Dear Heatblur: You need to get your F-14's liveries folder under control.

[Wissam24]

Agreed. It's ludicrous how big they are compared to other modules, almost to the point of arrogance? Especially considering how some of them are meme skins. I've no issue on my machine but it's quite rude to dismiss some of the playerbase out of hand as has been done in this thead, very unpleasant reading. 

[IronMike]

1 hour ago, Wissam24 said:

Agreed. It's ludicrous how big they are compared to other modules, almost to the point of arrogance? Especially considering how some of them are meme skins. I've no issue on my machine but it's quite rude to dismiss some of the playerbase out of hand as has been done in this thead, very unpleasant reading. 

Please do point out where I have been rude to anyone. The fact remains that we are well within industry standard, and not even on the upper end compared to other sim modules on the general flight sim market - if that is arrogant for you, I am sorry, but we disagree. And I also disagree that providing higher quality skins, which are still smaller than the largest skin in DCS, and simply demand a larger size, is being arrogant. If disagreeing with you is considered rude, then sorry, but I don't know what to tell you. And what you consider meme skins, others do not, and they are exactly 2, and if removed would make a difference of precisely 291,6 MB combined.

The vast majority of the community wants more skins, not less, and better skins, not worse. Requests for more and new skins are among the most frequent requests we get. The many iconic F-14 liveries are also part of the Tomcat culture, and thus expected of us. Stating these facts, in my book, is not rude. My apologies if you think it is.

Edited October 31, 2022 by IronMike

[XCNuse]

17 minutes ago, IronMike said:

the community wants more skins, not less, and better skins, not worse.

The purpose of this post should prove the exact opposite that "the community," is a mixed bag, and that it isn't so particularly black and white.

If people want the ultra high resolution HB is offering, it should be something that is provided from either the files portion of the main DCS website, the HB website... what have you, and they can put them in their custom skins liveries, which can overwrite the "default" files in the core.

 

Not ALL of us want or need such extreme resolutions that HB has shipped with the F14.

Skins for other aircraft and other modules are down below 1/4 the size and resolution, and yet... they're more than large enough at normal viewing distances.

 

There's a very good post about what high resolution texturing means when in use; and it comes down to what's large enough. It foregoes discussing resolutions, and makes that the main purpose of the entire topic. It's not about what is 4K, 8K, etc. It's about not being able to pick out pixels when your view is within standard limits.

 

Which for me, involves not going into F2 camera, and zooming in until I can't anymore and ensuring I see no pixels on the nose and underbelly....

 

Hopefully I don't get in trouble for sharing this link, but this is what I'm referring to:

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/93792-high-resolution-textureswhats-that-do-they-exist-continued/

 

My point being; like for like, the only time the F14's insanely large textures become an advantage; is when I'm zoomed in the entire way... at any normal FOV, there is no reason for the textures to be as large as they are.

By cutting them down to something more standard (and no you're right, the Apache has the same issue); it should greatly decrease the number of people placing bug reports about the F-14 causing their game to crash when their GPU has to VRAM dump every time one comes into and out of picture.

Edited October 31, 2022 by XCNuse

[Rudel_chw]

1 hour ago, XCNuse said:

it should be something that is provided from either the files portion of the main DCS website, the HB website

 

Why? why you want to force everyone else to go download liveries separately? ... are you suggesting burdening everyone else just so you can keep using your current hard drive a bit longer?

[XCNuse]

1 minute ago, Rudel_chw said:

Why? why you want to force everyone else to go download liveries separately? ... are you suggesting burdening everyone else just so you can keep using your current hard drive a bit longer?

Why is Heatblur forcing people like myself who own servers to download 12GB of liveries?

[Rudel_chw]

1 hour ago, XCNuse said:

Why is Heatblur forcing people like myself who own servers to download 12GB of liveries?

 

That seems more on ED than Heatblur, can't you just delete them afterwards?

[XCNuse]

1 minute ago, Rudel_chw said:

That seems more on ED than Heatblur, can't you just delete them afterwards?

They cannot be deleted no; if they are, the skins are not visible and no longer functional on the server.

 

It's also worth noting; people that don't even own the F14 have to have 12GB of files on their computer; this is the issue.

If folks genuinely want 12GB of files on their computer of JUST F14 skins, it should be their choice.....

I'd prefer to not have nearly that large of a mass of just texture files sitting on my drive that I never see; and when I do see.... still don't need to be able to never see a pixel no matter how far I zoom in.

 

The community is SCREAMING! for DCS to be optimized....

Heatblur can at least take a step forward and do something about it.

[Cobra847]

The F-14's textures are not unreasonably heavy @XCNuse, you have repeated this assertion a fair bit in this thread without a proper understanding of your argument. It's simply untrue. Just remeasured now to refresh my own memory- it's pegged (on average) at 480 px/m for the exterior. This is less than a typical hero vehicle standard of 512 px/m in AAA games on console.

We pick our resource usage very carefully. I can't recall the amount of hours I've spent planning and optimizing the F-14- but it's a lot. You're welcome to dump the F-14 cockpit into wireframe view and see how we've even stripped some triangles to avoid long and thin faces (super slow on the GPU). Every texture is sorted rather meticilously compression wise and we maintain relatively average industry average texel densities across the board.

The main reason you are seeing significantly heavier total texture usage in the F-14 is because it's simply bigger. The total surface area to cover with textures in the F-14 is far far bigger than the F-16. It's a completely silly comparison. In the near future, some of the liveries that ship custom normals will be reduced in size as some liveries added custom normals for various fixes or special considerations. 
 

Quote

Why is Heatblur forcing people like myself who own servers to download 12GB of liveries?

Because even the most expensive NVME m.2 SSD storage costs you 0.2c per GB, so at most we're "wasting" $2.4 worth of diskspace.

Happy to continue discussing the technical specifics for any concerns you may have.


 

Edited October 31, 2022 by Cobra847

[IronMike]

3 minutes ago, XCNuse said:

The purpose of this post should prove the exact opposite that "the community," is a mixed bag, and that it isn't so particularly black and white.

To add to what @Cobra847 said - it is also not such a mixed bag, because so far I count 2 people who want less and smaller skins, against thousands of our customers who do not, and hundreds of requests that we got who actually want even more. Not saying that there are not potentially more who stand with you, there very well may be. But in all the years since release - if - maybe a handful of ppl ever asked us to reduce our skins at best, versus hundreds who asked for more liveries, and thousands who are content with it as is. We get it, you care deeply about this. But that does not turn the general consensus of the community into a "mixed bag".

If you say you are running a server, I also very well hope it is a dedicated one that does not render. In which case this has zero performance impact for the server as well.

[XCNuse]

3 minutes ago, Cobra847 said:

so at most we're "wasting" $2.4 worth of diskspace.

So are you guys going to buy me a new SSD then since I can't just "tack on" another GB...?

 

If we want to start counting pixels let's begin. Since everyone wants to keep talking about the Viper it'll be used as reference which.. is large file size wise, and PLENTY high resolution.

F-14's phillips head screws are 11-12 pixels.

F-16s phillips head screws are 8.

If we're going for comparison's sake, that's immediately 30% larger than it needs to be... which directly correlates to how much larger it is file size wise.

 

5 minutes ago, IronMike said:

If you say you are running a server, I also very well hope it is a dedicated one that does not render. In which case this has zero performance impact for the server as well.

This is not about performance; this is about wasted drive space on ALL USERS' computers.

 

 

Please stop trying to white knight your own product; the reason this thread exists is to make others aware of what's going on.

What happens when you guys release your F-4 and we will have 40GB of skins on our drives?

 

You're literally forcing your potential customerbase from buying your product because we'll have to buy storage space just for your product whether we purchase it or not.

[Despayre]

32 minutes ago, XCNuse said:

Why is Heatblur forcing people like myself who own servers to download 12GB of liveries?

They aren't. YOU are CHOOSING to host a server. That's part of that decision. Heatblur has nothing to do with your choices.

[XCNuse]

1 minute ago, Despayre said:

They aren't. YOU are CHOOSING to host a server. That's part of that decision. Heatblur has nothing to do with your choices.

You have the exact same 12+GB of liveries everyone has; including server owners.

 

The only decision that this comes down to is whether you have DCS installed or not.

[Despayre]

26 minutes ago, XCNuse said:

They cannot be deleted no; if they are, the skins are not visible and no longer functional on the server...

So what. 

You CAN delete those 12GB of liveries on the server, and the player clients will all revert to default skins. No one loses, and for those playing online alone, I doubt most would even notice. It does NOT affect server performance in any way that I can see on my own server, whether I have those skins or not.

Additionally, if you cannot afford 12GB of drive space in 2022 (total cost on a decent cloud server, about a buck per year), then maybe it's time to reconsider the effort of running a public server. Those numbers are only going to higher, whether the entire sim is optimized in the future, or not.

[IronMike]

4 minutes ago, XCNuse said:

So are you guys going to buy me a new SSD then since I can't just "tack on" another GB...?

 

If we want to start counting pixels let's begin. Since everyone wants to keep talking about the Viper it'll be used as reference which.. is large file size wise, and PLENTY high resolution.

F-14's phillips head screws are 11-12 pixels.

F-16s phillips head screws are 8.

If we're going for comparison's sake, that's immediately 30% larger than it needs to be... which directly correlates to how much larger it is file size wise.

 

This is not about performance; this is about wasted drive space on ALL USERS' computers.

 

 

Please stop trying to white knight your own product; the reason this thread exists is to make others aware of what's going on.

What happens when you guys release your F-4 and we will have 40GB of skins on our drives?

 

You're literally forcing your potential customerbase from buying your product because we'll have to buy storage space just for your product whether we purchase it or not.

Please stop - this is getting ridiculous. No we won't buy a new disk for you, last time I checked activision did not buy me a new disk when I could not install MW2019 either - I had to wait 1 year before I could try it, because I did not have the space and not the money to spare, simple as that.

And, no we are not forcing our potential customerbase from buying our products, please do not try to blackmail us into changing our development choices to accommodate an issue that is anything but widespread in the community. Sims need space. A lot of space. They need fairly well equipped gaming PCs. Going into simming, this should be both known and expected. DCS will continue to grow in size. With each module and each map. Should we all stop developing now, so no one will ever have to upgrade their disk space? I think not.

The solution to skins, again, is a livery manager, and again: you are asking for it on the wrong forums.

We will support the wish for a livery manager with ED, but that is all we can and want to do about it. Please accept that.

[XCNuse]

2 minutes ago, Despayre said:

You CAN delete those 12GB of liveries on the server,

And guess what? They will immediately be redownloaded when the software updates.

And if a skin is not on a server install, and is chosen; it does not function; meaning nobody can see it change.

 

Running a mission with Aggressors?

Means they no longer can VID the jet as being an aggressor.

 

How is that not an issue?

[Cobra847]

5 minutes ago, XCNuse said:

And guess what? They will immediately be redownloaded when the software updates.

And if a skin is not on a server install, and is chosen; it does not function; meaning nobody can see it change.

 

Running a mission with Aggressors?

Means they no longer can VID the jet as being an aggressor.

 

How is that not an issue?

What, precisely, do you want?

You seem to be arguing for having different liveries and not having different liveries at the same time.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Cobra847

[Despayre]

1 minute ago, XCNuse said:

And guess what? They will immediately be redownloaded when the software updates.

And if a skin is not on a server install, and is chosen; it does not function; meaning nobody can see it change.

 

Running a mission with Aggressors?

Means they no longer can VID the jet as being an aggressor.

 

How is that not an issue?

First, oh no, once a month you have to delete some files... there's 4 seconds you'll never get back again!! Complete non-issue, even less of one if you take 1 minute to write a script/batch routine, to remove those files after every update... again/still, complete non-issue.

Second, re: Aggressors, you honestly cannot think of a solution for that? Leave a couple liveries around for the Aggressors to use... OBVIOUSLY, also easily scripted/batched.

 

These are not issues without solutions for those that need them. However, the vast majority, don't need them, so there's no need to inconvenience the many for the sake of a few, who already have these solutions, even if you choose not to use them.

[Cobra847]

18 minutes ago, XCNuse said:

If we want to start counting pixels let's begin. Since everyone wants to keep talking about the Viper it'll be used as reference which.. is large file size wise, and PLENTY high resolution.

F-14's phillips head screws are 11-12 pixels.

F-16s phillips head screws are 8.

This is a woefully imprecise way to measure texel density and, further, comparing to an older module built to an older density standard makes no sense either.
 

Quote

So are you guys going to buy me a new SSD then since I can't just "tack on" another GB...?

Are we obliged to buy you a GPU to run the game too?

[XCNuse]

Let's keep being comparative here then; while you guys let DCS become the fat game that it is.

Because last I checked, other flight sims I have previously had installed ALL came in under 100GB, and others weren't 20GB.

 

Meanwhile.... the as a whole F14 consumes 19.16GB of storage on everyone's computer, including dediservers.

For comparison, Razbam's Mirage2000C, which has been hailed as a major success and very very high quality as of recent..... consumes 3.55GB.

 

null

[IronMike]

17 minutes ago, XCNuse said:

Let's keep being comparative here then; while you guys let DCS become the fat game that it is.

Because last I checked, other flight sims I have previously had installed ALL came in under 100GB, and others weren't 20GB.

 

Meanwhile.... the as a whole F14 consumes 19.16GB of storage on everyone's computer, including dediservers.

For comparison, Razbam's Mirage2000C, which has been hailed as a major success and very very high quality as of recent..... consumes 3.55GB.

 

null

An older module with only 1 variant, that is not even half the size of a Tomcat vs a much newer module that in itself is larger, comes with 2 aircraft variants, a free aircraft carrier, hundreds of missions, several campaigns, 2 cockpits x 2 (with 2 aicraft variants)... It is like asking a pineapple why it could not grow to the same size of an apple. The mirage was also built in 2013 - then compare the general GPUs used in that time to the ones used in 2019 and beyond.

Please stop wasting our time with this, sorry if I have to put it so bluntly now.

Edited October 31, 2022 by IronMike

[XCNuse]

20 minutes ago, Cobra847 said:

This is a woefully imprecise way to measure texel density and, further, comparing to an older module built to an older density

Then explain to us, why your module from Spring of 2019 is an unfit and unfair comparison to such an "older" module that was released Fall of 2019.

 

No offense IronMike but the fact you want to toss in the Forrestall is hilarious; because as a whole, the thing consumes less storage space than 3 liveries on the F14....

If that doesn't prove a point of how oversized the F14's liveries are than I don't know what to say anymore.

Saying the F14 requires 300+MB paint jobs, while the Forrestal is only 1,170MB should be self explanatory.

Edited October 31, 2022 by XCNuse

[Cobra847]

5 minutes ago, XCNuse said:

Then explain to us, why your module from Spring of 2019 is an unfit and unfair comparison to such an "older" module that was released Fall of 2019.

Frankly- I was happy to discuss technical specifics with you and try to elaborate on optimization and technical choices made during the development of the Tomcat- alas you seem to have simply made up your mind and written us off as incompetent idiots with no respect for optimization or diskspace.

I'm happy to argue against any solid critique here, but the fact of the matter is that the F-14 is mastered at a very standard texel density and does not use excessive amounts of VRAM, and the amount of diskspace it uses is absolutely trivial, relatively speaking. I seemingly can't stand by this point any more clearly. You have the texel density number above, feel free to do some independent research or even ask the industry (www.polycount.com is a great resource!) if you'd like further confirmation.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Cobra847

[XCNuse]

4 minutes ago, Cobra847 said:

amount of diskspace it uses is absolutely trivial

I'm leaving this discussion then with the statement that the F14 being 14% of DCS' vanilla installation size is ... absolutely not trivial.

 

[lunaticfringe]

3 minutes ago, XCNuse said:

Then explain to us, why your module from Spring of 2019 is an unfit and unfair comparison to such an "older" module that was released Fall of 2019.

The M2K was released in 2017.

But that's besides the point- as you yourself admit, the Apache, new F-16 liveries, and the examples from the Mirage F1 show that this isn't ending, but instead heading in the direction that Heatblur chose from the start through using HD textures.  The future is now, and the dev teams are all following in that same direction, because the simple fact is that the performance and storage necessary to drive these models is accessible to the average player.  

Now I can follow the argument that a dedicated server doesn't particularly have the use for spending storage on skins.  But that's not an argument to take up with module developers, but the party that has instituted the core requirement that those liveries be part of the installation.  For those who question the need to download said liveries, again- it's the wrong tree to bark up, because multiple third parties (including HB) have stated they'd be willing to work with a download manager if the core requirement were removed.

Flip side is, you're not going to get developers and artists and content creators to cater to your individual need when it restricts their creativity and quality.  Which means you need to target your argument to the party controlling what files need to be downloaded to play or run a server, and how or if they're downloaded at all. Because this particular conversation is a nonstarter for anyone who is doing the high end work.  

[IronMike]

If vanilla for you means only Caucasus and no other module, it may be 14%, but as you can see above, if you run several modules and maps, it is absolutely trivial, and I currently have 3 maps not installed and several modules and campaigns not installed.

This again is an unfair and skewed comparison.

Edited October 31, 2022 by IronMike