Today's patch added the entire shaders folder to IC, effectively blocking every quality of life mod that accessed that folder

[key_stroked]

In the effort to block the dots/spotting mod, ED decided to just block the entire shaders folder.
Mods like the clear canopy glass, Tacca's NVG mod, and better smoke are now blocked from working on any MP server that has IC enabled.

Good job ED. All you needed to do was stop one mod from being abused and you ended up blocking a good chunk of them. The clear canopy glass is the one I'm most upset about. I can't see f--k all through the Mi-8 cockpit with those horrible baked in reflections and sunlight added to the mix.

[SharpeXB]

Well it’s not exactly fair in MP for some players to alter their graphics like that with regard to spotting etc. This should be controlled by the IC. 

[key_stroked]

4 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Well it’s not exactly fair in MP for some players to alter their graphics like that with regard to spotting etc. This should be controlled by the IC. 

Having canopy glass that you can clearly see out of is hardly an unfair advantage.

[Extranajero]

11 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Well it’s not exactly fair in MP for some players to alter their graphics like that with regard to spotting etc. This should be controlled by the IC. 

Im sick of hearing about what is and isn't 'fair' in MP, mostly it's used in a " won't somebody please think of the children " way to justify a set of conditions that make no sense when you think about them properly.

[SharpeXB]

8 hours ago, key_stroked said:

Having canopy glass that you can clearly see out of is hardly an unfair advantage.

Yes it is if one player can do it and another can’t. Not everyone wants to use mods or knows that this one even exists. 

1 hour ago, Extranajero said:

Im sick of hearing about what is and isn't 'fair' in MP, mostly it's used in a " won't somebody please think of the children " way to justify a set of conditions that make no sense when you think about them properly.

Having certain players able to adjust visibility in a way that others can’t is cheating. Plain and simple. 

[Extranajero]

16 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Having certain players able to adjust visibility in a way that others can’t is cheating. Plain and simple. 

They could download and apply the mod, that way everyone gets to operate in a level playing field. Takes a couple of minutes.

This whole thing is all about the gaming types who obsess over their kill\death ratios not wanting to give up their advantage, nothing else.
They have an influence which is completely disproportionate to their tiny numbers.

I'd like servers to stop tracking kill stats completely, then they might all go to somewhere like Fortnite, where they belong.
If people want to keep a record of how amazing they are, then they can write it down on a piece of paper.

[Hobel]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb SharpeXB:

Having certain players able to adjust visibility in a way that others can’t is cheating. Plain and simple. 

And what do we do with people who set their resolution to 800x600 or similar to gain an advantage?

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Extranajero said:

They could download and apply the mod, that way everyone gets to operate in a level playing field.

Not everyone wants to use mods or is even aware that this one exists. 

1 hour ago, Extranajero said:

This whole thing is all about the gaming types who obsess over their kill\death ratios not wanting to give up their advantage, nothing else.

Nobody wants to play an unfair game. 

1 minute ago, Hobel said:

And what do we do with people who set their resolution to 800x600 or similar to gain an advantage?

Honestly that should be fixed too. 

[Eldur]

Just my d*bleep* opinion, but with heavily impaired eyes, I absolutely rely on modding the dot sizes in DCS to even remotely be able to spot anything airborne and I still can't see $*bleep* (sorry for the wording, but that's the only appropriate way to handle how I've been mistreated by mankind, absolutely not ED's fault though). Needless to say that modding dots never worked online anyway as "Full (local)" or "Dot only (local)" effectively just equals "No" and literally every server that had that setting enabled somehow had it enabled like that, but never just went the full way - and ED owes us an explanation on what the "x (local)" thing actually means in the server browser as it suggests that the local settings are taken and not overriden by the server, but always ends up with the thing being just disabled (the manual is pretty quiet on that as well BTW). Which I why I stopped flying online, literally. I don't have many hopes left to be somehow able to fly online withput getting my plot served to me on a silver plate constantly... modding the visibility was one of the hopes that never worked though. And to be fair, yes, I totally see how that can be abused to gain unfair advantages... but as always: One single dude that acts like a jerk breaks it for tens or hundreds of thousands... I always loved how open DCS was for modding, and seeing how it keeps closing itself up in little steps makes me sad.

Rule #1: Don't give in to the multiplayer cry babies!

[SharpeXB]

16 minutes ago, Eldur said:

One single dude that acts like a jerk breaks it for tens or hundreds of thousands

Yup. Funny how cheating does that

[Extranajero]

41 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Nobody wants to play an unfair game. 

 

Then shall we ask for ED to have the FW190A8 turn like a Spitfire, instead of lurching from one accelerated stall to the next, pulled by it's asthmatic but indestructible engine ? that's hardly fair. Or maybe the Spitfire should get the A8's armament, which shreds anything the pilot can get in front of him ( fat chance of that ) with one mighty burst ?

I don't want to play a game at all. That's half the problem here, gamers and the gaming mentality.
As far as I'm concerned I've " won " if I get to land after a sortie.
 

[SharpeXB]

6 minutes ago, Extranajero said:

Then shall we ask for ED to have the FW190A8 turn like a Spitfire, instead of lurching from one accelerated stall to the next, pulled by it's asthmatic but indestructible engine ? that's hardly fair. Or maybe the Spitfire should get the A8's armament, which shreds anything the pilot can get in front of him ( fat chance of that ) with one mighty burst ?

I don't want to play a game at all. That's half the problem here, gamers and the gaming mentality.
As far as I'm concerned I've " won " if I get to land after a sortie.
 

You’re confusing the abilities of the aircraft with the conditions and rules of the game. As a simulator game it’s inevitable that the aircraft will have unequal abilities. That’s part of the challenge. 
DCS may not be for you if this isn’t what you expect from a game. 

[Extranajero]

Have you had a sarcasm bypass ?

[NineLine]

Dear all,

We needed to first block files that were being exploited. We are now working on adapting the spotting mod to suit users and server owners alike for better gameplay. I understand your frustration when something no longer works the same as it has, but we are working towards a better solution than what was available before.

The same goes with the reflections, while I understand some liked to remove them completely, we need a better solution and I will be submitting that to the team as well. 

We already have our first version of the improved dots in an internal build and will be testing, tuning and tweaking and hopefully, we can show something soon.

Thanks.

[TPrince]

This is from 2017 ...  So we are talking 5 years.  So I think we can all agree that this issue has been around.   

 

 

But looks like there will be light at the end of the tunnel. 

[IanC58]

49 minutes ago, NineLine said:

Dear all,

We needed to first block files that were being exploited. We are now working on adapting the spotting mod to suit users and server owners alike for better gameplay. I understand your frustration when something no longer works the same as it has, but we are working towards a better solution than what was available before.

The same goes with the reflections, while I understand some liked to remove them completely, we need a better solution and I will be submitting that to the team as well. 

We already have our first version of the improved dots in an internal build and will be testing, tuning and tweaking and hopefully, we can show something soon.

Thanks.

Maybe you should clearly state the way forward, as in, we are working to block the use of any user created mods, it would be nice to know rather than stuff being blocked secretly?

I presume you will be deleting any unusable mods from the downloads section?

Edited May 19, 2023 by IanC58
more info

[SharpeXB]

15 minutes ago, IanC58 said:

I presume you will be deleting any unusable mods from the downloads section?

I think that should be the responsibility of the mod maker. ED shouldn’t be bothered to evaluate every mod. 

[IanC58]

14 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I think that should be the responsibility of the mod maker. ED shouldn’t be bothered to evaluate every mod. 

It sounds like ED is evaluating every mod though huh?

[SharpeXB]

14 minutes ago, IanC58 said:

It sounds like ED is evaluating every mod though huh?

When it comes to their attention that it’s allowing an exploit in the game? I suppose they do. But continually testing every mod that gets made isn’t their job. 

[Eldur]

4 hours ago, NineLine said:

The same goes with the reflections, while I understand some liked to remove them completely, we need a better solution and I will be submitting that to the team as well. 

We already have our first version of the improved dots in an internal build and will be testing, tuning and tweaking and hopefully, we can show something soon.

 

That does sound solid, thanks for teaking measures. BTW, speaking of which, DCS still has the problem of showing dots or any kind of labels even when the object is obstructed by the very own aircraft / cockpit. I've never been fond of that, because that literally makes any of those solutions a see-through capability which clearly does represent an unfair advantage over others that don't use labels. You guy have to work on that to improve the general acceptance of that option. We don't want to have to rely on lefuneste's 3dmigoto mod only to be able to use any sort of dot labels without getting x-ray capabilites.

As for the reflections: Why don't you guys just go ahead and improve on what you did already? A few of your very own modules do have some special options for reducing some sorts of reflections already which especially was a hot thing then people noticed those reflections are baked-in. You could solve this by adding that set of options to all of your modules, make your third parties to do so as well until date X, mandatorily and add a difficulty option for those who want to host servers that wouldn't allow the use of reflection disabling on the canopy glass. BTW, while you'd be at it, also add a clear glass panes option as well, so we don't need those retexturing works anymore that some of us might prefer to use. You'd really do us a great thing by going that way, even if it takes an amount of time we have to patiently wait for.

[key_stroked]

18 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Yes it is if one player can do it and another can’t. Not everyone wants to use mods or knows that this one even exists. 

Having certain players able to adjust visibility in a way that others can’t is cheating. Plain and simple. 

Everyone has access to these mods. They're free and freely found. Before this recent patch, there was literally nothing stopping anyone from using them.
It's not my problem that someone else can't do a little searching and find these mods the same way I found them.

If someone chooses not to use a mod that improves visibility looking through simulated glass out of the cockpit, that's their decision. Shouldn't have to affect me or my game one bit. You seem to have confused the word "can't" for "won't". Anyone can use these. If players won't, that doesn't mean I'm cheating by using them.

[unknown]

1 hour ago, key_stroked said:

Everyone has access to these mods. They're free and freely found. Before this recent patch, there was literally nothing stopping anyone from using them.
It's not my problem that someone else can't do a little searching and find these mods the same way I found them.

If someone chooses not to use a mod that improves visibility looking through simulated glass out of the cockpit, that's their decision. Shouldn't have to affect me or my game one bit. You seem to have confused the word "can't" for "won't". Anyone can use these. If players won't, that doesn't mean I'm cheating by using them.

Wait, are you seriously complaining that now you have to deal with the same limitations that your opponents had/have to deal with in the past?

Why don't you just play on servers which dont't have IC enabled? There everyone can use the mods they like and on IC enabled servers everyone IMHO should play vanilla version of DCS.

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, key_stroked said:

Everyone has access to these mods. They're free and freely found. Before this recent patch, there was literally nothing stopping anyone from using them.
It's not my problem that someone else can't do a little searching and find these mods the same way I found them.

If someone chooses not to use a mod that improves visibility looking through simulated glass out of the cockpit, that's their decision. Shouldn't have to affect me or my game one bit. You seem to have confused the word "can't" for "won't". Anyone can use these. If players won't, that doesn't mean I'm cheating by using them.

Many people don’t want to use mods due to the problems they can cause or the difficulty in dealing with them. And no, everyone isn’t aware of mods like this one. 
Please… you’re just trying to justify cheating  “it’s everyone else’s fault if they don’t cheat like I do” 

Edited May 20, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Extranajero]

47 minutes ago, unknown said:

Wait, are you seriously complaining that now you have to deal with the same limitations that your opponents had/have to deal with in the past?

 

Unless someone has got access to a time machine we'll never know what a piece of 1940's perspex is like to look through. Even if it's new old stock that's been kept on a shelf the material degrades, and then when it's fitted to a frame there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, to avoid stresses creating micro cracks.
What I can say with a degree of certainty is that some canopies in DCS look like they've been fitted to gate guards and have 70 years of UV and weather damage, while others look like they've just been fitted in 1944 by a conscientious ground crew.
The Spitfire ( which I hardly fly these days ) is one of the worst offenders, the canopy on that has a lot of character, but it's horrible for the pilots vision. That just wouldn't have been allowed by the quality control systems in place at the time. I'd prefer it if the Spitfires canopy was painted black, because they are very difficult to kill
But the BF109K4's armoured screen seems a bit at odds with reports on how poorly manufactured German glass was at that stage of the war. Maybe it's a bit too clear and needs some tinting ? I don't know, it's difficult enough to even find a grainy black and white photo of a K4
If all you ever fly is the Jug then you'd wonder what all the damn fuss is about, you'd think that canopies are just fine as they are.

Then there is the issue of lighting - that was all altered in DCS a couple of years ago and some canopies worked with the new system just fine, while others picked up truly awful reflections from cockpit lights with the new rendering system. The FW190A8 suffers badly from those in low ambient light, and the indicators can't be dimmed in the sim, although they can in the real aircraft.

One long term solution would be to have a consistent set of ( 3DS ? ) materials for perspex and for armoured glass, that get used in all modules unless there's good evidence that a particular aircraft had better or worse visibility. That way, if the rendering system alters again it'll be a lot simpler to tweak things back to where they should be.

Until then, this mod removes the issues of the worst offending modules.
 

24 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Please… you’re just trying to justify cheating  “it’s everyone else’s fault if they don’t cheat like I do” 

 

You've got a very broad definition of cheating, haven't you ?

But meanwhile I've never, ever seen anyone complain about the real cheaters, maybe they just don't notice what's happening right in front of them....

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Extranajero said:

You've got a very broad definition of cheating, haven't you

This mod is a clear an example of cheating as there can be. That’s obvious to everyone. Including ED apparently.