[Dev] Eye zoom 'probably' being removed entirely

[-Gews- 7443]

Some horrifying news from Gamescom (via BarelyInfected).

 

Q:

"We can't zoom anymore."

 

Dev response:

[...] "I think,  like, I was a, I was advocate of keeping the, that eye zoom, in [...] we wanted to throw it away like long time ago [...] I was like, okay guys, it's [...] great mark of ARMA [...] let's keep it and see how it goes [...] we lowered the zoom quite drastically [...] when compared to the ARMA, but now we had some issues with the [...] zooming value (?) in (?) the iron sights, so we tear it up (?), completely out, for this version, and I think, it will maybe... well, I like it, because [...]

[talks about FOV and LODs] 

[...] 

so I think we will ditch it, probably."

 

Receipts at 8 minutes 45:

 

 

If the 'eye zoom' was removed I think I might ditch DayZ. The 'eye zoom' has always been one of my big concerns:

https://forums.dayz.com/topic/165710-the-campaign-for-iron-sight-zoom/

https://forums.dayz.com/topic/225515-vision-nerfed-yet-again/

 

 

Patch 0.57, with extreme reduced zoom, was unplayable for me as I would run around squinting at things that were actually pretty close and should have been easy to see—myopic characters were not good for my blood pressure so I took a time out until they fixed it in 0.58. The only patch, the only decision which has bothered me to such an extent.

 

The status report of 30 June 2015 gave a nice explanation of the 'eye zoom' feature, for those unaware.

Quote

 

Status Report - 30 June 2015
Dev Update/Jan

Since there's been some discussion regarding changes in the character zoom mechanic I decided to jump in and explain what are we trying to achieve.

We should probably start by asking the question "Why have a characters-eye zoom in the first place?". It's the old problem with emulating a 3D world on insufficient hardware. The human field of vision (fov) is around 190° and the area where the vision cones of both eyes overlap is around 100°. Unfortunately, most of todays monitors viewed from a regular distance usually tend to cover only 45°of human fov in real life. This means that if you want for target on screen to appear in real-life size you are only able to display around ~1/2 of what you would see in reality, stereoscopically.

And so as a designer you have to choose - Should I display objects in the distance properly but sacrifice the overall vision or set the fov to 100° but deform the whole picture? The trick of Arma is actually not to choose and instead introduce an "eye zoom" instead. This way you can keep the surrounding awareness by setting the default fov to 100°, but when necessary to perceive a depth of field properly occurs (ie. you are shooting), you can "zoom in" to 45°.

https://dayz.com/blog/status-report-30-jun-2015

 

 

 

So it seemed the team was backing this feature and understood why it was there.

But now I hear it will be removed?

And the main reason seemed to be that transition between LODs aren't perfectly smooth? Is this related to console development or something? Seems unlikely, but I'm scratching my head.

 

As far as I'm concerned removal of this feature would ruin the game. Much of the appeal of DayZ is the wide open map with long vistas and the ranged combat that can take place there. If my character doesn't have an 'authentic' visual acuity then those aspects of the game will not longer be 'authentic'. A variable FOV/zoom is a fundamental feature of any realistic game involving combat/shooting. I shouldn't need to use binoculars or scope to see a person a couple hundred yards away, instead of just a moving dot.

 

My character is looking at someone all the time, which means that all the time, I will be seriously annoyed at my guy's gimped vision. And at that point it's no longer worth playing.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 29, 2017 by -Gews-

[BeefBacon 1185]

I'm pro eye zoom. It helps to compensate for low screen resolutions. Human eyes are pretty good, after all, but screens only have so many pixels. We have to choose a balance between having a decent FoV and being able to see distant objects with any definition. Zooming allows us to change that balance on the fly. I hope they don't remove it, or at the very least make it a server option.

I don't think it would ruin the game, but it would take a lot of getting used to. I'm confident that if a lot of people say that they really don't like it, the devs will listen and change it back.

Edited August 29, 2017 by BeefBacon

[green_mtn_grandbob 594]

 

I also like eye zoom as i have macular degeneration, to the point that i'm legally blind,  i have over 1800 hours in dayz so far i use a big monitor and binoculars and scopes to augment zoom when i can't make out what what it is I think i'm seeing. a lot of time the monitor has nose prints on it i have to get that close to see. But that's just me a walking target.  I guess i'll have to find a RP server  and play a blind  character as all i would have to do is play myself.    

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

It may not be as much of a game breaker for me but I do think it was a good way to compensate for the limitations of hardware.

[Dancing.Russian.Man 1631]

While I'm not against the zoom, I'll play devil's advocate:

I don't see it as a big issue, because most FPS games are doing just fine without the zoom.

Now, some would say that (almost) no other game has as big of a map as DayZ, but that argument doesn't work for a few reasons. For one, you won't see across the map, for two, there are quite a few games where the engagement distance between players is about the same as it is in DayZ. (Squad, Planetside, Red Orchestra / Rising Storm, PUBG, H1Z1, etc.)

Those concerned about draw distance have to keep in mind that there's only a certain range around the player where their client will receive data about other players/vehicles/storage, so even if you did see further than, say, 1000 meters, it wouldn't help you beyond plain scenery. The LOD issue can be fixed by just upping some graphics settings if your computer allows it.

And, he says in the video that the zoom was causing technical problems because changing the FOV would cause the game to load higher detail models/textures while zooming in, which it would then have to discard as you zoom out. (Memory management and performance reasons, basically.) I didn't catch where the LOD transition was mentioned.

Edited August 29, 2017 by Dancing.Russian.Man

[-Gews- 7443]

1 minute ago, Dancing.Russian.Man said:

(Squad, Planetside, Red Orchestra / Rising Storm, PUBG, H1Z1, etc.)

I've only played Squad, but I know Squad, RO2, PUBG and H1Z1 all have some form of zoom. Squad has a modest zoom on rifles and a much greater zoom on heavy machine guns (huh?). PUBG has zoom while aiming down sights. H1Z1 also zooms in while aiming in 3rd person. RO2 has zoom. All of the above zooms are while aiming, whereas DayZ has zoom during any activity. I don't think it matters if other games 'get along' without 'eye zoom', because if someone isn't interested in the realistic/simulation aspect, then it comes down to personal preference of gameplay. DayZ can get along fine without zoom, and it could also get along fine with hitmarkers, kill feeds, or bunnyhopping, etc. I am interested in the realism/simulation aspect and this is a core foundation. I always nitpick weapons and their statistics, etc, but all that is small potatoes compared to the basic way in which my character perceives the world.

14 minutes ago, Dancing.Russian.Man said:

And, he says in the video that the zoom was causing technical problems because changing the FOV would cause the game to load higher detail models/textures while zooming in, which it would then have to discard as you zoom out. (Memory management and performance reasons, basically.) I didn't catch where the LOD transition was mentioned.

Yes, that's a more accurate summary.

[DannyDog 532]

I somewhat want this to happen just to give DayZ a different feel when we first start playing .63

This will only make me feel more paranoid and safer at the same time.

Maybe have binoculars spawn more frequently and allow players to move while looking through them. Or have a system similar to say Squad where its only a minor zoom when ADS or standing still.

[igor-vk 909]

Bad news if true. 

[Mantasisg 172]

How to save more on performance.

• Make corpses disappear in 10 seconds;
• Make it to be always foggy, very very foggy;
• Remove third person view completely;
• No... make corpses disappear in 5 seconds.....
• Remove stupid things like night and rain, no servers are using that anyway (because people only likes sunshine and being comfortable, even on dayz (I know it is sad to me too, I'd like to play in rain and cold nights too);
• More LODS, like new LOD every three meters;
• Reduce max players count to 30, because there is no difference anyway when they all gets all through the map;
• Reduce capacity of inventory;
• Cancel Base Building, because there is no room for it performance wise anyway.
• Cancel vehicles, whatever lol;
• Strip down the physics, kids will not notice anyway;
• Actually there could be even less loot around.
• Reduce the map size - now this one is real idea, no sarcasm here.
   

I don't know why DayZ keeps removing nice things.... Ohhh, performance....

Anybody remember times when after death you could still hear and see a bit..... Or when corpses lasted something like 30minutes..... It was cool.

Edited August 29, 2017 by Mantasisg

[Sqeezorz 839]

Hmmm ... @Mantasisg what exactly did you smoked before the writing? Send my the name of stuff by PM ^^.

 

I need the zoom very rare ... but if it is important ... how to real life .. make chinese eyes ---> focus, light protection with the hands,  more focus.

It should not be removed. You should try to solve the problem (I think it caused internally in the clientmassives data chaos, which will be the reason) otherwise; When zoom LoD freeze, yes does not look quite as super from ... or the zoom slower, so that it takes some time to zoom and one only needs it when it is important. An idea would be the eyeglasses could make the zoom faster and slightly better, which would give incentive for the benefit of eyeglasses. Simply omit the zoom, no please not ..... seeks other ways to solve the problem .... no matter if it is at the expense of fps / time or quality of rendering.

Edited August 29, 2017 by Sqeezorz

[Mantasisg 172]

Aaaand welcome to ignore list, Squeez, tired of your semi conscious mash up of thoughts, visions and whatever. Go spin a fidget spinner. 

Anybody who dislikes me, can ignore anytime. I'm not for likes, and making friends with everybody.

And my idea was that DayZ is being stripped out. Those little details, like zoom, are important parts of DayZ for me, it is used very often to adjust FOV and focus in the distance when needed. If it is going to be removed - thumbs down. 

[St. Jimmy 1631]

So if I have set 75 degrees fov I can't see as well as people with 43 degrees of fov because it doesn't zoom? The minimum requirement is that there should be zoom that goes to that minimum fov or the system is flawed.

[Gobbokirk 546]

I'll miss it for sure if it goes away, would take away from the "ARMA feel" and that's never a good thing tbh.
Considering other games like Miscreated has taken it in, I see it as a good thing, it would be a big loss if it went away here.

I'd definitely want to see it added back in, even if it takes away from performance.
Gamebreaking? Obviously not, but I don't want us to lower the standard because other FPS games don't do it, we're better here.

[IMT 3190]

I don't know how I feel about this one. I use it regularly to concentrate on certain spots when running around. Perhaps they could lower it instead of removing it? But let's be honest here, spotting something in DayZ is not very hard.

I guess I will get used to it, should it be removed.

3 hours ago, Mantasisg said:

How to save more on performance.

• Make corpses disappear in 10 seconds;
• Make it to be always foggy, very very foggy;
• Remove third person view completely;
• No... make corpses disappear in 5 seconds.....
• Remove stupid things like night and rain, no servers are using that anyway (because people only likes sunshine and being comfortable, even on dayz (I know it is sad to me too, I'd like to play in rain and cold nights too);
• More LODS, like new LOD every three meters;
• Reduce max players count to 30, because there is no difference anyway when they all gets all through the map;
• Reduce capacity of inventory;
• Cancel Base Building, because there is no room for it performance wise anyway.
• Cancel vehicles, whatever lol;
• Strip down the physics, kids will not notice anyway;
• Actually there could be even less loot around.
• Reduce the map size - now this one is real idea, no sarcasm here.
   

I don't know why DayZ keeps removing nice things.... Ohhh, performance....

Anybody remember times when after death you could still hear and see a bit..... Or when corpses lasted something like 30minutes..... It was cool.

 

1 hour ago, Mantasisg said:

Aaaand welcome to ignore list, Squeez, tired of your semi conscious mash up of thoughts, visions and whatever. Go spin a fidget spinner. 

Anybody who dislikes me, can ignore anytime. I'm not for likes, and making friends with everybody.

And my idea was that DayZ is being stripped out. Those little details, like zoom, are important parts of DayZ for me, it is used very often to adjust FOV and focus in the distance when needed. If it is going to be removed - thumbs down. 

If you keep your ridiculous sarcastic bullshit and negativity up then everyone is going to have you on their ignore list eventually. I guess you haven't been around here for long enough to know how the forums work. Feedback is welcome, negative and sarcastic bullshit bashing the game, developers or community isn't.

I'm not the kind of person who ignores others. I rather tell it to your face that your behavior is not welcome here. The game gets enough negativity in the Steam reviews, let's keep the forums a clean place with constructed feedback and criticism.

Edited August 29, 2017 by IMT

[Mantasisg 172]

Constructive feedback in a nutshell: 



My forum tactics are politically suicidal, thats for sure. But all I said was that I dislike good features being taken out of the game, and thats not the first time. And then fanboys attack.

Zoom has always been a very useful feature, especially when I used to play with a laptop, then I used that function all the time. Without it it would have been bad. Having a good sight in a distance in DayZ is far more important than in any other game. There is no point even to compare with any other game. It is super helpful to press RMB and have a natural FOV for a few seconds.

If the issue is to save the performance, then perhaps the game should be delayed at least 5 more years, and perhaps then computers and serves and internet connections will be more powerful, at least a bit more powerful to pull this game which requires very good performance in all departments. This is game for the future, I guess.

However still looking forward to 0.63, hopefully there will be many great things to outweight loss of zoom (if it is true) and the wait, I've seen in a previews than player finally is able to run uphill, thats awesome :)

Someone has started the rumor that it could happen this tuesday aka today, I hope.

[exacomvm 101]

4 hours ago, Mantasisg said:

How to save more on performance.

• Make corpses disappear in 10 seconds;
• Make it to be always foggy, very very foggy;
• Remove third person view completely;
• No... make corpses disappear in 5 seconds.....
• Remove stupid things like night and rain, no servers are using that anyway (because people only likes sunshine and being comfortable, even on dayz (I know it is sad to me too, I'd like to play in rain and cold nights too);
• More LODS, like new LOD every three meters;
• Reduce max players count to 30, because there is no difference anyway when they all gets all through the map;
• Reduce capacity of inventory;
• Cancel Base Building, because there is no room for it performance wise anyway.
• Cancel vehicles, whatever lol;
• Strip down the physics, kids will not notice anyway;
• Actually there could be even less loot around.
• Reduce the map size - now this one is real idea, no sarcasm here.
   

I don't know why DayZ keeps removing nice things.... Ohhh, performance....

Anybody remember times when after death you could still hear and see a bit..... Or when corpses lasted something like 30minutes..... It was cool.

Go back to play Rust/H1z1.
Anyway..
"Make it to be always foggy, very very foggy;" - that would just destroy the fps, u wont get 60fps on "nasa" pc.
"Remove third person view completely;" - Would not affect the fps, maybe make all players invisible ?
"No... make corpses disappear in 5 seconds....." - Make you get VAC'd in 5 seconds of first login.


"I don't know why DayZ keeps removing nice things.... Ohhh, performance...." 
Nothing is getting removed, they're just not in use, but it's there. ( no need for testing anymore? )

"Anybody remember times when after death you could still hear and see a bit....."
This is not Counter-Strike or PUBG.

Edited August 29, 2017 by exacomvm

[Mantasisg 172]

You make me sad, @exacomvm....

There is a difference between fog and dust. Fog and smoke works very nicelly in DayZ btw. Fog doesn't hit fps, AFAIK, it also reduces drawing distances, so it should increase fps. Furthermore, it was a joke. I was not serious, I was exaggerating in response to the Zoom being taken out, which is not even official or anything.










 

[Girth Brooks 570]

Performance-wise I do good and I have an average rig, I keep everything maxed out and I get 60 frames locked because vsync. I've always thought to myself as far as Arma goes that the zoom was just away to simulate the human eye focusing on something in the distance intensely. Part of me wants to keep it because of its ties to Arma, but if they want this to be different they have all the reasons and right to do it that way.

As far as the fog goes back in the day all games had fog and it looked like shit because graphics cards couldn't do enough. To make the fog look believable it takes a fair amount of GPU Cycles. It is graphic intensive work. 

[Mantasisg 172]

Back in the day fog worked in different way perhaps ? Nowadays it doesn't hit performance, at least it seems so to me. DayZ has a beautiful fog, which works neatly trapped in the coast between the mountains.... Tooo bad lately haven't seen any rain or fog, IDK why, perhaps because people are too simple, and likes only sunshine and butterflies. 

Again, AFAIK, I'm not sure about that. But, AFAIK, zoom is the way to simulate correct FOV. Naturally screens are too little to have enough vision and proper FOV at the same time. So it compensates that, and correct FOV is better when you have to look far ahead. Obviously. So it is like zoom.

IMO it is good feature. 

0.62 has rather annoying issues with trees LODs switching, just doesn't work very well, this is probably related.

 

[Sqeezorz 839]

No problem, I accept that.

[BeefBacon 1185]

5 hours ago, Mantasisg said:

But all I said was that I dislike good features being taken out of the game, and thats not the first time. And then fanboys attack.

I think it's less what you're saying, and more your attitude. I get that people can come across as a bit fanboyish, but all that happens is that discourse degenerates into everyone becoming very defensive and accusatory.

2 hours ago, Mantasisg said:

Back in the day fog worked in different way perhaps ? Nowadays it doesn't hit performance, at least it seems so to me. DayZ has a beautiful fog, which works neatly trapped in the coast between the mountains.... Tooo bad lately haven't seen any rain or fog, IDK why, perhaps because people are too simple, and likes only sunshine and butterflies. 

Again, AFAIK, I'm not sure about that. But, AFAIK, zoom is the way to simulate correct FOV. Naturally screens are too little to have enough vision and proper FOV at the same time. So it compensates that, and correct FOV is better when you have to look far ahead. Obviously. So it is like zoom.

IMO it is good feature. 

0.62 has rather annoying issues with trees LODs switching, just doesn't work very well, this is probably related.

It depends. In DayZ fog is more volumetric. It's not just a simple Z gradient where the environment stops rendering after a certain point (see early FPS for glaring examples of this) it's a bit more advanced. As such, I don't think it helps much with performance, but then I don't think it harms performance all that much either. It's a visual effect rather than a sneaky optimisation measure.

I agree, though. I hope they don't remove zooming. I don't consider the performance hit to be a good enough reason to remove it. If zooming results in a momentary judder, then so be it.

[Dancing.Russian.Man 1631]

1 hour ago, BeefBacon said:

I think it's less what you're saying, and more your attitude. I get that people can come across as a bit fanboyish, but all that happens is that discourse degenerates into everyone becoming very defensive and accusatory.

This. You guys should definitely keep it calm regardless of how you feel about possible changes. Getting hostile towards people doesn't stop change.

Besides, if it does get removed, you might be able to very easily just mod the feature back in if you need/want it.

Edited August 29, 2017 by Dancing.Russian.Man

[pilgrim* 3514]

[ * ]

 

Edited August 29, 2017 by pilgrim*
.. duh ..

[pilgrim* 3514]

15 hours ago, -Gews- said:

the basic way in which my character perceives the world.

Gews has a sensible and carefully thought out attitude to 'eye zoom',  IMO

 

https://forums.dayz.com/topic/165710-the-campaign-for-iron-sight-zoom/

https://forums.dayz.com/topic/225515-vision-nerfed-yet-again/

- plus his input above in this thread

**

Also czarnyborsuk's thread comments, worth reading  -  " What matters is the tactical planned decisions that it favours and all the good it brings to the gameplay. While it may not be easy to keep this feature in doing so is vital to the dayz experience and it's one of the features that are clearly in line with the direction where the game has been heading all the time."

https://forums.dayz.com/topic/237418-additional-feedback-regarding-zoom-feature/

 

Edited August 29, 2017 by pilgrim*

[Mantasisg 172]

No the fuss is not about Gews, it is because of me posting a tiny bit too energetic, not politically enough to these days standarts. I have posted a post what more could be nerfed in this game in order to save more performance, which was a joke more or less.... and this social justice war begun from there also fanboys sesnitivity value risen, no point to do drama IMO

Totally nice posting by Gews, makes me happy. But I guess thats fighting the windmills unfortunately.