You may already have seen this, but there’s a reasonable guide posted here:
Thanks but the fact that you need a tutorial is a pointer to the problem. No other flight sim ever needed a tutorial for its replay - the design problem for a replay was solved >10 years ago by FS2004 (iirc) and X-Plane.
The current system is overengineered. They would actually save dev resources in the long run by changing it.
1 Like
And that’s what they are looking for feedback on - you know this is a beta right? So tell them here what you are looking for because they said in the Q&A that they’ve had little feedback, so not sure where to take it.
I was also respondng to @Portalearth420 who said they were looking for a user guide.
I also think just saying “give us what we had in FSX” etc isn’t helpiful because this is an always live sim that is much more complex, so there are many things to think about:
- What to do about multiplayer?
- What to do about live traffic?
- What to do about live weather?
- What to do about cameras?
- What to do about cockpit switches, FMC changes, autopilot changes?
- What if you want to stop the replay and take over half way through - you know, re fly that landing that didn’t go so well
- How long should the replay be for?
On that last one, one of the payware replay systems will use about 500Mb of disk space for a 2 hour flight and I don’t think it records all activities in the plane. Will that be acceptable to everyone?
I just think everyone thinks it’s simple, when it just isn’t. They are looking for pointers from people as to what they want from a replay system.
While an „out of the box“ video export would certainly convenient there exist flexible screen recording solutions like
(free and open source) which give you the ultimate control over format and video encoding parameters.
Absolutely agree here. For me the replay should just make me able to look at my landings from the outside to relive the moment. For me it doesn’t even have to allow me to replay from a given point, just the recording would be awesome. Make it a slider to move back in time and allow camera changes, that’s all I guess. Currently it is a bit of a hassle within the dev mode.
1 Like
It’s very simple actually.
They can just copy 100%| the freeware and first replay we had for MSFS,the Flight Recorder,and just make it better by adding cameras and complete variables playback,along with smooth framerate.
I did not know about this. thanks!
1 Like
i mean well yeah I know about OBS. I’ve used it myself for streaming to twitch on a number of occasions. My thought was just that it could be just as easy for less-than-tech-saavy people if there was a button that says “Export to My Videos” And boom, there’s your flight in Documents>My Videos
So it doesn’t get lost in translation; when we say replay we mean watching a recording of what we did in the past during the session. All while having control over the camera to e.g. watch from the passenger view, tower, move to an arbitrary position along the runway etc.
I think Seb mentioned an idea of replaying and taking over. Being able to “rewind” and have another go at the landing would be cool, but could come later.
-
Ideally i wouldn’t have to remember to start recording, it would always be recording.
-
Being able to scrub through to where I want to watch it is useful.
-
We’ve seen in FSX that it doesn’t record all the custom vars so like in PMDG if you shut down your engines before running starting a replay you don’t get engine sounds which ruins the point.
-
I believe FSX recorded the flight positions at a low frequency which made for a “blocky”, not smooth replay. This isn’t ideal.
Thanks for reading 
My wishlist for Replay is as follows…
- A more user friendly user interface.
- The ability to assign control keys to Replay functions.
I am finding the Replay feature to be very useful, even though it’s in development mode. However, many effects that are visible when flying “live” are missing when in Replay. These include aircraft smoke systems, smoke and dust from tires, and a few other things. Please add to the “wish list” to upgrade the Replay mode to include all of the effects that are visible when the initial recording is being done. In other words a true, 100% replay. Thanks!
The most important thing for me with replay, is to be able to load it up to a simobject so I can fly alongside my recorded flight.
I’m not sure if that classifies as a ‘replay’ in the traditional sense of observing a past moment.
In FSX the mission system allowed these and one could get very creative with it.
1 Like
I think it should just be a record button and a slider with a back and forward button. When replaying you should always be able to switch camera’s.
So without all the keyframe recording cam views etc.
And maybe they can also remove the rec button and just have it recording the last 10 minutes of flight automatically. I don’t think it’s much data so it won’t affect performance.
It sounds like we all have different needs when it comes to replay. What you say meets your needs and that’s good. They way I use replay for creating videos is to create the “master” recording of a flight. Then I go back and create 3 more sub-recordings from different camera angles on the master recording. Then I pull those 4 recordings (which are sync’d from beginning to end) into a video editor that has multicamera views. Then I mix the 4 sync’d recordings into 1 final output which has different views based on my instincts. The pieces that are in the final output are all synced time-wise. No 3rd party Replay allows for this method – only the Asobo Replay. So it’s flexibility and functionality meets my needs, in a different way than your needs. It also has less impact on FPS. The only complaint I have about the Asobo Replay is that on replay it does not include effects (like smoke), whereas the 3rd party replayers do.
The problem is you need to record tracks to switch cameras.
They could have also made it so you can always switch camera’s when replaying, not only if you’re recording. That would keep the same features for content creators but make it easier to use for regular users who just want to watch a landing.
1 Like
Since I’ve heard Asobo mention a few times that they’re waiting for feedback on the replay function, I thought I’d give my 2 cents.
The Issues
- First and foremost the whole tool is targeted towards cinematographers. As a standard user who isn’t trying to make a commercial, I don’t need fancy features like replaying the same path elsewhere in the world. The whole replay system is built around saving a recording file that you can then edit and replay. I’d bet that 90% of users just want to see their landing from 5 minutes ago. They don’t need to save the recording file. If we want to revisit a video then we can just use a 3rd party screen capture software to make our own videos without revisiting them later. Requiring us to save a recording file causes several clunky/confusing tools to be necessary. For example, if I want to make it look like my perfect landing was in a hurricane, why can’t I just use the weather tools to change the weather? Weather keyframes and location changes are completely useless (unless you’re making a commercial). The worst of these tools is the camera track tool. Why can’t I just look around freely? Why do I need to record where the camera goes? Again, this is usefully for cinematographers, but not for the average user. In this case, more features are not better. They just create confusion and add complexity that allows bugs to creep in.
- The replay feature is buggy. The most common issue I’ve seen is that if you turn off your engines the replay you were recording is just lost. It stops saving and there is no way to recover it. I’ve also seen lost recordings at other random times as well.
- The replay mode doesn’t save details. When I do a replay in the Fly By Wire A320, the cockpit displays are just black. That reduces the number of pictures I can take during the replay because I can’t have the cockpit screens in the pictures. Ideally, everything would be replayed exactly as it was during the flight. The clouds would be in the same place (on a low vis approach, I sometimes want to see exactly where I got the runway in sight). The doors, landing gear, flaps, etc… would return to their previous state and deploy when they actually did in flight (e.g. an opening a door after landing should not mean the replay has an open door). Finally, the cockpit screens would display the same thing they did during the replay time.
What I Recommend
- On the replay menu give us a very simple timeline. Importantly this timeline should be scrubbable. Pause and play are a must. Fast forward would be nice, but it is not necessary if we can scrub along the timeline. Those are all the features we need on this menu. Delete every other feature and tool. We don’t need to save and we can record our own videos.
- Allow us to freely change camera position and weather during the replay. We don’t need to record these features. They should function just like they do when we’re playing the game normally.
- This is just my personal preference, but I don’t think we should have to start replay recordings. They should always be on. If there are memory/performance concerns then allow us to enable or disable this feature in the global settings. Or even limit how far back is saved for replay. When we open the replay menu, you could show us the last x minutes. Maybe we could configure how far back to save as a setting.
- The current tool might be helpful for some niche groups (e.g. 3rd party developers for commercials). So I’d say leave it as it is in the developer mode. Then make a new tool that does the above.
Anyway, these are just my opinions. If anyone agrees or dissagrees please say so. I think most of us agree the current tool has issues. But if we don’t give feedback then it won’t ever get fixed.
12 Likes
Not sure what was wrong the way replays were achieved in the older FS games that they decided to take this new route? Replay tool in the past was great and I hope that we can get something like that (simple to use and works).
6 Likes
I think they built this tool internally for them to make their commercials. Changing weather and locations is a key feature of MSFS commercials. When there was outcry for a replay mode, I think they just slapped a user interface on it. I agree, returning to the old FS replay style would be a step forward.
3 Likes
Simple explanation: the replay “only” stores what is known as “simulation variables” (*). This is a well-defined set of variables (position data, attitude, engine state, …) that is also accessible (“readable”, mostly “writeable”, too) via the SimConnect API (for external applications, or also WASM modules - API = application programming interface) and described e.g. here.
You can actually verify this yourself by opening such a replay recording with some text editor.
The “problem”: some aircraft use “local variables” (“custom variables”) and their own internal logic to e.g. simulate the engine, autopilot, throttle and what not. While those “local variables” would technically be visible to FS2020 internally it seems that those aircraft-specific (!) variables are not recorded. Most likely because there is no standard API to set (“write”) them (only the custom “aircraft code” knows how to properly set / apply them - but that is pure speculation on my side now).
Anyway, that’s the most likely explanation why certain aircraft systems won’t work during replay, specifically with third-party aircraft such as the FBW A320.
(*) The recording seems to also include additional data - especially the camera position and perhaps also weather data - which is not settable via the SimConnect API. So it seems that there are “local variables” (again, related to the camera position) stored alongside the mentioned “simulation variables”. So technically of course it would also be possible to “request the entire aircraft custom state”, store that data block (including “local variables”) and write it back during replay - but again, I assume such a generic and universally applicable “get / set aircraft state” API does not exist yet in the SDK. Someone else may provide more details here.
2 Likes
I’m actually loosely familiar with sim variables. I’d done some dabbling in development. I figured there was a limitation like that, but I hoped they could do something like save the final image of the displays or something like that. That would be a ton of data I’m sure. It’s probably impractical, but I thought I’d mention it as a nice to have feature. Shoot for the moon, right?
2 Likes