Disappearing plane skins issue

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

This "optimization" or bug is immersion killer. Please recognise another implementation of skins handling. In my opinion there are so few oficial skins that they could be stored in RAM. Or the skins could be unloaded only when plane exceed defined radius. At present it's look very bad.

 

example mission on SYN server:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGzvqFt_7cU&feature=youtu.be

[TG-55Panthercules]

Is this a BoS thing or a MP thing?  I checked a couple of SP missions in RoF, sitting on the airfield next to a plane that should have a custom skin, and after the first view (which displays the same default-switching-to-custom-skin behavior as in the BoD video in the OP) none of the subsequent views display this behavior - every time I look away and then look back, the plane is already displaying its appropriate custom skin and there's no repeated flashing from one skin to the other like there is in the OP's video.  I haven't been able to test it in RoF MP so I don't know if the repetition aspect of this is related to MP or just to BoS.

[SeriousFox]

It's a Engine thing and it got worse than RoF    

Edited December 2, 2014 by SeriousFox

[Livai]

The Skins pop-ups are there because the game load two skins at the same time and your skin is just a overlay not more. And the skins doesnt have mip-maps that allow a faster loading. With a mod that can be improved and the Performance, too.

[Anw.StG2_Tyke]

The Skins pop-ups are there because the game load two skins at the same time and your skin is just a overlay not more. And the skins doesnt have mip-maps that allow a faster loading. With a mod that can be improved and the Performance, too.

Tell that please the devs, because the status quo is pretty bad, disgusting in my opninion and a immersion-killer.

[Livai]

Tell that please the devs, because the status quo is pretty bad, disgusting in my opninion and a immersion-killer.

 

Do you think that change something? I think not? They made their .decision? Maybe for them it looks pretty good the pop-ups?

Thats not only a immersion-killer thats a huge performance-killer, too. Remember the Game load two 2048x2048 skin texture that are around 4 Mb big just for a single plane. Now look if there are many planes you can easy calculate how much that eat performance for nothing.

 

 

Thats a performance killer to have two 2048x2048 skins at the same time at your plane that are 8 MB big. Now wonder that the performance goes down

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

 

 

Do you think that change something? I think not? They made their .decision? Maybe for them it looks pretty good the pop-ups?

Thats not only a immersion-killer thats a huge performance-killer, too. Remember the Game load two 2048x2048 skin texture that are around 4 Mb big just for a single plane. Now look if there are many planes you can easy calculate how much that eat performance for nothing.

 

 

Thats a performance killer to have two 2048x2048 skins at the same time at your plane that are 8 MB big. Now wonder that the performance goes down

 

Our skins have no bugs. What LL is complaining about (I guess) is how our system optimizes texture memory by only drawing skins on planes that are within view. Sometimes, not all the time, and I haven't looked lately, you can choose to look at an external shot of a plane and if the plane happens to have a custom skin it may take a short second to appear. 

 

Jason

 

This worries me much :/

[-NW-ChiefRedCloud]

I have seen this in RoF also but I don't think it's a serious unless I've just never noticed it. And as much as I hate to draw a comparison here, I've never seen it in CloD. Of course the ATAG online servers do not allow much in the way of custom skins past squad markings. It seems to my uneducated mind that in time this should be corrected if for no other reason than to make it easier loading "A" skin as apposed to "2" skins.

 

Chief

[Remontti]

I don't like this either. Once I lost a sight of plane completely against a white cloud when its dark green skin got replaced by a white skin. By the way, you can disable skins from startup.cfg if it really bothers you.

[Livai]

This worries me much :/

Our skins have no bugs. What LL is complaining about (I guess) is how our system optimizes texture memory by only drawing skins on planes that are within view. Sometimes, not all the time, and I haven't looked lately, you can choose to look at an external shot of a plane and if the plane happens to have a custom skin it may take a short second to appear.

 

Thats the meaning from above " only drawing skins on planes that are within view ". The planes fly with their default skin all the time. Your skin that you have choosen is only a Overlay not more that disappear from the plane if the plane is not at view.  But is the plane at view the game apply your skin on the default skin from the plane. Now we have two skins at one single plane only if the plane is at view if not at view your skin disappear. That why it needs some time to load your skins that you have choosen. I still think a mod could improve performance and faster skin loading.

[-NW-ChiefRedCloud]

Ghost I don't recall this being an issue in the old IL-2. How was that different, if it was? And even though I've seen this in DCS, in RoF it isn't this extreme. Perhaps some adjustment in the time for the load sequence?

 

Chief

[JG1_Pragr]

This feature actually kills the camouflage system. Lets say you take the white camo on your plane to be less visible. But because of this, you wore the default (usually dark green) skin for some time. And the dark green object on bright white background is visible, as we say here in Czech Republic, like the fist on the eye. Moreover, the switching of the camo from default to custom makes the plane even more visible just because the human eye is more sensitive for such sharp change (you'll notice blinking object way easier than one with constant color/brightness). 

Edited December 3, 2014 by II./JG1_Pragr

[BlackDevil]

Can you check the last update ? Did it get better ?

[MadisonV44]

This is definitely an immersion killer ... and a show stopper when flying online.  

How is it possible to disable skins from startup.cfg ? 

[Remontti]

[KEY = system]
    bin_log_folder = ""
    chatlog = 0
    debug_info = 0
    dlgbox_sky = 0
    gamelog = 0
    keep_binary_log = 0
    mgenlog = 0
    mission_text_log = 0
    modes = 0
    playoffline = 0
    reset_configs = 0
    show_net_skins = 0
    skin_dir = "graphics\Skins\"
[END]

 That will make the game use default skins.

[MadisonV44]

Thank you Remonti, unfortunately show_net_skins is already set to zero in my startup.cfg ... is there another parameter to check ? 

 

Online, planes around me still appear with their default skins for one or two seconds and then display their custom skins. Each time I turn my head from the guilty plane and come back to it I've got the same visual bug, again and again. The icing on the cake is that if I do it 20 times to check my six mate, it still not in my memory cache and still blinking from dark to white ...(immersion killer each time). 

 

Having such detailing possibilities and not being able to display them correctly on the most advanced graphical sim engine is for me the last major visual issue of the game. Hope the dev will soon fix the problem rather explaining it's a network optimization inherited from ROF.

 

I'm extremely respectful and grateful to the devs for the great job done on this awesome simulation, we all can be patient and understand that it is not short term priority, but  please devs,  don't tell us it will stay "as is". It's visible as the nose on your face. 

[Remontti]

No, I don't know other ways to disable them. Maybe it was changed in some patch, because I'm pretty sure this was working earlier. But that was like 6 months ago when I tried it last time.

Edited July 23, 2015 by Remontti

[TG-55Panthercules]

Thank you Remonti, unfortunately show_net_skins is already set to zero in my startup.cfg ... is there another parameter to check ? 

 

Online, planes around me still appear with their default skins for one or two seconds and then display their custom skins. Each time I turn my head from the guilty plane and come back to it I've got the same visual bug, again and again. The icing on the cake is that if I do it 20 times to check my six mate, it still not in my memory cache and still blinking from dark to white ...(immersion killer each time). 

 

Having such detailing possibilities and not being able to display them correctly on the most advanced graphical sim engine is for me the last major visual issue of the game. Hope the dev will soon fix the problem rather explaining it's a network optimization inherited from ROF.

 

I'm extremely respectful and grateful to the devs for the great job done on this awesome simulation, we all can be patient and understand that it is not short term priority, but  please devs,  don't tell us it will stay "as is". It's visible as the nose on your face. 

 

 

I'll have to go check again to see if something has changed with RoF, but in my experience this issue in RoF has been a one-time thing - e.g., when you load in on the airfield and glance over at your AI flight mates, you will generally see the default skin momentarily and then their custom skin will pop in view.  However, for me at least, every time after that when I look away and then look back, the custom skin will be displayed immediately without the lag evidenced the first time.  Annoying certainly and I wish it would get fixed there, but at least not something that continues to annoy me throughout the missions.

[Gl-l0st]

The skin change happens on my computer in offline campaign mode and I haven't downloaded any custom skins so its not just MP.

I seldom fly MP due to the connection latency being around 250ms to 350ms, so latency would make it even worse any thoughts?

Edited July 23, 2015 by Gl-l0ST

[MadisonV44]

@ GI-I0ST: I don't think that online MP latency will make it worse because both custom skin and standard skins are stored locally.

 

@ TG-55Panthercules: Yes i must admit that a one-time display latency would be much better, annoying the first time only, and then ok. Are you speaking about ROF only ? If you've got the same behavior with BOS can you share your config details ?    

[TG-55Panthercules]

@ GI-I0ST: I don't think that online MP latency will make it worse because both custom skin and standard skins are stored locally.

 

@ TG-55Panthercules: Yes i must admit that a one-time display latency would be much better, annoying the first time only, and then ok. Are you speaking about ROF only ? If you've got the same behavior with BOS can you share your config details ?    

 

I was only talking about RoF.  I haven't flown BoS in so long other than to enter a quick mission after every patch/update (still waiting for a fix to the graphics/bubble of blur problem) I don't know how this works in BoS at this point.  

[Gl-l0st]

@ GI-I0ST: I don't think that online MP latency will make it worse because both custom skin and standard skins are stored locally.

 

@ TG-55Panthercules: Yes i must admit that a one-time display latency would be much better, annoying the first time only, and then ok. Are you speaking about ROF only ? If you've got the same behavior with BOS can you share your config details ?    

I must have misunderstood the thread as my reply was in regards to BOS nevertheless is my computer in need of more ram, 8gb on the MBoard and 4gb on the vid?

[SharpeXB]

I'll have to go check again to see if something has changed with RoF, but in my experience this issue in RoF has been a one-time thing - e.g., when you load in on the airfield and glance over at your AI flight mates, you will generally see the default skin momentarily and then their custom skin will pop in view.  However, for me at least, every time after that when I look away and then look back, the custom skin will be displayed immediately without the lag evidenced the first time.  Annoying certainly and I wish it would get fixed there, but at least not something that continues to annoy me throughout the missions.

My experience in RoF is the same, if the skin flicker happens, in SP it's only once and not repeated. I can't say I've seen the effect there in MP. If it's there I haven't noticed it.

In BoS I have the suspicion it's related to ping but since there aren't enough active servers I can't compare them.

[Matt]

I must have misunderstood the thread as my reply was in regards to BOS nevertheless is my computer in need of more ram, 8gb on the MBoard and 4gb on the vid?

I've yet to see BoS use more than 2 GB of RAM, so 8 GB is more than enough, unless you're running a lot in the background. Check your task manager when you have BoS running and take a look how much free RAM you hava, it would surprise if even half of the 8 GB would be used overall.

 

This skin-load lag has been carried over from RoF and there's no way to fix that, unless the devs decide to fix it themselves. It's a safe feature, incase the number of different skins would overload your RAM, but even if there were 100 different skins around, todays hardware should be able to handle this. So there should be an option to set this up depending on your RAM/VRAM state.

Edited July 25, 2015 by Matt

[MadisonV44]

So there should be an option to set this up depending on your RAM/VRAM state.

 

 

Completely agree with you Matt (I've got 32 Go RAM and 2 Go Video RAM and I barely even use 10% of it ...)

 

Tonight we've done a He 111 cover on Wings of Liberty server : the big bomber was so much blinking from dark green:  excellent thing for the Yaks that spotted him without delay.

 

It would have been even more understated with his lights on and smokes  !!      

[Gl-l0st]

I've yet to see BoS use more than 2 GB of RAM, so 8 GB is more than enough, unless you're running a lot in the background. Check your task manager when you have BoS running and take a look how much free RAM you hava, it would surprise if even half of the 8 GB would be used overall.

 

This skin-load lag has been carried over from RoF and there's no way to fix that, unless the devs decide to fix it themselves. It's a safe feature, incase the number of different skins would overload your RAM, but even if there were 100 different skins around, todays hardware should be able to handle this. So there should be an option to set this up depending on your RAM/VRAM state.

Any extrainious Windows services and processes are always killed before I launch BOS, ie Windows updates and BITS, they are both hungry. One program I'm not sure about though is Steam, when I launch BOS by itself Steam loads also, my game was purchased as a boxed disc so whats the need for Steam?

Back to the main point if BOS needs less than 2gb of ram to run why is it texture caching if there is at least 4gb still available?

[MadisonV44]

I seldom fly MP due to the connection latency being around 250ms to 350ms, so latency would make it even worse any thoughts?

I don't think that online MP latency will make it worse because both custom skin and standard skins are stored locally.

 

Confirmed : offline the same skin blinking occurs (I tested it today with a custom mission), so it's definitely not a network ping or latency issue.   

[SharpeXB]

I never see the skin blinking in SP

In MP I see it occasionally. Even when consistently flying on the same server. Sometimes the skins blink, sometimes they do not, sometimes the skin loading lag is quite substantial.

Not knowing much about how all this works I wonder if it depends on the ping of the other player and not the server.