Add option that allows a new flight record to start when the previous one has ended

[spamRoast]

Type of improvement:

Game setting for flight record behavior

Explanation of proposals:

Add a config option to allow for a flight record (and related tacview) to automatically start a new flight record when your previous flight record has stopped.

Benefits:

It would allow for fluid flight records. When you're in the middle of a battle, it is often impossible to realize that your flight record has stopped recording because the only cue is that the red icon goes away. I often don't notice because I'm focused on the battle, so I often miss parts of a battle in flight records until I realize that a recording has ended and I start a new one manualy. If we had a config setting like Automatically continue flight records, it would allow for flight records to automatically start a new when the previous one has ended and it would allow us to have fluid flight records and tacviews. This is somewhat related to the following suggestion among others:

 

Apologies if this has already been suggested. If so I can just delete this post.

Edited July 5, 2018 by obit

[Velxra]

This would be a great addition along with simplification of recording names in the flight log listing. 

[Gr3y]

Bit of a necro but I agree that this kind of option would be nice to have, or even better having the option to change the maximum size of the record file.

[spamRoast]

On 7/28/2018 at 2:28 PM, Geronimo553 said:

This would be a great addition along with simplification of recording names in the flight log listing. 

Yeah I agree.

 

Not only could the recording names be shorter or organized differently, but while we're discussing flight record names I also think the sorting can be fixed. They're sorted mostly by date, but it looks like the filenames themselves seem to have inconsistencies when sorting. It's possible that the records are sorted ascii-betically instead of a natural alphabetical sort, but I haven't looked into this much. Just thinking that if we're suggesting fixing names, may as well suggest to fix the sorting too since they're related.
 

12 minutes ago, TrueGrey said:

Bit of a necro but I agree that this kind of option would be nice to have, or even better having the option to change the maximum size of the record file.

IMHO, necros are fine for suggestion posts. Not everyone will see the post or have thoughts right when it got posted and new ideas may come along later.

Anyway, yeah I definitely agree that there should be control over flight record sizes. I also think that flight records should give a simple and short visual cue that the recording is going to stop. Even a simple, light flash of the camera icon before it goes away or another visual cue would work. Otherwise, it's very easy to miss that it stopped. But I'm with you that the best option is to just allow differing record sizes.

My (New) Suggestions:

1. Add a visual cue when flight recording near max size: This is to let player know when a flight recording is nearing the max size so that they know to start a new recording. Right now the flight recording icon goes away when the size is reached, but if you're in battle it's very easy to miss that your recording has stopped... until it's too late. A flashing flight record icon or some sort of UI update could help with this.
   
   -And/or-
    
2. Add new options for flight records for users who want to control flight record size:
   1. Max Flight Record Size: 500MB (current default I think). Current suggestion is to allow this to be modified or set it to allow unlimited size, meaning flight records will continue filling the disk until flights are done. Sidenote: There might be another reason that IL2 team wants to cap records at 500MB, not sure.
   2. Automatically Restart Flight Records: true or false. If this value is true and the max record size is reached, the flight record will still give a visual cue so the player knows that their max size was reached and a new recording will be started automatically.