Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: beet1e on June 29, 2004, 06:00:00 PM
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AH2 is working well for me. Tonight I even found some fine fellows to fly with, and had a marvellous session with the P47D25.
But I missed a couple of scoring opportunities. The problem is the colours. In AH1, there was great distinction between the colours in the landscape. Rocks stood out from grass.
In AH2, the difference between greys and greens is less distinct, and if chasing a green plane like a LA7 or Spit, it can be hard to see the actual plane with terrain as a backdrop. Is there a way to adjust this? Would altering my monitor's contrast help?
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I dunno Beet1e... isn't this trying to take a step away from realism?
You can adjust colour levels in display properties, some drivers offer a colour vibrance level or some such making colours brighter.
I think AH2 is maybe even slightly more cartoon than AH, for the steps that have supposedly been taken to make the game look more realistic its starting to remind me of AW....
Specially when you compare to that boxed sim....
SKurj
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I have the same trouble beet1e and found that if you zoom in just one notch you can see them fine.
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Originally posted by beet1e
AH2 is working well for me. Tonight I even found some fine fellows to fly with, and had a marvellous session with the P47D25.
But I missed a couple of scoring opportunities. The problem is the colours. In AH1, there was great distinction between the colours in the landscape. Rocks stood out from grass.
In AH2, the difference between greys and greens is less distinct, and if chasing a green plane like a LA7 or Spit, it can be hard to see the actual plane with terrain as a backdrop. Is there a way to adjust this? Would altering my monitor's contrast help?
Huh ? Isn't that why planes were painted colors to match the landscape to make it harder to see them when being bounced ?
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It is called "age" Beet. Those old tired eyes make this a young man's game. ;)
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Originally posted by Curval
It is called "age" Beet. Those old tired eyes make this a young man's game. ;)
Thank you for those kind words! :mad::lol
I think Slapshot has it - of course planes were camouflaged, which makes me wonder why some were silver, and the P51D with its distinctive red tail.
Boozer! Hey, great flying with you and TARGUT last night, all of us in P47s. Mine's a D25.
Here's a few pics to show what I mean.
1. Spit invisible at 400 yards.
(http://www.zen33071.zen.co.uk/p47-1.jpg)
2. Still can't see it at 200 yards.
(http://www.zen33071.zen.co.uk/p47-2.jpg)
3. Ah, there it is but doh - too late! I missed the shot.
(http://www.zen33071.zen.co.uk/p47-3.jpg)
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which makes me wonder why some were silver, and the P51D with its distinctive red tail.
I was watching either the History channel or Discovery Wings and the reasons for those schemas were for the simple fact that the gunners didn't want to shoot down their escorts and the pilots, of course, did not want to die to friendly fire.
Flying high-alt bomber escort, camouflage really didn't make a difference. Being able to have the bomber gunners be able to tell the difference between a friendly and a foe in the middle of chaos was more important.
The "Tuskeegee" airmen (all-black unit) were the "Red-Tails". These guy NEVER lost one bomber in all the escort sorties that they flew. Needless to say, but they were the most requested escort unit around.
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I had also heard a reason for leaving the B17 aluminum was so that they were easier to spot therefore drawing the enemy planes in for the escorts.
I can see that spit fine Beet1e.. in fact all 3 look identical.... sure a size diff, with range but...
SKurj
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Camo is virtually useless on moving objects.
Planes can get "lost" against the AH terrain because of the inherent lack of depth perception on a 2D screen. This is one of the reasons why we have icons.
J_A_B
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Oh I disagree J_A_B..
A dark green plane against a dark green background would be much harder to see than a red one against the same background.
The colours in AH already seem too saturated, any adjustments that increase the brightness will just make it more comical.
SKurj
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"A dark green plane against a dark green background would be much harder to see than a red one against the same background. "
Nope---they both stick out like a sore thumb.
Seriously--camo is about useless if you're in motion. Your eyes will detect the motion. If you aren't moving than its another matter entirely.
The green camo of the USAAF was particularly useless at 30,000 feet, hence why they stopped bothering with it.
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With an airplane, if it is heading directly away or directly towards you it has a rather small profile, little relative motion, and can be rather hard to see. This is compunded by technological limitations of our computers, so as Beet1e's pictures demonstrate it has an effect of "masking" into the terrain at that angle. If he would have been looking at a top-down view of it I am sure he would have seen it clearly.
Camo doesn't really have anything to do with it. Beet1e's grey Spitfire isn't exactly Camo'd against the nice green terrain, is it? It has more to do with angle and the way graphics are rendered.
J_A_B
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Depends.
An object moving directly towards or away from you is much less perceivable, than an obejct moving sideways in relation to your line of sight.
This is because, like said in other threads about icons, over a certain distance human eyes detect movement with the help of visual cues - by measuring relative movement of a certain object in cotrast to the background.
Obviously, a movement towards, or away from you has no relative motion which human eyes can train on and judge upon, and only changes in the size of the said object.
....
However, what J_A_B says applies in other ways.
Detecting a movement which the observer was previously unaware of, works in the way I described above. However, once humans are aware of an object, the human consciousness focuses on the existence of the object, and applies different levels of "alertness" to the eyes.
Its how camouflage works in the natural world too. When there is a camouflaged animal hiding in the woods it is effectively, by all means, 'invisible'. However, once we realize that there is something hiding there, we begin to see the shape of the animal very clearly, no matter how well it is camouflaged. No amount of camouflage short of science-fiction light-bending technology, will hide a shape against its background perfectly. We literally(!) see things better when we know it is there - its the way how brain processes information.
Computer screens, lacking in detail of "visuals", make that process more difficult. The camouflage effect in the initial stages, aren't wrong... but in computers, when icons are off, a very frustrating thing happens - we see a plane out in distance, close up and engage. Then, the enemy maneuvers away, we flick the hat-key and... what the? It's not there! The unrealistic lack of depth perception, flares out in these occasions. (Thus, icons, are needed.)
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Maybe my eyes are different than Beetle's, but that Spit is very visible, and looks to me to be the same size in each of the pictures.....:(
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Originally posted by debuman
Maybe my eyes are different than Beetle's, but that Spit is very visible, and looks to me to be the same size in each of the pictures.....:(
Looks like Curval was right then. :( Because try as I might, I cannot see it at all in the first two pics.
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How about doing a comparison where your NOT in external camera view, and the images are closer to full size instead of those thumbnails? Thats what everyone is seeing, and thats why it looks the same no matter the distance.
Also try lowering your gamma/brightness, the washout effect is proburly messes with your colour contrast
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The guys who think it's the same size in all 3 pics are looking at Beet1e's plane and not even seeing the Spit :)
J_A_B
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Originally posted by J_A_B
The guys who think it's the same size in all 3 pics are looking at Beet1e's plane and not even seeing the Spit :)
Bloody 'ell, don't say Debuman was looking at my P47 all this time. :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by beet1e
a green plane like a LA7 or Spit
Are these green???? :confused: :eek:
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Would like to see the full size screenies. From the pics above tho I must say I can "barely" see the Spit in the last pic and not at all in the first two. Don't feel bad Beet... :)
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BenDover - here you go - some more pics.
Invisible
(http://www.zen33071.zen.co.uk/p47-4.jpg)
Barely visible
(http://www.zen33071.zen.co.uk/p47-5.jpg)
Visible through three quarter window
(http://www.zen33071.zen.co.uk/p47-6.jpg)
Short extract from film (http://www.zen33071.zen.co.uk/p47.ahf). View this if you want to see what I saw. The beginning bit shows the engine starting (as films do) but that's settled down by the time I get to 600 yards. View it in slow motion.
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Watched the video, easirly tracked the spit.
Only time I could see it going about invisible was when you were near dead 6 on it, the spit is a very slim plane direct from the back.
As I said, try making your screen darker.
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Originally posted by beet1e
Bloody 'ell, don't say Debuman was looking at my P47 all this time. :rolleyes:
OOPS! You're right - my eyes wee immediately drawn to the large plane in the pics - yours! Looking closer I can't see the Spitty until the last picture - and then it's very difficult to see. So much for my eyes.... gotta lay off the vicodin I guess! Sorry!:(
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LOL Debuman! :lol
BenDover (and Phil McCafferty if he's anywhere nearby) ;) -oh wait - that's Ben Doone's friend. :D
I'm sure you know this already, but for the benefit of the others reading this thread...
...What you see on your monitor when you play my film is not necessarily what I see. The way I understand it, the film viewer files work like .MIDi files. Those work by issuing instructions to the player to play particular notes on designated instruments for specified lengths of time - ie. it's not "recorded sound". The .AHF files (to the best of my knowledge) contain digital data about the position, type and speed of each plane on the terrain, whether guns are being fired etc. They don't contain the stored video images, else they would be much larger. That's what happens when .AHF is converted to .AVI - the actual video images are contained in the file.
So what you're seeing on your end uses the benefit of your system and video card, which is probably better than my ATi Radeon 9600.
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Originally posted by DipStick
Would like to see the full size screenies. From the pics above tho I must say I can "barely" see the Spit in the last pic and not at all in the first two. Don't feel bad Beet... :)
The pics have simply been cropped from full size film editor images, ie. not shrunk.
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Viewed the film also. Never had that problem. I mean to some extent with camo planes over grass and the blue planes over water but not nearly that bad. In the video I couldn't see it until you were right beside it. :(
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IT'S CALLED CAMOFLUAGE (or something speeled similar to that) :lol
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Beetle go to the ATI control panel and check if :
Mipmap detail level and Texture preference are set to quality and NOT performance.
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Originally posted by straffo
Beetle go to the ATI control panel and check if :
Mipmap detail level and Texture preference are set to quality and NOT performance.
They are - max quality.
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Iv' just seen your film and on my PC like your the Spit blend (correct?) in the background between 200 and 400 yard.
But I didn't noticed this kind of problem online so ?