Please Fix the Replay system, I'm so tired of this...

[VinntoreZ]

I've decided to write this post since I didnt see anyone who reported this issue get enough attention, so I'll try myself

As you may know, we - content creators are constantly working with DCS replay system.
Anyone who worked with them knows how annoying can they be. Seems that with recent updates almost all replays have some sort of problems in them.

Most commonly it is with how AI behaves while playing live and how it behaves on replay. It very often happens that AI enemy planes manouver differently which makes targeting them on radar impossible, since it recoded my input aiming the TDC cursor at somewhere the bandit is not anymore (despite it was there live), or similiar thing with vertical scan or HMD targeting - In F-16 if you are not in cockpit and moving your head to aim at the bandit the fox-2 wont get a lock, so how are you supposed to record it "from the outside"?

The other problem with that is often times you not being able to shoot at nothing - because AI went the other way on replay - means the AI continues to do its thing, shoots you, and then you fly the plane wreck till the end of mission.

The same happens with missile targeting, your radar can hold lock in live gameplay but can drop lock on replay - meaning fox1 that hit the bandit, wont hit on replay. Same with fox-2 and fox-3 missiles, they often dont hit their target on replay or even go for a different one. Why are their tracking and flypath being recalculated again on replay?

Recently theres this bug where your plane will vibrate violently during flight - especially on fc3 planes and mods, happens by itself, when using autopilot or damper, or when the plane gets damaged - even seen on Wags fulcrum videos (which he claims is not a replay bug but rather something to do with the fulcrum, we all know its not, looks exactly the same as the replay bug thats been there for years).
MiG-29A Fulcrum often does not retract the front landing gear, you probably know about this.

I understand that replay feature is mainly for debugging but like c'mon, it works exactly like 10 years ago, records inputs as unreliable as 10 years ago, and almost nobody uses it for debugging but for screenshots and videos.
Why cant it record position and state of every object on the map so there is no problems like mentioned above? We dont mind the replay being hundreds of megabytes in size - IL-2 Sturmovik already does that and noone is complaining since the replays do their job there. Especially when you can disable track recording which I'm sure you can In dcs.

Some of the replays are straight up innaccessible. You either get "mission load fail" message, or when you load a mulitplayer replay theres no replay, rather just server mission started locally on your pc. It doesnt matter if you use mods or not, although modded dcs tends to have this issue more often which I kinda understand.

As a person who was uploading dcs videos almost daily, I know how much pain in the a$$ it is to work with them, often having to replay and record the same mission over and over again until replay works fine.
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one having problems with that, because Its been like that for years.

Please do something with that, especially given the fact that without Youtubers and other content creators DCS wouldnt be as popular as it is, so at least give us, creators, a proper working tool.

Have a nice evening

Edited yesterday at 01:28 AM by VinntoreZ

[MAXsenna]

I agree and hope for a new reworked system. But if you have read the other threads, you must have understood that what we currently have is NOT a replay system. It's a debugging tool that have been made available to us, for better or for worse. It just records our inputs, not what happens in the "world". So, it's pretty useless in this state, because it just replays the mission as it is with our inputs. That's why AI can react differently with each "replay".
I completely understand your frustration, but don't think what we have will ever get better. The tracks are great for the devs for the debugging, what what we need is a completely new recording appliance. But I guess that will be very taxing on the system recording 1000+ units in some cases. Oh, well!



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[VinntoreZ]

7 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

I agree and hope for a new reworked system. But if you have read the other threads, you must have understood that what we currently have is NOT a replay system. It's a debugging tool that have been made available to us, for better or for worse. It just records our inputs, not what happens in the "world". So, it's pretty useless in this state, because it just replays the mission as it is with our inputs. That's why AI can react differently with each "replay".
I completely understand your frustration, but don't think what we have will ever get better. The tracks are great for the devs for the debugging, what what we need is a completely new recording appliance. But I guess that will be very taxing on the system recording 1000+ units in some cases. Oh, well!



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Yes, I have read about it and I also mentioned in the original post, that I am aware of the purpose of the replay system. We got some additional camera options in the replays, so ED is well aware of what we use it for most of the time.
It is been unchanged since lockon days, I'm hoping we'll get some improvements or completely new system made for creating videos or taking screenshots.
I understand recording all of the units may take some resources and replays could be big. but just allow it to be switched on or off.

[MAXsenna]

23 hours ago, VinntoreZ said:

Yes, I have read about it and I also mentioned in the original post, that I am aware of the purpose of the replay system. We got some additional camera options in the replays, so ED is well aware of what we use it for most of the time.
It is been unchanged since lockon days, I'm hoping we'll get some improvements or completely new system made for creating videos or taking screenshots.
I understand recording all of the units may take some resources and replays could be big. but just allow it to be switched on or off.

Right, the resources might not be that much of an issue for making content, because then one can just use the resources one wants on the video, and making many clips is not that hard, if we had a working replay with diffent camera angles and rewind and fast forward functions.

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Edited 11 hours ago by MAXsenna

[Loki_v2]

+1. The current system is difficult to use for proper recording and also for its stated purpose of reviewing bugs.  What am I supposed to do with 3 hour long mission tracks and no rewind button (and no guarantee that it exactly matches what happened)?  I don't understand how ED uses it.  

Easier use = more videos and content, more cinematics, more tutorials and more module sales.  

Edited 14 hours ago by Loki_v2

[rob10]

2 hours ago, Loki_v2 said:

+1. The current system is difficult to use for proper recording and also for its stated purpose of reviewing bugs.  What am I supposed to do with 3 hour long mission tracks and no rewind button (and no guarantee that it exactly matches what happened)?  I don't understand how ED uses it.  

They are using totally different tools than what DCS users have with trackfiles.  For them debugging having the correct inputs likely lets them see how they are interacting with the program.

2 hours ago, Loki_v2 said:

Easier use = more videos and content, more cinematics, more tutorials and more module sales.  

While I'm sure this is true to some degree, I think too many people who make or watch these videos assume that everyone watches them (they don't) and greatly overestimate their value to promoting DCS.

[G21pilot]

This should really be on the list of things that need overhaul. I agree with the OP.