DCS Newsletter discussion 15th April 2022 - Mi-24P Progress | AH-64D Livery Competition

[BIGNEWY]

DCS Newsletter discussion 15th April 2022 - Mi-24P Progress | AH-64D Livery Competition
 

 

[golani79]

Nice - looking forward to all those nice liveries!

Unfortunately I wont have time to participate - good luck to all!

[MAXsenna]

"We are currently refactoring the pedals trim system and pedals microswitches system."

Does this mean will get the same torque pedal trim as in the Apache", and we'll we finally get the microswitches implemented so I can mod my pedals accordingly?
If yes, I hope we'll see some updates in the Hip as well.

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[LooseSeal]

I absolutely don't mean to sound ungrateful, impatient, needy or anything like that - but I'm wondering will it be long before we get an update on some of the core work being done on the sim? I don't mean Vulkan/multicore, as that topic has been beaten to death. Something like new assets; ATC; AI work; dynamic campaign, etc and so on. We're already in April and I feel like most, if not all, the newsletters have been about minor things or specific modules.

Again - don't want to sound impatient. I'm just excited to see what ED have been working on behind the scenes! 

[Dragon1-1]

The problem is, the core features mostly involve code. Lots of it. ED probably doesn't feel like sharing things like "today the lead graphics coder spend the whole day trying to solve a bug that turned all the reflections pink by explaining it to the little pilot in the F-16 model on his desktop".  Day to day coding grind isn't even that interesting, hunting a particularly weird bug can sometimes be spun into an epic yarn, but the fewer of those, the better, since they take away time from actually building the thing.

It'd be nice to see the new assets, but they're probably rigging what they have, which, unless it involves animations you can make a gif of, is also not something that generates pretty screenshots.

[Fastbreak]

Some information respectively a summary of progress are a problem, because of missing screenshots? This is your statement- seriously?

Edited April 16, 2022 by Fastbreak

[Dragon1-1]

Read again. My statement is that a "summary of progress" isn't gonna be something anyone but other graphics coders will understand. Without knowledge of how the engine works internally, and without any training in deep magic that is low level graphics coding (that's why Vulkan is taking so long, it's a low level API, fast, but difficult to work with), it'll be a meaningless jumble of jargon. Well, either that, or it'd have to be prefaced by an impromptu introductory course in graphics coding, just to let the average pilot understand what follows. Either way, a largely pointless waste of time. It's not worth pulling coders off their tasks to write up a progress report, indeed, even making internal reports is typically counterproductive. The newsletter is a place for screenshots and short, concise descriptions of what's going on with the development. No matter how much bad managers wish it wasn't so, coding doesn't really translate to those until the very end, when you actually start getting real results.

FYI, things like Vulkan and multicore are practically invisible to the end user even after they're done. Ideally, all you'd get would be an FPS boost (in reality, you tend to also get at least a few bugs with it). Even if they did posted test results before and after, complete with machine specs, it still wouldn't tell you much. What else is there to talk about, at least to non-coders in the audience?

Edited April 16, 2022 by Dragon1-1

[St4rgun]

7 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Read again. My statement is that a "summary of progress" isn't gonna be something anyone but other graphics coders will understand. Without knowledge of how the engine works internally, and without any training in deep magic that is low level graphics coding (that's why Vulkan is taking so long, it's a low level API, fast, but difficult to work with), it'll be a meaningless jumble of jargon. Well, either that, or it'd have to be prefaced by an impromptu introductory course in graphics coding, just to let the average pilot understand what follows. Either way, a largely pointless waste of time. It's not worth pulling coders off their tasks to write up a progress report, indeed, even making internal reports is typically counterproductive. The newsletter is a place for screenshots and short, concise descriptions of what's going on with the development. No matter how much bad managers wish it wasn't so, coding doesn't really translate to those until the very end, when you actually start getting real results.

FYI, things like Vulkan and multicore are practically invisible to the end user even after they're done. Ideally, all you'd get would be an FPS boost (in reality, you tend to also get at least a few bugs with it). Even if they did posted test results before and after, complete with machine specs, it still wouldn't tell you much. What else is there to talk about, at least to non-coders in the audience?

 

I still don't get it.

There're a lot of modules in DCS and there're module specific details which are interested a lot of people. But the HEART of DCS is the graphic engine. This should interest ALL players, so any information on core progress is really useful for every user. ED was able to make a "Development report" on Vulkan / Multicore on 15th October 2021. They were able to write down something, which is not "meaningless jumble of jargon", but an understandable status report. Since then no such "detailed" report has been made.

If ED decides not to share information on this progress that's understandable. But please why, WHY are there some people in the community who have the urge to "tell the truth" about the meaningless of such reports? If someone is not interested to core progress, then don't read about it. But actively writing a comment about why it is wrong and impossible to ask for ANY status report is ridicuolus. Please, stop it.

I don't want to disturb any development. If ED would like to say us sometihing about this topic, they will find a way, I'm sure.