Please Stop Trashing Our Flight Records!

[the_dudeWG]

I can't understand how this is becoming a common occurrence with some updates. It never happened with Rise of Flight updates, but it's starting to become commonplace with BoS. This adds a lot of work to my skins creation as all of my preview images are prerecorded  flight records with the optimal view angles, lighting and background. Having these flight records means less time spent on creating these images and more time skinning and enjoying the game. Thank you.

[SharpeXB]

This happened with RoF updates too. It’s the inevitable price of progress.  

[[DBS]Browning]

This even happened in 1946. It's common with many games that record tracks.

[AndyJWest]

Trying to maintain backwards compatibility with track recordings would be a programming nightmare.

[Cpt_Siddy]

can you access them by reverting to older version? 

[AndyJWest]

17 minutes ago, Cpt_Siddy said:

can you access them by reverting to older version? 

 

If you'd managed to keep an older version from being updated (which basically requires disconnecting from the internet before you start it up), it would play files recorded in that version, obviously. Otherwise, there is no way to 'revert' versions, because trying to support that would be another nightmare...

[Cpt_Siddy]

26 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

 

If you'd managed to keep an older version from being updated (which basically requires disconnecting from the internet before you start it up), it would play files recorded in that version, obviously. Otherwise, there is no way to 'revert' versions, because trying to support that would be another nightmare...

 

Steam has a perfect system for that if i am not mistaken, you can just caches all the versions there. Works perfectly for most games that use it. 

[AndyJWest]

1 minute ago, Cpt_Siddy said:

 

Steam has a perfect system for that if i am not mistaken, you can just caches all the versions there. Works perfectly for most games that use it. 

 

That's fine until people try to fly multiplayer on different versions. Or load a track recorded on another version. Or expect to be able to transfer settings from one version to another. And so on...

 

Having everyone running the same version keeps things a lot simpler for the developers, and not being able to play old tracks is a small price to pay for the frequency of updates we are getting. 

[Cpt_Siddy]

Literally no other game that got this system has the problem you mentioned above. In MP, the server just displays the version of the game it is running and badabim badabum, technology. 

 

If you want latest version, just click one button in steam, if you want to change your version, just go and change to the previous release versions that can be cached with no problemo. 

 

This is literally standard for most of not all the game i have so far come across in Steam. Be it strategy game like Stellaris or Total War series, who also suffer from the same save game and records incompatibility across different versions. 

 

There is no real legitimate technical reason not to do this, only convenience and "cant be bothered to hire an intern with a price of a hod dog to manage versions". All valid economic reasons, but none of them are valid technical reasons.

 

/edit: and This game already forbids you to even see the servers that are being flown with different versions, you can see this phenomena every time new patch hit. 

This is just a function of tight control over the versions and code the current owner of IL2:BoS IP displays. (probably due to the fact this game is popular in countries that are notorious for the fact they pirate anything that is not nailed down)

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by Cpt_Siddy

[AndyJWest]

Ah yes, the 'insult the developers, that's bound to make them change things' argument. Works every time...

[Cpt_Siddy]

1 hour ago, AndyJWest said:

Ah yes, the 'insult the developers, that's bound to make them change things' argument. Works every time...

 

What? I am laughing at you, only way i can "insult" devs is wither i chose to purchase products or not. 

If anyone is insulting devs here, it is you, by insinuating that a job that first year college student can handle is beyond them. Lack of this feature is their choice, and not incompetence. 

 

The very fact that this feature is missing in Steam with IL2 came as a surprise to me, actually, since it is mostly as a standard feature for most of the games i know...

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by Cpt_Siddy

[the_dudeWG]

14 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

This happened with RoF updates too. It’s the inevitable price of progress.  

This may be true, but I guarantee that it did not happen in the 2 to 3 year time frame that I was creating skins and preview images using my current method. I would be OK if 1C could come close to that level with their updates.

[SharpeXB]

5 hours ago, the_dudeWG said:

This may be true, but I guarantee that it did not happen in the 2 to 3 year time frame that I was creating skins and preview images using my current method. I would be OK if 1C could come close to that level with their updates.

Probably because in the last 2 or 3 years RoF hadn’t got many updates, especially those which affected graphics and such. It certainly happened many times over the life of that sim. 

[Charlo-VRde]

What Sharpe wrote is very true, though the ROF devs back then always warned us in the release posts if our tracks would no longer work after the update.

[the_dudeWG]

I was creating skins from 2013 to 2015, and there were many significant updates throughout that period. I never experienced losing any recorded tracks of importance. 

 

Edit: although I'm not quite sure when I started relying on recorded tracks, once did start that method, I enjoyed a long period of use without losing any. Maybe I was lucky, but 777 seemed to be much better about preserving those tracks.

 

Update: OK, so to follow up on @Charlo-VR's post, I thought I might search "flight record" in the RoF update list (and the Technical Issues/Bugs forum). The only evidence I could find where flight records were lost in RoF occurred in update 1.028 around Sep. 2012, which is well before the period I am referring to, ... yet the updates continued well after that without any evidence of flight records becoming obsolete. 

 

Edited August 20, 2020 by the_dudeWG

[SharpeXB]

Why are you trying to save recorded tracks for so long? Isn’t there a skin viewer?

[the_dudeWG]

It's for my skin preview images like this one:

 

 

I recorded the 6 views used (my "in game" mini image not included) for my latest skin the day before this last update ... ? So all of my following Fokker DVII skin preview images can be cranked out in like 15 minutes each (I've timed myself before out of curiosity). The problem is, the first image takes me a few hours to create, but that's OK if I'm going to make a lot of skins and preview images. Every time I lose my tracks ... it's back to square one. Like I mentioned, I was fortunate to have never had that problem back in my RoF days, but Flying Circus has burned me a few times already. This last update trashed my flight records for the Camel, Dolphin, Bristol F2BF2, SE5a, Albatros, Dr1, and now the FD7. It's very frustrating to say the least. Cheers!

Edited August 20, 2020 by the_dudeWG