At it stands, I do not feel Infiltrator cloaking is "broken". Please take a moment to review.

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PREFACE
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This is essentially a copypaste from my post on Reddit.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/17wlqe/as_it_stands_i_do_not_believe_infiltrator/

If you'd like to continue the discussion there, we'd love to have you!

Let me introduce myself. I play on Jaeger, I have just under 200 hours of gameplay and am currently BR50. I mostly play Light Assault and when I do play Infiltrator, I use a lot of the same tactics, positions and angles.
Infiltrator cloaking has been an issue since beta, but this most recent build has appeared to have altered this area.
I'm sure anyone who frequents the forums or this Subreddit has seen screenshots and videos circulating, showing the now ineffectiveness of the Infiltrators cloak ability. I do not believe the issue demands the amount of concern from players that it is getting.
Before I begin, let me give you an example of what playstyle these shots are based around, because that's going to play a large role in my explanations of the shots later on.
This is an infiltrator who is up-close and in the fight. He uses an automatic rifle, an SMG, or a semi-auto rifle. He infiltrates the enemy base, hacks their terminals and turrets, all while killing enemies through the utilization of the following.
* Footsteps - Listening for footsteps to make a best guess about the enemy position in the structure, while maintaining a good sense of where his allies are using HUD indications and his minimap.
* Noise Discipline - Doing as little jumping and sprinting as possible, to keep his own footsteps quiet. This also means only utilizing cloak when necessary, as it is very loud and will alert enemies.
* Trigger Discipline - Allowing himself to pass up groups of enemies in favor or picking off lone soldiers or pairs, he can't afford to be spotted and shot.
* Knowledge of the base layout - Knowing where jump pads, lifts, and good concealment is in case he is caught and requires a quick escape. Having a plan to retreat to a safe area if he is discovered.
This is how I play my Infiltrator, and this is how I see most Infiltrators play. Explaining the style is simple, practicing it to great effect is hard.
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My Gallery
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I considered posting a large album of screenshots for your viewing pleasure, but I'd actually like to take the time to explain them individually.
I am using the lowest settings on all available features, and am using nothing but the positioning of the my friend to demonstrate why cloaking really isn't that bad. Most other people have taken screenshots in bright, open environments in order to exaggerate shortcomings as much as possible, I too have done this in order to show you how it's being done.
I've spent roughly 3 hours now preparing these screenshots and streamlining my explanation to them, so I kindly ask that you consider taking a few minutes of your time to consider my opinion with an open mind before you join the commenting. Thanks!
Let's get started.
Our first shots are going to be our friendly old infiltrator standing in the middle of the room, on catwalks, and in places where he would generally be obvious at point-blank range. I am standing roughly 5-15 meters away from him in most shots, in order to more accurately represent how far you would be from an Infiltrator that is actively avoiding you.
* http://i.imgur.com/dtivRvp.jpg - The legs are pretty obvious as they are in a bright section of the room, proper positioning, as I'll demonstrate later, could easily avoid that.
* http://i.imgur.com/KgTvcH9.jpg
* http://i.imgur.com/JdFt9yz.jpg
Excellent. If you're looking hard for him he's going to be relatively easy to spot, but if you're just sprinting through the room, trying to get to the terminal or into a clear combat zone, I don't believe you're very likely to spot him.
Our next set is our cloaked friend taking cover in a corner.
* http://i.imgur.com/u6OXBtr.jpg - I can't even see him.
* http://i.imgur.com/2WLhzhV.jpg - His rifle makes a somewhat weird pattern if you look for it.
* http://i.imgur.com/P7VFdK1.jpg - At this range, even, he's surprising hard to spot.
* http://i.imgur.com/DxFWr4U.jpg - Hello old chap!
So at this point you may be thinking to yourself "Wow, how come all those other shots look so clear?"
The short answer is that they took their shots in lighting conditions that heavily favor being able to see the Infiltrator. I took my shots in lighting conditions that heavily favor *not* being able to see the Infiltrator.
Positioning clearly plays a huge role in your success as an Infiltrator! See, I chose dark, multi-colored walls and corners, while others have chosen bright, glaring solid surfaces in which the dark silhouette of the Infiltrator will contrast.
* http://i.imgur.com/ysv0xce.jpg - A little bit like this! (UI on)
* http://i.imgur.com/zpPAnZq.jpg - Or this! (UI off for comparison)
* http://i.imgur.com/N5DKaGY.jpg - Or even something like this.
* http://i.imgur.com/RpPzzSL.jpg - Hello world!
* http://i.imgur.com/1k5fM44.jpg - Even something as simple as finding a small patch of dirt that won't contrast you can make a **huge** difference!
* http://i.imgur.com/8ZcUiro.jpg - Finding a *large* patch of dirt, on the other hand, will again render you pretty much safe again! Fight on, my cloaked buddy, fight on.
Now contrast can work both ways. Knowing the shade you're aiming for is important, because very dark environments can work against you as well, triggering the "casper" effect you've seen in multiple screenshots.
* http://i.imgur.com/NvKT8lN.jpg - What's that thing on the wall?
* http://i.imgur.com/usMYsxS.jpg - I see you!
Even in worst-case silhouette positions, a distorted backdrop can always help your cause.
* http://i.imgur.com/YB4xhWC.jpg - Something as simple as clouds and some WG sparky effects can turn your obvious shadows into what looks like dark shades in the sky.
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IN CONCLUSION
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Quite frankly, I don't like cloak now any more than I liked it before. I play on low because of the huge FPS benefits, as well as cutting down on unimportant things such as flora, bloom effects and shaders.
I believe cloak should be the same across all settings, hard-coded as a specific effect that does not change, and it should look roughly like what medium setting cloak looks like now. If this were the only effect that did such a thing, I highly doubt one could get enough Infiltrators on their screen to actually cause performance issues.
When it's all said and done, there's no reason to feel too bad about cloaking on low detail. As long as you're choosing a decent backdrop and not doing crazy obvious stuff in front of your enemy, you're still pretty hard to see!
Thanks for reading. I ask again that before you comment, you take a few minutes to review what I have to say with an open mind, I really hope to shed a little bit of light on this topic and get some good feedback and discussions!

Please try to keep flaming to a minimum, that's really all I ask. Enjoy.

on high, cloak looks like your trying to see through a water bottle. sometimes it blends well but most of the time it looks like ****(standing still). i can see infil cloak with my 12x or even 7x scope from far away. even if you do manage to pull this simulated cloak they show in the pictures, the enemy will still know your in the relative area because they can hear your cloak.

The cloak is fine and working as intended unlike what some infiltrators will whine about.

It is not intended to make you 100% invisible as that would be a game breaking advantage.
The technology is bending the light around you..hence when you stay still you are for the most part unseen yet you start moving that light bending causes the shimmer effect you see on the infiltrator.
Look at it as the same tech the Predator uses in the movies...when still he is unseen when moving there is a shimmer in the light bending cloak.
Just look at Youtube,,we have this tech now in its infancy stages and even then it leaves a distortion where the light is being bent around the item trying to be cloaked so on a moving target that would be amplified.

You are an infiltrator so try using some tactics when moving so you do not get spotted..your not supposed to be able to run through the middle of a squad of players unseen.

i understand the concept behind cloak. being easy to see when moving is fine. the standing still part is the part they need to improve. maybe they should make it after a certain ?m away they would appear perfectly invis or close to it (while standing still). i don't think it would be "game-breaking". it would just be much harder for people to snipe them with their rifles.

No, no it is not. It is quite broken especially on low settings, which alot of people play with. You can see a running infil cloaked as a whitish silhouette even from 60 feet away, it complete defeats the purpose of stealth infiltrating if they know you're there before your even in SMG range. It is COMPLETELY broken for low settings. There isn't even a element of stealth, you're a white silhouette running around that says KILL ME! This is from a HA player

tl;dr

Watched the screenshots. Nice work on capturing infiltrator standing still when it's really invisible. Next time bring screenshots of moving infiltrator when you actually see it as fairly visible dark shadow or white ghost.

cloak would be fine if they normalized the way it looked between different graphics settings. complete invisibility while moving would just be completely ridiculous, like the old TF2 spy problems except on a much larger map. talk about needle in a haystack.

So, if the cloak at this point can be seen at any range, what is the point of cloaking? Just to make you have to press cloak again to be able to shoot while the enemy can start working on you as soon as they spot you? The cloak is supposed to help infiltrate but it makes a 100m radius noize and in some lighting conditions makes you even more obvious then the default purple/red/pink neon stripes on the infiltrator armors....
I didn´t plat ps1 but to see why ppl are complaining that much about how it was then, however as far as ppl told me you could hold cloak up for way longer, didn´t even do a sound when cloaking and uncloaking and you could shoot while cloaked so.....

The only change I would love for the infiltrator would be auto uncloak when you fire.

I can headshot a cloaked Infiltrator from max infantry rendering distance (and I have!) and he's just as visible as a non-cloaker. That is not as intended. That is broke as ****.

Pics:
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...u-can-kill-every-infiltrator-with-ease.87841/

Yeah, yeah, but cloaking system worked fine before the patch, infiltrators were visible but not that visible. I would like to see how it worked in PS1, infiltrator just looked like very transparent white ghost, visible if you have good eyes, yet invisible in most of situations, especially at distance. Right now I can see a dense dark shilouette running 100 meters away like nothing happens, especially at Esamir winter desert, that means invisibility is broken right now.

I always wonder what's the point of having a very audible cloaking sound where our cloak is already difficult to miss when moving. If we are standing still and thus invisible the sound gives us away, if we move both the sound and the water bottle effect give us away...

I'm not looking for a way to run around completely undetectable, that would be silly, but i'd like to be at least difficult to spot.
Keep the cloak graphics as they are, but make the sound inaudible at more than 10 meters. Everybody can spot us if we are dumb and move in open grounds, but if we stick to cover and make a more cautious advance only radars and lucky people that are passing near us can see us.

Yup cloak is fine on medium / high setting's .. You should not be 100% invis ... But it is broken on low setting's which need's to be addressed

IMO, the infiltrator should have an entirely invisible cloak that has a single class with an effective counter like thermal vision. For reference, look at nuclear dawn's stealth class and assault class. The assault had a thermal visor that was imperative in order to protect his squad mates from getting knifed in the back.
Improve infiltrator cloak and encourage more team play. It's a win-win.

The cloak is next to useless now, I can spot other infiltrators now that are cloaked at any distance most of the time they almost appear to be glowing making them stand out more than regular troops. Instead of using the cloak I have been working on finding spots with either good cover or where my camo blends well with the background. Any infiltrator relying on standing somewhere remotely open and using the cloak just becomes an easy headshot.

Cloak was fine before the patch, imho. Was hard to see, as a cloaking device should be. Recently it's just all too easy to see infiltrators when they're a totally-not-suspicious grey smear. As someone who usually plays a Light Assault, infiltrators have NO CHANCE of getting away from me if I scale the wall they're sniping from. They used to be able to cloak and flee, but now they stick out like a sore thumb while 'cloaked'

This guy is full of crap, just 3 days ago he was posting on reddit about how hard it was to see infiltrators and how SMGs were going to make them overpowered.

here's what he said

I've been playing on potato-quality settings since release, simply because the slightly increased performance is worth any amount of aesthetic quality to me (In a competitive shooter, anyway. I love me some ultra-high Skyrim or Max Payne 3).
This video shows that cloaked Infiltrators are almost impossible to see on low detail, while being only somewhat difficult on normal, and being pretty obvious on high (If you're looking for him, anyway).
There was an image that also did a side-by-side comparison I remember seeing a few months back, but I can't find it anymore. This video does a better job anyway, in my opinion.
Unless the Infiltrator walks in front of a lightsource (Vehicle headlights, terminals, the odd light on a wall) or is heavily silhouetted by a bright surface (Snow on Esamir, or a bright sky while looking up at an Infiltrator perched upon a hill), he's completely invisible to players on low quality unless he is shot. I can't tell you how many pistol rounds I've put into rocks and walls trying to stumble upon my cloaked enemies.
All that being said, it's clearly a balance issue, one that I couldn't care less about since Infiltrators with a handgun sneaking up on me aren't a huge threat. I've been quite annoyed by Infiltrators cloaking immediate after I shoot them and being entirely unable to find them, but not enough to do something about it.
Now, however, with the age of cloaked SMGs dawning upon us, I'm pretty concerned for my own safety.
So, now that my rant is over with, does anyone know specifically what setting adjusts the ability to see Infiltrators? I'd assume it's Texture or Model quality, though those seems to adjust how far away from something you have to be before it drops to a lower resolution model/texture, not necessarily how good it looks close-up.

link: http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/...graphics_setting_affects_the_visibility_of_a/

Yesterday, I headshot an enemy Infiltrator who was cloaked and crouched as he stared right towards me. That I could even tell which direction he was facing should say enough. The guilt was overwhelming.

It's become so bad that using it has quite literally become a punishment to our class. Executing stealth tactics which don't even involve the cloak is hundreds of times more effective and reliable, and the cloak has been reduced to a noisy spotting-removal device which locks out your weapons while active. This isn't to say that it was ever good, mind you, but at least it was functional at great distances. Not so anymore - I'm tempted to unbind my F key just to free myself from the illusion that it's doing anything for me.