Aircraft liveries: optional or mandatory?

[Hardcard]

Today's update has been the last straw for me, I'm sick and tired of being forced to download and install 30+GB of liveries that I don't want, many of them are for aircraft I don't own and will never see, since I don't play WW2 or Cold War scenarios. 

The situation gets worse as time passes, as more modules and liveries are added to DCS.

So I'm starting this thread and poll, to see if I'm alone in thinking that DCS aircraft liveries should be made optional. 

Edited January 25, 2023 by Hardcard

[SharpeXB]

Honestly I think liveries are some of the most important and appealing artwork in the game. Trying to manage the install of all these files separately would be way too confusing. It’s an all or nothing situation and needs to just be done automatically with the install. There’s no other good way to handle this. 

[Lace]

There was a good idea on the F-15E thread suggesting an overhaul of the bort number system, to include colour flashes, Sqn badges etc, overlaid on a standard grey scheme could go a long way to improve things, particularly on the USAF a/c which are all very similar in appearance.  It is nice to have variation in schemes, but the current system is a very inefficient way to store '50-shades-of-grey' liveries.

[bies]

I think it should be a compromise:

Real life historical liveries should be downloaded with the module - when fictional ones should be optional, selectable in module options, man could skip them if he wants to i.e. save space.

[upyr1]

I didn't vote as I think we need some way for the liveries to show up in multi-player without downloading them before making anything optional 

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, upyr1 said:

I didn't vote as I think we need some way for the liveries to show up in multi-player without downloading them before making anything optional 

That’s pretty much impossible. In order to see a skin you need to have it installed. 

[sirrah]

I'm not really bothered by the livery downloads (upgrade to a 2TB nvme about a year ago), but I do admit that current forced livery download system seems a bit absurd.

Just like the OP, I never fly WWII era in DCS, so it's quite pointless to have all these liveries "fill" my storage space.

I'm not sure on how to properly find a solution to this that suits all. Though personally, I wouldn't be bothered if I had a bit less skins to choose from. I mean I'm not at my pc now to count, but some modules have like 20 (or more) liveries? Seems a little excessive to me. Then again, I play VR only and hardly ever use external camera's, so most of my DCS time I don't even see other aircraft so close that I can actually see all the high texture skins.

I do like that ED (and 3rd party devs) select liveries for me, so that I don't have to spend time in the user files section. Maybe a solution could be, that modules by default come with only like 6 liveries and if you want more, you can either choose to download additional liveries selected/made by the devs (a separate "official" download section per module), and you can choose to download from the user files section.

 

But again, this ain't something I loose sleep over  

[MAXsenna]

An "intelligent" livery manager could easily solve this.


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[SharpeXB]

Really the only practical way that this works is that all the liveries are just installed automatically. Searching or managing and installing them individually just madness, that’s too time consuming. 

[MAXsenna]

Really the only practical way that this works is that all the liveries are just installed automatically. Searching or managing and installing them individually just madness, that’s too time consuming. 

By default yes, but if we had a livery manager where you could remove and exclude to prevent liveries from re-downloading during updates, and tie it in with the user files. It could help a lot, and you wouldn't really need to search anything.
Some times I wonder if the world would progress if you were in charge.

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[SharpeXB]

26 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

if we had a livery manager where you could remove and exclude to prevent liveries from re-downloading during updates

Indeed this could be a solution, there’s something like this in another sim. But… it’s a community project and took about 10 years to finally happen. And the User files section in DCS is a mess, many of those skins are probably outdated ie won’t work with the current game etc. Then there’s just the sheer volume of these to go through, a livery manager would mean sorting thousands of these. There are currently 10,323 skins in the User Files. And including the user-made skins officially in the game would mean quality checking them which is something I’m sure ED doesn’t have time for. Yes I’ve seen this handled better in other sims but it stretches the imagination to figure it getting done today in DCS. Certainly many of the user made skins are nice artwork but they’re wasted by dumping them in the user files. 

Edited January 26, 2023 by SharpeXB

[MAXsenna]

Indeed this could be a solution, there’s something like this in another sim. But… it’s a community project and took about 10 years to finally happen. And the User files section in DCS is a mess, many of those skins are probably outdated ie won’t work with the current game etc. Then there’s just the sheer volume of these to go through, a livery manager would mean sorting thousands of these. There are currently 10,323 skins in the User Files. And including the user-made skins officially in the game would mean quality checking them which is something I’m sure ED doesn’t have time for. Yes I’ve seen this handled better in other sims but it stretches the imagination to figure it getting done today in DCS. Certainly many of the user made skins are nice artwork but they’re wasted by dumping them in the user files. 

Well, for starters, it could support official skins, and then a little rework of the user files section.
But honestly, I'm using a user made livery manager now. I just start it go to the user files section and find the livery I want to install. Get the ID and enter it into the livery manager, and voila. It installs, and then knows about if I want to remove it.
Easy peasy.

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[Exorcet]

A livery manager is what we need. We have a sort of backbone for this in the module manager. Just add a section for liveries. The user could choose by plane what to download. This way module makers could have even more liveries, but those with disc space issues wouldn't need to worry about how to fit them.

[upyr1]

23 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

By default yes, but if we had a livery manager where you could remove and exclude to prevent liveries from re-downloading during updates, and tie it in with the user files. It could help a lot, and you wouldn't really need to search anything.
Some times I wonder if the world would progress if you were in charge.

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I've said before a mod and livery manager would be awesome. 

[SharpeXB]

9 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Well, for starters, it could support official skins, and then a little rework of the user files section.
But honestly, I'm using a user made livery manager now. I just start it go to the user files section and find the livery I want to install. Get the ID and enter it into the livery manager, and voila. It installs, and then knows about if I want to remove it.
Easy peasy.

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I don’t think I’d say that was “easy peasy”. Again for example there are 468 skins for the M-2000C alone. Most people I’m sure want to spend their gameplay time actually gaming instead of sorting files. This sort of thing just sucks away hours and truthfully there isn’t much use for skins. Yes they’re very cool but the stuff you download onto your machine, only you can see. Nobody else can in mp unless they have it also and given the amount of work it takes to get these it’s unlikely they did that. 

Edited January 26, 2023 by SharpeXB

[MAXsenna]

I've said before a mod and livery manager would be awesome. 

Absolutely!

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[MAXsenna]

I don’t think I’d say that was “easy peasy”. Again for example there are 468 skins for the M-2000C alone. Most people I’m sure want to spend their gameplay time actually gaming instead of sorting files. This sort of thing just sucks away hours and truthfully there isn’t much use for skins. Yes they’re very cool but the stuff you download onto your machine, only you can see. Nobody else can in mp unless they have it also and given the amount of work it takes to get these it’s unlikely they did that. 

If for some reason a user wants a skin. That user will make the effort to browse through the user section and click on the skin. The ID will be in the URL, but could easily be shown in other more handy ways. Copy that ID and paste it into the livery manager. That's how it works right now! It ain't easy enough for you?
And like @Exorcet wrote, official skins could be handled in the module manager, but I find that GUI a little cumbersome if there are lot of skins, and would probably need a restart.
I agree with @upyr1 an official "offline" mods and livery manager is the only way to go.

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[SharpeXB]

1 minute ago, MAXsenna said:

That's how it works right now! It ain't easy enough for you?

No. I find that to be a horrible waste of time. 

[Northstar98]

On 1/26/2023 at 2:36 PM, SharpeXB said:

There are currently 10,323 skins in the User Files.

It only needs to support official liveries because they're the only liveries that install by themselves. Doing that and the number drops to below 1000 and roughly a quarter of that is in the Mirage F1, F/A-18 and F-16 alone.

Out of those, I personally use less than 10% of them, but if I delete the other 90% (which honestly wouldn't take much more than a few minutes), they'll all get redownloaded every time I run a repair or update DCS.

Other liveries in the user files don't need a livery manager (though it would be nice for multiplayer compatibility) because they're opt in in the first place.

Edited January 28, 2023 by Northstar98

[MAXsenna]

No. I find that to be a horrible waste of time. 

What do you want then? That all userskins are mandatory?

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[SharpeXB]

29 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

It only needs to support official liveries because they're the only liveries that install by themselves, which is less than 1000 of them

It’s funny that you think managing 1,000 files isn’t a big deal. The average person wants all the content at the click of a button. And if these aren’t all universally installed it makes even less sense for any player to go through the trouble since other players online won’t see these if they don’t have them as well. 

17 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

What do you want then? That all userskins are mandatory?
 

The game should have a decently wide variety of skins installed automatically for everyone. As a part of the base game or included with DLC campaigns. That’s the only practical solution. 

Edited January 26, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Exorcet]

10 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

It’s funny that you think managing 1,000 files isn’t a big deal. The average person wants all the content at the click of a button. And if these aren’t all universally installed it makes even less sense for any player to go through the trouble since other players online won’t see these if they don’t have them as well.

It's not a big deal with proper tools:

Download base livery only

Download historic liveries only

Download assorted liverys up to X GB

Download all

 

Someone just needs to sit down for an hour or so and come up with some feasible options. I'm just going to hit download all always until my drive is full, then buy a new drive. What do I care about MP anyway, I play single player pretty much exclusively.

[MAXsenna]

The game should have a decently wide variety of skins installed automatically for everyone. As a part of the base game or included with DLC campaigns. That’s the only practical solution. 

Skins in campaigns are in the mission files.
If users wants to exclude or delete skins for various reasons, it should be an easier approach the what we have now.
That's the topic of this thread.
I agree they should be installed by default, to make it easier for new users.

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[Northstar98]

22 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

It’s funny that you think managing 1,000 files isn’t a big deal.

Maybe, because it just isn't?

If they're sorted and categorised by aircraft and maybe "historical" or whatever it would only take minutes. If they don't care and want to install everything, they can leave them all checked (which should be the default state).

Look I'll give you an example, there's a popular space flight simulator with little green humanoids. Someone developed a manager for all its many mods and it's very useful allowing you to search through a massive database of mods, it will it even point you dependent mods, check their version, check what they're compatible with etc you can opt in and opt out at your leisure and you can even search for things.

Hell I'll give you a better example: DCS' own freaking updater. When you run it it performs an analysis that lasts for a few seconds and if you're missing liveries it will redownload them - all a livery manager would need to do is control which of them it installs.

22 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

The average person wants all the content at the click of a button.

And how is that idea mutually exclusive with a livery manager?

Have you heard of a function called "select/check all"?

Heck, it would be perfectly acceptable if its default behaviour was to install everything it currently does and if people want to opt out, they can go through and do so.

The people who want everything have got it "at the click of a button" not having to do anything at all and the people who want to opt out of certain liveries can do so - neither group has to compromise anything, it's a win-win.

22 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

And if these aren’t all universally installed it makes even less sense for any player to go through the trouble since other players online won’t see these if they don’t have them as well.

1. Again, I'd be perfectly alright with a livery manager that by default, if you didn't touch it, would install every official livery, like what the updater does now.
2. For unofficial liveries the same problem is already present...

22 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

The game should have a decently wide variety of skins installed automatically for everyone.

And if I delete a load should it reinstall them?

22 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

That’s the only practical solution.

Except it just isn't though is it?

Edited January 26, 2023 by Northstar98

[MAXsenna]

@Northstar98
Well, the three of us have basically tried to explain the same thing.
Sharpy is just doing his usual thing at this point.

Cheers!

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