Liveries taking up too much space for planes I don't even own.

[MoCluck]

My DCS HDD is so full i cannot update the game and play it. Liveries for the F14 and F4 take up 34Gb of space between them. I don't even own these planes. This is a bit ridiculous. Is there a way to safely remove the liveries and not crash the game or move them to another drive?  

[MAXsenna]

@MoCluck Oh, another Treesize user!  

You can safely delete them, but they will just be downloaded again. (Have a look at the latest wishlist thread, and give your opinions there). 

What you can do is move coremods to another disk, and just make a symbolic link back to the main folder. Many users have done this with maps when their disk gets full. My DCS installation is ≈1TB.

https://www.howtogeek.com/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

There's even a shell extension you can use, which makes it all easy through a GUI. I know some other people are using even easier software to do this. The name escapes me though. 

Cheers! 

 

[silverdevil]

10 hours ago, MoCluck said:

Is there a way to safely remove the liveries and not crash the game or move them to another drive?  

 

10 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

There's even a shell extension you can use, which makes it all easy through a GUI.

Not sure if this is your thought max. this is one of the several i know. 

https://github.com/Benisgo/Symbolic11

[MAXsenna]

Not sure if this is your thought max. this is one of the several i know. 
https://github.com/Benisgo/Symbolic11

Exactly that one! Thanks buddy!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[pixelpilot]

I've just noticed the same thing. 55gb of aircraft files I don't even own. It would be good if you could check a box for each livery you want installed per aircraft, even the ones you do own. Makes sense if you only want to play certain theatres and/or time periods.

[silverdevil]

12 minutes ago, pixelpilot said:

I've just noticed the same thing. 55gb of aircraft files I don't even own. It would be good if you could check a box for each livery you want installed per aircraft, even the ones you do own. Makes sense if you only want to play certain theatres and/or time periods.

the pic posted by OP is CoreMods. when you join a server and fly against people, how will you see their AC represented? the CoreMods are all the official modules that DCS has.

[Rudel_chw]

20 minutes ago, pixelpilot said:

55gb of aircraft files I don't even own.

 

Even if you don't own them, that just mean that you can't pilot them, but you can still use them as AI units on your missions, to play as opposition or allied units.

22 minutes ago, pixelpilot said:

It would be good if you could check a box for each livery you want installed per aircraft, even the ones you do own.

 

Just consider it for a bit: for example just the Phantom has 72 liveries ... you think that having 72 checkboxes would be practical? ... another example, the F-14 has 67 liveries, the F-16C has 51, and so on ... honestly, having to select which I want and which I don't would be really tedious, I'd rather select all of them and just consider a disk with 55 GB of extra space.

[TheBiggerBass]

Where does DCS look for liveries? And which location is prioritized in case the same liveries are installed more than once in seperate locations? I found these locations:

• DCS World/CoreMods/aircraft/<aircraft name>/Liveries
• DCS World/Mods/aircraft/<aircraft name>/Liveries
• Saved Games/DCS/Liveries/<aircraft name>/Liveries
• Saved Games/DCS/Mods/<aircraft name>/Liveries

There may be even other locations. I also found the same liveries as .dds files in a directory but also packaged in a .zip file. Which ones does DCS use?

I would like to store them at a single location in their most size efficient form, preferable as a .zip.

[Czar]

13 minutes ago, TheBiggerBass said:

DCS World/CoreMods/aircraft/<aircraft name>/Liveries

Actual external liveries. Controlled and non controlled aircraft.

13 minutes ago, TheBiggerBass said:

DCS World/Mods/aircraft/<aircraft name>/Liveries

Cockpit Textures.

13 minutes ago, TheBiggerBass said:

Saved Games/DCS/Liveries/<aircraft name>/Liveries

User made liveries that you download on the internet to enrich your experience. Optional and by default empty.

The path is not right, btw. It should be: Saved Games/DCS/Liveries/<aircraft name>/<livery name>

13 minutes ago, TheBiggerBass said:

Saved Games/DCS/Mods/<aircraft name>/Liveries

Cockpit AND external textures/liveries that comes with an aircraft MOD by default.

Edited 55 minutes ago by Czar
extra thingy there

[TheBiggerBass]

Ok, understand. But in which priority does DCS looks them up to use them? Like this?

1. Saved Games/DCS/Mods/<aircraft name>/Liveries
2. Saved Games/DCS/Liveries/<aircraft name>/<livery name>
3. DCS World/CoreMods/aircraft/<aircraft name>/Liveries

Which would imply to only place new liveries in Saved Games/DCS/Mods/<aircraft name>/Liveries

What format have these liveries to be stored? Do they have to stored as .dds in there seperate directories or can the directory be packed as a space saving .zip? 

[Rudel_chw]

28 minutes ago, TheBiggerBass said:

can the directory be packed as a space saving .zip?

zipping liveries does not save disk space, because the graphics format of the textures is usually already compressed.