Elite Journey history wiped?

[GraXXoR]

I know for a fact my commander travelled to beagle point in 2015. I still have all the bookmarks from systems I visited.

But when I select "Visited Systems" on the system map, it shows Beagle Point, Sagittarius A* and The Great Annihilator as unvisited.

Is there a time limit on recording player history?

Thanks for any insight.

 

[Darrack]

I know for a fact my commander travelled to beagle point in 2015. I still have all the bookmarks from systems I visited.

But when I select "Visited Systems" on the system map, it shows Beagle Point, Sagittarius A* and The Great Annihilator as unvisited.

Is there a time limit on recording player history?

Thanks for any insight.

Have you reinstalled at any point?

O7

 

[Robert Maynard]

The systems that have been visited are stored in VisitedStarsCache.dat file which exists in a numeric directory (that corresponds to the CMDR's numeric FID in the journal) i.e. C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\<FID numeric>

If that it not kept every time one reinstalls Windows or changes PC entirely then it's lost.

 

[Neilski]

Were you by any chance signed up to EDSM (if it even existed back then)? If so, you may be able to reconstruct VisitedStarsCache.dat (can share links to forum threads with more info).

 

[DjVortex]

The systems that have been visited are stored in VisitedStarsCache.dat file which exists in a numeric directory (that corresponds to the CMDR's numeric FID in the journal) i.e. C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\<FID numeric>

If that it not kept every time one reinstalls Windows or changes PC entirely then it's lost.

I always thought that whether you have visited a system or not is stored on the servers. Is it really only stored locally?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I always thought that whether you have visited a system or not is stored on the servers. Is it really only stored locally?

It is stored on the servers too, of course (if you know for other reasons that you've previously visited a system, you'll still have its exploration data visible if you open the system map) - but not, presumably, in a convenient format for colouring every previously-visited system a different map colour.

 

[Neilski]

I always thought that whether you have visited a system or not is stored on the servers. Is it really only stored locally?

I kinda thought so myself, even though you can't readily persuade the server to give up the info.
The OP says that the systems don't show up as "visited" (presumably when you set the filter to show only visited systems).

However, there's one other thing you can try, @GraXXoR: try selecting Beagle Point and seeing if it offers you the system map. Since you've visited it, the game should let you see the system map, but if it doesn't then that would imply that VisitedStarsCache.dat is used for that too, which would really suck, and makes the whole question of whether or not the servers keep track of which systems you've visited almost totally moot. (The only thing that might remain is that the total system count couldn't possibly work correctly if the servers didn't keep track of the actual systems visited.)

Oh, just been ninja'd by Ian

 

[DjVortex]

It is stored on the servers too, of course (if you know for other reasons that you've previously visited a system, you'll still have its exploration data visible if you open the system map) - but not, presumably, in a convenient format for colouring every previously-visited system a different map colour.

Yeah, maybe the "visited/unvisited systems" filter uses only local data?

I was more thinking of when you select a system in the galaxy map, and it either does or doesn't offer you the possibility of opening its system map (by enabling or disabling the system map icon on the right): Does that get pulled from the servers?

I think it might be pulled from the servers because I sometimes get some significant delay before the system map icon becomes enabled.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Yeah, maybe the "visited/unvisited systems" filter uses only local data?

I was more thinking of when you select a system in the galaxy map, and it either does or doesn't offer you the possibility of opening its system map (by enabling or disabling the system map icon on the right): Does that get pulled from the servers?

I think it might be pulled from the servers because I sometimes get some significant delay before the system map icon becomes enabled.

Yes, exactly that.

It's one of those things where the data sizes are very very different:
- all quantitative NPC data in the game: megabytes, and not that many of them (because it's mostly procedurally generated and a lot of the rest can be stored very compactly). Might not fit on the proverbial floppy disk any more, but you'd have plenty of room left over on a CD.
- most player data: low-to-mid gigabytes
- the player exploration/exobio database describing exactly which bodies which players have which levels of scan data on: terabytes and lots of them, even stored efficiently and compactly.

So searches on that third data set tend to be a lot more limited in-game than on the other two.

 

[GraXXoR]

Were you by any chance signed up to EDSM (if it even existed back then)? If so, you may be able to reconstruct VisitedStarsCache.dat (can share links to forum threads with more info).

That would be a cool function to have. but I remember reading that the visited stars cache has a maximum size.
I have used EDDiscovery since pre Horizons... It has every event since the Battle of Chi Lin back in 2015 / early 2016 or thereabouts... And all that data has been uploaded to EDSM and Inara via EDDN. More recently added EdAstro though that only uploads data on celestial bodies and the uploader is anonymized.

I always thought that whether you have visited a system or not is stored on the servers. Is it really only stored locally?

It has to be stored on the servers because commanders' names appear next to various planets (Discovered, mapped, First footfall etc.)

It is stored on the servers too, of course (if you know for other reasons that you've previously visited a system, you'll still have its exploration data visible if you open the system map) - but not, presumably, in a convenient format for colouring every previously-visited system a different map colour.

Opening the system map is a good idea. Not even sure why I didn't think of that...

That makes sense that a cache of recently visisted stars for local rendering is kept locally because searching a billion+ line database and transmitting thousands of data points would bring the servers to their knees.

I kinda thought so myself, even though you can't readily persuade the server to give up the info.
The OP says that the systems don't show up as "visited" (presumably when you set the filter to show only visited systems).

However, there's one other thing you can try, @GraXXoR: try selecting Beagle Point and seeing if it offers you the system map. Since you've visited it, the game should let you see the system map, but if it doesn't then that would imply that VisitedStarsCache.dat is used for that too, which would really suck, and makes the whole question of whether or not the servers keep track of which systems you've visited almost totally moot. (The only thing that might remain is that the total system count couldn't possibly work correctly if the servers didn't keep track of the actual systems visited.)

Oh, just been ninja'd by Ian

Good idea. I will open Beagle Point in the system map next time I'm in game.. probably next weekend.. Have a busy week ahead.

I kept bookmarks of every WW, AW and ELW that I found in EDDiscovery. I think I found 30 or so ELWs in total...

 

[Neilski]

That would be a cool function to have. but I remember reading that the visited stars cache has a maximum size.

Yeah I saw someone stating that recently but it came as a surprise to me so I asked for their source (and don't recall getting an answer).
It may have a limited size, I guess - sounds like you expect to exceed the limit?

 

[DjVortex]

It has to be stored on the servers because commanders' names appear next to various planets (Discovered, mapped, First footfall etc.)

My question was in reference to the "visited"/"not visited" galaxy map filter.

In other words, to rephrase my question: "Does that galmap filter use only local data, or does it get the system colors from the server?"

 

[GraXXoR]

My question was in reference to the "visited"/"not visited" galaxy map filter.

In other words, to rephrase my question: "Does that galmap filter use only local data, or does it get the system colors from the server?"

That is without a doubt a file on your computer. I moved it out of the save / journal folder and it only showed my current system as having been visited.

Yeah I saw someone stating that recently but it came as a surprise to me so I asked for their source (and don't recall getting an answer).
It may have a limited size, I guess - sounds like you expect to exceed the limit?

I have visited about 30,000 systems in total between my two commanders and will be heading out into the black to get at least Elite III in Exo/Explo this summer.

 

[SlickPBW]

As a slight tangent, the 4 things that you need to manually copy over if you intend to lose your local storage for any reason:

• Screenshots
• Key binds
• Visited stars (location stated above)
• Journal

 

[space voyager]

I am pretty sure that there was at least one data culling when ALL data on previously visited systems was deleted. Perhaps you can check if you can see the system data - that IIRC is still available to you. I can't check though, I have it among visited systems.