Rhinox

Slightly OT: I checked some on-line shops here, and pre-release price (for which you can order it) of R9-290X is ~460-550€. Seems to me very fair. It is much less than highly overpriced Titan (~850-900€) and quite less than GTX780 (530-570€). Yet I think R9-290X will be faster than both... Did not find price of R9-290 (non-X), but I think it will be somewhere around 350-400€, that is in the middle between R9-280X (~250€) and R9-290X. NVidia will have to do something quickly!

By "better" I meant better representation of underlying hardware. Not better hiding its (hypervisor's) presence. I have good reason to think DCS-World (with its ProActive or whatever protection system it uses) is NOT trying to detect VM at all. Why? Just open VMware Player (or ESXi) VM and check hardware names: you will find things like "VMware SVGA graphics adapter", etc. It does not use some fake (but real), or random names. Or check CPU, and it says: Intel Core-i7 with 1 (!) core (which i7 is single-core? none!). I also had "VMware Tools" installed and running, another clear trace of VM. Etc, etc. I will check that VirtualBox-problem, but despite of that error-message box I think it does not fail because it detected VM...

No. Working is: VMware Player and probably VMware Workstation (both desktop virtualization products) VMware vSphere (server virtualization) (VMware is just company name, not product-name) ______________________________________ BTW, there is (I think) useful info in this thread. Maybe it is worth to make it sticky, or rename to something better (easier to find by searching)...

I'm surprised. I thought Hyper-V could be better platform for Windows-VM, than any other hypervisor. But apparently, it is not that way. But Microsoft is still relatively new in this area, while VMware was actually pioneer of virtualization (at least on PC)...

VM-image (de-compressed) is at least as big as partition, where you install OS+software. I doubt you can fit Windows7 and DCS-World on 8GB partition...

And I think it could be something different: For any software it is MUCH easier to detect it is running on VM if type-2 hypervisor is used (i.e. VirtualBox), than to detect it is running on type-1 hypervisor (ESXi)...

That sounds logical. Ultimately, why should you protect something, that is free? And for server, all you need is DCS-World... Anyway, DCS-World does run on VM (at least on my configuration). If I find some time, I will record desktop-video. It might explain it better... (btw, I do not like censorship. Especially when I DID NOT break any rule)

I'm affraid you do not understand, so I will try to explain just some basics of virtualization without going very deep: "type-1 hypervisor" (sometimes called bare-metal) is virtualization platform "sitting" directly on hardware. Kind of "minimalistic" OS, which does not do anything else, just virtualizes underlying real hardware for VM. Nothing is between type-1 hypervisor, and hardware. So you can not install vSphere ON arch-linux. First, vSphere must be installed (directly on hardware), then you create VMs (be it linux, windows, etc) and install OS as usuall. Common type-1 hypervisors are ESXi (vSphere), Hyper-V, Xen, etc. "type-2 hypervisor" (operation-system assisted) is installed ON TOP of normal OS (linux, windows). Some of this kind are VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, or VMware Player. These have higher overhead, and IMHO are not very suitable for running games on it.

Part of ProActive copy protection (that is that activation-code you have to enter).

1. I'm using free vSphere 5.1.0, build 1312873 (type-1 hypervisor). VM is Windows7/64b, with 2 vCores and 8GB vRAM (normal share, not-reserved, not over-comitted), vm-hardware version vmx-09. ESXi-server is single-Xeon (4cores, 8 threads), 32GB RAM, local storage (hw raid1), running ~10 VMs (mostly linux)... 2. I installed clean DCS-World 1.2.6.18933-283 (the latest download version at that time), and updated in-game to the latest version. 3. As i said: it is clean VM and clean DCS. No need to duplicate it. 4. Virtualbox (and all other type-2 hypervisors, i.e. VMware Workstation) are IMHO not very suitable for Windows-VM, especially if graphics is included. The same for KVM (very poor support of graphics). Maybe Xen is worth a try, but I have most experience with ESXi. 5. Pepec9124 apparently uses wrong virtualization platform.

My point is DCS-World DOES run in VM. And what is your point? Why you want me to test Wine? I never said anything about running DCS-world with alternative API/dll (i.e. Wine)... No, it is not. StarForce was used up to FC2. NOT in DCS-World! You do not need any modules on server. Maybe you should try harder! FYI, for ~10 years I've been doing experiments with games running in VM. IIRC, the old original LOMAC 1.0 was one of the first games I managed to run (and even play) in VM... In case someone did not realize it yet: YES, I AM running DCS-World in VM right now! Wanna ask something seriously? Go ahead! You want just to yell and jump like crazy child? Then I'm not interested in such a kind of communication...

R9-280X just became available, so I doubt someone here has it already (edit: R9-280X is basically just re-marketed HD-7970). But for that price (~250€ here) it is a very good deal. In most tests I have seen (hardwareluxx, pcgameshardware, computerbase, etc.) it clearly outperforms GTX760 (by as much as ~20%), and is actually on about the same performance-level as GTX770 (which costs much more). Moreover, R9-280X has 3GB GDDR5, while GTX770 only 2GB (those 770 with 4GB are even more expensive). So if you face the decision "GTX760 or R9-280X" and want the best performance for ~250 bucks, I'd take R9-280X.

Wine is NOT VM (virtual machine).

DCS-World does NOT have SF and CAN run in VM.

One day 50 years later I'll be talking with my grandson like: "...you know kiddo, once in the past we had a sim called LockOn:FlammingCliffs2, and just imagine, you could run on-line missoins with 50+ players for 3+ hours, and it did not crash! But it died out of beauty on the day when DCS-World was released...". And my grandson says: "...you are kidding me grandpa, that's impossible! Look at our DCS-World version 94.7.643, it can barely run for 30 minutes on my brand new PC with 2048 cores and 64 petabytes of RAM. You could not have something that rock-stable 50 years ago!..."

Practical limit of USB 3.0 is ~450MB/s. That might be on the edge of some new SSDs (i.e. 840Pro has sequential read/write speed over 500MB/s). But it is still much better than USB 2.0 of course (which was not only slower, but also half-duplex)...

Depends on PCIe version. PCIe v3.0 has per-lane speed ~1000MB/s. More exactly it is a little bit less, (128/130)*8Gbit. So it is enough to have mobo with PCIe v3.0 and 1x sata3-expansion card with the same PCIe-specification. ~950MB bus-speed is more than most of todays SSDs can offer...

Even if he has older hardware, free sata-port and sata-bracket is all he needs. Taken into account one can buy external case for 2.5" disk (that is also SSD) for about 15€ I think nobody will attache it using usb...

Oh really? I have one SSD in external enclosure, I connect it to my PC using eSATA, and guess what? Speed (be it sequential or random) is the same, as if the drive was mounted in PC. Quite logically, as eSATA is basically just SATA with a few mods (higher voltage, longer cable allowed, higher resistancy to errors, slightly different connector, etc).

No offence man, but this is the biggest bullsh*t I have heard in this century...

Re-activation is triggered by some amount of "hw-change points". Even if GFX alone does not require it (and I am not sure if it is so), he might have just cumulated enough to reach threshold (i.e. if he previously added RAM, or changed CPU, etc.)...

For example in Windows Task Manager, tab "Networking". Or you can install some monitoring utility (i.e. NetWorx and many similar tools), this can monitor bandwidth usage in background and generate excel/word/html-reports. But be aware that this tools usually calculate an average value (i.e. traffic per second, as TaskManager). So you might see network traffic never reached limit of your connection speed, but within that averaging interval it might have happened.

Concerning mission building, a few tips: 1. Please use different atmospheric conditions, at least in combat-missions. These are "all weather fighters/strikers", so why 95% of mp-servers run missions with "holiday-like" weather? That's far from reality. Use rain, snow, fog, storm, wind, etc. Let us prove we can land on instruments, in strong cross-wind! 2. In combat-missions use "logical" AAD-deployment, that's mix of loong/medium/short-range systems, covering each-other. Lonely S-300 does not look realistically. And when I'm at it: do not squeeze systems like S-300 to one compact pack on area barely as large as one soccer-playground (one more bad habit in many mp-misions). Missile-launchers of the same long-range system can be many miles away from command/radar vehicles! So if a pilot turns away from radar after he received missile-launch warning, he might just as well turn unwittingly toward incomming missile (he already overflew launcher during inbound flight)...

Even if they cost the same? You still want a little slower GTX680? That's strange. But ultimately, it's your money...

Better said, higher-clocked (standard chip/memory frequencies in MHz): 680: 1000/1500 770: 1050/1750 Overall 770 is ~5% faster, than 680.