Zeke Coloration and Terrain Blending

[Vermillion]

We all know that some planes in AH, blend in very well with the terrain, while others stick out like a sore thumb.

Well, yesterday in my Yak just SW of A2, I attacked 2 Zeke's not 15 seconds apart from dead six at low altitude.

Both blended into the terrain so well, I literally would not have seen them if it were not for the icons. I literally had to get within 250 yards or so, to even see a silouette that was only a shade or two darker than the background terrain texture.

Can some kind of contrast work be done to make it a little more realistic in the visibility of this aircraft against the terrain texture?

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Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure
"Real Men fly Radials, Nancy Boys fly Spitfires"

[JimBear]

I have seen this with Me-109s on the deck and N1K2s also. Someone mentioned in a post a reference to the Z-Buffer selection having an effect upon this. Does anyone recollect this or have more info?  btw, have seen the icons blend out and this was within 500yrds

[Fishu]

I've had problems to see plane wings usually..
If plane is not at about 25-35 degree angle at me, I see its wings flickering and stabilizers.
Kind of annoying when you try to ID plane without icons and thin parts of the plane is flickering.

[funked]

In spotting planes in real life, I've noticed that reflection off the canopy or paint is important.  Even a plane with a matte finish (like F-16) will give off a bright "flash" of reflection in bright sunlight.  I think this is missing from AH.

[Toad]

....and unfortunately all of these things are reasons why we presently need some sort of icon.

I have no idea how tough it is to program "icons" but I'm thinking about starting a "scotch of the month" club to help persuade our guides to try some experimentation.  

[Fishu]

 

Originally posted by funked:
In spotting planes in real life, I've noticed that reflection off the canopy or paint is important.  Even a plane with a matte finish (like F-16) will give off a bright "flash" of reflection in bright sunlight.  I think this is missing from AH.

Unfortunately those are just black dots from longer ranges    (can't identify fighters, even metal skinned plane looks big black dot  )

[SpyHawk]

Fishu, that's an interesting point.

It would be interesting, although I don't know how realistic it would be, if the silver planes were silver dots, the green or camo planes were green dots, and so on.

[Gadfly]

The colored dots thing works pretty well if you practice it, re:WB.  I can call them from far, far away, but then, I fly without Icons a lot(I fat finger the F2 key, and don't realize it, till too late).

Lizking

[Lephturn]

Fishu,

That "flickering" and "crawling" you see is a result of aliasing.  This is a limitation of current computer graphics systems.

There is a solution.  It is called Full Scene Anti-Aliasing, and it works wonderully.  Currently the only video cards that can pull this off are the Voodoo 5 5500 and the GeForce 2.  I own the V5 5500, and believe me, it does WONDERS for the image quality.  Damn it looks nice, and it fixes those flickering/crawling straight lines.  

Hopefully it will become standard for all video cards within the next year and will become much more affordable as well.

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Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com


"My P-47 is a pretty good ship, she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip.
Just thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip, always got me through so far."
 - Steve Earl

[GrinBird]

Hmm the flashing canopy effect is allready known from the sim MigAlley where is works and looks fine. A long time ago I discussed it with Hitech in main arena chat, and finally he decided that it would be too difficult to make it work in an Arena sim.