Player aircraft dots/silhouettes are disappearing from view depending on the range and zooming in at some ranges actually makes aircraft harder to see instead of easier…
Sometimes at close range aircraft simply vanish into the ground clutter or become a blur. That being said you can spot an AI aircraft from absolutely miles away of course, it’s only the more dangerous player controlled vehicles that vanish for no reason.
Don’t get me started on spotting aircraft over a body of water…
All of this is old news of course and these issues have been with the game for years. That said everything is exemplified now due to War Thunder’s obsession with adding a thousand clouds to every other game. Yes they’re beautiful to look at but they’ve made spotting even harder thanks to the buggy nature of them. Instead of planes being easier to spot (when they’re above the clouds but beneath you) they can turn invisible at random. Even if an aircraft is directly behind you half of the pursuing aircraft can disappear so you’re chased by just a fuselage.
Sometimes the only way to spot someone is to wait for contrails from their wingtips as they turn… because our strange pilots can’t see the large aircraft that the contrails are attached to but they can see the contrails themselves easily.
If anyone from Gaijin is reading this please fix the way War Thunder implements aircraft rendering and fix your clouds too. This has been a problem for far too long now…
The reason for this is Gaijin’s genius plan of putting a strict limit to render distance for all players so the cheaters can kill you easier. And of course AI planes’ render distance isn’t that limited so you can see them easier.
They should revert that tbh, especially after switching to BattlEye.
A very blatant and clear demonstration of aircraft phasing in and out of reality as the player flies over the plane, looks away, looks back and it pops out of existence.
Supposedly keen sight/awareness affects the render range which if true is bollocks. I’m spotting with my own eyes, there’s no crew in my plane and there’s no markers. Keen sight/awareness make sense for red markers but not for sim.
I once used the TGP to track a stable flying enemy aircraft and it disappeared at a distance of about 10KM. But my TGP kept tracking until it lost its target after more than 15KM.
I think the distance might have something to do with the size of the target. I used to see a BV238 in RB mode at a distance of more than 30KM, but for most aircraft the model is no longer displayed beyond 12KM.
It’s true, what bothers me the most are the clouds that despite having them in high graphics they look bad (their edges distort the entire environment around them) and when a plane is in front of the clouds (not inside) it mysteriously disappears.
It’s getting incredibly frustrating, I hate that any time I see something in the distance I already know it’s either a friendly or a bot, since those are the only things that render that far. I can literally watch a base get bombed on the map, but until I get within 10km there is no one there, then suddenly they pop into existence out of thin air.
Exactly. It’s a stupid system and clearly they can render aircraft better as they already do it for friendlies and AI.
Spotting up close is equally as terrible with aircraft turning into blurs against the ground or as mentioned partially phasing out of reality against the clouds. I did a silly test the other night with Ace Combat 5 with the HUD off and it’s sad that a game from the Ps2 era doesn’t have aircraft blending against the ground etc whilst War Thunder does.
This is also bad for attacking AI ground units in planes and in Assault mode. In Assault you can see the markers for planes, but no planes, including big bombers until you get pretty close. Years and years ago it used to be much better, but they nerfed the visibility up to ridiculous amounts when they added more CAS and anti-air to ground. Now you have to fish around with your mouse to find something before you can even see it (enemy bunkers and stationary AI units as well). Yes, the planes blend too much to the ground or when you have 2 or more tanks next to each other. It all just blends into this strange mess. As I said, it was actually better 10 years ago. What sucks, they can change things without telling you and then you have to re-learn things all over again. Nothing is constant in this game, except suck.
Also, the markers and the font (incl. size) is from the old days and it overpowers everything else. Sometimes you just see an ocean of red font and nothing else. I already disabled titles for less clutter, but still want to see the nick, distance and unit type, so I’m stuck with the clutter.
Airfield doesn’t relevant. LOD change distance depends only from angle of view/zoom/distance. It’s about 500-1000 meters ot max field of view. At this distance model which is shined by light, and shadowed at parts where it should be (not to mention reflections of brightest part) became flat LOD.
That is the issue of poor view distance currently.
Such a fun time. Guy was nowhere near the cloud. Screenshots taken like… 1 second apart at most from me pressing zoom. Unzooming made tracking possible again
It’d be nice if they would fix missile rendering as well. It’s absurd how often they simply don’t appear until it’s far too late. I’d have to guess this is also related to the aircraft rendering too…
They also nerfed visibility of enemy shells in Naval. Now I don’t see who’s shooting at me a lot of the time. Sometimes it’s some tool sitting in the far corner and lobbies the shells across the map, but even from 5 km you cannot see the incoming shells until they are about to hit the ground. Some weeks back they had a patch update with notes that they “increased” visibility of your shells. It must had been some days before they nerfed visibility of enemy shells (either by a bug or by stealth nerf) without making patch notes about it. Just tired of this constant screwing. That’s the only thing that’s constant in this game, besides suck and 0.7 uptiers.
