IMPORTANT - Uninstall your unofficial mods!

[Reflected]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

If you want to play any of my (or others') campaigns, the first thing you MUST do is to uninstall any unofficial mods you have installed. Don't just disable, delete. Assets, planes, anything. It's because they may or may not (they probably will) interfere with DCS in the weirdest ways and I cannot guarantee that the missions or campaign will work as intended as long as you have a single file in your folder that didn't come through the module manager (skins are OK).

Official modules are tested thoroughly by ED, by the testers and then the community, they can't even be released until they cause any glitch. This can usually not be said about unofficial mods. 

I get it, they're fun, cool, and I wish some of them were part of the official game, but right now you're wasting your own time (and mine) trying to troubleshoot campaign problems as long as you have any of them installed.

 From now on I won't be touching any bug reports before it's confirmed that it happens without any mods installed as well.

Thank you!

 

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by Reflected

[Reflected]

Interesting how I posted this video exactly a year ago. Not sure what's going on in December and January, but this year, I'm getting 2-3 bug reports a day where very, very weird things are happening and only to that specific player, and I'm unable to reproduce.  99% of the time it turns out it was caused by some unofficial mod. As I said, I get it. They are cool, free, and those modules and assets are very much needed in DCS. What people don't realize is that if John Doe releases a free mod, a static penguin asset or a flyable ice cream truck, he won't test every aspect of the core game whether his bunch of code messed it up. Or even if he does he won't do that after every DCS update. This is why mods are unsafe.

3 bug reports a day and that's probably just the tip of the iceberg. I dare not imagine how many players fire up my campaign, see an A-10C in WW2, or watch the AI do something that completely breaks the mission, and just assume these campaigns are sh*t without bothering to report these bugs on the forums.

It's a complete sh*tshow, a disaster, I'm fed up with mods beyond words - even though I wish a lot of them were part of the core game.

If you fly a campaign or expect to use any core feature of DCS (e.g. expect an AI to fly from point A to B or expect the P-51 to have tracers and such), then

1) REMOVE ALL MODS (If you say "I have no mods" and then 2 days later you add "oh yeah I have the Goshawk and the A-4, but those should be safe, right?' I swear I'm gonna look up your address and pay you a personal visit to buy me a beer )

2) RUN A SLOW REPAIR (DELETE EXTRA FILES OPTION CHECKED)

3) TRY AGAIN

4) SPREAD THE WORD because this is destroying DLC content.

Thank you, rant over.

[Jayhawk1971]

Does Voice Attack/ VAICOM Pro count as a mod?

Edit: I'm asking pre-emptively. I haven't had time to play DCS since November, therefore I haven't encountered any bugs. But just in case, since I don't want a vengeful Reflected knocking on my door.   Although I would buy you a beer anyway!   

Edited January 12, 2024 by Jayhawk1971

[Reflected]

Haha I never used it but it was found to exacerbate the MT problem of DCS missing stop flags

[MAXsenna]

On 1/12/2024 at 9:49 PM, Jayhawk1971 said:

Does Voice Attack/ VAICOM Pro count as a mod?

Edit: I'm asking pre-emptively. I haven't had time to play DCS since November, therefore I haven't encountered any bugs. But just in case, since I don't want a vengeful Reflected knocking on my door.   Although I would buy you a beer anyway!   

 

Just finished Paradise Lost. No issues with VAICOM at all. Actually, no issues with any of my mods. Only issue I had was the AI take off bug, which ED fixed.

Cheers!

[Reflected]

1 hour ago, MAXsenna said:

Just finished Paradise Lost. No issues with VAICOM at all. Actually, no issues with any of my mods. Only issue I had was the AI take off bug, which ED fixed.

Cheers!

Baltic found out that with VAICOM DCS is more likely to miss flags and tasks, so it exacerbates the MT stop flag bug.

[MAXsenna]

Baltic found out that with VAICOM DCS is more likely to miss flags and tasks, so it exacerbates the MT stop flag bug.

Yes, I know. Just wanted to point out that it didn't happen at all with your campaign.
Also, VAICOM is constantly updated now. No idea, if that has helped. Obviously, if I run into trouble in a campaign, the first step will of course be to disable it.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Jayhawk1971]

It would be great if Baltic and the new VAICOM team could stick their heads together sometime, maybe they can figure out what's going on with the flags? I don't see ED taking an interest, as I suspect they might be working on their own voice command integration.

For me personally, it may not be a good situation potentially (still haven't had time to play DCS, as I am in the middle of moving, and all my peripherals are still in some boxes somewhere ), since I simply can not go back to the Jester wheel in the Tomcat. We'll see. Maybe ED simply squishes that MT bug soon. 

No issues in non-Tomcat campaigns so far (I think), as I don't use Voice Attack for any other module than the Tomcat - mostly because I am simply too lazy to figure out how to set up another profile, as I hardly know how I managed to set up the current one (kinda stumbled into creating a working profile for the Tomcat).  Also it's not really necessary for those modules, since I would only ever use it for the radio menu, which I don't need that much anymore anyway with the current scripted SP campaigns. 

I can see me using VAICOM intensively with the Phantom and Jester 2.0.

Edited February 11, 2024 by Jayhawk1971

[Reflected]

41 minutes ago, Jayhawk1971 said:

It would be great if Baltic and the new VAICOM team could stick their heads together sometime, maybe they can figure out what's going on with the flags? I don't see ED taking an interest, as I suspect they might be working on their own voice command integration.

For me personally, it may not be a good situation potentially (still haven't had time to play DCS, as I am in the middle of moving, and all my peripherals are still in some boxes somewhere ), since I simply can not go back to the Jester wheel in the Tomcat. We'll see. Maybe ED simply squishes that MT bug soon. 

No issues in non-Tomcat campaigns so far (I think), as I don't use Voice Attack for any other module than the Tomcat - mostly because I am simply too lazy to figure out how to set up another profile, as I hardly know how I managed to set up the current one (kinda stumbled into creating a working profile for the Tomcat).  Also it's not really necessary for those modules, since I would only ever use it for the radio menu, which I don't need that much anymore anyway with the current scripted SP campaigns. 

I can see me using VAICOM intensively with the Phantom and Jester 2.0.

 

I’m sorry but what could Baltic do about it? ED needs to rewrite the MT code to make sure it’s never allowed to miss any flags or tasks. Baltic, Vaicom, you and I have the same access to that code: none.  

Probably the vaicom code itself doesn’t interfere with dcs the same way unofficial mods do, but it’s an extra load on the cpu which makes the MT engine more likely to be too busy to notice flags and tasks. 
 

e.g. i see that bug more often when I play in VR than in 2D. 

Edited February 11, 2024 by Reflected

[Jayhawk1971]

vor 40 Minuten schrieb Reflected:

I’m sorry but what could Baltic do about it? ED needs to rewrite the MT code to make sure it’s never allowed to miss any flags or tasks. Baltic, Vaicom, you and I have the same access to that code: none. 

My thought process was that maybe they could isolate the instances when those triggers won't work that could maybe help the VAICOM team find what's going on in the VAICOM code? Something must be in there that exacerbates that bug? The VAICOM code, not ED's code. 

EDIT:

Zitat

Probably the vaicom code itself doesn’t interfere with dcs the same way unofficial mods do, but it’s an extra load on the cpu which makes the MT engine more likely to be too busy to notice flags and tasks. 

Well, if the problem is an overtaxed CPU due to unoptimized MT code, then the problem should go away anyway once ED streamlines the code. 

Also, I'm aware that Baltic is a very busy guy, hence why I wrote "it would be great", not "he absolutely has to immediatly, right now, or [insert meaningless string of consequences]". 

Edited February 11, 2024 by Jayhawk1971

[Reflected]

I don’t think there’s anything wromg with the Vaicom code. I mean if you run Spotify in the background that also  puts more stress on the cpu, but that doesn’t mean Spotify needs to work on anything  I may be wrong though, I never used vaicom. 

[MAXsenna]

I don’t think there’s anything wromg with the Vaicom code. I mean if you run Spotify in the background that also  puts more stress on the cpu, but that doesn’t mean Spotify needs to work on anything  I may be wrong though, I never used vaicom. 

VAICOM works essentially as Helios, Ikarus, DCS-BIOS, Simshaker and other apps that uses the export.lua It actually circumvents the radio menu. Some files are changed related to radios and Jester. So I guess if you use a lot of 3rd party apps that relies on the export.lua, you can potentially run into issues. TacView also comes to mind.
So, yes. Once MT gets thoroughly optimised, I hope issues will be a thing of the past.
Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Jayhawk1971]

vor 6 Stunden schrieb MAXsenna:

VAICOM works essentially as Helios, Ikarus, DCS-BIOS, Simshaker and other apps that uses the export.lua It actually circumvents the radio menu. Some files are changed related to radios and Jester. So I guess if you use a lot of 3rd party apps that relies on the export.lua, you can potentially run into issues. TacView also comes to mind.
So, yes. Once MT gets thoroughly optimised, I hope issues will be a thing of the past.
Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk
 

Thanks, let's hope ED can optimize their MT code soon. 

[blihp]

dumb noob question here - building on the question on if VAICOM breaks things. What is a mod? Is it anything that is non-native to DCS? Do third party apps like SRS / Helios / Kneeboard / DCSBios Bridge / DCSBiosHub etc all count as mods? I expect alternate planes, graphics, skins, maps etc are? thanks for your patience with the dumb q

 

[Reflected]

Skins are fine. VAICOM has casued problems with some of my tomcat missions. The main culprits are unofficial assets and planes that you don’t install through the module manager

[Viking 1-1]

So all I have to do to drink a beer with you is using mods and complain about your campaign not working?

Nice, that sounds easy

[Reflected]

1 hour ago, Viking 1-1 said:

So all I have to do to drink a beer with you is using mods and complain about your campaign not working?

Nice, that sounds easy

You also need to get that beer to me