Track recording is non-functional

[quantumchance]

It appears this well-known bug is still around. My only ONLY request is to simply remove the feature from availability. It's like advertising you're selling cheeseburgers, however when you order it the cheese is moldy. Remove the moldy cheese and stop giving the users the impression we have features that in fact, we do not.

[razo+r]

There is still use for this function. No need to remove it. 

[Dangerzone]

Agreed. We know it contains issues, and doesn't work as we would like it. But it doesn't mean it's not usable either. For short track files (and reporting bugs to ED), it's invaluable. 

[MAXsenna]

It appears this well-known bug is still around. My only ONLY request is to simply remove the feature from availability. It's like advertising you're selling cheeseburgers, however when you order it the cheese is moldy. Remove the moldy cheese and stop giving the users the impression we have features that in fact, we do not.

If you search this forum you'll find that it's actually a debug tool and was never intended war replays/videos. Main issue is that it often gets desynced in SP while if you set up your own MP server it's much better, except for missing video controls like rewind etc.

Cheers!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[Nealius]

"Non-functional" totally depends on the module and what you're doing with it.

[SharpeXB]

Agree this feature should just be removed from the game. It isn’t reliable even for the most simple recording and therefore I can’t see how it’s of any value in bug reporting. If anything it just spins their wheels, a useless bug report is worse than no report at all. If it had any value in bug tracking you’d think it would have been fixed by now. 

Edited August 29, 2023 by SharpeXB

[buceador]

2 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Agree this feature should just be removed from the game. It isn’t reliable even for the most simple recording and therefore I can’t see how it’s of any value in bug reporting. If anything it just spins their wheels, a useless bug report is worse than no report at all. If it had any value in bug tracking you’d think it would have been fixed by now. 

 

I disagree!  It's like watching something totally new, completely abstracted from reality, you literally have no idea what will happen next, It's SO exciting!

[MAXsenna]

Just now, SharpeXB said:

Agree this feature should just be removed from the game. It isn’t reliable even for the most simple recording and I can’t see how it’s of any value in bug reporting. If anything it just spins their wheels, a useless bug report is worse than no report at all. If it had any value in bug tracking you’d think it would have been fixed by now. 

Lol! You guys crack me up. I just used a track from another user last night to find out an issue. 

It's of no consequence what you guys want anyway. Tracks won't go away. There could be an option as a choice whether you want track recording or not. I would support that. 

Users totally misunderstand what a track does and does not. Was never intended to be a video tool. 

Peace out!

[SharpeXB]

6 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Lol! You guys crack me up. I just used a track from another user last night to find out an issue. 

It's of no consequence what you guys want anyway. Tracks won't go away. There could be an option as a choice whether you want track recording or not. I would support that. 

Users totally misunderstand what a track does and does not. Was never intended to be a video tool. 

Peace out!

But it’s really just a big waste of time because odds are the track won’t show you anything like what happened. Even for very simple things. And if it was that useful for bug reporting it would have been fixed by now. It’s amazing that ED would prefer to get useless tracks submitted which is a waste of their time vs just putting that time into fixing the feature. 

[Nealius]

If you don't like it then don't put the mouse button over the save track button, name it, save it, then navigate to the replay button, click that, open the file, and load the track.

It's literally easier to not use it than it is to complain about it on a forum.

[SharpeXB]

1 minute ago, Nealius said:

If you don't like it then don't put the mouse button over the save track button, name it, save it, then navigate to the replay button, click that, open the file, and load the track.

It's literally easier to not use it than it is to complain about it on a forum.

If they removed the feature people would stop complaining that it doesn’t work

[MAXsenna]

But it’s really just a big waste of time because odds are the track won’t show you anything like what happened. Even for very simple things. And if it was that useful for bug reporting it would have been fixed by now. It’s amazing that ED would prefer to get useless tracks submitted which is a waste of their time vs just putting that time into fixing the feature. 

So ignore it. It is of no consequence for you!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

If they removed the feature people would stop complaining that it doesn’t work

You're bored again today?

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[SharpeXB]

10 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

So ignore it. It is of no consequence for you!

It doesn’t reflect well on the game to have something dysfunctional in it. Eagle Dynamics seems like a capable company but then this issue makes you wonder. Why include something that clearly doesn’t work? Why ask for tracks in bug reports when they’re less than useless? It doesn’t make them look very good. 

[Nealius]

9 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

It doesn’t make them look very good.

Neither does not having any trailers for their products because there's no replay function.

[Art-J]

As mentioned many times up to that point, the feature kind-of works in muliplayer. It also mostly works for me in my short and simple warbird missions (maybe modern aircraft modules are more susceptible to playback issues? I don't own any of them them so can't comment). Last but not least, track file contains mission file, which was sufficient for me a couple of times in the past when troubleshooting someone else's bug reports. So it does clearly have a purpose for a part of the playerbase here. True, not for all of us, but certainly for a number higher than zero.

Sharpe, seriously, have you ever considered admitting once that you might actually be wrong about somethng? That applies to your general activity on these forums...

[SharpeXB]

26 minutes ago, Art-J said:

Sharpe, seriously, have you ever considered admitting once that you might actually be wrong about somethng?

I’m not wrong in pointing out that the track feature is broken and therefore pretty much useless. The first step in investigating a bug would be to play back the track to see what the player was doing. After all they might be doing something wrong and what they’re reporting isn’t even a bug. Or it would show you exactly how to reproduce the problem. Right there the track feature is less than worthless because you don’t know what you’re seeing in the track is even accurate. It doesn’t matter what other info the track file contains because that very basic troubleshooting step isn’t possible. 

26 minutes ago, Art-J said:

As mentioned many times up to that point, the feature kind-of works in muliplayer.

It actually doesn’t. It’s just as broken there as in SP. What does “kind-of works” even mean? 

Edited August 29, 2023 by SharpeXB

[MAXsenna]

1 hour ago, Art-J said:

Sharpe, seriously, have you ever considered admitting once that you might actually be wrong about something? That applies to your general activity on these forums...

Fat chance! You'd be better off plying roulette.

 

47 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

The first step in investigating a bug would be to play back the track to see what the player was doing. After all they might be doing something wrong and what they’re reporting isn’t even a bug.

I have done exactly this twice this week. Follow @Flappie and you might get some insight.

 

49 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I’m not wrong in pointing out that the track feature is broken and therefore pretty much useless.

That's your opinion. Not facts.

 

50 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Or it would show you exactly how to reproduce the problem.

Told you above how to do that. But people are lazy.

 

51 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Or it would show you exactly how to reproduce the problem. Right there the track feature is less than worthless because you don’t know what you’re seeing in the track is even accurate.

Depends...

 

51 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

It doesn’t matter what other info the track file contains because that very basic troubleshooting step isn’t possible. 

That's not up to you to decide. If the moderators and developers find it useful, there must be a reason even if you are blind to it.

 

[SharpeXB]

18 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

That's your opinion. Not facts.

It’s a fact that it doesn’t work. I think everyone knows that. 

18 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

That's not up to you to decide. If the moderators and developers find it useful, there must be a reason even if you are blind to it.

I’d be curious to know exactly how they find the tracks to be useful, it doesn’t make sense to ask for them when they know they’re broken. Replaying the mission using the track and then saying they can’t reproduce the problem doesn’t solve anything. 

Edited August 29, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Flappie]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

It’s a fact that it doesn’t work. I think everyone knows that.

Here's my personal opinion, not ED's: if DCS tracks were useless, this sim would be dead by now. We -testers-, ED devs, and third party devs use DCS tracks on a daily basis. As an example, today I used tracks to report issues, and I used tracks to verify upcoming fixes. Tracks, tracks, tracks.

To sum it up:

1. Tracks do work, especially when it comes to reproduce an issue happening in a short time window. That's what DCS tracks were made for initially.
2. Tracks are NOT as reliable as a video maker would want them to be. That is a problem for video makers, yet ED said many times that it was not a high priority issue from their point of view.
3. The shorter the track, the more reliable it is.

[SharpeXB]

17 minutes ago, Flappie said:

The shorter the track, the more reliable it is.

In my experience even short simple tracks are unreliable. And many bugs are revealed in longer missions such as in multiplayer. 
Sure DCS can make use of the tracks as they are now because there’s no alternative. It would be better served by tracks which actually worked. I’m amazed that you guys would prefer to keep looking at these broken tracks than spend the effort to fix the feature. It’s like continually putting buckets under a leaky roof instead of fixing the roof. 

[Flappie]

54 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

In my experience even short simple tracks are unreliable. And many bugs are revealed in longer missions such as in multiplayer. 
Sure DCS can make use of the tracks as they are now because there’s no alternative. It would be better served by tracks which actually worked.

You keep saying DCS tracks don't work even though you don't use them.

I use them, like, a lot, and I tell you they are reliable as long as they are short. If you don't believe me, there's no need discussing this any longer.

[SharpeXB]

Just now, Flappie said:

You keep saying DCS tracks don't work even though you don't use them.

I use them, like, a lot, and I tell you they are reliable as long as they are short. If you don't believe me, there's no need discussing this any longer.

I’ve tried to use them plenty of times over the years only to discover again and again that they don’t work. Many times for things that seem very simple like a quick mission or short track. It would be a big waste of my time (and yours) to try and repeat a bug with this and try to report it because odds are you won’t see anything like I did. 
 

So how is it useful if I try to report a bug which happens at the end of a mission if the track shows my plane crashing into a hill right after takeoff? Other than getting a copy the mission file in the track what use is this?

[MAXsenna]

I’ve tried to use them plenty of times over the years only to discover again and again that they don’t work. Many times for things that seem very simple like a quick mission or short track. It would be a big waste of my time (and yours) to try and repeat a bug with this and try to report it because odds are you won’t see anything like I did. 
 
So how is it useful if I try to report a bug which happens at the end of a mission if the track shows my plane crashing into a hill right after takeoff? Other than getting a copy the mission file in the track what use is this?

Again you're missing the point.
You are correct in regards that issues might happen very late in a mission, but do you expect the devs, or power users like @Flappie, that do it all for free to help you personally, to watch endless tracks. Or isn't it better to make a short one that shows the issue straight away?
Also consider that the devs have some tool we don't know about that can keep track of or analyse whatever you did with your controllers, even if the track in regards to "the world/sim" is broken.

I do agree with you though, that it would be better if a track could be FF/RW, and we could save a chunk of it for troubleshooting. I'm positive it will come when it's doable in the future state of the sim.

Cheers!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[SharpeXB]

48 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

do you expect the devs, or power users like @Flappie, that do it all for free to help you personally, to watch endless tracks.

Yes because it’s their job. If the lack of features in the track replay makes this harder, they can certainly do something to rectify that. The chief thing that wastes their time here is that they could go through this long track only to find it broken. Again that’s on them. 

48 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Or isn't it better to make a short one that shows the issue straight away?

No because it’s a waste of my time to try and make a track since it will probably be broken. It’s also not my job to go bug hunting, it’s the testers job. I’m a customer not a tester. 

48 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Also consider that the devs have some tool we don't know about that can keep track of or analyse whatever you did with your controllers

I did in fact just ask the question how these tracks would be useful despite a broken playback. I haven’t heard that answer. I can’t see how a log of commands without an accurate playback makes any sense. 
 

The other problem with dysfunctional replays is that it prevents me from reviewing my own report and perhaps making screenshots, noting the time etc to make investigating easier. 

Edited August 29, 2023 by SharpeXB

[MAXsenna]

@SharpeXB
Like I wrote. I agree with all the improvements you want for the tracks. We all do I suppose. But none of your arguments validate a need to remove the feature. Which was what I responded to in the first place.

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk