Thinder

Simple fact from experience: Windows 10 Home edition won't let you install other drivers that the one it choses unless you use DDU, reason why it is useful, and I'm talking about a fully updated O.S. In any case, it is always better to clean the O.S from drivers that can conflict with the new ones.

Hey! Merry X-Mass to start with. I wonder if it's my settings (working 100% with the Mirage 2000C) or something else, but as far as I've tried, I never was able to get stable trimming from the F-15C. The Aircraft doesn't stay level flight in both roll and pitch despite my best efforts to trim it, both axis trim set on my stick and going through the "reset" trim drill several time over. Anyone has experienced this or knows a solution to it? Thanks in advance and enjoy your gaming.

Because they were tested and guaranteed to work together, even more relevant with X 4 8GB kits instead of 2 X 16 GB kits according to G Skill support, who pointed out that 2 X 16GB kits might not always work together as well as a single 4 X 8 kit for this reason, according to them, chips can be different from a batch to another...

What people doesn't know is that RAM manufacturers can use different chips from one batch to another of the same RAM type, so being lucky using two different kits or size is one thing, making it an habit will lead to failure to boot, low performances etc. You'd be far better off purchasing a 32GB kit at once to avoid possible issues, so if your solution works right now, save the money to change the totality of your RAM when you can afford it.

I serviced the AIM-9 B with the G.E.R.M.A.S BA 102 Dijon, at the time, the Squadrons flying there were equiped with the Mirage IIIE, wiring was NATO standard, always been, same for the Mirage F1, I'm quite sure it was the R550 which needed integration as the aircraft was from stock capable of using the AIM-9s but the Magic wasn't fully NATO compatible at the start. The difference was probably not the wiring itself, but the black boxes allowing for the use of the AAMs from the cockpit, selectors, HUD box etc, especially if there had been some alteration of the B standard to newer AIM9 versions, in this respect, there were little differences with the Mirage III export version sold to Pakistan ready for use with newer AIM-9 variants.

For those living in the UK: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7GHz 6 Core (Socket AM4) CPU; £299.99. cclonline.com 100% agreed. I'm fade up with the "more is better" echo chamber, it looks like stats became a stamp for player's quality, the only reason for me to upgrade is because I need to get some quality gear for playing DCS in VR with my G2 and resonably good settings, not because it looks good on my P.C stats. I shop around a lot, I don't stick to a particular provider, I have my usual one but I don't hesitate to purshase elsewhere if they don't have what I need or are more expensive, in this case, about more than £31 including priority postage which is a lot for me, it was a first with this provider. Next, the GPU is going to take me month of saving but at the end of the day, it will be something I can afford, not the top of the top.

I figured a serie of quite smooth looking settings out of NVIDIA control panel in combination with Steam VR and DCS in game settings, but FPS penalty is heavy and I still have some issues in high contrast especially low light while looking at the HUD. I had to reduce anti-aliasing from X 8 to X 4 to make it remotely playable without too much jitter, but I recon it would work with a faster GPU such as a 2020 or one of the new Gen Nvidia or AMD, in those screenshot settings are where I left them when I decided to hit the sac last night: Condisering the impact on Frame Rate, I've been focusing in reducing Frame Time in Windows and Nvidia Control Panel, as well as pushing my 1080 Ti VRAM and Core clocks to (safe) limits in Afterburner (No Core Voltage tweak), to make sure, I used 3D Mark Fire Strike Ultra (3840 X 2160 MSSA 2 X), I'm up to the point where the card won't go further without crashing but my GPU is stable and Max temp never goes above 76°, my cooling solutions are quiet good. I also tried to set my MSAA to ZERO in DCS and use a Steam VR resolution setting from 150% down to 125% with DCS MSAA from X 2 to X 1, it worked better visualy for me than the game MSAA settings at X 2 only when it comes to anti-aliasing but there are side effects like most of what can be expected from extreme setting starting with jitter and no real blur effect, instead I'd see two F-15 in one when they pass overhead. It is possible to get this game to look real smooth, tough. I'm still working on it, and it's just a start so don't expect a miracle solution but it might be a begining of a way to get smoother picture int the game, for the moment I still have to play around with Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames from X 4 and other slittle tricks I can find to make it even better looking without loosing to much playability. Note that I'm not after 90 FPS, instead I'm content with 40 + and a better looking game, tests were conducted with F-15 C (training in mission folder), F-15C Training 030A & B: Cold start, Taxi & Take Off both basic and advanced and F-15C Training 05 Visual Landing.

Does your motherboard have a M2 slot? The M2 buses are a LOT faster than SATA, a relatively cheap M2 SSD will run circles around your other drives. I have a SAMSUNG V-NAND 500GB 970 EVO PLUS SSD, it runs at up to 3500 MB/s and I had it for £99.99, compared to the last SATA I purchased from the same provider, a Silicon Power 240GB SATA III SSD S55 costing £72.95, running at 560MB/s. Consider the option but also the fact that on some motherboards like mine, you'll loose one or two SATA slots by using one of those, so it is worth buying a larger capacity one, like I did, and I still have room for 2 more SATA SSD, all in all bang for buck this is by far the best solution when you're running out of storage space. 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 SSD 500GB

You're more than welcome. I'm still fine tuning my own system and just ran a mission; Mirage 2000 Caucasus Missile Combat: 2 X Mirage 2000 vs 2 X Mig-23 and 2 X Mig 29. With a minimum of windows optimization (can still improve on it), the right BIOS/Drivers and reasonably good VR settings, it ran very smooth, between 40 to 180+ FPS, I'll run further tests but there is something for sure, GPU memory usage was never below 8.0GB, so having 11.0GB was more than useful. I used Ryzen Master auto-O.C and safe Afterburner O.Cs settings for my 1080Ti, GPU and CPU temperatures never were close to 70° C, so good colling is important, my hardware never was thermally limited despite O.C. https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/246922-upgrade-complete-happy-player/ For the story, I failed to save my wingman (basically a tourist commenting on target position and missile launches) but got 4 kills, 3 with AAMs, my last Magic missed so I had to engage the last Mig-29 with guns, hit it twice and finaly got the kill, but all that time I was in A.B, made it RTB bingo fuel, touch down with 140 Kg in each tank, shut down with 2 X 80 Kg... The Mirage 2000 is in sold at $29.99, I'd recommand getting it for X-Mass, it is one of the best modules out there, very accurately simulated, AdlA uses it for Squadron Level support training. I don't know where you are based but good 1080Ti 11GB (recommanded max VRAM) can be find second hand, I bought mine from CEX (UK) and it was basically new and guaranteed 2 years, I think it is the minimum for a mid-level experience in DCS, more complex scenarios or demanding maps will requier faster GPU/CPU/RAM.

You have basic tools in Windows to set up the apps you want to run from start up or not, in Services, you can stop those you don't use (or disable them as I do), and set them to start only manually. Windows can be optimized to an extend for gamming, there are a lot of apps which are designed for "multimedia" and are pretty useless but still run in the background when you play games, using your RAM and slowing down your whole system. Important, first thing: Create a restore point while your system is stable. You have to understand that DCS is very demanding on VRAM, the Radeon RX 5700 XT is a good card but because of DCS demands on RAM it is limited and could easily be one of the sources of your problems with this game, that's why I upgraded to a 1080Ti 11GB, the amount of RAM and VRAM makes a difference but then again, I use Afterburner with good stable O.C settings to help. (on this screenshot it is not on O.C mode). Afterburner is a very good tool not only for O.C a card, you can monitor Frame Rate and Frame time, the second is just as important and there are ways to minimize it, you can have the graphs displayed on screen as well so you know what is doing what when you play. CPUID-CPU Z is also verry useful, it will tell you everything you need to know about your system and has its own CPU bench, but to check of your settings, you can use different benches such as free versions of 3D Mark or Superposition Benchmark, since I play in VR I also use SteamVR Performance Test for overal information about the readiness of the system for VR. Just don't expect to be runing the game at best settings and high FPS, you can gain some performances but every system has its limitation, if the goal is to get the best of yours we can help with some advise but you can't perform miracles with hardware, once you figured the limits of yours you can look for a good balance between performance and look of the game.

I was about to say the same than 98abaile. The minimum amount of RAM will help your system run smoother, you can also help by setting a page file on a different drive, allocated to programs (not background apps) and about twice the size of your total amount of RAM, on my system, including the minimum used by the C drive (min 16 Mb max 16 Mb) I have 32784 Mb allocated to page files on my fastest SSD. I installed a Samsung V-Nand SSD 500GB (M2 slot) and run both DCS and DCS Open Beta on it, it runs at <> up to 3500 MB/sec R/W, make sure you minimize the number oif apps running in the background, the lower, the better. For the rest of your specs, I really like the the B450 Gaming Plus Max, it has limitations compared to a X750 for example, it doesn't support PCI Gen4, but it is fairly fast and very reliable. Be careful if you plan to update the BIOS because there are updates for this board and it is meant to be used for the Ryzen 5000 serie only: (AGESA ComboAm4v2PI 1.1.0.0 support for Zen3 Vermeer 5000 series CPU 2020-11-27 and a Beta version, AGESA ComboAm4v2PI 1.1.0.0 Patch D 2020-12-10), so make sure you download the previous BIOS for the 3600X. The 3600X is OK, I run it at the moment with Ryzen Master, so is your GPU, although you'll need to get at least a 1080 Ti 11GB if you want to play in complex maps or/and VR, my advise, since you'll probably will feel like upgrading in the future, focuse on cooling first, GPU like CPU are thermally limited, there's no point running more powerful gear if they reach their thermal limit. A good case cooling will always help. All in all, there is little needed but an extra 16GB of RAM to run DCS but your specs, like mine at the moment are limit minimum, in your case, you might bump into thosee limits in some maps or complex scenarios, a warning about RAM upgrade tough, manufacturers doesn't always use the same chips from a batch to another of identical kits, it is far safer to change the whole RAM with a new kit (2 X 16 MB) or at the very least make sure those you get comes from the same batch. If you're in the UK CEX buys used RAM. The 3600X support 4 channels settings and the B450 Gaming Plus Max, although it is a 2 channel board, can support 4 of them as well with BIOS set ups, if you stick with the 3600X it's better to use a two sticks configuration as it will be easier to set up and more stable, I'll recommand Crucial DDR4 3600 CAS latency - 16 for it, I run 3200 but I can improve on RAM speed. In case you upgrade to the Ryzen 5000 series, use the BIOS update and the best RAM would also be DDR4 3600 CAS latency - 16, although the Ryzen 5000 supports the use of 4 sticks with an increase in FPS of up to 10%, the B450 once its BIOS updated won't be a problem. Enjoy yout gaming.

Explained this way it look a bit clearer. I'll try this ASAP. Thanks all for your replies.

I'm using a VR headset, not full screen. Before I start DCS, I make sure all related windows are minimized, Mixed reality Portal, Steam, Steam VR and my notifications are OFF in Windows settings, the problem is that the cursor is still going to work over the O.S desktop, behind the VR layer, and if I click of a lever (like the hand break) or button with any Icon behind it, it will trigger this bug and I'll loose all controls. I'll have to click multiple times in the middle of the creen to try to deselect the App and recover full VR functionality, as I said I managed to mitigate this by setting my taskbar at the top of the creen, but the problem remains, it would happen if I clicked on the taskbar area anyway, like some people would if they tried to use comms with the mouse. Hiding the taskbar doesn't work, it pops up as soon as the mouse curser hover over it, what we need is a function that would disable the mouse cursor in O.S in game mode.

Cockpit Global Illumination doesn't work, I've tried if OFF and ON, it makes no difference, the cockpit stays fully illuminated.

That's true, especially when your grear and settings allows you to mitigate the loss of frame rate, since VR is relatively new and evolving real fast, it takes a lot more research work to get it right... I've played with an Oculus CV1 at much lower resolution and had more trouble getting a decent frame rate and no adverse effects than with my new Reverb G2 at max resolution, that's for one thing. Then Setam seems to be waking up (it took them time and then some) and come up with better support software, players find and share settings we can try with our own hardware and figure out what is best and what works best for us, as a result I was able to set my textures from low to high with no apparent loss, raw figures doesn't mean much to me, it's the visual which matters most, if the game looks smooth, from 30FPS it's well playable for me. Anyway, what I noticed, is that the more progresses I make with my GPU settings, the lower my CPU scores in 3D Mark, so I guess it is a matter of knowing what I want to do with my settings for a particular game, for DCS, I would bet on GPU, but my next upgrade stage is Rizen 3 and DDR 400 3600 RAM.

I havent find a solution in sofware but I managed to minimize the problem by setting my toolbar position to "Top", where I am much less likely to hit a button, if the desktop is clean from opened program it works very well this way, it was most appearent while trying to use the handbreak in the Mirage 2000...

I guess it depends on the update, in this particular case, the engine start button didn't work following exactly the same procedure in both versions, now it's the Mirage 2000 INS enter button that doesn't seems to be working but it is certainly more likely related to the module or mistakes from my part than the game. DCS OB doesn't upload the Mirage 2000 settings from DCS client either, I have to rebind everything. Since I play solo at the moment, still learning DCS and the Mirage, fine tuning my upgrades, new VR set etc, it doesn't matter to me too much but I can understand why it can cause you some real inconvenience.

You can use a zoom key in VR: UI Layer > Toggle VR Zoom. I used it with the Oculus CV1 it helps a lot to read the cockpit.

Run benchmarks at every increse by small increments. From a givent point I use only 5% improvments between benchmarks, our GPU might not have the same limits, depending on cooling and manufacture etc... This setting is as far as my card would go without touching to core voltage, which I'm not going to try, I need to be able to resell this card in two month from now when I get an RX 6800 XT. Not that I am not happy with this card, it's been the best I ever had, but like my RAM it was always a stop gap, I got it second hand (in reality new) from CEX with a two years guaranty and it's been doing a fine job since I installed it, but since I'm upgrading CPU and RAM I'll bound a new GPU to this PC and try to take advantage of an all AMD system. In any case, it will do the job if you're not planning to upgrade, it is not stricly necessary, it works just fine in VR, the only thing is I never tried it in multi-players mode or with a very demanding map/scenario. Enjoy your gaming.

Tried it, gave up on it, use JoytoyKey instead and am very happy with it.

That's one of the reasons why I went full VR, the other being tracking moving targets made a lot easier with a headset and once you've tried this solution, you wont be willing to go back to using PoV buttons or any other solution, VR is the future of flight simulation and the next generation of headsets (starting with the HP Reverb G2) will make it more attractive. There is a complementary solution for binding, using voice recognition: VoiceAttack works well with DCS although I haven't been using it, I have it, it's just a matter of making the effort of going through voice recognition drills in Windows and set it up, in any case it will extend your control over your gaming and support your HOTAS efficiently. https://voiceattack.com/ The funny thing is that more often than none, the OpenBeta version is actually more stable, once Support told me to stick with it when I experienced issues with the "stable" version...

Compatibility issues can go way further than just those encountered between motherboards and Ram sticks. I have made an enquiry to Eurotech G-Skill about the difference between two generations of RAM sticks, as they released a new serie optimized for Zen 3 systems, this is their reply: Their reply came just in time for me to make a wiser choice, my intention was to purchase two kits of the same model, namely G.SKILL Trident Z Neo (For AMD Ryzen) Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin RGB DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Desktop Memory Model F4-3600C16D-16GTZNC. But as they pointed out, there are no guatranty that the provider will go through the trouble to check the full compatibility between two identical RAM kits, so after researching for its availability from the same provider, I opted for a (4 x 8GB) kit instead. According to the results of diverse tests I have seen so far, the benefit of using 4 X sticks instead of 2 X can go as high as 10% FPS. My tip, if you need to upgrade RAM, either make sure they come from the same batch or change everything, in my case, I will resell my actual RAM kit (Crucial BALLISTIC GAMING MEMORY 2 X 16GB) to CEX, just like my CPU and in a couple of moth my GPU. Hope this have been informative. Enjoy your gaming.

Thanks guys for your replies. Yeash, I figured it was mostly another application but I am looking for a solution to avoid the situation...

I find it rather anoying to loose all controls whipe playing DCS because I clicked a button and end up with this red text saying "Windows is out of focus". Is there a fix to that? Tips appreciated, thanks in advance.

If you have a Ti 11GB it is possible to get a set up to run DCS rather smoothly, I use MSI after burner with those settings: I haven't run a test in DCS yet but I used 3D Mark and the card is stable. Note that in some tests, PCU is more important and it will improve with a Ryzen 5 5600X. MSAA x 2 at 3840 x 2160. Graphics score 7 372 Graphics test 1 41.26 FPS Graphics test 2 26.21 FPS Physics score 19 572 Physics test 62.14 FPS Combined score 3 964 Combined test 18.44 FPS During testing, pick temperature never exceeded 76°C but I have a good cooling set up because I upgraded my case with this in mind, our systems are always thermaly limited, so it is important to make sure we limit temperature as much as possible. SteamVR Performance Test shows that my system is on the green, completely VR ready, I guess frame rates will depend on DCS settings.