“Keen Vision,” as it stands, is a game-breaking mechanic that affects Ground Realistic and Simulator battles. It is the main reason why players often cannot hear or even see a tank. War Thunder is supposed to be a game focused on “realism,” yet, at the same time, an enemy tank just 200 meters away can disappear and become completely silent. This is why I believe this mechanic and perk should either be removed from the game or thoroughly reworked.
Edit: Perk also affects Air Battles, where planes can also de-spawn
It provides a massive and unfair advantage to those with the fully researched perk.
It breaks immersion when a tank disappears right before our eyes or goes completely silent—even while firing its main gun!
It causes confusion among players, who often think the game is just bugged.
My Idea for a Rework:
Engine sounds remain unaffected by the perk, meaning they can be heard at all times.
Tanks remain visible at all times. They do not de-spawn.
Crew provides call-outs when the commander or a teammate spots an enemy tank (similar to the “Air Alert” command). Additionally, a red arrow could appear, pointing in the enemy’s direction.
Spotting planes remains unaffected, but the arrow indicating their position should be a different color, so players can distinguish between a spotted tank and a spotted plane.
This issue has also been highlighted by some YouTubers. You can check out their videos to see detailed examples of how it impacts gameplay.
The hilarious part is this isn’t even an engine limitation.
In Air simulator battles, friendlies render at all distances limited only by size of the black dot being spottable by your own player skill.
A.I bombers, interceptors etc render at all distances. You can easily see a flock of bombers from 30km away (2 grid zones on denmark) on a clear bright day due to the size of their formation.
Enemies though?
You can see two black dots at a distance dogfighting. Due to shared vision, you also see the enemy despite being out of your keen/awareness range. However, the enemy black dot gets into your ally’s blindspot and suddenly… 2 black dots turn into 1 black dot without any killfeed indicating one of them died.
You can also have cases of contrail + black dot = friend. Contrail + nothing = enemy.
Showcasing this happening at dogfight ranges is more difficult to do without too much variance.
One issue is LoD in such scenarios. I’ve had many cases where I’m diving down on an enemy. They’re a featureless black silhouette that stands out against the ground. I get within range and they suddenly have camo, lighting, shadows and stuff and now they disappear against the ground. They are however rendered, but the LoD switching makes it hard to visually track them and takes a moment or more to find them again.
It has always been an issue, but I didn’t realize it was caused by the “Keen Vision” perk. I thought it was just a “sound problem.” Now that I know, I’ve decided to address this issue. Better late than never, I guess.
They are slow at making quality of life changes to the game. Like ghost shells being an issue for years. Render distance much more of an issue for more modern vehicles. They whole game was based around ww2 and early cold war tanks. As they rolled out more modern stuff, they just never bothered to update the rest of the game to to match it.
Personally I think that this feature is just a bit outdated. It’s perfectly fine for rank I-III or maybe even rank IV battles, but for tanks and aircraft with very fast speeds, this feature can spell trouble. Especially in air simulator battles, where enemies will often spawn only a couple seconds before they reach you at Mach 1.2, unless you level keen vision to the max, with both an expert and ace qualification.
Keen vision has been in the game since well over 10 years (and since 2015 for the newest version: [Development] Visibility in 1.53 explained - News - War Thunder ) and is an integral part of how the game works. It’s just a badly understood mechanic, with how complicated this game can get sometimes that is understandable. The original guide on keen vision is also not available anymore on the wiki.
What I would propose, like many have said before (and what they also added for missile spotting a couple of years ago), is that they increase the spotting (and thus rendering) ranges at higher ranks.
As someone who mains BR 3.0-5.7 props with rare foray into 8.0-10.3, this is very much not fine even there. I’ve had quite a few cases where I was on intercept course of a bomber near our airfields where shared vision made them light up as a black dot, then as I was pursuing them they disappeared and later reappeared without really changing their course.
There being a ~10 kilometer limiter also leads to… hilarity on maps like Smolensk. An A-point is 16x16 kilometers wide. Add 3D space (0-5 kilometers to still be capping the point.).
You can end up having an 1 vs 1 contesting of an A point where you’re unable to see the enemy due to both of you flying ~13-16 kilometers near the edges of the A point.
Keen vision should only be relevant in game modes with markers, and maybe for multi-crew assistance in markerless modes (automatic gunner fire distance, rangefinding, scouting).
So your logic is: if someone wasn’t aware of an unfair mechanic until recently, it suddenly makes the mechanic fair? That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?
No my point is, people watching a youtube video then running to the forum like they are the ones breaking the news on issues in the game because they think they are the hero of war thunder.
They obviously didnt try to “steal the spotlight” from the creators when they clearly listed all the relevant videos. How is it a bad thing to post it on the forum so people can discuss the problem further?
I don’t see the reason to be hostile and uncooperative towards people.
If it helps signal boost the issue enough that it causes a sufficient stir and drama, all the better. How that is achieved matters, getting these rendering issues fixed benefits us all.
lol my maxed drivers skill still shift like shit and stay in 2 gears too high for too damn long. Or shift to a higher gear instead of working through the power band in one lower.
One of my new tips to newbies is if you want to flank, get used to never switching your q and e key bind and shift on your own, you can put some real distance between people this way
