The reason I ask is, I havent been able to fly for acouple of weeks so on Sunday had the chance to jump on ATAG !...Steam did its "update thing"(which took much longer than usual) and then I was sitting in a Spit1a at Gravesend(coz I heard on TS, Mansgate was being attacked by multiple 109s).While i was sitting there warming up I noticed the grass is not coming over the wings today and when I got to the runway it seemed to be "more defined with "mud tracks" much easiear to see !I took off and had 4 sorties over about 2.5 hours without any dramas(except being shot down by "Fastfed"(~S~) over Mansgate.The Sim just felt "smoother" to me !....Maybe,because I havent flown for a while,its placebo, I dont know ! What I DO know : I havent changed anything my end, such as, Video options,Nvidia drivers,hardware changes etc..I just "feel" somthin has changed in two weeks since I last flew(for the better)...Whats you thoughts guys ? ~S~.....BTW Ive took off from Gravesend lots of times before When Mansgate is being vulched(thats why I noticed the grass)

I find that very unlikely yet I recognize the experience and I've had the exact same thoughts more than once...

Since the patching part is automatic, its possible to get the patch without you even knowing it. I normally just let my Steam run when I'm at work just so I don't have to sit through the patching process for games in my library. But there hasn't been a patch released for CoD since Oct?

Hmmm. I think the version number would change (which it hasn't). That would create a version incompatibility problem when trying to join a server, I would think.

The game publisher can force a steam update even if you have 'no updates' set, although Valve ask people to justify it (i.e. game breaking bug etc).

It's more likely that your cache files got updated, or started to work better. Not saying it's impossible there wasn't a clandestine update but there's probably other simpler explanations. Especially on this title where people would scream if anything like that happened and spending hours on Friday hitting F5 on the 1C page..

It'd be nice to quietly wake up to this sim at it's full potential. A great coupe that'd be

Isn't this relatively simple to check?

Post your launcher.exe time, date and byte size...

Not always, only if the patch is big enough, remember about 2-3 patches ago, when they first introduced the CTD bug, and they had a quick fix about 2 days later. It didn't change the version#, but there was a 500kb or so download, very small and painless.

Good point, Cheese, wasn't that the "hotfix"?

yes, I believe it was, it's been so long though, I can't remember if there was a ver# change or not. I don't remember there being one, but I could be wrong. I might be mixing it up with one of the beta's too. I do remember there being a download with no version change, and although our server automatically installed it, I could join even with my automatic updates being off. I only knew there was a fix after getting on TS and people telling me about it.

I also suspect there have been little updates, although I can't point to any directly. Some things that didn't work before, work now (i.e. Radar). Nothing was ever mentioned in the patch notes, and I am absolutely certain that when this last patch came out, it didn't work (god-awful amounts of testing when we were running the multi-squad campaign). So somewhere along the line, code changed, but we have not been told...

Im not saying there is something "dasterdly" goin on here,just subtle updates. ..Last patch was October(Ithink) which is 5 months ago.Ive made no internal hardware changes in my PC for 6 mnths,but to me, COD gameplay has slowly got better in the past 3 months...lots of little things improved!..I was goin to give this game away just before Christmas,Id had enough of launchers,not being able to join servers servers,stupid wingmen not listening and crashing into me,supersonic AI opponents...the list goes on !...I know there are some major dramas to be sorted out with this game(especially for Offline players)but for me,the game is so much better than it was 3 months ago....I coulnd fly for 2.5 hours in December ! somethin has changed and I dont really care how it came about,Im just glad !....One more thing,Every player has to go through Steam,(even to switch to Offline mode).Is it possible for Steam to update our core files without updating Launcher.exe ? ....~S~

I think it's unlikely, but then I'm wrong all the time

If they did have fixes (rather than that hotfix, which was more 'aaargh, the update doesn't work!' then I'd suspect they'd be screaming from the rooftops they'd fixed something.

I would say it is possible, if the developers wish, I'm under the impression that Steam is a pretty powerful tool to let them update anything they need in the game files. I don't think anything dastardly is going on either, but I'm with FF on this one, if the devs would have fixed anything recently, they would have mentioned it to counter all the bad publicity they've had to endure in the past 5 months.