I cannot see enemy aircraft when I am in a plane except if they are above me, and even then its hit and miss. On occasion I will see their wingtip vortexes, but otherwise they are generally invisible. This is true even at very close range, when I can hear them behind me, but when I look I can often not see them.
This is particularly frustrating in a dogfight. I will generally only know the enemy is there by sound, and spot them when the fire. I can then follow them visually, but if I change my view, say to look forward to ensure I’m not crashing in the ground even for less than a second, when I switch back they are just gone. They are visible, it’s not like they are not being drawn, but I simply cannot spot them against the background unless they are above me against the sky.
This is not helped by the fact that when ground forces report an aircraft that is not displayed in the cockpit as it would be in the ground, and the fact that there are no red markers to indicate the direction of the visible enemy.
Just to make it worse, I can spot the drones pretty much across the entire map, as they are always visible as a small dot.
Is this a system dependancy? Or is there a trick to spotting I do not know?
If you’re flying sim, I found binding “Lean left/right, raise head/lower head” to be pivotal binds to track targets through canopy frames and thick armoured glass.
All axes are “Relative axis” and 0% relative step, 1 nonlinearity and sensitivity is around 70%
These take a hot minute to learn and adapt to, but once you do they allow for fairly smooth camera control without trackIR or VR.
However, if you got the means I strongly recommend getting trackIR (Opentrack).
Beyond these, I found most success with trying to align fuselages with the enemy to help reduce workload, but obviously you cannot really do that and win fights but it’s helpful whenever viable.
One particular combo I found quite useful is leaning left and raising your head if the enemy is below you to the right. It looks past canopy frames quite conveniently.
I’m guessing we’re talking about prop planes/early jets in GRB, right? What I usually do is follow them with my eyes, not the plane, and then when I lose them because I’m turning or they are, I try to predict where they’ll be. It’s usually a battle of either who’s got better eyesight, wider screen or ability to ‘know’ where they are. I play with a bad computer and usually need to see moving things to identify if something is a plane or not (similar to pulse Doppler radars ironically) so if they are moving in a direction in some way I can’t see if they are moving, I’ll have a harder time. Also, use the free cam as you can see where the plane is if it’s sideways to you or basically not in front of you. Additionally, if we’re talking about prop planes with no missiles, you can go up and you’ll be ‘untouchable’ until someone sees you and they try to engage you. This way you might see them and you’ll have the high ground (air), moreover, you’ll be able to engage with bombers too. Additionally, make sure your graphics are well set, if, for example, you’ve set the graphics to be darker, you won’t be able to see them. Play with them (graphics I mean). If you meant something else, clarify and I’ll try to help.
Also, use the free cam as you can see where the plane is if it’s sideways
Sorry, the “free cam”? What is that?
you can go up and you’ll be ‘untouchable’ until someone sees you and they try to engage you
When I do this, enemy aircraft fly right by me and attack my side. I typically have no idea they are even in the air until they start firing on the ground.
There is no real trick other than just trying to see them. You’ll normally see them when they first spawn in as small dots (at least for me). After that it’s a matter of trying to keep track of them. It’s not easy, but that’s the challenge of GRB air.
One way to mitigate this is to climb as soon as you spawn in. This allows you to put some distance between you and the potential enemy who is low and using their speed to zoom climb to attack you.
While you’re climbing, note what’s going on. Lots of GRB pilots will be to busy going after ground targets and will be sometimes completing big sweeping zoom climbs and then looping at the top. If you watch the spawn you’ll know how many enemy to expect.
After that, you just need to look for tell tale signs, such as firing, AAA firing, contrails etc.
The other option is to go low and then use the sky as a backdrop to see the enemy.
Again there isn’t a perfect way to spot other than noting who spawned, who’s already over the battle, watching the map to check to see if there are enemy who’ve pushed to the helo or air spawn.
I have found that adjusting my monitor has allowed me to at least get some contrast at times against the ground clutter to be able to pick up aircraft low.
Sometimes you just lose sight of planes, and will have to use your ears to sense where they are.
There is no nametags in GRB so it plays completely differently, its easier to be spotted the higher you are, harder to spot you if you are on the deck. If you are on the deck and the guy you are looking for is at altitude you can easily see him on the backround of the sky as a black dot, versus you on the ground dark dot on a dark backround (outside of winter maps). Using sounds helps a lot too. Enemy planes always spawn in the same exact location on a map right where the plane icon is on the air map, so find where that is and check there every 15 seconds or so and keep tabs on if someone spawned in.
You can also look for tracers, from enemy planes, or from your friendly SPAA.
The free cam is basically what happens while you hold ‘C’ and move your mouse around. If you are capable of doing so while also controlling the plane, you’ll be able to know where the enemy is at all times.
As i used to play video games like Il-2 or DCS decades ago i fully understand your issues as i had the same problems, at least at the beginning.
It boils down that spotting enemies is mainly a mix of hardware performance (and adjusting settings) in combination with experience and your ability to predict flight paths and attack patterns whilst being always fast enough to dodge surprise attacks.
From my perspective aerial warfare in Ground RB is a mix of Air SB and a plain turkey shooting. On one hand the missing Air RB markers allow low level strafing / bombing runs - one the other hand the very low average pilot skill allows even mediocre pilots to score incredible high numbers of air kills.
My recommendations:
Whilst playing wt i supported my son whilst he went through the prop BRs in Ground RB. As i bough him a very capable hardware the spotting issues of his old PC almost vanished as soon as we adjusted the settings and kept an eye on the kill feed / air space.
The issues of enemies camping your air spawn location was solved by spawning only after knowing that there were no campers - or by performing a split-S right after spawn and reverse climbing (=not towards the center of the map) so direct above and behind your own airfield.
Regarding dogfights:
Whilst i agree that it looks like a challenge to look behind, dodging incoming fire and avoiding smashing into the terrain it depends imho just on your mouse settings - so you need to learn to use the mouse for looking behind whilst using your keyboard for up/down/left/right - and being aware of your altitude. A training issue.
If you are generally unaware of approaching enemies it Is no wonder that you get jumped. So it might be worth to think about playing a rather defensive part like protecting your air spawn area in order to attack enemies looking for easy kills - or to fly top cover for own aircraft and attack enemies focused on them.
In any case: Stay fast and do not over-commit - it makes no sense to stick to a single target (and lose energy in this process) if you are unable to detect other aircraft trying to 3rd party you.
Well that’s not my experience. About two missions ago I could hear someone following me, co-alt, and simply could not see him. I could see his tracers when he started firing, but still could not see the plane.
Oh, ok, but as I said, if I turn away for even a split second I cannot find them again when I look in their direction again. Sure, if I never ever look in another direction AFTER seeing them I can track them, but that is not practical.
What exactly did you change?
I’m playing at 2k resolution and 60 FPS at Movie quality, everything else is basically stock.
What makes all of this so frustrating is that you CAN see a drone on the other side of the map even against the ground.
I submitted a bug report, supposedly it’s fixed but I havn’t seen it referenced in a single patch note yet (Community Bug Reporting System)
Another funny bug or feature is this (yes, video is 7 years old and I still encounter this REGULARLY):
This sounds like crew skills to me.
In Sim, we observed that you can spot A.I controlled aircraft at any distance.
You can spot friendlies at any distance.
Hostiles only under a crew-skill determined (we dunno exact range, ~12-16km) range which is modified by “Hazy” weather conditions and loosely defined clouds.
However, if the hostile is an NPC you can spot them at any range like friendlies.
Further, if a friendly is looking at a hostile (PC) then they’re spotted regardless of range but the moment server thinks they’re not being observed they disappear for you if you’re out of range.
