboats were approaching the island, and were virtually invisible. There was a flight of Hueys conducting a rescue, escorted by a flight of Apaches. Unless you were right on top of them, you couldn't see them.

Anyone who has ever flown in an aircraft could tell you that 1000-2000 ft above a 3x4 island, you would be able to easily see pretty much anything happening, and pick out small details easily. A flight of 3 Apaches would be immediately apparent. Speedboats, even small ones, leave a wake you could easily see from 10,000 feet.

Things in DCS are just too small. Other aircraft in your area, if visible at all, are represented by a single dot. Real people can see real planes much more easily. Go to a spot 5 miles from your favorite airport and see if you can make out small planes taking off and landing. Do they look like a dot? No. Now try to spot a plane in DCS World 5 miles away. If you can see anything, it will be a dot. Yes, a computer monitor cannot offer the same visual acuity of the human eye. That's kinda the point. The developers should adjust object size and clarity to SIMULATE real world visibility.

You can argue pixels all day long, but the point is, if you could see it in real life at some range, but not in DCS World, that's a problem that needs to be corrected.

For the record, I use a 34" 1080p monitor with TrackIR driven by a GTX 1080 GPU.

[Lion]

Well, until object visibility gets better, the abbreviated-labels-into-dots they implemented works pretty well for me, when its available in a mission

[Specter13]

Yeah agreed Hedge. Imagine the ass pain on a 17" laptop powered by the same gpu. Thats why it takes me so long to make missions because i actually get in the jet and fly it multiple times to make sure everything acts accordingly. Now imagine how many times i had to search around for those speedboats and get them to shoot at me to make sure they were working right and then i had to look for the helios also which was also a pain because those darn f15s would also beat me to it. In the future i will try to keep small objects to a minimum. But do note that during my testing of that mission the more the sun was up the easier it was to see the boats but not by much.

[Lion]

feels like being in a WW2 bird with no radar and FLIR pod, having to eyeball everything on the ground