I made my contribution, but they never accepted visibility-of-contact reports, so I’m afraid this is the end for the War thunder simulator.
This bug will make plane spotting virtually impossible for players playing with small screens (like laptops) or lower resolutions. I really hope Gaijin addresses this.
@Schindibee @Smin1080p_WT Please help us in taking this bug to Gaijin’s notice.
As strange as it may sound, contacts are much more visible on FHD monitors than on 2K or 4K ones. This is because distant contacts were rendered as a group of 5-6 pixels regardless of resolution, and the lower the resolution, the larger the pixels are.
Hello everyone, the report has been forwarded. If someone can provide additional required files (Clog + in-game screenshot + replay), it will help a lot as the original report lacks them.
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I thought it was just me. I’m glad it’s not, but the game is unplayable. In real life, on a clear day every year I can see the pacific airshow planes from the roof of my work and the show is 10 miles away. Unless they fix this, I will have to tryout DCS because War Thunder arcade and realistic mode are for kids that don’t really know how to fly and use a mouse and keyboard.
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Hi, Thanks a lot for forwarding this bug to devs.
Where shall I upload the screenshot, replay link and CLog file?
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If you can still edit it,
If not,
add a comment and click the “attach files”:
File locations:
...\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\War Thunder\.game_logs
for clogs (close WT after match).
...\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\War Thunder\Replays
for replays.
...\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\War Thunder\Screenshots
for screenshots
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It’s done
Feel free to drop them as a PM or update the original report :D
Saw the files, synchronized to the report.
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Naturally, the first thing I did was check out the DCS packs. These Sim issues kind of push people in that direction.
You worded it perfectly. I agree 100%. This is miles away from anything resembling realism. Anyone who actually plays Sim knows this isn’t realistic — it’s just broken. Cockpit refractions and reflections don’t add anything, they just make it harder to see, especially in VR.
I can’t spot anything anymore either. This update broke the game for me. Spent 45 mins just trying to find an aircraft in the same zone as me in capture the zone. I play VR. Gajin please fix this asap.
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Yup, I even had trouble finding the surveillance plane (Stirling) on a clear day, can’t see nearby planes til they shoot or turn hard then they disappear again unless I’m zoomed in and padlocked.
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Even the testflight bot is impossible to find like this.
Thought, “might as well take one of my unflied planes for practice” and couldnt find the chaika regardless of which map I’ve been testing on (winter, mediterrean, western europe).
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Good thing I took screenshots in the previous patch for the bug report. Here are two screenshots:
The first one is from the previous patch. It clearly shows two contacts. These are bots from the Polygon.
The second one is from the current patch, and the contacts are not rendered here.
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Experiment idea for any two pair of players who:
- Have the capability to record matches during live gameplay (windows gamebar should mean everyone with a Windows 10 OS on PC)
- Have capability and willingness to upload to youtube
To:
- Begin recording in hangar, demonstrating crew skills & graphics settings to the camera
- Join SB EC match with partner.
- Agree upon a fixed spot on the map that is easily referenced and flown to
- Spawn in and fly towards each other in a straight line that ensures you have visibility of the partner’s flight path
- Once encountering each other, do a dogfight or just RTB. Probably doing a dogfight is preferred for potential rules reasons.
- Stop recording, upload to youtube and link us the results. Do not process video or edit or cut it together. Link partner’s.
Make sure to note weather, time of day and map of the recording.
Edit 1:
My own attempt at demonstration
Testing the conditions affecting black dot spotting/rendering as of Leiviathan Warthunder major update.
Timestamps at bottom of the description
Game conditions:
Deleted Patch, compiledShaders, Cache and Verified file integrity on Steam
Future Experiment Ideas:
- Live SB EC match example with at least 2 individuals recording their flight from moment of take-off until meeting at an agreed-upon, easily referenced point of contact to demonstrate how each player sees the other throughout their straight-line flight to meet up
- Live SB EC match example, with a close range dogfight
In both scenarios, it would be ideal to vary weather, time of day, map and crew skill across multiple experiment recordings and submissions.
Limitations:
- Custom matches versus pre-spawned bots do not necessarily reflect logic in air simulator enduring confrontation
- For sake of rapid & reproducible testing, small (Air Domination) maps were chosen. This was done to ensure airspawn and guaranteed position of enemy aircraft to make it reliable to compare across different games. However, this fails to demonstrate the issues at proper SB EC distances (64 km x 64 km map at smallest)
- It is possible to overlay both Winter Stalingrad and Tunisia with their SB EC equivalents. This exercise is left to the reader & watcher.
- Due to short duration of tests, it is impossible to examine late evening (1+ hour or so SB EC matches with “Evening” time label).
- We lack 1:1 direct comparison of what happened before the patch, only VoDs from streamers and clips from clippers in either live matches or replays.
- Due to crew slots and crew skills, I tested Corsair 5/5 Expert against 0/0 Noob MB151C1. Difference in canopy may affect results.
- Youtube compression may not act as perfect representation of in game view. Video was recorded at highest quality I could manage.
- Recorded with Windows Game Bar
- No processing of video files done beyond Youtube’s own.
Tested maps:
Winter Stalingrad (Air Domination) - chosen for ease of spotting through contrails. (WS)
Tunisia (Air Domination) - Chosen for lack of ground clutter and no contrails. (T)
Crews tested:
5/5 Expert Corsair - chosen for high-vis canopy and being experted (E)
0/0 Noob MB151C1 - chosen for relatively high-vis canopy and zero spotting skills while still being pre-trimmed. (N)
0/0 and 5/5 correspond to keen vision/awareness.
Weather tested:
Noon, Clear (NC)
Noon, Hazy (NH)
Was tempted to test evening as well, but I’ve had a satisfactory demonstration with just noon clear and noon hazy.
Timestamps:
00:00 Corsair crew skill
00:20 Setup 1
01:30 WS, NC, E
03:00 Setup 2
03:30 WS, NH, E
05:25 Setup 3
06:00 T, NC, E
08:20 Setup 4
08:55 T, NH, E
11:00 MB151C1 Crew skill
11:25 Setup 5
11:55 WS, NC, N
13:20 Setup 6
13:43 WS, NH, N
15:11 Setup 7
15:37 T, NC, N
17:51 Setup 8
18:15 T, NH, N
20:30 Graphics settings demonstration
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