andhog Posted March 21, 2020 Posted March 21, 2020 I've been searching for this question but haven't found anything. As the title says, why are the model specific upgrades not released independently? I can understand that certain upgrades are dependent on new functionality in the DCS core, but alot of them could certainly be released as stand alone upgrades right? The 2.5.6 open beta contains numerous upgrades to the FA-18 but since the overall performance and stability is pour, especially for online gaming, it seems I'll have to wait quite some time before I can start enjoying them. I have very little knowledge about the architecture of DCS and the modules, but it seems to me like it's a very modular system and that makes me believe that it wouldn't be that hard to upgrade the modules independently from the core?
Fri13 Posted March 21, 2020 Posted March 21, 2020 Because each module uses core features in some manner, so you can't separate those. i7-8700k, 32GB 2666Mhz DDR4, 2x 2080S SLI 8GB, Oculus Rift S. i7-8700k, 16GB 2666Mhz DDR4, 1080Ti 11GB, 27" 4K, 65" HDR 4K.
andhog Posted March 21, 2020 Author Posted March 21, 2020 Because each module uses core features in some manner, so you can't separate those.Yes, I understand that some upgrades depend upon core features, but is that really true for all of them? And that brings me to another question I've been wondering about. How much of each module is really just core features presented in a model specific HMI and what is really module specific? Take the radar as an example, something that works very differently from aircraft to aircraft. In a modular architecture I would have thought that there was an API with certain radar specific parameters and that every module came with their own radar model. As long as they communicate the correct parameters this radar model should be upgradable independently from the core right? It should even be possible to have a radar model that communicates with a newer API than the core as long as there is backwards compatibility (like in protobuf).
Wilcino Posted March 21, 2020 Posted March 21, 2020 Unfortunately, adding features to 2 separate base versions vastly increases the development effort required. Looking at the F/A-18 updates, it can look on the surface like the updates don't directly relate to what a 'core' game engine is, but they almost certainly do. To ensure they didn't would take a lot of planning from the start, and essentially you'd have to get lucky that the assumptions you made at the start about what is 'core' and what is 'module' turned out to be right years down the line.In your example of the radar, you may at the start think 'I can make it work with these standard parameters', and then find that to simulate some edge case it requires more information, and then you need a core change. Even a trivial change to the core, e.g. to add a field to a 'global' data structure or make something that was global unit-specific, would suddenly touch a lot of different areas of the code. Even if there are changes that don't require updates, you still probably double the testing requirement, you need to test everything on both versions of the game, and also as a developer keep in your head all the knowledge of how things work under the hood for both versions as you develop. I'm a part time developer who supports 2 companies with nominally the same product, and every time I try to implement a feature for 1 company and not the other, and roll out other, common, updates, it turns into a nightmare very quickly. It's frustrating from the outside, and its easy to imagine it can be nice and clean under the hood, but in reality it isnt. Early Access and Beta just brings these compromises to the end user.
Kang Posted March 21, 2020 Posted March 21, 2020 I think even if it's possible to some extend (which may vary very much depending on versions in question) it is generally not a good idea to try that. The organisation is going to escalate quickly. I'll give you an example: You are flying the Spitfire in a mission over Normandy. Everything goes well, but you get shot down by a flak gun after doing repeated gun passes at it. You prepare a forum post, because you suspect something is wrong with this particular gun, as it stubbornly refused to die. It is not unheard of that some ground objects have wonky damage modelling - there was a famous Russian truck a while back. Anyway, to check on this issue now you'd need to include your version, release or open beta, and somebody is bound to recreate the thing to help some data to come along. Consider, if every module gets updated individually, this task is going to be much more complicated: what version of the core sim did you run? What version of the map? What version of the asset pack the object came from? What version of the plane module? These are all questions that could be answered, of course, but the effort of just investigating your observation has become a lot larger, thus fewer people will contribute to the data. Add that the sort of situation is going to be more likely due to incompatibilities and a lot of problems will end up being a lot more messy than they are now.
andhog Posted March 21, 2020 Author Posted March 21, 2020 Roger that! I can certainly see the implications and thank you for clearing those out in a very pedagogical manner!
andhog Posted March 21, 2020 Author Posted March 21, 2020 And just to be clear, this was not intended as any kind of complaint. It's just out of curiosity and I have nothing against having the opportunity to run open beta and test new features.
Wilcino Posted March 21, 2020 Posted March 21, 2020 Yeah, no worries, it would be really useful for more fine grained access to certain new features without having to be on the Open Beta branch.
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