Track replay issues

I know this has been covered many times but how the heck do we replay tracks successfully. I am trying my hand at some video editing for DCS but every time i replay my tracks, even simple 1v1 dogfights, the replay is way off by 20 seconds in. I have tried launching mission in MP server and replaying track but get the same issues.

What's the best workaround as there are many movie makers out there who must know something??

Cheers

Hello ED Team,

I think it would be verry good if you can repair this and I think it's important for this product, and I will explain why I think so: This is a good point where also people who can't fly your great but complex aircrafts can make the experience in VR to "fly with them", and maybe later they decide to buy the modules ;-)

I want to share my experiences to help you to hopefully to enclose the issue (All points are just guesses and the result of long year observations ;-) ):

I found that there are still four noticed reasons for brocken track files:

1. By taking of from a carrier in a F/A-18, the "brocken track issue" happents mostly to me. When I only take off and try to land on the carrier again immediately, there is an "offset" of the delta between the carrier and the aircraft. This could have different reasons:

A) The course of the carrier is different in the mission and in the replay (Maybe the orientation could be the same but the "direction of moving" not?)

B) There is something happening with the aircrafts orientation/position/velocity/acceleration during takeoff (leaving the boat) (E.g. affecting wind effects?...)

C) A difference in the positioning / orientation / velocity / acceleration on initialisation of ship and/or aircraft between mission and replay

When I take of from a land based runway and land on the Stennis, this issue is not (Only by taking off from it).

However, I also have a "little" offset if I have a mission when the ship is holding it's possition all the time and without any wind... But it's not so big...

[Edit] I just had to try out another Idea and I hope this can help you defenetly for this issue:

When I tried out to use the carrier "CNV-70 - Carl Vinson" instead of the Stennis, this issue is no issue and the replay works perfect! So it seems that it's depending on the ship!

[Edit 09.10.2019] I just tried it again using the CNV-70 - Carl Vinson and using this ship the track is definetly not brocken again, but using the Stennis it is (with one exception where I landed on the deck I the replay but in another cable than in the mission, so a small error was still there...)

I flew ~5 minutes and landed in the replay on the Carl Vinson exactly as I did in the mission. So the workaround to create a good track with carrier take off and landing could be to use this ship :-)

D) Another idea I just had is that the error also could occurs during the plane is anchored onto the catapult. A little difference here could result in a big error by flying arround a bit...

[/Edit 09.10.2019]

2. Another issue seems to occur if wepons are used. I noticed that when I fly around even with AI aircrafts, it seems to be ok as long as nobody shoots. I don't know how the DCS engine works but maybe you are creating a new AI aircraft for the missile? You are also deleting aircrafts when they have been destroyed I guess, so do you have respect this on all points of the reading/replay/track file etc.? Just an Idea... So you should make sure that the recorded inputs are always put in into the right vessel. (==> No confusion with the array index of the object / "max index" etc.? If you are working with arrays, you need to "copy the upper indexes down" in the mission and replay and change the new "max" value of the array, if an object has been deleted. However, please make sure that the inputs are always used for the correct object(s) on replay, even if new vessels have been created and if vessels have been destroyed... ;-)) You also need to make sure that the behaviour of AI aircrafts and missiles is the same in mission and replay (No time based random for weapons and AI aircrafts. If AI aircrafts react on weopons and the weapon behaviour is different between mission and replay, this could lead to a different behaviour of the AI aircrafts also).

(Maybe this is what Dougall reported and means with 1vs.1 dogfights)

3. Module based issues (Multicockpit?): I notices that I had a brocken replay issue each time I changed the seat in the C101 (Maybe also in the F-14?). In a C101 replay, even the takeoff in the replay is not working good and can end into a crash if you have played it in the front seat an if you change to the back seat in the replay (C-101). You need to make sure that the inputs can be made and are used for "the right seat" in the replay. My feeling is that the "center of gravity" and or the "aerodynamic focus" is set relativ to the pilots seat and if you change the seat, it could be wrong for the replay, but it's just a guess and maybe I'm wrong...

4. Time acceleration: If you have a different time acceleration in the mission and in the replay, the replay is not correct. So you should deny to change the time acceleration in the replay as long as this cannot be fixed.

I also noticed that if you

- Create a mission with rain and much wind

- Start the mission and wait some seconds

- Note that the raindrops falls with an angle

- Exit the mission to the mission editor

- Change the wind to '0' in the mission editor

- Start the mission

Note that the raindrops falls with an angle first. Only after a while, they are falling the corect 90° towards earth (because there is no wind anymore).

That means for me that it will take a while until all wind/weather effects are "reseted" to the values which are set in the mission editor (Maybe the weather conditions are not "destroyed" on mission ending?).

That brought me to the idea that If the wind in the replay is different to the played scenario, this could also break the track file... So you should make sure that the weather conditions will be set to the ME values immediately and each time on mission start and replay start (Not only for wind, same for air pressure and maybe more...). The wind must also fit immediately on replay start for the deck of the carrier (The carrier is moving so the wind for the deck is different to a land based runway).

Also please make sure that if in a mission "wake turbulences" are used (or not), they also must be used (or not) in the replay, no matter what the setting in the options is to avoid a different behaviour!

I don't want to tell you how you can realise it, but did you ever thought about to save/load all positions, orientations, current accelerations and velocities in a "timestamp" from time to time (e.g. each second) and set this values during replay instead of just recording all the inputs?

Same for events like "missile hit" or damage things and that... Because sometimes I have destroyed an aircraft in the mission but the missile pass it in the replay, so the aircraft shoot me down in the replay! Thats not funny! ;-)

I guess that not all guesses are right ;-), but I guess they are worth to be checked.

I Hope this will help a bit...

great Job @Topper81

i hope ED can fix this huge element of the game!

it would be a game changer, the most important after a dynamic campaign

I think they don't know how to fix it. If they knew they would have done already. Too many 3rd parties modules that breaks the "compatibilty" of it.

Would be nice if they could add another type of replay feature, that they only would record the position, angles, weapon releases and events in the sim. Not where I was looking or what button I pressed, because right now they are not replays, they pretend to be replays of the actions inside the cockpits... and that doesn't work for all the modules.

The same way Tacview always has a good position and events replay, they could do another replay feature with less events recorded as we have now, but that always would work. the same way IL2 does, or XPlane.

And please include a rewind feature.

I know this has been covered many times but how the heck do we replay tracks successfully. I am trying my hand at some video editing for DCS but every time i replay my tracks, even simple 1v1 dogfights, the replay is way off by 20 seconds in. I have tried launching mission in MP server and replaying track but get the same issues.

What's the best workaround as there are many movie makers out there who must know something??

Cheers

Firstly, the replay system is inhentrently buggy and unfriendly. There is, as a result, a whole host of marekting/ community-made videos that could be getting made for DCS, which are no;t due to not only the cumbersome nature of the replay, but also the bugs and broken bits.

To answer your question about what people who do make videos are doing to get footage:

1. Use the minimal number of units in the video - only put the units in the video that you need for the specific section of footage you want to shoot

2. Build up footage with lots of very short sections of mission recording. e.g. if you want takeoff footage, then make a mission that JUST has the take off. Play it, record it and try to replay it. Maybe it will, work, maybe it wont.

If you then want to get some footage of the ingress to target, then you should remove all the takeoff related struff, set up your aircraft already en-route (air-start, minimum number of waypoints etc), and play that mission, record it and then replay it. It is a very slow, trial and error process.

3. Try not to use missions with any scripting in them

4. Avoid using the "pause" button at all, including aovid starting the mission paused

5. Avoid recording tracks from a multiplayer missions

An addition to the above, the replay functions seems to be intended as a system to let the play re-fly the mission from a point-in-time along the mission, rather than a system to record accurately what DID happen for playback at a later date.

The absence of a rewind / skip to timestamp feature is exasperating, and has cost me too many hours.

What I really wonder...why can't they simply store/save the x/y/z coordinates as well for the player aircraft? In multiplayer replay, the server replay is always correct because there's no "user aircraft".

It's so annoying to have to watch a replay maybe 10 times because you get a different outcome when you use e.g. F2 or ctrl-F11 view too often or if you use time comprerssion.

Also, I'd really wish we'd have a clean replay replay recorder as seen in many racing sims. How can it be that a game from 1998 (Grand Prix Legends) still has the best replay recorder from any sim?

IMO ED should be aware of the marketing effect of good videos. However, it's always a pain to create them and it takes an unnecessary long time to create them.

As mentioned, as soon as there are a lot of units (and a lot of action from the AI), replay tend to be broken even more. I e.g. wanted to create some videos from the latest Huey campaign (Worlds Apart) but I gave up on many of them.

I don't think the re-fly is that useful. If you do that in a campaign, you anyway won't get the full points and you won't progress. But even with a "real" replay - why shouldn't it be possible to anyway have the "take control" option.

So yeah, ED really should put some time into the replay functionality to make sure people are creating even better videos. As mentioned above, I skipped doing some videos already because of broken replays.

Firstly, the replay system is.....

 

...The absence of a rewind / skip to timestamp feature is exasperating, and has cost me too many hours.

Thanks for this Phil, glad to hear i am not the only one struggling.

Others have mentioned that you can use an MP server and so long as another player simply spectates, you can use their track to get accurate replays for editing.

My question is, could ED not create a means for users to create a second player on a server. I.e. create an AI client which spectates and records a track which the player can then access and edit that way. You could then mash up footage from in cockpit and the external track footage from the AI client?

My phraseology may be wrong here but i hope folks can understand what i am getting at

Hi in this inteview Matt Wagner told, that the replay system will be updated.

I don't know when but I hope it's all fine after that...

My friend and I made up an external MP server hosting our mission. The replay saved in the servers folder is perfect even played at 30x. If you don't have a spare pc you u can try launching a separate instance of the server within the same pc with the -w command, it should work.

FYI, replay accuracy depends a lot on the aircraft being used.

My friend and I made up an external MP server hosting our mission. The replay saved in the servers folder is perfect even played at 30x. If you don't have a spare pc you u can try launching a separate instance of the server within the same pc with the -w command, it should work.

And that's exactly the reason why I don't understand that the replay can be recorded like that in SP as well. Problem would be solved...

My friend and I made up an external MP server hosting our mission. The replay saved in the servers folder is perfect even played at 30x. If you don't have a spare pc you u can try launching a separate instance of the server within the same pc with the -w command, it should work.

Can you elaborate on how to set it up within the same pc?

Any track I reply ends in destruction of the aircraft. At first, I thought it was due to each OB update but testing proved to not be the case. It seems as though the coordinates of the map and what the aircraft does aren’t in sync. The replay system as it is now seems useless. I don’t recall having these issues several updates ago.

I’m just reporting my findings so that ED is aware of this issue.

I have seen this as well, recorded simple track (about 3 -4 mins long), went to play it back and my heli took off correctly then 15 seconds later I landed (while recording), instead of landing my heli crashed into the ground

I just tried the replay on the “stable” version and it does te same

Roger that - I completely understand.

We are going to be looking at improving the track replay system, but this isn't going to be fixed over night and will take time.

Thanks.

Dude, tracks have been eff’d since day one, over ten years now.

Seriously how much patience do you expect us to have?

Ten freaking years, smdh.

Just a thought.. I always find the that TACVIEW show correct track. The data in that export could maybe be imported to an addons in DCS that only show "track"-data without input from AI etc. Just pure track, event data.

This could then be used as rewind, slowmotion etc.

. This way you could see all interactions by user(s), AI etc in the environment of DCS.

I know that, DCS, users, third-party have this programming skills.

Addon is the key I believe.

this bug has already been fixed, but it seems with the latest update it got broken again.

when you fly with your mate and if i watch the track i only see my mate, if i watch the track of my mate i only see me.

i dont understand how those functions get fixed and broken within 2-3 updates.

rec_new_f18_movie_aar-20191123-201232.trk

server-20191123-201209.trk

I used to be able to replay tracks and see my aircraft in MP with the others on the server, but for months now, Track Files don't show the client/host aircraft for the person with the track file in possession. My buddy sent me his track file a few months back of the same mission, and on his track file, I show up but he doesn't....can we get this fixed?

Single-Player saved track files show player just fine...it's MP tracking of the client's PC that is the problem.