DCS Update discussion February 2024

[paloncho]

On 2/22/2024 at 3:16 PM, BIGNEWY said:

DCS Update discussion February 2024

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/news/changelog/

Hello guys.

I see latest release on Feb 22nd has only been done in stable rollout (I understand that unified version will be released in stable version and no more updates in open beta, correct?) Is there a way to move all progress from my current open beta version to the stable one?

Thanks in advance.

Regards. -

[Gunfreak]

10 minutes ago, paloncho said:

Hello guys.

I see latest release on Feb 22nd has only been done in stable rollout (I understand that unified version will be released in stable version and no more updates in open beta, correct?) Is there a way to move all progress from my current open beta version to the stable one?

Thanks in advance.

Regards. -

Just update the game. It happens automatically.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

2 hours ago, paloncho said:

move all progress from my current open beta version to the stable one?

What do you mean by progress? Flight hours for your virtual pilot? Campaign progress? Just copy the files you want from your OB Saved Games to the new Saved Games. For example logbook.lua  

[rob10]

3 hours ago, paloncho said:

Hello guys.

I see latest release on Feb 22nd has only been done in stable rollout (I understand that unified version will be released in stable version and no more updates in open beta, correct?) Is there a way to move all progress from my current open beta version to the stable one?

Thanks in advance.

Regards. -

At this point it's basically still being released to both, but both Stable and Openbeta are getting the same release at the same time.  At some point apparently everything will end up in a "stable" folder (hopefully it will be done automatically, but one way or other ED will give details when they do that), but for now it will stay in the openbeta folder if that's all you have installed.  If you have both currently installed it will update stable apparently and you might need to do as Raven suggested.

[LeCuvier]

Since both are the same now, I find it useless to update and maintain both. I used to fly in Open Beta only. So the "Saved Games" data for Open Beta were most relevant. Going forward, there will be no Open Beta I presume. I do not want to wait for some miraculos logic from ED to clean up for the different user situations. Therefore after the updating, I ...
1. Renamed the folder "DCS" under "Saved Games" to "DCS Old Stable". Will be deleted after a short grace period.
2. Renamed the folder "DCS Open Beta" under "Saved Games" to "DCS"-
3. Deleted the folder "K:\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World Open Beta" ("K:" is my games drive). This freed up about 400 GB on my Games drives
4. Deleted the desktop shortcuts to Open Beta and Open Beta MT. When I start the game from the shortcut "DCS World" it starts the MT version.

[Hiob]

Since you can name the folders whatever you like (of course you need to adjust your links and edit the configuration file to point at the right folder name) - I doubt that there will be any further action by ED.

When your current Installation is located in folder X and points to a savegames folder Y (regardless if it is named openbeta or kartoffelsalat) every update will honor this and just leave it alone.

Assumptions - of course!

[draconus]

7 hours ago, LeCuvier said:

Since both are the same now, I find it useless to update and maintain both.

One of the benefits of maintaining two versions was having previous version that doesn't have the bug the new one introduced. You can still do that by updating only one of them now.

Edited February 26, 2024 by draconus

[LeCuvier]

37 minutes ago, draconus said:

One of the benefits of maintaining two versions was having previous version that doesn't have the bug the new one introduced. You can still do that but updating only one of them now.

Yes, that was a potential benefit. In practice though I flew in Open Beta only because I always had at least one bird in early access and wanted to see the progress. I have never seen bugs so distastrous that I would have gone back to "Stable". I actually stopped maintaining mods in stable.
But now, as NineLine stated Thursday, "this is the unified version, no matter what version you are on now it will update to the same version.  "
Thus, no point keeping a second version.

Edited February 26, 2024 by LeCuvier

[Johnny Dioxin]

Anyone else had controller mayhem since the update? I know it's nothing new, but as I had only just redone everything with an alternative stick, it was highly frustrating.

Not only were there multiple assignment and input issues (HOTAS not being recognised by DCS World despite being recognised and working with Windows 10 until after 2 restarts) but even keyboard assignments being shown as conflicting with others, when I haven't touched keyboard assignments for years (since VR - 2016). I'm guessing that's maybe where something has been changed by ED but not by a 3rd party dev?

In any case - killed my planned flying day Sunday but I'm well into getting things reassigned - will only take a few more hours, even with back-ups, cos everything needs to be checked as well.

[rob10]

8 hours ago, Hiob said:

Since you can name the folders whatever you like (of course you need to adjust your links and edit the configuration file to point at the right folder name) - I doubt that there will be any further action by ED.

You're correct in the behaviour, but I believe it was Nineline did indicate that ED intended to clean this up at a later date (likely to avoid confusion down the road from people having different folder names).

[paloncho]

19 hours ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

What do you mean by progress? Flight hours for your virtual pilot? Campaign progress? Just copy the files you want from your OB Saved Games to the new Saved Games. For example logbook.lua  

Yeah. I don't care about logbook, just all campaigns progress. I'm trying to find that data but no success yet, will investigate a bit more knowing that can be done now. Thanks Raven!

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

1 hour ago, paloncho said:

I don't care about logbook, just all campaigns progress

Then you do care about logbook 
Campaign progress is saved in Saved Games\DCS\MissionEditor\logbook.lua

[HoBGoBLiNzx3]

I'm assuming that Vulkan will be added in 3.0? I didn't see any info on if it was released this patch.

[draconus]

1 hour ago, HoBGoBLiNzx3 said:

I'm assuming that Vulkan will be added in 3.0? I didn't see any info on if it was released this patch.

It's not released yet.

[Rudel_chw]

11 hours ago, Johnny Dioxin said:

Anyone else had controller mayhem since the update? 

 

Not on my case, I'm currently flying the Viggen and all the command bindings were OK. I heard that the Gazelle added a lot of new commands and it was likely to require re-assignment of bindings ... which aircraft did you had trouble with?

[Bucic]

Part 2 of the Dora audio update is up!

 

I have even recorded my own short stint. What an update! It's a pleasure to listen. You fly at 5000 m, dive to 4000 at a fixed throttle position, the airspeed increases and the engine audio reflects the different regime. It sings to you now!

 

[LeCuvier]

12 hours ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Then you do care about logbook 
Campaign progress is saved in Saved Games\DCS\MissionEditor\logbook.lua

logbook.lua is hard to read though. Took me a while to import it into a database (MS Access), parse the data structure and present campaign data in an understandable format.

[draconus]

3 minutes ago, LeCuvier said:

logbook.lua is hard to read though. Took me a while to import it into a database (MS Access), parse the data structure and present campaign data in an understandable format.

Because it's not for you to read - it's lua data. You just copy the file into your profile and it works in DCS.

[Shahriar0]

On 2/26/2024 at 4:06 AM, LeCuvier said:

Since both are the same now, I find it useless to update and maintain both. I used to fly in Open Beta only. So the "Saved Games" data for Open Beta were most relevant. Going forward, there will be no Open Beta I presume. I do not want to wait for some miraculos logic from ED to clean up for the different user situations. Therefore after the updating, I ...
1. Renamed the folder "DCS" under "Saved Games" to "DCS Old Stable". Will be deleted after a short grace period.
2. Renamed the folder "DCS Open Beta" under "Saved Games" to "DCS"-
3. Deleted the folder "K:\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World Open Beta" ("K:" is my games drive). This freed up about 400 GB on my Games drives
4. Deleted the desktop shortcuts to Open Beta and Open Beta MT. When I start the game from the shortcut "DCS World" it starts the MT version.

I was also impatient and went ahead with removing openbeta from my directory names, both for the main install folder as well as Saved Games. One thing to add to the above steps is that after renaming the "Saved Games\DCS.openbeta" to "Saved Games\DCS", you need to edit the "dcs_variant.txt" file (under the main install folder) and remove the word "openbeta" and save it (essentially a blank file.) Without this step, DCS keeps looking for DCS.openbeta folder and when finds none, it creates its own empty one. I suppose this can apply for Stable release too which the file includes the word stable as oppose to openbeta.

Edited February 27, 2024 by Shahriar0

[ngreenaway]

6 hours ago, LeCuvier said:

logbook.lua is hard to read though. Took me a while to import it into a database (MS Access), parse the data structure and present campaign data in an understandable format.

Why are you using MS access? That's why the data structure is so hard to read. You may as well be opening it with .txt 

You'll save yourself a lot of heartache by using MS visual studio or any other programming environment for lua, then it's super easy to work with 

[LeCuvier]

18 hours ago, ngreenaway said:

Why are you using MS access? That's why the data structure is so hard to read. You may as well be opening it with .txt 

You'll save yourself a lot of heartache by using MS visual studio or any other programming environment for lua, then it's super easy to work with 

Even if I used Visual Studio to implement the parsing and visualization of logbook data, I would use a database structure with tables and relationships to store the structured data.
Now MS Access includes VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) and that is practically the same as the VB I would use within Visual Studio. Plus, MS Access provides an object set of forms and data handling objects that make it very easy to create a data-based application.

Edited February 28, 2024 by LeCuvier

[Wizard1393]

Too bad F10 map is still unusable in VR. Still halves the FPS / makes it all juddery when going back to cockpit.

Other than that, great patch!

Edited March 1, 2024 by Wizard1393

[Cab]

48 minutes ago, Wizard1393 said:

Too bad F10 map is still unusable in VR. Still halves the FPS / makes it all juddery when going back to cockpit.

Interesting. I use F10 all the time and don’t experience this. 

[Qcumber]

1 hour ago, Wizard1393 said:

Too bad F10 map is still unusable in VR. Still halves the FPS / makes it all juddery when going back to cockpit.

I don't get this issue either. I have done in the past, but not for the last couple of updates. It used to be module specific for me. F14 in particular.

[Mistermann]

32 minutes ago, Qcumber said:

I don't get this issue either. I have done in the past, but not for the last couple of updates. It used to be module specific for me. F14 in particular.

Same.  Pimax 8kx on SteamVR.  Never experienced this issue ever in 2+ years of VR use.