No Enemy Icons, The new standard

[j500ss]

So far as FSO going to no icons, not happening.  We had around 100-115 people on the other night, FSO has what? 500 plus?   Daddog has assured all that asked, that FSO will not be a no icon event.

Now, does that mean that at times a CM will play with the ranges and alts at which icons are present? Don't know for sure, that is up to them.  But you can pretty much bet that Combat Challenge will stay as is, when it runs.  Many enjoyed it, many presented ideas that can be used in the future, and some cannot be used, its all about playability.

So rather that getting someones undies in a bunch, about whats next, or where its going to happen next, let it go.  It was a blast the other night no doubt, I know I initially had trouble, especially locating low cons, but beyond that, it was nothing more than deciding to adapt.  Like it or not, it is possible to play this game with no icons, hard YES, but possible.  It just adds a challange, that it.  For all the thing and ways there are to game this game, no icons presents a real challange.  Don't believe it, give it a whirl sometime, you'll get a new rush, just like the one you had when you got you very first victory in game, except now, your gonna work harder for it.

[Valkyrie]

Icons are screwed up because unless you have a faster airplane than anyone else your going to die. No Icons gives you the ablity to evade which does not exsist now. And FSO in time will be a no icon event.

Vlkyrie1

[Valkyrie]

Krusty be happy! All you have done is squeak about the icons, I would respect your opinion if you were there. But you weren't so shut up and enjoy the ride into no icon land! Where you will need some more skill to hit with your tater launcher.

Vlkyrie1

[68ZooM]

just leave it for the combat challenge, everything else stays as it always has been

[Vulcan]

And there is no stereoscopic vision beyond like 10m distance in RL - the difference in angle is just too small. But still it will be cited whenever the icon/no icon discussion comes up. Beyond 10m our brain calculates distances or depth just the same as when staring at your screen - by relative size of objects, memorized pictures like landscapes and fleet point (dunno what the proper word in english is - german: Fucht oder Fluchtpunkt).

Above mentioned is why all those 3D computer gizmos don't work well with sims. Because there is no stereoscopic 3D beyond a certain point. You can get a nice 3D view of your cockpit but it won't change how you see the planes at 300yards - on the contrary you might even get the aquarium effect where those planes will look like fishies in a aquarium or toys in a box because the 3D effect is unrealistic and the object will appear to your brain to be much smaller and closer...

Having played AH (and many other games) in both standard 3D and Stereoscopic 3D I can tell you thats complete rubbish. It makes a huge difference, especially in early war sets with the closer fights. The sense of depth and relative motion is hugely enhanced. No aquarium effect either.

[Kirin]

Uhm Vulcan - it was a fishie aquarium when I tried AH stereoscopic back around in the late '90s with the ELSA shutter glasses and Tomb Raider looked like a toy puppet running around in a shoe box. Maybe the gamecode did change in some way. One question for you Vulcan - how will the game 'tell' the stereoscopic gizmo how far what object is from you? The angle of conversion was manually setable back with the ELSA shutter glasses. So you could zoom in and out the level of what would be displayed in 3D. Unless the game is specifically coded to represent a realistic 3D enviroment I really doubt the effect.

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You're wrong about steroscopic vision past 10m... I've read more than a handful of accounts where the best pilots at spotting distant aircraft were the ones that could (to paraphrase) "focus on infinity" or "unfocus their eye paths" while scanning around so they would be better able to spot stuff further out.

Well, what I said was off the back of my head. Trying to find some scientific proof - will ask my neurologist or ophtalmologist collegues later this month. As for now Wikipedia seems to back what I said here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception.

And furthermore your Top Gun statement basically says that binocular fusional vision is not needed to spot distant objects...

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And speaking of pilot accounts. I read more than a handful of pilot accounts where blue shot blue under the perception it was the enemy! In my Fw-190 bible there is a story of an F8 pilot who 'chased' his flight leader all the way to homebase who was 100% sure he was being attacked by an enemy. I am sure those big roundels and swastiskas were more than just pretty decoration. All that with the perfect human eyeball vision. I am sure you can spot and identify airliners sitting in your rocking chair on your terrace but being in a cramped fighter cockpit, fearing for you life it was a different story.

[wgmount]

I'm not sure I would like this no icon thing in an FSO either. I have enough trouble keeping up with planes with icons much less no icon. I didn't participate in the snapshot they did with this but was told it was fun.

How did you tell the difference in friendly and enemy? My eyes are not good enough to make out that much detail on the planes to know.

Flushed

[Vulcan]

Uhm Vulcan - it was a fishie aquarium when I tried AH stereoscopic back around in the late '90s with the ELSA shutter glasses and Tomb Raider looked like a toy puppet running around in a shoe box. Maybe the gamecode did change in some way. One question for you Vulcan - how will the game 'tell' the stereoscopic gizmo how far what object is from you? The angle of conversion was manually setable back with the ELSA shutter glasses. So you could zoom in and out the level of what would be displayed in 3D. Unless the game is specifically coded to represent a realistic 3D enviroment I really doubt the effect.

The game doesn't tell the 'gizmo', the game renders in 3D, each alternate frame is rendered from a different PoV.  Sounds like you are referring to separation, the distance between the eyes. Most modern DirectX games render stereo 3D fairly well, up to the 7xxx series nvidia cards. In fact I'm trying to find an old top end card, I want to back to one for stereo 3d (the new nvidia 3d system doesn't support 3rd party products very well).

For me I use a VR headset with 2 OLED panels, so the 3D is represented far better than shutter glasses.

IIRC the elsa glasses used their own driver, and I tried a 3rd party driver recently and found it's 3D rendering not that great compared to the nvidia one. So you probably experienced a sub par stereo 3d driver with shutter glasses, ie not the best way to experience stereo 3d.

I have seen the aquarium effect, but only in the odd 3D movie (an HD one of the Rhein springs to mind).

[Kirin]

Sure, the game renders 3d with 2 different view angles but what relative sizes and distances does it apply? In the 2d world there is no difference between a couple of toy planes 50cm from your POV and real planes 500m from your POV (scale chosen deliberately) - but there is a huge difference in perception in binocular fusional vision - and hence the toy in a shoebox effect when you render the planes stereoscopic although they wouldn't be in RL - the objects appear smaller and closer because that is what we experience everyday.

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As I remember correctly there were 2 things you could adjust on the fly within the ELSA stereoscopic drivers. One might have been the eye-to-eye distance. But the other - the one I meant - was something like shifting the level what would be rendered 3d. So in AH I could set it near to get my cockpit in purdy 3d with the enviroment being the same as in 2d gaming - or I could push the (lets call it) '3d-level' further back which gave me a 2d cockpit (like a past-up or frame) while the landscape and the planes turned three dimensional but with the above mentioned toybox effect.

[gyrene81]

I'm not sure I would like this no icon thing in an FSO either. I have enough trouble keeping up with planes with icons much less no icon. I didn't participate in the snapshot they did with this but was told it was fun.

How did you tell the difference in friendly and enemy? My eyes are not good enough to make out that much detail on the planes to know.

Flushed

Whoa, hold on there bud...

Anyone who has the misconception that we're talking no icons at all is wrong...the settings for the combat challenge were no enemy icons and 3k friendly icons...no icons at all would be much tougher, and with killshooter off there would have been more friendly fire kills, until everyone got used to identifying aircraft from a distance.

[68ZooM]

Whoa, hold on there bud...

Anyone who has the misconception that we're talking no icons at all is wrong...the settings for the combat challenge were no enemy icons and 3k friendly icons...no icons at all would be much tougher, and with killshooter off there would have been more friendly fire kills, until everyone got used to identifying aircraft from a distance.

exactly, this thread is staring to get mis-informed, where just talking about combat challenge, as far as a new standard it just wouldnt appeal to the masses

[wgmount]

Ok, when I heard the icons would be turned off I assumed it would be friendly ones also. I apologize for my mistake.

[gyrene81]

exactly, this thread is staring to get mis-informed, where just talking about combat challenge, as far as a new standard it just wouldnt appeal to the masses

Well TBH, I would push for no enemy icons becoming a standard FSO setting sometime in the future...people squawked about shortened icon range...why? FSO is supposed to be something more challenging than the MAs...and regardless of the "that's the way it has always been" attitude that some may want to cling to...people are constantly whining about how boring AH has gotten, yet they haven't done anything to challenge themselves beyond flying something different.

FSO and scenarios should be more challenging than the MAs in every way possible without making them impossible for cyber pilots to compete...or maybe a simple change is perspective is beyond the ability of some to accept.

[ghostdancer]

I think Daddog has already addressed this. No enemy icons is NOT the new standard for FSO.

An individual admin CM though can an use different radar / icon settings for their design though and those settings would be specific just to that design (they would not be a standard applied to other designs).

[Vulcan]

Sure, the game renders 3d with 2 different view angles but what relative sizes and distances does it apply? In the 2d world there is no difference between a couple of toy planes 50cm from your POV and real planes 500m from your POV (scale chosen deliberately) - but there is a huge difference in perception in binocular fusional vision - and hence the toy in a shoebox effect when you render the planes stereoscopic although they wouldn't be in RL - the objects appear smaller and closer because that is what we experience everyday.

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As I remember correctly there were 2 things you could adjust on the fly within the ELSA stereoscopic drivers. One might have been the eye-to-eye distance. But the other - the one I meant - was something like shifting the level what would be rendered 3d. So in AH I could set it near to get my cockpit in purdy 3d with the enviroment being the same as in 2d gaming - or I could push the (lets call it) '3d-level' further back which gave me a 2d cockpit (like a past-up or frame) while the landscape and the planes turned three dimensional but with the above mentioned toybox effect.

Yup know what you're talking about, I've seen that setting and effect on some drivers. It's the difference between depth 3D and pop-out-3D. Have a look here at http://www.mtbs3d.com/ under Guides/S3D Settings.

Pop out 3D gives you all the problems you've described. Some of the 3D drivers are orientated towards pop-out 3D (suited to a large screen with shutter glasses). The (old) Nvidia did more depth 3D by default, this suits VR style headsets more - and this is what I've always used.