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[Tailwheel]

~S~

Just looking for some thoughts and views on the acceptance of zooming in and wide FOV... or not.

I used to fly on IL2:1946 dogfight servers back in the day and most of them weren't completely 'full real', i.e. icons were on, external views were permitted etc. However, having got into IL2: Great Battles very recently (I know, late to the party) I've noticed that there is much more focus on fully real flying and more simulation. Watching videos of dogfights/missions of IL2:GB on YouTube, I notice that most of the pilots still unrealistically zoom in to identify targets/enemy aircraft and often use a wide FOV for better situational awareness.

Is this frowned upon on multiplayer servers or is it generally deemed acceptable? The zooming in particularly bugs me because it quite significantly changes the nature of combat. In real life, you would have to fly a lot closer to a potential enemy to identify them before attacking (or risk friendly fire) and this changes the dynamic of the dogfight. Leaning forward using TrackIR/VR to get closer to the gunsight is obviously natural, but assigning a key/button to zoom in/out just seems to be immersion breaking for me.

I'd be interested to hear what the general consensus is about this.

/Tailwheel

[SAS~Storebror]

Unless I'm completely mistaken, there isn't even any difficulty setting to limit the zoom function, neither on the client nor server side.
Sounds like a change request for the devs to me.


Mike

[marcost]

I think of using zoom just like the human eye - it can take in a general view or it can focus on a specific area and extract more detail from that area. If you look at just one area of a screen without zooming, you can't gain more detail beyond the pixel count for the area.

Also, there are limitiations in all sims of object LOD and realistic lighting etc for far away and fast-moving objects, especially aircraft at a distance. I think using zoom for recognition in this instance is reasonable to offset these limitations.

As for FOV, same argument could apply as it is simulating peripheral vision, albeit not a true simulation. Human peripheral vision goes to 100+ degrees.

[Frankiek]

My 2 cents.

Considering the dimensions and limitations of an average display I don't think that is cheating or breaking immersion to use the FOV capabilities currently available in any case not more than using track-IR or other similar gadgets. If you want you can add the soft transition mod used by UP34 that makes it somehow more realistic.

I am always puzzled by what different users consider to be realistic. Try to fly a 109 in IES version and you tell me. As in real life it will take you hours and hours of practice (and countless failures and crashes) just to be able to take off.   

[Tailwheel]

Thanks for the responses and you all raise some valid points. The wide FOV I can see does go some way to compensating for natural peripheral vision and allows the virtual pilot to 'take in' much of what we automatically process visually without thinking about it. I also accept that zooming in/out goes some way to making up for the lower resolution of a monitor compared to reality. However, it still feels somewhat unrealistic to me as I think close inspection of a target makes more sense for 'full real' play.

I guess if there is no way of turning it off at client or server level and everyone is doing it, then there is no unfair advantage

/Tailwheel

[Frankiek]

The only way that I can think would be to reduce the FOV min and max angles. In UP3.4 you can define these angles in conf.ini 

[WxTech]

There are a number of elements which come to bear on the issue:
- Screen physical size.
- Display pixel count.
- Distance between eyes and screen.

A first consideration in terms of 'realism' regarding image scale, is to calculate the FoV to select which will provide an image whose scale matches reality.

The simplest example requires no math. Assuming a flat screen, if your eyes are as far from the screen as 1/2 the screen width, said screen will subtend an apparent angular width of 90 degrees. And so setting the in-game FoV to 90 (which is tied to the horizontal dimension) would result in your view having a 1:1 correspondence with the real world view. If your screen is, say, 90cm wide, when your eyes are 45cm from the screen this condition is met.

Most gamers don't sit this close to their monitors, a more typical viewing distance providing an apparent screen width of perhaps 45-ish degrees. Setting a correspondingly smallish FoV would be pretty restrictive, costing a lot in terms of situational awareness.

The pixel count can play a role in the matter of perception of detail. To keep it simple, if the pixel pitch (number of pixels per unit distance) is low enough to have them resolvable to any extent whatsoever, the display will be presenting less detail than could be seen otherwise. A large display running at a lower resolution and viewed from a close distance increase the chance of resolving pixels. In such case, zooming in at least somewhat is no cheat at all.

I could go much further on this topic, but will leave it at that, lest I induce a coma in the reader.