Spotting

A walkthrough of one spotting engagement from a real loadout. The exact tank stats are illustrative (your vehicle has its own numbers), but the order and the math play out exactly like this whenever an enemy steps into your vision sphere.

Setup

The shared baseline

Right now, every released vehicle in Tyr ships with the same 400m vision range and the same 35m proxy detection range. The thing that actually differs between a heavy and a scout is camo, which currently ranges from ~0% on a brawler like Atlas up to ~42% on a scout like Vanguard or Ikarus.

So the question isn't "who has more vision?". It's "whose camo turns 400m of theoretical vision into actually-spottable range?"

The watcher (you)

• Vehicle: Deadeye, a medium sniper
• Vision range: 400m
• Camo: 25%
• Proxy detection range: 35m
• Loaded shell: STANDARD (we don't fire in this article)

The target (them)

• Vehicle: Phantom, the stealth-class light
• Vision range: 400m
• Camo: 37%
• Currently: sitting still in a single thick bush, engine off, hasn't fired in over a minute
• Bush in question: contributes +12% camo while it's actually between you two

The shared knobs the game tunes balance with

Knob	Current value	What it does
Spot threshold	100 points	The "detection meter" you fill before they're spotted
Open-ground spot time	~1s	Time at clean line of sight inside their adjusted range to spot them
Camo cap	70%	Max total camo a target can stack
Bush contribution cap	60%	Max combined camo any number of bushes can contribute
Outside-radius decay	-10 / sec	The meter drains if the target leaves their adjusted range
Gun-fire camo penalty	flat -5 + -60% reduction	Brief camo collapse after firing
Gun-fire penalty duration	0.15s	How long that collapse lasts
Unspot timer	7s	After last enemy loses sight, how long until you go dark

These are shared across every vehicle. They're the dials the game tunes balance with, not per-tank stats.

Step 1: your effective spotting range

Vision range is a sphere, not a cone. There's no facing or field-of-view check. Your vehicle is watching every direction at once. Anything inside your 400m sphere is a candidate to be spotted; anything outside is unreachable.

But the enemy's camo doesn't make them invisible inside that sphere. It shrinks how far inside the sphere you can actually spot them from. Their effective range against you, before any cover comes into play:

adjusted_range = your_vision_range × (100 − their_camo) / 100
               = 400 × (100 − 37) / 100
               = 400 × 0.63
               = 252 m

So the moment Phantom crosses 252m, your detection meter on it starts filling. From 252m to 400m, the meter doesn't accumulate; it only drains anything that was already there. Past 400m, you can't see them at all.

For comparison, swap roles: Phantom looking at you (Deadeye, 25% camo) gets 400 × 0.75 = 300m. Same vision, different effective ring. Scouts see further into a brawler than vice-versa, every time.

Camo is a range modifier, not a stealth field. A 37% camo target inside the inner ring is just as spottable as a 0% camo target at the same distance; the difference is the inner ring is smaller, so they have to come closer for "just as spottable" to apply.

This also explains why scouts feel so different to play than they look on paper. A 42% camo Vanguard isn't sneaking through enemies at 50m; it's sitting at 250-300m where every shot it takes is from a position the enemy can barely reach.

Between the adjusted range (252m here) and the full vision range (400m), the detection meter doesn't fill. It only drains, at -15 points per second, capped at zero. So if you started accumulating points on a target who then backed past their adjusted range, the meter empties. They can't slow-spot themselves into trouble from outside.

This is also why "stationary at max range" is a defensive posture: even if an enemy holds line of sight, they can't accumulate on you. They have to close the gap first.

Step 2: bushes shrink the inner ring further

Bushes don't toggle a "hidden" state. Each bush between you and the target adds a camo contribution on top of the target's own camo, which then shrinks the adjusted range again.

The contribution rule has three parts:

1. Each bush has its own contribution amount. A small shrub might be +3%; a thick wall of foliage +12%. The values live on the foliage itself and are added up along the line of sight.
2. Combined bush contribution is capped at 50%. Past that ceiling, adding another bush does nothing.
3. Total camo is capped at 70%. Even after the bush contribution is added to the target's base camo, the result is clamped.

Plugging the example through:

target_camo  = 37 (Phantom's own)
bush_bonus   = 12 (this one bush, between you and them)
total_camo   = min(37 + 12, 70) = 49

adjusted_range = 400 × (100 − 49) / 100
               = 400 × 0.51
               = 204 m

Phantom's "I'm safe from this Deadeye" range just grew from 148m of buffer (400 − 252) to 196m (400 − 204). One good bush is worth ~50m of standoff.

The system tracks which bushes sit on the line between this observer and this target. A bush that hides them from a tank to their north contributes zero against a tank to their south.

There's even a "phantom refund" pass that subtracts out any bush the target thinks they're hiding behind but which isn't really between them and the current threat. So no, you can't pad your camo by parking next to bushes you aren't using.

The game doesn't trace one ray between you and the target. It traces several, from corners and the center of the target's hull to corners and the center of yours. The rule is min across all those rays: bushes only protect the target if every ray is blocked.

If even one corner of their hull has a clean line through (or around) the bush, the bush does nothing on that line, and the most-permissive line wins. An enemy whose gun barrel is poking out the side of a bush is using ~0 of that bush's camo, no matter how thick it is.

Step 3: how fast the spot actually happens

Inside a target's adjusted range, with clean line of sight, the meter fills at the open-ground spotting rate. In native defaults, that is 1 second from empty to spotted.

There's no seven-second ramp in open ground. The meter exists, and the default open-ground fill is fast enough that a committed exposure is punished quickly, but it is not a one-frame instant spot.

What this means for play:

• Cover is binary, not gradual. The moment line of sight breaks (a hill, a wall, a smoke), the fill stops. The moment it's restored, they're spotted again. There is no "almost spotted" zone in open ground, only "in line of sight at adjusted range" or "not."
• Quick peeks still expose you, because any clean exposure inside adjusted range starts the meter immediately. A full second of held exposure from empty is enough to flip spotted under native defaults.
• The only way to slow a spot in the open is to stay outside their adjusted range. Camo, talents that boost your camo, anything that shrinks their inner ring against you. Those buy you the entire benefit upfront, not over a ramp.

So where does the slow "filling a meter" feeling come from in matches? Bushes.

Step 4: in a bush, the meter actually fills slowly

Bushes do two things. They shrink the adjusted range (Step 2). And, when you're inside a bush, they add a real spot ramp on top, only when the enemy is more than 35m away.

The ramp is set by the target's own camo:

in-bush spot time = max(target_camo, 1) / 10  seconds

For Phantom (37 camo):
  in-bush spot time = max(37, 1) / 10 = 3.7 s

For a 6-camo Maul caught hiding in a bush:
  in-bush spot time = 0.6 s

So Phantom in a bush forces an enemy to hold line of sight for 3.7 seconds before flipping spotted, versus the 1s open-ground spot.. That's a huge defensive ramp, and it's the real reason bush cover feels so strong: the moment you step out (or the bush stops being between you), the ramp evaporates and you're back to instant-spot.

A few rules around this:

• The ramp only applies when the enemy is more than 35m from you. Inside that distance, you're in their proxy detection range, and the ramp is suppressed. (More on proxy detection in Step 7.)
• Lower-camo vehicles get less protection from bushes, even when bushes are between them. A 6-camo brawler hiding in a bush gets a 0.6-second ramp. A 42-camo Vanguard gets 4.2 seconds.
• The ramp resets the moment line of sight breaks, just like the open-ground meter. So if you peek out, you start over from zero.

Bushes have to give brawlers a way to clear out campers without triple-stacking spotter abilities. The "in-bush ramp" is the lever; it rewards committed pushes into the bush. It also rewards scouts who pick the right bush at the right range, since high-camo vehicles get long ramps and the strong-camo position becomes very hard to dig out.

Side note: while the brief gun-fire camo penalty is active on you (Step 5), the in-bush ramp is suppressed and you fall back to open-ground rules. The intent is that gun-fire exposure is the real visibility event, and stacking the bush ramp on top would muddy the consequences of firing.

Step 5: firing temporarily collapses your camo

Pulling the trigger temporarily wrecks your camo for a brief window. Two things happen at once:

• A flat -5 camo subtraction.
• An additional 60% of current camo is subtracted. So if Phantom (37 camo) fires, the math is: 37 − 5 − (37 × 0.60) = 9.8 effective camo for the duration of the penalty.

The window is short, about 0.15 seconds. During that blip your effective camo, and therefore everyone else's adjusted range against you, collapses. If you were already carrying detection progress or remain exposed afterward, firing can be the event that turns a safe position into a spot.

The bigger your camo before firing, the bigger the absolute drop, but the percentage hit is the same. A 6-camo Maul drops below zero and is clamped back to 0. A 42-camo Ikarus drops to about 11.8.

Two takeaways:

1. Make the first shot count. Your camo is doing maximum work right up until the muzzle flash. The shot you fire from a perfectly-set-up bush ambush is the highest-camo shot you'll fire all engagement; every subsequent shot, while reload-camped in the same spot, is the same exposure event.
2. Move after firing, not because you're spotted, but because you're about to be. The penalty window is short, but if a sniper has line of sight on your firing position, 0.15s is enough to lock in a spot. A small relocation between shots breaks line of sight just long enough to deny that.

Step 6: going dark, how unspot actually works

Once you're spotted, the spot doesn't decay because the original spotter looked away. The unspot timer only starts ticking when nobody on the enemy team is contributing detection points to your meter, this frame.

The flow:

every frame, on the spotted target:
  if any enemy contributed detection points  → reset unspot timer to 7s
  else                                        → unspot timer −= dt
  if unspot timer ≤ 0                         → drop spotted state

So:

• If even one enemy still has clean line of sight on you (and you're in their adjusted range), you stay spotted forever.
• The moment the last enemy loses sight, your unspot timer starts. After 7 seconds, you fall off the enemy team's display.
• The 7-second value is per-tank. Every released vehicle currently uses 7, but talents and effects can shorten or extend it.

Practical:

• Hard cover beats soft cover for breaking spots. A solid hill kills line of sight from every angle behind it instantly. A bush only works if every ray through it is blocked, and once one enemy is past it, they're still feeding the meter.
• Disengage before you reposition. Sliding sideways across the enemy's field of view because "the original spotter is dead" usually means a second enemy is already feeding the meter. You never break the spot.
• Smoke, terrain folds, reverse slopes. These are the cleanest unspot tools in the game. Use them on purpose.

Step 7: proxy spotting, the "you can't sneak past me" rule

Underneath the line-of-sight system there's a second, much shorter detection layer: proxy detection. Every vehicle has the same 35m proxy range. The rule is dead simple: any enemy inside your 35m bubble that isn't already directly spotted is revealed to you, automatically. Bushes, walls, terrain folds, and stealth abilities included.

The trigger is one short check. There's no line-of-sight requirement. There's no teammate requirement. Just distance.

• Trigger: the target is inside your 35m proxy range, AND the target is not currently directly spotted (or is spotted but is using a stealth ability).
• Effect: a hidden marker shows the target to you only. Other teammates who haven't personally breached the 35m bubble see nothing. Proxy spots are personal, not team-wide.
• Bypasses stealth. Stealth abilities normally suppress detection entirely. Proxy detection ignores that; if you're 30m from an enemy in stealth, you still see them.
• Doesn't apply to already-spotted targets. Once a target is fully spotted by your team, they're already lit up everywhere; the 35m bubble adds nothing.

What this means at the wheel:

• You cannot drive past a heavy unseen, even with full camo and full bush cover. Inside their 35m bubble, they always see you. The bubble fires through walls, around corners, and through smoke. There's no "they didn't have line of sight" save.
• Proxy reveals are personal, not team-wide. The heavy you snuck past sees you on his screen. His teammate 100m back, who didn't breach the bubble, still doesn't. So a proxy spot doesn't instantly mean "the whole enemy team is shooting"; it means that one person is.
• Stealth is a flank tool, not a shortcut through a chokepoint. Use stealth to break contact at distance, not to crab through a doorway full of enemies. The 35m circle around each one of them is a death zone.

Proxy detection has one quiet side-effect on the rest of the spotting math: the in-bush ramp from Step 4 (~3.7s for a 37-camo Phantom) only applies when the enemy is more than 35m from you. Inside the bubble, you fall back to the regular open-ground spot.

Why? Because the proxy reveal is already running independently. The moment they cross your 35m line, they see you via the personal marker. Layering the bush ramp on top would just be a second punishment for the same bubble crossing.

Step 8: special cases worth knowing

A few rules that don't fit the steady-state model but show up often enough to matter.

Drones, recon abilities, certain consumables: instant spot. The detection meter has a short-circuit: certain abilities and effects mark a target as "immediately spotted" and skip the spotting math entirely. If you hear a drone, assume you're already lit.

Stealth: full suppression. A stealth ability suppresses detection entirely while it's active. Even an enemy staring straight at you won't fill a meter. This is not the same as having very high camo; it's a separate switch that turns the system off for the duration. When stealth expires, normal rules resume.

Stealth still loses to proxy detection. The one weakness of stealth: a stealthed vehicle inside an enemy's 35m proxy range is still revealed to that enemy. Stealth is a long-range disengagement tool, not a way to crab through tight quarters.

The mental model

Source	Where it lives	How it stacks
Vision range (your stat)	The sphere. No facing.	Currently uniform 400m; talents can extend it
Camo (their stat, or yours when hiding)	Shrinks the inner ring	Capped at 70% total
Bushes between you	Add to the target's camo on this specific line	Sum, capped at 60%; best available sight line wins
Adjusted range	vision_range × (100 − camo) / 100	Recomputed every frame
Open-ground spot	Inside adjusted range with line of sight	1s by native default
In-bush ramp	When in a bush AND enemy further than 35m	camo / 10 seconds; slower the higher your camo
Outside-ring decay	Inside vision range but past adjusted range	Meter drains at -10/sec; never accumulates
Gun-fire camo penalty	Brief on the firer	Flat -5% then ×40%; 0.15s window
Unspot timer	On the spotted target, after last enemy loses sight	7s for every current vehicle
Proxy detection	Inside 35m, uniform	Pure distance; bypasses bushes, walls, stealth; personal reveal
Stealth	Suppresses normal spotting	Beats line-of-sight detection; loses to proxy

Takeaways

1. Vision is a sphere; camo is a range modifier. The enemy's effective spot distance against you is vision_range × (100 − your_total_camo) / 100. Anything you do to shrink that number (base camo, the right bush, the right angle) buys you meters of standoff before spotting becomes possible at all.
2. Open-ground spots are fast, not instant. Inside adjusted range, with line of sight, the meter fills immediately and reaches spotted after the open-ground spot time. There's no "almost spotted" gradient out in the open, only "in their inner ring with line of sight" or "not."
3. Bushes are range and time. They shrink the inner ring (Step 2) AND give you a real spot ramp inside the bush (Step 4). The combination is what makes a well-placed bush feel impossibly strong, and what makes the wrong bush, or one that's "between" the wrong enemy, do nothing.
4. Half-cover is fragile. If any tested sight line has a clean or less-covered path, that line can win, and the bush may not be doing what you think it is.
5. The first shot is the high-camo shot. Firing collapses your camo for 0.15 seconds: long enough to be spotted from way out, but short enough that a small reposition between shots resets the geometry.
6. You unspot when no one sees you, not when someone doesn't. Spotted state lasts until every enemy loses sight, plus 7 seconds. Break it from everyone or you haven't broken it at all.
7. You can't sneak past close-range threats. Proxy detection bypasses bushes, walls, terrain, and stealth at 35m. The reveal is personal to the observer who breached the bubble, but for that one observer, you are not hidden no matter what cover you have.

The vehicles, maps, and abilities will keep changing. The vision system underneath them won't. Players who learn to read it (who can feel when their camo is working, when a bush is real cover versus theater, when a teammate's spot is about to go cold) are the ones who keep coming out of engagements they shouldn't have survived.

Be that player. Or, if you can't, at least know what's killing you.