Aircraft liveries: optional or mandatory?

[Hardcard]

@SharpeXB
Tidy list of all aircraft, each with its own checkbox and expandable sublist of liveries, no chaos, all very intuitive, just like a customizable installer. 
If you want it prettier and more practical, then some sort of livery manager would be a better option, something along the lines of @Exorcet's proposal.
If you want the cherry on top, then it could also have a livery preview window, just like in mission editor. 

If you want all liveries, then click on "select all ", done, nothing confusing about it. 

Anyway, you've already stated several times that getting all liveries is the only option that makes sense (to you, that is).
Therefore, you won't be choosing your liveries. 

So I'm wondering why you kept posting, telling the rest of people (the ones who, unlike you, are actually interested in choosing their liveries) what's best for them.
As if it were any of your business, as if it were up to you to decide what makes sense for other people, what's "madness", " what's "too time consuming", etc. 

Being forced to download 30+GB of unwanted liveries (only to have to delete them afterwards) every time there's an update... that's what I call "time consuming", "madness", "absurdity", etc. and it definitely makes no sense.
 

Edited January 28, 2023 by Hardcard

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Hardcard said:

@SharpeXB
Tidy list of all aircraft, each with its own checkbox and expandable sublist of liveries, no chaos, all very intuitive, just like a customizable installer. 
If you want it prettier and more practical, then some sort of livery manager would be a better option, something along the lines of @Exorcet's proposal.

If you want all liveries, then click on "select all liveries", done, nothing confusing about it. 

Anyway, you've already stated several times that getting all liveries is the only option that makes sense (to you, that is).
Therefore, you won't be choosing your liveries, you'll just select them all, right?

I would simply select all of them. Because the alternative is sorting through hundreds of files. I imagine that’s what most people would do. And it’s hard to come up with logical categories. Nearly everything in DCS would fall under “historical” and very few fictional like Top Gun Maverick’s F-18. There’s no telling what “Basic” or “Extra” means. So you’d end up sifting through a thousand files deciding which ones you want unless you just install all.

If you’re looking to control the size of your install the best way is to manage maps, not skins. They're large and are more easily selected and loaded or unloaded as desired.

Edited January 28, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Hardcard]

@SharpeXB
Again, you seem to think that you're in a position to tell other people what's best for them... stop it.

I'm already sifting through 30+GB of unwanted liveries every time there's an update, it's time consuming and absurd, which is why I started this thread and would very much like to see some sort of livery manager in DCS... or at least have the option to choose which liveries I want to download and install.  

I wouldn't have a problem with liveries if they didn't take up so much space, but they do (tomcat, apache, mirage f1 and mig21 are among the worst offenders), if there's something in DCS that should be optional, it's liveries. 
 
If you want to download and install all liveries, just select them all and you're done, you won't be forced to waste your time, so there won't be any problem for you. 
But don't force other people to do the same, I don't want to waste 30+GB (and counting) of SSD space in unwanted liveries, that's a problem for some of us and would like to see a solution.

You let me worry about what's the best way for me to classify and choose my liveries, thanks. 

[Exorcet]

On 1/26/2023 at 5:22 PM, SharpeXB said:

To simplify that I’d put it under DCS World, not just the F-16. Where install “All” means for every aircraft. And I’m not sure how any of the categories make sense for DCS. How does a player know what Historical or Extra or Basic means? With no image to show what they look like and trying to show images means showing dozens of them to choose from. That’s a pain to go through. In the end just installing All is the only thing that makes sense. Which is what we have now. So why bother?

 

Having commands to set options for multiple planes is fine, but there is an obvious need for them on a per module basis.

The categories are meant to serve as examples, not the only possible list of options. They are pretty self explanatory though and could have descriptions added to them. I specifically explained what basic and extra are, they serve to facilitate module developers in creating livery lists for users with different space needs. Modules might classify the first 10 liveries as basic for users with little disc space. Any additional liveries could be considered extra and targeted at players with unlimited space.

There is no need for images. Players who don't want liveries for a given plane pick default only. Users who want all the liveries pick all. Anyone looking for something inbetween has options.

On 1/26/2023 at 8:10 PM, upyr1 said:

That doesn't look like a bad set up- just a few changes I would make first historic liveries should be liveries used by aces and other famous pilots and then add a category for export liveries. I like having the menu for each aircraft and I would also have a DCS core option we also need a good system for multiplayer. 

 

I'm not sure if every module has liveries for famous pilots, but if so that could be its own category.

2 hours ago, Hardcard said:

Being forced to download 30+GB of unwanted liveries (only to have to delete them afterwards) every time there's an update... that's what I call "time consuming", "madness", "absurdity", etc. and it definitely makes no sense.
 

 

Yep

[SharpeXB]

17 minutes ago, Hardcard said:

@SharpeXB
Again, you seem to think that you're in a position to tell other people what's best for them... stop it.

I'm already sifting through 30+GB of unwanted liveries every time there's an update, it's time consuming and absurd, which is why I started this thread and would very much like to see some sort of livery manager in DCS... or at least have the option to choose which liveries I want to download and install.  

I wouldn't have a problem with liveries if they didn't take up so much space, but they do (tomcat, apache, mirage f1 and mig21 are among the worst offenders), if there's something in DCS that should be optional, it's liveries. 
 
If you want to download and install all liveries, just select them all and you're done, you won't be forced to waste your time, so there won't be any problem for you. 
But don't force other people to do the same, I don't want to waste 30+GB (and counting) of SSD space in unwanted liveries, that's a problem for some of us and would like to see a solution.

You let me worry about what's the best way for me to classify and choose my liveries, thanks. 

If you don’t want my opinion on the matter don’t quote me. Otherwise I’ll respond. That’s what a discussion form is all about. Discussion. 

[SharpeXB]

2 minutes ago, Exorcet said:

There is no need for images.

If you’re trying to select individual skins beyond just a category, absolutely there is. How else are you going to decide? I have one of these skin downloaders for another sim and it gives you an image along with other information for each of the skins. It’s pretty well done. But since they’re over 3,000 of them I can’t bother looking at all of them. I just select all and install. 

[Exorcet]

1 minute ago, SharpeXB said:

If you’re trying to select individual skins beyond just a category, absolutely there is. How else are you going to decide? I have one of these skin downloaders for another sim and it gives you an image along with other information for each of the skins. It’s pretty well done. But since they’re over 3,000 of them I can’t bother looking at all of them. I just select all and install. 

This thread arose out of a concern for disc space. If your drive is full, then it's pretty easy to make a decision. You don't use WWII planes? Disable all those liveries. It doesn't matter what any of them look like. You yourself seem to be under the impression that all anyone wants is an all button anyway, which would also make images pretty pointless. If there is a particular livery that you want to add or remove, then you probably know its name. I can recognize a few livery names that I'm familiar with, and I can probably ID whether I'd use quite a few more by name (North Korea for example isn't a country I use a lot because of the current map list so I might remove their liveries if I were trying to make space).

You can't seem to find a reason to go through the checklist, but others can. So I don't see the problem here.

And before it comes up, I'm not against images either. It's just that they are completely unnecessary to make a livery manager worthwhile or user friendly.

[SharpeXB]

20 minutes ago, Exorcet said:

I'm not against images either. It's just that they are completely unnecessary to make a livery manager worthwhile or user friendly.

It’s a rather important feature if you want people to actually use it. You’re asking people to select artwork that they can’t see? Does the User Files Skin section have images? Yes, of course it does. 

Have you seen the one for that other WWII sim? It’s pretty well done. 

Edited January 28, 2023 by SharpeXB

[MAXsenna]

I believe he's still hung up about the user skins being part of the "livery manager".

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[Northstar98]

6 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

If you’re trying to select individual skins beyond just a category, absolutely there is. How else are you going to decide?

By reading the name of the livery, just like how I do it now in the mission editor - no preview required.

You can already change liveries without a preview in the rearm and refuel screen.

So long as the livery name is descriptive enough (which they should be anyway), there's no issue.

A preview would be nice to have, but it's absolutely not a necessity.

Edited January 28, 2023 by Northstar98

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

You can already change liveries without a preview in the rearm and refuel screen.

Now that you mention it, this menu could be improved a bit, have it look more like the Mission Planner screen with a view of the aircraft etc.

2 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

A preview would be nice to have, but it's absolutely not a necessity.

You’re not doing this suggestion any favors by making it bland and unappealing. 

[Northstar98]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

You’re not doing this suggestion any favors by making it bland and unappealing. 

I said it wasn't a necessity (which it isn't), but would be nice to have. Right now I'm infinitely more interested in functionality rather than making it look pretty. Once the functionality exists, then by all means make it look pretty.

[SharpeXB]

8 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

I believe he's still hung up about the user skins being part of the "livery manager".
 

It would be nice to have a solution for the user skins, but managing them is probably a lost cause at this point. Indeed the livery manager I’ve used in the other sim is only for managing the community made skins. The official ones aren’t optional, which brings up an important point.

Being able to alter your opponent’s skins in MP is a cheat or exploit. You can deny them certain types of camouflage etc. That’s why the official skins in the other game are locked. I don’t know how DCS treats this. How does an enemy plane appear to you if you don’t have it’s skin? A default? Is that default bright aluminum? I seem to recall seeing an orange mesh all over them for missing textures. This is something to be considered if players can manage the skin install themselves. 

We got to page 3 of this discussion before realizing the reason why a skin manager for the official liveries isn't feasible. The official skins need to be mandatory and unalterable otherwise they can be exploited or used to cheat in MP. My guess is you wouldn't pass the IC if you remove or alter these so having a manger in the game that lets you do this doesn't make sense.

Edited January 28, 2023 by SharpeXB

[upyr1]

12 hours ago, Exorcet said:

I'm not sure if every module has liveries for famous pilots, but if so that could be its own category.

15 hours ago, Hardcard said:

No but in your original proposal you were going to use historical for export liveries. Which is why I suggested have a category with export one historical with famout pilots and maybe historically significant planes- like prototypes. My only question is how to best deal with liveries that didn't get installed. For example if someone is is flying an A-10 in this livery

and you don't have it installed then what happens? The folks who don't select all liveries either lack space or bandwith 

Edited January 28, 2023 by upyr1

[Exorcet]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

It would be nice to have a solution for the user skins, but managing them is probably a lost cause at this point. Indeed the livery manager I’ve used in the other sim is only for managing the community made skins. The official ones aren’t optional, which brings up an important point.

Being able to alter your opponent’s skins in MP is a cheat or exploit. You can deny them certain types of camouflage etc. That’s why the official skins in the other game are locked. I don’t know how DCS treats this. How does an enemy plane appear to you if you don’t have it’s skin? A default? Is that default bright aluminum? I seem to recall seeing an orange mesh all over them for missing textures. This is something to be considered if players can manage the skin install themselves. 

You get the missing texture skin, which is orange or something. As far as I know you can force this to show up on planes currently by deleting skins, so having a livery manager doesn't enable this anymore than is already case. It's not hard to solve in any case. The missing skin can be replaced by one that isn't missing. If you really want to be paranoid about it then you could have a bunch of low res skins to cover different camos as replacements.

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

We got to page 3 of this discussion before realizing the reason why a skin manager for the official liveries isn't feasible.

Which disucssion? Certainly not the one in this thread, official livery management is totally feasible.

12 minutes ago, upyr1 said:

No but in your original proposal you were going to use historical for export liveries. Which is why I suggested have a category with export one historical with famout pilots and maybe historically significant planes- like prototypes.

Export liveries, if they are real, would be historical no? In any case though, if desired we could rearrange the categories.

12 minutes ago, upyr1 said:

My only question is how to best deal with liveries that didn't get installed. For example if someone is is flying an A-10 in this livery

and you don't have it installed then what happens? The folks who don't select all liveries either lack space or bandwith

Missing liveries can be replaced by the default. Or we could have low res versions of liveries for MP.

[SharpeXB]

4 minutes ago, Exorcet said:

You get the missing texture skin, which is orange or something. As far as I know you can force this to show up on planes currently by deleting skins

Ok so deleting skins is an exploit in MP. Making your opponents appear bright orange. Why then create a manager that allows the player to easily do this?

Another point is that skins should be part of the IC. Surprising that they’re not. 

[Northstar98]

19 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Being able to alter your opponent’s skins in MP is a cheat or exploit. You can deny them certain types of camouflage etc

This is something the IC could and should handle, if whoever's managing the server wants it to do so.

It could warn people that they don't have a livery one of the players is using and even optionally prevent people from joining if said livery is a requirement.

But this is already just as prevalent an issue with the current system, without needing to involve a livery manager in the discussion.

19 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

I don’t know how DCS treats this. How does an enemy plane appear to you if you don’t have it’s skin? A default? Is that default bright aluminum? I seem to recall seeing an orange mesh all over them for missing textures. This is something to be considered if players can manage the skin install themselves. 

The missing textures 'texture' last time I checked was a mostly green almost digital camo looking thing.

19 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

The official skins need to be mandatory and unalterable otherwise they can be exploited or used to cheat in MP.

No they absolutely don't.

Just include liveries into the things the IC checks for and give it the optional capability to enforce certain liveries be installed, at the discretion of whoever is managing the server.

17 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Ok so deleting skins is an exploit in MP. Making your opponents appear bright orange. Why then create a manager that allows the player to easily do this?

This problem is not a problem of having a livery manager, because this is already an issue in the current system (exactly nothing is stopping me from deleting official liveries, they'll just get downloaded again when DCS is updated or repaired).

This issue, is that of the IC not checking liveries, but that's not what this thread is dicussing.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Northstar98

[SharpeXB]

3 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

No they absolutely don't.

Just include liveries into the things the IC checks for and give it the optional capability to enforce certain liveries be installed, at the discretion of whoever is managing the server.

If something is part of the IC then making it unalterable in the game is the sensible thing to do. Giving players tools which will just get them kicked online is counterproductive. 
 

This is all much ado about nothing. 30GB in today’s world of hardware is hardly anything. You can buy a 1TB SSD for $49. 

[Northstar98]

8 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

If something is part of the IC then making it unalterable in the game is the sensible thing to do.

No it absolutely isn't - by any stretch of the imagination.

If everything under the purview IC scans would be made unalterable, then the IC would be completely redundant...

All it would achieve is a further expansion of what ED did to many of the .lua files back when 2.7 was released, we should all know how well that went down, meaning many user mods (many of them to fix issues), would cease to function.

8 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Giving players tools which will just get them kicked online is counterproductive.

If anything is counterproductive, it's passing measures that annoy your customer base.

8 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

This is all much ado about nothing.

Oh dear, grasping at straws are we?

You've already said you have no use for a livery manager (despite you apparently being in favour of them for whatever other game you mentioned), so of course you're going to say this.

8 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

30GB in today’s world of hardware is hardly anything. You can buy a 1TB SSD for $49. 

Oh great, I should be required to swap out my SSD so I can store an ever growing amount of data I don't see a use for, that sounds reasonable (not).

[upyr1]

 

22 hours ago, Exorcet said:

Missing liveries can be replaced by the default. Or we could have low res versions of liveries for MP.

I think this would be the best idea instead of the weird green digital camo. I think giving people the option to download and upload liveries might be a good idea as well. I figure they could use a torrent to make it faster 

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

No it absolutely isn't - by any stretch of the imagination.

That’s how this other sim deal with this. I don’t notice anyone complaining about it over there. 

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

Oh great, I should be required to swap out my SSD so I can store an ever growing amount of data I don't see a use for, that sounds reasonable (not).

Welcome to PC gaming. Keeping your hardware current is part of the hobby. Fortunately this isn’t something that needs to be done very often. Until recently I had DCS on the same SSD for 10 years. That’s the last time I installed a new drive. 

[Northstar98]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

That’s how this other sim deal with this. I don’t notice anyone complaining about it over there.

But were not talking about the other sim are we?

You see plenty of people complaining about it over here and next to nobody (apart from maybe you) in favour of such a thing so...

Go figure?

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Welcome to PC gaming. Keeping your hardware current is part of the hobby. Fortunately this isn’t something that needs to be done very often. Until recently I had DCS on the same SSD for 10 years. That’s the last time I installed a new drive. 

You might want to re-read what I said... Particularly the bit when I said data I don't see a use for. And more importantly, data I can get rid of without experiencing any detriment to myself, so no, turns out I actually don't need to do this at all.

This "welcome to PC gaming, you've got to keep your hardware current" is an irrelevancy. It's just more ad hoc nonsense trying to prop up a position that's barely holding on.

"There's no good/sensible way to do this than the current system" to "managing liveries is too hard/cumbersome/complicated/confusing/time consuming" to SharpeXB classics: "it would take too much time to develop/programming it would be too complicated", to "it won't work without thumbnails" to "deleting liveries is cheating" to now "this isn't a big deal, just buy a new SSD".

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

Particularly the bit when I said data I don't see a use for

Yes but other players do use the standard skins and they’re relying on everyone else to have them installed in order to do so (in MP). I think many people don’t realize how this works. Any player uses the skins with the expectation that they’ll be seen by the other players. That requires both parties to have them installed. Allowing players to uninstall them at random basically makes selecting them pointless. Let alone that eliminating certain skins can be an exploit. It’s an important aspect of that game and a standard feature as much as anything else. There are better and easier ways to manage the install size. And overall it’s a small portion of that. 

Edited January 29, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Exorcet]

55 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I think many people don’t realize how this works.

No, the problem is that you don't realize that your opinions are your own and no one else's.

You're describing unrelated problems that exist regardless and have already had solution proposed.

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Exorcet said:

No, the problem is that you don't realize that your opinions are your own and no one else's.

Well the topic is a poll asking me for my opinion. It’s not a problem for me or anyone else to have one.