Dawger, a lot of real life pilots actually fly AH. A lot of folks that have an interest, passion, fascination with all aspects aviation, and along with that many hundreds, if not thousands of years of accumulated first hand experience.
Many even combat fighter pilots.
They all state, with first hand evidence, that this is so, and you claim "it's not physically possible" -- sorry but you're wrong on this one. Making out individual tail codes is and was an everyday thing for real pilots. In this game you'd be delusional to pretend you can do it outside of close formation.
1. I am a real life pilot with right around 10,000 hours. Just yesterday I flew from Monterey, Ca back home to Houston at 39,000 feet. I have some experience with the real life example Toad presented including out over the North Atlantic. My real world experience tells me it is BS. For the record my last FAA First Class physical my eyesight tested at 20/15 distance and 20/10 near.
2. I have done a ton of research on this particular subject including gathering the opinion of real world fighter pilots both current and former. I have used folks that were very familiar with WWII aircraft and folks that weren't in the course of testing the ability to differentiate aircraft silhouettes at specific scale ranges (scale since I don't have access to life size versions of WWII aircraft unfortunately). I have tested the visibility of tail markings from the largest aircraft in WWII. I have tested the identification range of modern aircraft over known distances using people that were familiar and those who were not. I have reached some pretty good conclusions that I find match the information I have gotten from reliable sources. I was lucky enough to discover some of the distance estimation rules of thumb used by current military pilots and they correspond to what I have found to be true. An example is the engine intake on the F15 used by USAF pilots to estimate distance. There are others. If you look you can find information on the internet regarding these formation flying thumb rules. An example is when you can read the NAVY (or MARINES) on the fuselage of the T34C you are three planes lengths away approximately. Knowing the size of those letters and the length of the aircraft gives one a good idea of the visual acuity of the average military pilot.
3. There is known science regarding human visual acuity. It is easily accessible on the internet. 20/20 vision is a measurement of resolution.That resolution is 1/60 of a degree. Any object that subtends less than that will not be distinct.
A 12 inch diameter aircraft window at 12,172 feet does not subtend 1/60 of a degree. In order to do that it would need to be 42 inches in diameter. It simply would not be visible. Even a person with 20/10 distant vision could not resolve 12 inch diameter windows at 2 nautical miles. It is much more likely the brain painted the windows in because they are expected to be there. Your brain does stuff like that.
So the issue is why people keep insisting on using obviously false anecdotal evidence?
Mostly fear of change. The current icon system is demonstrably inaccurate. It does not account for two of the most important components of visual identification, size and aspect angle. The point of my research and others who helped was to present ideas for modification of the icon system so that it would more closely resemble real life while recognizing the limitations of the computer monitor. The research I and others engaged in indicated that the computer monitor did a great job at long distance because airplanes far away in real life are dots. At extremely close range the computer did a very good job. It was the middle ranges from about 2000 feet out to the distance a particular model becomes a color smudge in real life that the computer needs help. The idea was to propose an icon system that accounted for aircraft size and aspect at these middle ranges and did not present more information than would be available in reality while also accounting for the shortcoming of the video system at those middle ranges. We came up with some very good ideas but there is very little interest in the WWII MMOG community in a better icon system so there is very little interest on the part of the game developer (understandably so).
My interest is in an icon system that accounts for the limitations of the computer while preserving as much of the uncertainty of aerial combat that exists in reality, especially in the WWII age. I have given up all hope of this ever being done because it is actively discouraged by the community.
NOTE: I cannot even begin to count the number of times I have typed this exact same information or something very similar over the past 13 years. I am pretty sure this makes me fit Einstein's definition of insanity very closely.
