Spotting, view range, & concealment

View range, concealment, and spotting are 3 directly related mechanics in the game, and depend on many interconnecting factors.

View range is how far your tank can see an enemy from, and camouflage (camo rating) is how much (%) your tank takes away from the enemies’ view range.

Spotting is how your tank gets seen by the enemy, and how your tank sees the enemy.

Spotting and being spotted

-Your tank has 6 visibility checkpoints, these are what get you spotted by the enemy.

-Your tank has 2 view range ports, these are what spot enemy tanks.

Visibility checkpoints:
1 on the very front of the hull
1 on the very rear of the hull
1 on each side of the hull, at the middle of the tank
1 on the front of the gun mantlet, it doesn’t move with the turret (but the view range port does)*
1 on the turret roof, at the center of the turret, it doesn’t move with the turret.*

* These 2 checkpoints are also the view range points.

Note that the visibility checkpoint on the gun mantlet does not move, yet the view range port on the same point does move. This mean’s you can turn the turret front to spot enemies, but it won’t cause your tank to be spotted.

These work by making pings onto other points, for example:
-Your tank gets spotted when a visibility checkpoint pings on an enemy tank’s view range port.
-Enemies get spotted when your view range port pings on any of their visibility checkpoints.

When these points interact with bushes, they affect your tank’s ability to spot and to be spotted. There is a page dedicated to bush mechanics here.

Minimum spotting distance

The minimum spotting distance is 50 meters.

This means that no matter what obstacles are between you and the enemy, no matter what is obstructing the line-of-sight, no matter how good your tank’s camo rating is, an enemy will always spot you at a distance of 50m.

This is to simulate the enemy being close enough to your tank that they would notice its presence, even without vision, even over the sound of their own engine.

View Range & camo rating

View range:
View range is the maximum distance at which you can spot an enemy tank.

If your tank has 302m view range, you won’t be able to spot any enemies at a distance greater than 302m.

An injured commander reduces your tank’s view range to half of its original. A tank with 302m view range but an injured commander would only have 151m view range.

Camo rating:
Camo rating is how much view range your tank take’s away from an enemy’s vision.

A tank with 0% camo rating would be spotted at the maximum view range of an enemy, and a tank with 100% camo rating would only be spotted at 50m.

Effective spotting distance

If you want to know the distance at which your tank will be spotted, use the spotting distance calculator tool on blitzhangar.com, it tells you at what distance an enemy would spot you, and it also has accurate camouflage values.

Don’t rely on the in-game camo values, they aren’t accurate. The actual formula for calculating the “effective spotting distance” is this:
Effective spotting distance (meters) = View range – [(View range -50) * camo factor]

(Note that the camo factor is a percentage, so in this formula, 53% would be 0.53)

When doing this calculation, and comparing the distance at which the tank is spotted, the numbers come out very wrong, and its due to the in-game camo value being inaccurate.

Increasing view range and camo rating

View range can be increased with:
–Food provisions
–Improved Ventilation equipment
–Coated Optics equipment
-Increasing crew mastery (50-100%)

There is a single caveat to this, the “Deadly Accuracy” crew skill, which further increases view range by 7%, but only if all of your allies have been destroyed.

Camo rating can be increased with:
-Camouflage paint
-“Camouflage” crew skill
–Camo net equipment

Camo rating isn’t affected by crew mastery level.

Its useful to know the average view range of enemy medium/light tanks, as these are the most proficient scouts, and their view range number will be the most common one that you face in that tier.

Using environment for concealment

The environment gives you various options to increase the camo rating of your tank, including:
-Hard cover (buildings & non-destructible objects)
-Soft cover (destructible objects, also bushes/trees)
-Foliage (bushes & trees)

There is a full article on the bush and tree mechanics here.

To use these for concealment, your tank’s visibility checkpoints must be hidden from the enemy’s line-of-sight. If a checkpoint is within line-of-sight, your tank will become spotted.

Solid cover

Solid cover is basically any item on a map that’s not a bush or tree (Solid cover includes both hard and soft cover items).

These items are solid, so you can’t see through them, thus they break the enemy’s line-of-sight.

When your tank breaks line-of-sight with an enemy, it has 100% camo rating (ie: only spottable at 50m), which allows it to stay hidden behind these solid cover items.

What is solid cover?
Buildings, walls, boxes, tents, hay bales, destructible buildings, etc.

There is a full list here, but there are exceptions, these are listed below. Also note that concealment mechanics in WoT Blitz are logical, so if you can see your tank from the other side of something, then the enemy can as well.

What isn’t solid cover:
Allied/enemy tank wrecks
Short fences
Bushes/trees

Above:
The solid cover of the wall and the building hides the IS-7 from the enemy, it would only become spotted if the wall was to break (shown), or if an enemy came within 50m of the tank.

As shown, the moment the IS-7 drives into the wall, 4 of its visibility checkpoints become visible.

Above:
Here is an E 100 in the same position as that IS-7. It can easily be spotted by any enemy that is in front or to the side of it, due to the visibility checkpoint on the roof being exposed above the wall.
(The E 100 can also spot enemies, due to the visibility checkpoint on the roof also being a view range port)

The E 100 won’t be spotted from the rear, as the building covers the tank from that side.

Using freecam to look over the wall, you can see that the other visibility checkpoints are concealed by the wall, just not the one on the tank’s roof.

Transparent cover

Transparent cover includes only trees and bushes.

These can be partially seen through by the enemy, so they only partially break line-of-sight. Thus this type of cover only gives between 25% and 50% in camo rating.

Transparent cover works in the same way as solid cover, the visibility checkpoints of your tank must be hidden from enemy line-of-sight in order to receive the camouflage bonus.

A tank’s vision is a radius (circle), but here it is shown as a cone, to show the direction from which the enemy tank is looking.

The enemy tank’s vision is highlighted as green, visibility checkpoints are shown in red.

Above:
The tree is currently shielding all visibility checkpoints, so the tree gives the IS-7 a 50% camouflage bonus from the enemy’s vision.

But what if there’s a second enemy?

In this image, the enemy is at an angle to the IS-7, and not directly in front.

Though the tree still shields the IS-7’s front, the other visibility checkpoints of the tank cause it to be spotted to this enemy. If one enemy spots you, the whole enemy team can see you.

Spotting time

Spotting time/time spotted is the duration of time that your tank remains visible to enemies after they break line-of-sight, or you leave their spotting range.

This time is 10 seconds.

Exceptions:
-If you got hit by a shell from an Obj. 84 or T-100 LT, you will be spotted for 20s. (17s for the WZ-132A and WZ-132-1)
-WZ-132A and WZ-132-1 have a spotting time of just 7 seconds.

Example:
If you pull out of cover, take a shot at an enemy, get spotted, then pull back into cover; you would need to wait 10 seconds before you go unspotted. If you pull out or try to relocate before that 10 seconds is over, the enemy tanks will still be able to see you.

As stated above, there are some exceptions to that length of time.

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