Is there a standard, in real life I mean, for airport signage? Things like size, font to be used etc. If so, wouldn’t third party devs. follow that, and not use their own sizes. If they did that, they would effectively be doing the very thing you are complaining about i.e. using arbitrary sizes of signage.
Taxiway signs tell me when I’ve gone the wrong way, rather than which way I should go.
Charts tell me the right way to go.
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There are ~5 different taxiway sign sizes in the airport construction standards. These are defined by ICAO, but some countries may have slightly different standards depending on the context.
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I’ll repeat the sad truth …the signs are inaccurate anyway and don’t correspond to real world charts. Therefore unusable either way no matter what size. And the ATC directions are also off and meaningless.
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The goal should only be simulating reality, having hilariously oversized signs is moving away from that goal.
That said, it would be a great switch for people who need it, but it really takes away from the realism when the size of the taxiway sign is 8 feet tall.
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I already explained earlier. The visual distance will always be worse in the sim than real life because we are using monitor sizes with resolutions that lead to a scale that is smaller than 1. Read up because you missed the conversation. The only way you can match real life visual distance is if your monitor and resolution produce a scale that is 1 to 1 with real life.
In real life, if you can just barely make out the letters in a sign from 40 feet away from the airplane, you won’t be able to make out the same sign from 40 feet away in the airplane in the sim. If you don’t understand this concept, read all the discussion from before, including the example I calculated showing the math of scaling.
So you need to be more specific when you say “simulating reality.” Because if you have reduced viewing distance in the sim because of smaller signs, that isn’t “simulating reality” either.
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When the sign is 8 feet tall in the sim and 4 feet tall in reality, I don’t understand how there is any further discussion!
Make a high visibility version like this for people who need it, and keep a version where the taxiway signs aren’t cartoonishly ridiculous. I’m not angry at the issue, I just live in a three dimensional world. A sign that is 8 feet tall looks silly when it is 4 feet tall. It is simply not representing reality in its huge size. Sure, make it a new high visibility mode for people who need it, but leave it real for the people who appreciate proportions and scale and the three physical dimensions. Add it as one of the options, like taxiway paths for people who don’t know where they are going, if magnifying glasses are needed around taxiway signs.
If we are going down this path to distort reality, why not double the size of buildings so you could see them better, or double the size of the runway so its easier for people with keyboards to land on. Its arguing that fish-eyed, single point of view users should be catered to above everyone else by this dumbing down of the scenery, and that is a pretty selfish side to argue.
A work-around for people who’s screens aren’t large enough instead of this cartoon option, is to briefly look in that direction and zoom in so the scale is closer to 1:1, kind of like turning your head and focusing your eyes. As a VR user, still on a 1st generation rift, I do appreciate its usefulness when I can’t look around and focus on something when the resolution just isn’t there, but I’d never want the default to depart from reality. We can’t just pretend that signs which are double the size aren’t double the size because it fits our particular point of view, like wishing it were real and now, poof, it is.
The ideal would be a slider situation, more choice is almost always better than less… hell, even make fish-eyed zoomies the default, just don’t take away a simulation of reality when it was already there.
For now most of my flying moves to bush strips or 3rd party airports until this is fixed. I’m hopeful something is revised in time for the next update.
Repeating this over and over again does not make it more correct. You think you found a super-intelligent way of describing why the taxiway signs need to be bigger in the sim than in real life to be able to read it but you constantly ignore the most relevant parameters, which are resolution, pixel density and distance of the viewer from the monitor.
Take your funny 79 inches 1 to 1 example of the cockpit, according to your logic, the gauges would not be readable anymore on a computer screen. Funny enough that they are, especially if you use a monitor with a relatively high resolution and pixel density. I wonder why?
Simply because you do not run through your scaling maths fully but you stop where the scaling suits your argument. Lets try to go through it again: if the cockpit is 79 inches in reality and you play on a 27 inch screen (as I do), your screen is about 24 inches wide, or 3.3 times smaller than the original. Now, I sit about 50cm from the monitor, in the cockpit I would sit about 1m away from the instruments (max).
What does this mean? Well, because you are half the distance away compared to the real thing, you would still have the same scaling in front of you with half of the panel, no? Means 35 inches. But you only have 24, so 1.5 times less. Next thing to consider is, can you read instruments/gauges that are 1.5 times smaller? The ONLY thing that is now relevant is a) how big they still are and b) if the monitor you use can display something with this size in a way you can still read it. The higher the resolution of your monitor, the higher the pixel density, the bigger the chance that you can read it even if it is relatively small.
Your Iphone 12 example should show this to you. If you would have the same resolution and pixel density on your Iphone 12 as you have on your monitor, you would not be very happy and you would already have issues with reading simple webpages like this forum. You do not, why? Because the pixel density of your Iphone 12 screen is so high, that the small text of a webpage remains easily readable even on the small Iphone screen.
Back to the taxiway sign sizes: on my monitor, as shown above, I am about half of the distance away from the instruments compared to the real thing and the monitor is about 1.5 times smaller. Now this scaling applies directly to all the rest of the world in the sim. Means: if I am 40m away of a taxiway sign in reality, I am still 40m away in the sim but with the same scaling as mentioned above. Now, the readabilty of the taxiway sign 40m away is still only depending on the actual size on my monitor and the fact whether or not my monitor is capable of displaying this taxiway sign in a readable manner and the only two relevant parameters are resolution and as such pixel density and distance from the monitor. Nothing else. And if those parameters allow a readable sign, I should be able to read it, end of the story.
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Umm no sorry that is all so incorrect, if you’re simulating reality (which is the aim of this Sim) then everything has to be to Scale in the World it is placed in regardless of what monitor or resolution the user is using.
Oversizing things is not confirming to reality, when I Race Cars in those simulators everything is to scale, the Turn Markers are not oversized to compensate and neither should the Taxiway Signs in this Sim.
Create to real world scale, not create to be fantasy.
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Wow, I feel really bad for you that you can’t understand a simple concept. Since you don’t seem to understand math, try to think of scaling. Given a specific resolution, if the monitor size is smaller, then the scale is under 1 compared to real life. Any scale that is under 1 means the signs will be smaller than real life, if the airplane is from the same distance from the sign and the simulator.
You will never have the same readability of signs in the simulator and real life because of scaling in the sim with the current monitor sizes and resolutions.
You keep spewing the nonsense about the gauges. Just because the gauges may be barely readable on a 15 inch monitor with 1920 x 1080 resolution, it doesn’t mean it has the same readability as real life if the gauges on a 15 inch monitor are smaller than real life (ie. the scale of the gauges is less than 1).
You are mistaking “minimum” readability with “equal” readability. I am saying that if the scale is less than 1, the readability of the simulator and real life is not equal and that real life readability is always better. Why don’t you understand this concept? It’s simple logic, you don’t even need any math for it (even though I have already produced the math to explain the concept of scaling in an earlier post).
And if I can read a sign in real life from 40 feet away, but I have to be 7.54 feet away from the sign in the simulator to read it, how is that realistic in the simulator?
(if you are asking why it’s 7.54 feet away, look up at my earlier post where I did the calculations for a 15 inch monitor at 1920 x 1080 resolution)
Scale in the world. This is the key phrase here. You can only have a 1 to 1 scale to the real world if your monitor size produces a 1 to 1 scale to real life.
In my example from before, if the cockpit panel that is viewable in the sim is 2 meters wide in real life which is about 79 inches, then you need a monitor that is 79 inches wide. With a 79 inch wide monitor, then the scale between real life and the simulator will be 1 to 1. Any less than a 79 inch monitor and the scale is under 1, which means the objects in the simulator are smaller, which means the signs are smaller, which means the readability is worse than real life.
Again people, you need to understand the concept of scaling. Scaling, scaling, scaling! If MSFS is played on an IPhone 12, which has a 5.78 inch wide screen, then the scaling would be many times smaller than real life, which means the objects in the simulator are smaller, which means your readability of signs is a lot worse than real life.
In real life, if you can read a sign from 40 feet away, on an IPhone 12, you will have to be a lot closer than 40 feet to read the same sign!
While MSFS is not played on an IPhone 12, it is played on 15 inch monitor laptops. If you can barely make out a taxiway sign from 40 feet in real life, on a 15 inch laptop, you have to be much, much, closer than 40 feet to see the taxiway sign.
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So you alter the Field Of View (FOV) which in Racing Sims gives you the correct perspective and that would translate to Flight Sims as well (unsure if thats an option in this Sim currently), there’s no altering of the Scale of Objects within the Sim to compensate which is ridiculous when wanting to recreate Real World objects at Real World Sizes.
Edit: at the end of the day MSF is supposed to Simulate Real Life, be that the actual Flying Experience and the World Around you, by altering the Size of Objects to make them “bigger and easier to read” then you’re not Simulating the Real World, you’re Faking it - ergo it becomes a Game/Simcade regardless of what Monitor or VR people are using.
The large Taxiway Signs (and Blue Lights on yellow poles, they’ve got big too!) are quite simply incorrect and need readjusting to Realistic Sizes. Hopefully it’s just a bug that got through (yet again…) and will be reverted in due course.
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Again, which part of the real world are we simulating? If we want to simulate the same readability of signs in the real world from a certain distance from the signs in the aircraft, that’s only possible if the signs are larger.
I’m going to repeat a post from before since some people don’t seem to get this idea. There are two types of realism at play here:
#1 The realism of taxiway signs being the same size in the sim as they are in real life
#2 The realism of being able to read a taxiway sign from 40 feet away in real life versus 40 feet away in the simulator.
If you want realism #1, then taxiway signs will not be as readable from 40 feet out in the sim, even though you may be able to read them from 40 feet away in real life.
If you want realism #2, which means you want to be able to read the taxiway signs from 40 feet out in the simulator just like you can in real life, then the taxiway signs need to be bigger, especially on a 15 inch monitor.
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Then you’re going down a whole rabbit hole of what else needs to be made Unrealistic in order to compensate, which IMO is incorrect and wrong in a “Simulator” that is “Simulating Real Life”.
I get what you’re saying but sorry I totally disagree that we need compensate by having ridiculously Large Items in the Sims just so they’re readable, that’s Gamey/Arcade and 100% False and not what I want personally.
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Good, I’m glad you understand what I’m saying about the readability of signs in real life versus in the simulator, because of monitor sizes. Some people don’t even understand this basic fact. The readability of signs in real life will always be better than in the simulator (because of the decreased scale in the simulator).
To address your concern about the size of the taxiway signs, some of us have suggested Asobo implement a slider in the Settings menu, so people can set the taxiway sign size to their personal liking.
I just have navigraph maps on and have it following my flight easy fix.
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Maybe you should make less accusations in your posts? You have no idea about whether or not I am capable in maths or not, but trust me if I tell you that you might be surprised about my maths skills. The problem here is that it is not entirely solvable with maths and scaling, that is what I wanted to say by mentioning pixel density and resolution as well as distance of the viewer in front of the monitor.
Take your bloody 15 inch FullHD screen, you have a pixel density of 140 ppi, more than my 27" 1440p screen (108 ppi) . Now, the readability on those screens is given by the size on them, correct? But not only the size, but also the PPI. Why this is a crucial factor is underscored by my example with the Iphone 12 display. If your Iphone 12 display would have only 140 ppi, you would not be even able to properly read this forum here, unless you zoom in like crazy. That is why your Iphone 12 screen has a pixel density of whopping 460ppi, more than 3 times the 15inch FullHD monitors pixel density.
THAT is the reason why you can still read ultra small letters on your Iphone display. Because the resolution and pixel density is so good, the letters are still crisp and clear. Vice versa, if you take a 50 inch TV Monitor with only FullHD, you get only 44 ppi, and a text with the same letter size than you have on your Iphone 12 would be unreadable. As basically a single pixel would have to represent a single letter…
Do you get the point?
Now, in a next step, you also need to consider (of course) the distance of the observer to the screen. Looking on your super crisp Iphone 12 screen with 460 ppi does not help you much, if you sit 2m away from it, no? So, normaly you have your Iphone 12 screen about an armlenght in front of your eyes, an estimated 30cm. Do you sit that close to your 15inch laptop monitor? I guess not. But you HAVE to include this distance in your scaling calculation, because it makes a huge difference.
Now back to your strange scaling calculation with the taxiway sign: lets assume (wrong, but for this approach we do it like this), in reality you do not have a huge FOV but something similar to what you get in the sim. A rectangular image of the reality to say. In this rectangular image, 79 inches wide (to use the numbers you used above), a taxiway sign in 40m distance might be 1inch in width. With your normal eyesight, you can read the taxiway sign.
Now do your math scaling. The 15inch monitor is 5.3 times smaller, ergo the taxiway sign is 5.3 times smaller, in our example 0.19 inch. On your 15 inch monitor. You are still with me?
Next step to consider if this 0.19 inch taxiway sign is still readable or not, is solely depending on the screen resolution or in more detail, the pixel density. Lets assume, the taxiway sign is 0.1 inch in height, the taxiway sign covers an area of 0.019 square inches on your monitor. Still correct, no? This area is now made up from 400 pixels with the ppi of 140, means roughly 30 pixels in width and 14 pixels in height.
Now, surprise, surprise, the same calculations you can apply on your Iphone screen. Instead of 0.19 inches, the taxiway shrinks down to utterly small 0.07 inches in width and 0.04 in height, covering ridiculously small 0.0026 square inches on your Iphone screen. But, as your Iphone screen has such a monstrous pixel density, those 0.0026 square inches are filled with almost the same amount of pixels (500 something) as on the 15 inch FullHD monitor.
Surprised? No? Now, you have the same taxiway sign on a 15 inch monitor filled and composed of about the same amount of pixels compared to the same taxiway sign, properly scaled down on the Iphone 12 display. Now which one is easiery to read? Does the final answer to this question not depend on the distance from the viewer and the monitor? Of course, if you SCALE also the distance accordingly, the readability is exactly the same on the 15 inch monitor as it is on the 6.1 inch Iphone 12 screen. If you do NOT scale accordingly, well, then you might have differences.
Point 1 what I tried to say above: you miss half of the relevant stuff in your scaling maths. Of course, if you put the Iphone 12 display at the very same distance than the 15 inch monitor, the readability will differ, but only because you have an additional scaling factor. That was the reason why I asked the question about the gauges, because you sit further away from the gauges in the real cockpit than most do in front of their 15 inch monitor, so they automatically correct for some scaling effects by sitting closer to the instruments than they would do in the real thing (but you did not get that one…). THAT is the reason why gauges can be scaled correctly in the virtual cockpit and you do NOT have the scaling issues you desperately try to calculate with an oversimplistic approach.
Back to your taxiway signs: Lets now assume, your 15 inch monitor has not only FullHD resolution, but 4K (3840 x 2160), you would get a whopping 290 ppi on your screen and in above example, the taxiway sign would compose of 1700 pixels instead of only 400 (55 width, 29 height). Should be more readable, no? Although the monitor size is the same, how come?
Or my 27 1440p screen with just 108ppi, above taxiway sign would end up being 0.34 inches wide and 0.18 inches in height, but sadly filled only with 700 pixels, not that much more than your 15 inch FullHD example.
Now the proof of concept: your simple scaling logic would say, that the taxiway sign is equally readable on a 79 inch monitor (you wrote that above). No scaling. I say, it depends on the pixel density. Lets assume, this 79 inch monitor only offers FullHD, your taxiway sign of 1 inch width (as above) and 0.5 inch height covers on this huge 79 inch FullHD monitor an area of 0.5 square inches, correct? Now, a 79 inch monitor with FullHD has a whopping pixel density of 28 ppi only, rendering the taxiway sign made out of 380 pixels. How come, this is even WORSE than the 15 inch FullHD monitor with the properly scaled down taxiway sign.
Now, can you read a taxiway sign made out of 380 pixels on a 79 inch FullHD monitor? Or can you read the same, properly scaled taxiway sign on a 15 inch FullHD monitor made out of almost the same 400 pixels? Who knows…
Fact is, your scaling only applies if you consider all relevant information and in the end, it is still mostly depending on the pixel density and the distance you sit away from your monitor that defines whether or not you can read it.
Now talk about maths please…
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I already addressed resolution and pixels in an earlier post. In real life, resolution goes down to the atomic level. On a monitor or phone screen, it uses pixels. For this reason, real life will always give better readability than a monitor or phone screen, everything else being equal, because resolution in real life goes down to the atomic level versus pixels.
You need to read what I wrote more carefully in my posts before.
So for the people that don’t understand the concept of scaling and why our monitors make the readability of the taxiway signs worse than real life, this simple diagram more or less explains it:
