Please, remove unnecessary liveries from DCS builds. Put them in separate packs

[SharpeXB]

59 minutes ago, Exorcet said:

If anything a livery manager would make gaining advantages through skins harder as it could include features to keep the playing field level as well as give people less reason to mess with files. If we had low res liveries that were linked to their high res versions then players would be free to delete the high res ones for space without drastically changing how other aircraft are rendered on their screen.

The cheating argument is just another reason for the manager.

It seems like you’re not understanding how liveries work. If you don’t have the file installed you won’t see the other player’s livery. What you’ll see is the aircraft’s default skin which in many cases isn’t camouflage. If a texture is missing I believe you see an orange mesh pattern. Deleting liveries from your game is therefore an exploit. It wouldn’t matter if these were deleted manually or through a manager. Arguably the manager would make removing them easier and thus facilitate cheating. If you are somehow imagining there is an alternate low res livery substituting for the high res one, each of the players would need both these installed, using even more drive space. 

Edited November 17, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

It seems like you’re not understanding how liveries work.

Oh the irony…

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

If a texture is missing I believe you see an orange mesh pattern.

If by “orange” you mean “green camo”. But that's not how liveries work, and especially not how they'd work if it was handled by a livery manager.

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

If you are somehow imagining there is an alternate low res livery substituting for the high res one, each of the players would need both these installed, using even more drive space. 

The whole point is that the player would be able to only have one of the two installed, using less drive space if they so desired. There would be absolutely no need for them to have them both when only one would ever be used and it was up to the player to decide which.

[okopanja]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Arguably the manager would make removing them easier and thus facilitate cheating.

Why would that be cheating? Simple map to module default.

Each and every new module adds more and more irrelevant garbage by adding more and more liveries that ever were.

[buceador]

On 11/16/2023 at 1:19 AM, SharpeXB said:

Sure it can. Someone can just remove all the camouflage skins for aircraft like the P-47, P-51 and MiGs etc which are all bright metal by default. Plus since the liveries aren’t controlled by the IC there is likely all sorts of mischief which can be done by altering them. 

This has been said (by you) on several occasions and while it is possibly true, there is a suggestion that this would affect all users of DCS when in fact the multiplayer community (to which you are referring when talking about cheating) represents a small percentage of total DCS users.

[MAXsenna]

@SharpeXB! @Exorcet has proveen a long time ago that he knows exactly how liveries work. Exploits are not cheats. They can rather be considered bugs. Your arguing against yourself again and painting yourself into a corner. A livery manager coupled with IC could solve all of that. Connect to a server, get an IC failed pop-up with an option to install the missing liveries. Please explain to me why that is bad? Could even help server admins'/squadrons' life easier with the "deployment" of user made liveries. Even for ground AI "modules" and what not. That's an official mod manager also would go such a long way. Could even path the way for users that find the whole thing messy and cumbersome to get into MP. 

I'll say it again. An official DCS  launcher like Skatezilla's with an official livery and mod manager, is the way of the future. That we don't have a launcher yet at all is sadly strange. 

 

Edited November 17, 2023 by MAXsenna
spelling and grammar

[okopanja]

Another approach would be to determine if there are common textures used in multiple liveries?

Now, we all know that graphic designers do not care how many megabytes the livery will take, but they tend to be Mega-pixel-click friendly for everything to look better, and as consequence spend around 0 time thinking if this has impact on disk space or game performance.

One could argue we could have several approaches, e.g.:

1. de-duplication of existing liveries, which might save perhaps 30% of disk space. This is essentially some intelligence applied to present strategy, Would need to be enforced by ED, and all liveries are still show to everyone.

2. ED defines mandatory livery pack, if the person wants he/she can download additional packages, either as bundles or specific aircraft. If the livery is not locally found, use the default low visibility from mandatory pack

3. ED defines mandatory livery pack, if user wants to use something extra he downloads additional packs, the viewing user when encountering the user using fancy non-mandatory livery is displayed the default low visibility livery, while in background without affecting performance too much the livery get downloaded and stored in local cache based on LRU algorithm to ensure that disk space is not overused.

 

Edited November 17, 2023 by okopanja

[buceador]

On 11/11/2023 at 10:55 AM, cfrag said:

To me, the livery I fly in is irrelevant - out here and in-game. I don't care how my plane looks like to others, I care that I enjoy myself flying that damn thing. It's not the livery, it's the plane.

This statement is summed up in your first 2 words...
The cinematic videos being produced by DCS itself, Phenom, J.P. Ferré, Venom Cinematic, Growling Sidewinder and many others (myself included) are what sell DCS to newcomers.  DCS is a beautiful spectacle, enhanced by atmospheric lighting, realistic models, attention to detail and the aircraft liveries are one of the key aspects of that immersion that everybody seeks.

[MAXsenna]

This statement is summed up in your first 2 words...
The cinematic videos being produced by DCS itself, Phenom, J.P. Ferré, Venom Cinematic, Growling Sidewinder and many others (myself included) are what sell DCS to newcomers.  DCS is a beautiful spectacle, enhanced by atmospheric lighting, realistic models, attention to detail and the aircraft liveries are one of the key aspects of that immersion that everybody seeks.

Not really, and not what Cfrag's referring to at all. Personally I like liveries, when I can see them. That's mostly in the ground, and they stand out in Reflected's campaigns. I only know of one of those channels listed, which I haven't watched in at least a year. They probably leave as soon when they find out that it takes practice and effort. Pretty sure potential new users don't notice the liveries at all, except maybe for GR with custom ones. I'd bet they even brought in more users than all the others combined before. You do bring up an interesting point though. I wonder what they'd think if they new about the mandatory liveries, and the potential "cheating" Sharpy hours on and on about. I'd bet they would welcome a livery manager, as I'm sure you would! Give support!
Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[cfrag]

3 hours ago, buceador said:

This statement is summed up in your first 2 words...

(those words of mine being "To me")

Of course, I try not to come across as speaking for anyone but me. I'm trying to make it clear that I don't assume mine is everyone's viewpoint. Sadly too many people speak as if they represent the majority or even everyone. 

3 hours ago, buceador said:

The cinematic videos being produced by DCS itself, Phenom, J.P. Ferré, Venom Cinematic, Growling Sidewinder and many others (myself included) are what sell DCS to newcomers

Are you now speaking for all newcomers? You certainly do not speak for me, or why I came to DCS. I came for the joy of having great procedures, good flight model, and the best VR experience around. And I decided that after downloading DCS and trying it out. 

Furthermore, I don't see why optional liveries would preclude production of any of those (very nice) videos that you mentioned. All you would need to do is to install any livery you'd like for your production, and probably include some special liveries from your arts department -- not to mention video post production effects like color grading, sharpening, audio processing and other). If anyone buys a game solely based on some "sales videos", they may not be using the best method to decide on a purchase. So, videos may be a part of what makes people notice DCS. I think you are severely over-estimating the existence of included (vs. downloadable) liveries have on the DCS sales/conversion rate.

3 hours ago, buceador said:

the aircraft liveries are one of the key aspects of that immersion that everybody seeks

You again appear to be talking for everybody. You are not, obviously, representing me - and you could know that I strongly disagree, as that should have ben made plain by the post that you have kindly quoted. I, personally, regard liveries as completely irrelevant for immersion.

Liveries may be important to some players, although I would assume that they are more important to experienced players than neophytes. And this still says nothing to the subject of mandatory download vs optional.

I also believe that liveries may be relevant in some cases. I fly jets, where BVR kills are the norm. I assume that the majority of DCS players (especially neophytes) come to DCs for the modern jets. IMHO, liveries for jets aren't as relevant as you make them out to be - not by a looong (BVR?) shot, for obvious reasons. For warbirds, I think the case for liveries is a bit easier to make, but again I fail to see the need for too many (whatever "too many" may be) mandatory liveries 

I'm not entirely against liveries - I just included support for liveries in a tool I'm working on, and there is a beautiful mod (CAM) that is 90% liveries. I think that moderation in the set of mandatory liveries can be something that we could talk about. What I would like to see is some intelligence in the server software, where when you sign up to a mission you can opt to automatically download the liveries that are missing on your install (as long as they are part of ED's 'officially accepted' list).

Edited November 17, 2023 by cfrag

[SharpeXB]

3 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

Exploits are not cheats.

A small technicality. But removing or altering the liveries is blocked in other CFS games for this very reason. It’s funny ED doesn’t realize this can be done in DCS. 
 

3 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

A livery manager coupled with IC could solve all of that. Connect to a server, get an IC failed pop-up with an option to install the missing liveries. Please explain to me why that is bad?

Certainly this is what would happen if liveries were included in the IC. It would be a giant pain for players over $1 of hard drive space. 
 

6 hours ago, okopanja said:

Why would that be cheating?

Making the other players aircraft easier to see in a way they don’t suspect? That’s a cheat/exploit in any other CFS game. Further explanation shouldn’t be necessary. 

3 hours ago, buceador said:

This has been said (by you) on several occasions and while it is possibly true

This isn’t “possibly true”. That’s literally how it works. Try it yourself. 

[okopanja]

3 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

7 hours ago, okopanja said:

Why would that be cheating?

Making the other players aircraft easier to see in a way they don’t suspect? That’s a cheat/exploit in any other CFS game. Further explanation shouldn’t be necessary. 

Please see what I wrote later than initial comment.

[MAXsenna]

16 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

A small technicality. But removing or altering the liveries is blocked in other CFS games for this very reason. It’s funny ED doesn’t realize this can be done in DCS.

I agree with this, and that's why I can't comprehend why you of all users oppose a livery manager. It would probably help the MP community. 

19 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Certainly this is what would happen if liveries were included in the IC. It would be a giant pain for players over $1 of hard drive space. 

People want choice just as much as you do!

I love post-patch Fridays! 

Cheers everyone!  

[SharpeXB]

3 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

I agree with this, and that's why I can't comprehend why you of all users oppose a livery manager.

I’m not really against the idea of a livery manager. But its use should be to manage the custom user skins, not the official ones which should be locked. That other CFS game has one and it’s pretty well done. Again it’s only for the custom skins though. 

25 minutes ago, okopanja said:

Please see what I wrote later than initial comment.

If you mean the default livery in many cases that’s not camouflage, it’s bright aluminum. 

[MAXsenna]

I’m not really against the idea of a livery manager. But its use should be to manage the custom user skins, not the official ones which should be locked. That other CFS game has one and it’s pretty well done. Again it’s only for the custom skins though. 

Again! Why not both? It's could, SHOULD, be integrated with IC, and it will solve all your problems. What people do in SP I'm sure doesn't bother you?

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[SharpeXB]

9 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Again! Why not both? It's could, SHOULD, be integrated with IC, and it will solve all your problems. What people do in SP I'm sure doesn't bother you?
 

It seems counterproductive to give the player a tool to uninstall something will end up being required in MP. Nobody in the other sim seems to have a problem with having official liveries. Not sure why this is an issue in DCS. 
The skin downloader in the other game is a nicely made tool. The real work in creating something like this though isn’t the tool, it’s organizing the thousands of user created liveries into it. It can be done, but it’s probably better as a community tool outside the game. 

[okopanja]

11 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

It seems counterproductive to give the player a tool to uninstall something will end up being required in MP. Nobody in the other sim seems to have a problem with having official liveries. Not sure why this is an issue in DCS. 
The skin downloader in the other game is a nicely made tool. The real work in creating something like this though isn’t the tool, it’s organizing the thousands of user created liveries into it. It can be done, but it’s probably better as a community tool outside the game. 

Why not installing liveries on demand?

You login to the server, and your client figures out you do not have the livery for one player? DCS displays you low-visibility livery from default set, while in background downloads the correct livery, stores it in your local livery cache. You would be able to define the size of a cache. E.g. 10-20GB, and the non-used liveries would be deleted based on LRU (least recently used) principle.

Benefits:

• you consume less disk space on clients
• you get to see all liveries
• "no cheating" (you ensure the least visible used be default before download & load completes)

Drawbacks:

• ED needs to work to implement this. Either way if they aim for world coverage, streaming of maps is something that will surely be on their roadmap.
• ED gets larger traffic bill for their infrastructure (people keep downloading from them)
• your livery is not immediately available on first encounter.
• Some small amount of resources get consumed on client to download and load.

 

Edited November 17, 2023 by okopanja

[MAXsenna]

It seems counterproductive to give the player a tool to uninstall something will end up being required in MP. Nobody in the other sim seems to have a problem with having official liveries. Not sure why this is an issue in DCS. 
The skin downloader in the other game is a nicely made tool. The real work in creating something like this though isn’t the tool, it’s organizing the thousands of user created liveries into it. It can be done, but it’s probably better as a community tool outside the game. 

Again, choice!
I'm sure that other community has a larger MP base.
It's easy, just start from scratch and only let new user uploads be part of it. Make it easy for creators to port them over and then have them removed from the old user files section. This practically what we do with digitising of physical document archives, except some are stored of course.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[cfrag]

7 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

It seems counterproductive to give the player a tool to uninstall something will end up being required in MP

Please allow me to re-phrase what you just wrote for clarity

it seems counterproductive to me to give the any player a tool to uninstall something that will may end up being required in the opinion in of a tiny splinter of players inside the tiny minority of MP players.

So you are against something that could help all players because you deem (for debatable reasons) it essential to your edge case [to me, an edge case affects less than 5% of all cases, and less than 1% of the standard deviation]

[SharpeXB]

28 minutes ago, okopanja said:

Why not installing liveries on demand?

You login to the server, and your client figures out you do not have the livery for one player? DCS displays you low-visibility livery from default set, while in background downloads the correct livery, stores it in your local livery cache. You would be able to define the size of a cache. E.g. 10-20GB, and the non-used liveries would be deleted based on LRU (least recently used) principle.

Benefits:

• you consume less disk space on clients
• you get to see all liveries
• "no cheating" (you ensure the least visible used be default before download & load completes)

Drawbacks:

• ED needs to work to implement this. Either way if they aim for world coverage, streaming of maps is something that will surely be on their roadmap.
• ED gets larger traffic bill for their infrastructure (people keep downloading from them)
• your livery is not immediately available on first encounter.
• Some small amount of resources get consumed on client to download and load.

 

 

You’d add a lot of download and install time joining servers. Realize there can be hundreds of liveries. It’s funny if people are complaining about disc space and here the game goes and forcibly fills it up when you join a game. You’re going to need keep this free disc space of 20GB or whatever in order to play. If that’s the case why don’t you just keep the files on your machine?

27 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

It's easy, just start from scratch and only let new user uploads be part of it. Make it easy for creators to port them over and then have them removed from the old user files section. This practically what we do with digitising of physical document archives, except some are stored of course.

Sure, it was easy. I think it took like 9 years to get it to happen  But it is very nicely done. 

Edited November 17, 2023 by SharpeXB

[okopanja]

23 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

You’d add a lot of download and install time joining servers. Realize there can be hundreds of liveries. It’s funny if people are complaining about disc space and here the game goes and forcibly fills it up when you join a game. You’re going to need keep this free disc space of 20GB or whatever in order to play. If that’s the case why don’t you just keep the files on your machine?

No you would connect immediately without waiting for the livery download. During that time you have drawback of using default livery, but afterwards it would be replaced the same way it get's loaded and replaced whenever any player changes the livery(this is how DCS works already now). As for 10-20GB: yes you can reserve even space, or simply let it fill in and if there is not enough space the game deletes the livery that was not recently used (Least Recently Used).

[SharpeXB]

24 minutes ago, okopanja said:

No you would connect immediately without waiting for the livery download. During that time you have drawback of using default livery, but afterwards it would be replaced the same way it get's loaded and replaced whenever any player changes the livery(this is how DCS works already now). As for 10-20GB: yes you can reserve even space, or simply let it fill in and if there is not enough space the game deletes the livery that was not recently used (Least Recently Used).

That seems like lot of hoops to jump through and it means forcible downloads to people who are allegedly worried about drive space. And it would require effort from ED I’d rather see spent on other things. You realize that the majority of players probably just don’t care about things like this. This is a game about aircraft, go figure the aircraft are what takes up your drive space. 

[cfrag]

55 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

You realize that the majority of players probably just don’t care about things like this.

So when the majority don't care about liveries you'd agree to drop the entire subject? After all, MP PvP without BVR makes up less than 1% of all DCS. Anyone outside those perpetually obsessed with 'exploits' couldn't care less about forcibly installed liveries as long as they can install them manually. I guess that this point is moot then for you?

 

[SharpeXB]

16 minutes ago, cfrag said:

So when the majority don't care about liveries you'd agree to drop the entire subject? After all, MP PvP without BVR makes up less than 1% of all DCS. Anyone outside those perpetually obsessed with 'exploits' couldn't care less about forcibly installed liveries as long as they can install them manually. I guess that this point is moot then for you?

It’s complicating the game and the install over what is in reality a tiny amount of drive space. It’s like you guys are stuck in 2013…

[Tippis]

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

But removing or altering the liveries is blocked in other CFS games for this very reason.

…and thus your entire complaint is about a problem that doesn't actually exist.

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Certainly this is what would happen if liveries were included in the IC.

If liveries already aren't included in IC, then it's already not a problem. If they are already included in IC, then it's already not a problem. Either way, it's already not a problem. You're imaging an issue that doesn't actually exist, and it is not an argument against making it possible for users to choose how much space they want to waste on texture bloat.

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

But its use should be to manage the custom user skins, not the official ones which should be locked. That other CFS game has one and it’s pretty well done. Again it’s only for the custom skins though. 

There's no difference. If the solution works for one, it inherently works for the other and it simply becomes a matter of what livery you choose for your plane. If you pick one where you know that the other players might not see it — custom or official or otherwise — then that's on you. Your choice does not turn others into cheaters or exploiters.

 

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

It seems counterproductive to give the player a tool to uninstall something will end up being required in MP.

It wouldn't be required in MP for the same reason as why it already isn't required in MP. The game already has a graceful fallback for when some other player's livery doesn't exist locally on your system. And yes, it would be counterproductive to just make an uninstaller — the better solution is to make an installer. Which already exists. It's called the module manager, which handles the whole business of downloading optional content.

Again, inventing a problem that is already solved. The issue you envision doesn't exist because the game doesn't work that way.

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

That seems like lot of hoops to jump through and it means forcible downloads to people who are allegedly worried about drive space.

No more than forcing downloads on people just because others are allegedly worried about cheating (for which a solution already exists if it ever was demonstrated to be a problem, which has yet to happen).

Edited November 17, 2023 by Tippis

[RazerVon]

On 11/16/2023 at 7:21 PM, SharpeXB said:

If you don’t have the file installed you won’t see the other player’s livery.

An argument FOR low-resolution necessary liveries, not an argument for the 14GB of F-14 liveries, nearly all of which are just minor changes.
If you want me to see your cool Grim Reapers skin then I'll have to download that.

If you're using a standard low-vis skin then I'd have the low-res version by default.