battlefield 1 spotting

Hey there @AirForceEngineer

Things that do affect spotting that I can think of would be as follows :

• Weather. Fog and sandstorms basically make it impossible to spot at all.
• Smoke Grenades not only block spotting in or through it, but they will clear any spotted status you, or your teammates, have prior had.
• The weapon's zoom level and some vehicles affects spotting. For example, you can spot further and easier with a sniper rifle or from a plane than with a pistol. Vehicles also give your spotting a slight splash radius.
• Cover generally makes spotting harder. Some vegetation does block spotting completely, usually the more solid kind. Sometimes you can spot people nearly through a solid wall though, so it can be a bit spotty (Unintended pun) sometimes but generally if you are behind some solid cover, you should also be safe from spotting. If the enemy lacks line of sight to you, they also have no "3D spotting" on you.
• Spot Flares can spot you in a large radius whether you're behind cover or not. Periscope will outright outline your character with a red market if you're spotted with it.

Spotting also has a cooldown so you can't just smash the Q key like it's Mario Party. People can take sometimes just guesses by trying to hit spot key in places where they know people usually hide in and it can make it seem like they "knew" you're there but they just got a lucky guess very simply.

If you aren't a huge fan of the whole spotting mechanics, you may like to play on Hardcore Mode servers where all visual spotting is disabled altogether.

I do myself agree that this game totally should have a Test Range like earlier BF-games have had or some short tutorial. Best we indeed right now do have is the singleplayer campaign which is, to be fair, largely built around tutorialising different concepts of the game.

Also, you're new to this game so it is understandable that you feel like you can't see a darn thing at all. It's very common for newcomers to this game that it feels like this game is one big game of hide-and-seek where you can't see anyone and whenever you try to hide somewhere, you're seen easily. It all comes down to getting used to the game as it can not only be difficult to spot enemies in the maps such as Argonne Forest, but the game's chaotic nature makes it even more difficult to see things right. But I do assure you, you'll get used to it with time !

A small hint I can give to you which can help your awareness is to configure your Minimap Zoom and Size. If you go to the Options -> Gameplay, you will have there under the Hud the settings for 'Minimap size' and 'Zoom radius' for when on foot, in vehicle or plane. This zoom radius is how far your minimap will zoom out in metres in each situation. The default 50 metres or something with the minimap size that is the default isn't very informative. 80 metres should give you better awareness while not being too zoomed out, but if you're playing a Recon class you may want to bump this up a bit further. Bumping the minimap size to 120-130% or so together with the increased zoom radius at least helped me quite a bunch with situational awareneness.

All in all, it does come down to experience. So good luck fighting in the trenches !