Dangerzone

But if you fly in a squadron - I'm guessing someone other than ED is creating missions and hosting the server, so you are relying on community contributions such as the server hosting, mission designing and maybe scripting too, etc? Sure thing. And I need to make an apology to you. I think my previous response to you was bad. My idea was more about how much people rely on other community contributors for their DCS experience. This includes any community contribution. Reflecting on this - it could include Mods (Such as QVFR) for sure. But it could also include non-commercial content creators (C130 mod, etc) - or 3rd party community missions, or using a community server, or using scripts, etc. It's a pretty broad spectrum. My understanding is that the majority of players are Single Player only - so this poll was a way of referencing just how many people here are happy with "ED only" material, vs how many actually rely on other community members also contributing something to the mix. I wasn't really focusing on QVFR, etc that are essential to people running DCS - but in all honesty reflecting back on this - if they are non commercial community contributions, then I was probably wrong with my previous response, and they probably should be considered, but it's not limited only to those. Or another way to put it. how much would DCS suffer if there was no volunteer / community contribution at all.

Can you please expand on this for the rest of us. Are you saying you had VSync on in DCS, and turned it off? (And have it nowhere now)? Are you also saying that turning off Full Screen fixed all your stutters. And lastly - can you clarify if you're running 2D or VR? Thanks.

Yeah... we've come so far. I remember with DOS games... I'm finished. Half a second later POWER BUTTON and walk away.

You're more optimistic than me. When ED can't even keep their own modules from having repeated issues (scoreboard, ground unit pathing, track replay desync, etc where they have all the source code and can work on it from all angles - it seems more plausible that sooner or later there's going to be a change they make that's going to change something that breaks the F15E in a similar way too - but without the F15's source code to be able to diagnose from all angles - well, as I said - if they struggle when they do have it, this can only make it far more difficult. (This isn't a go at ED with their bugs - but just to point out that if it's so involved when you have the source code, it's going to be far harder without) Agreed. I see only 2 ways that the F15E survives this. Either Razbam and ED come back to a mutually beneficial arrangement, or somewhere in the contract it's stipulated that ED must get a copy of the source code and the legal proceedings end up forcing Razbam to hand it over. Otherwise, without developers actively maintaining the source code - it would be a very hard ask to expect this to remain operational long term.

That's definitely not true in my case. If you are right - then there's a connection between you and I that is missing. To clarify though - and maybe this is where the miscommunication is: The problem isn't that I'm getting over 72FPS without limiting it - the VR does indeed limit the frames still to 72 as you say - so I agree there. (So if you think we're saying RTSS is needed to limit the FPS to 72 in the headset - that's not what I'm saying). What I'm saying is if I use RTSS and set 72FPS - I get a far more stable 72 fps with far less drops than compared to if I wasn't using RTSS. Now as for the part that RTSS only affects the monitor - if I change RTSS to 60fps - according to what I understand from what you've written - this should only change the mirror window to 60fps? That's not the case - what I observe is immediately after changing this setting, my VR drops to 60fps. As such - I can only conclude that RTSS does indeed force a limit on DCS's FPS in VR. This isn't placebo - I'm viewing the DCS's actual FPS counter in VR - and I also see the effects visually well. I can lower this significantly more to 30fps or less - and the effects are even more obvious. Obviously I have no intentions to lower FPS that far - but for the sake of this exercise to test if your theory is correct that VR isn't affected - and I can conclude it definitely is affected by RTSS. The headset can't go above it's refresh rate - but RTSS is definitely affecting the frames that the HMD is delivering. Not only visually - but I can see this also reported in DCS's FPS dialog as well. The main reason to limit FPS to 72 using RTSS in VR isn't to lower the FPS to 72 because it's rendering more than 72fps- but rather because doing so gives a clear change to the amount of stuttering and CPU binding that is going on. I don't know the reason for this. Maybe the 72FPS isn't being fully limited correctly with Pimax software, or DCS has some HID interrupts coming in the wrong place that causes issues that manually setting RTSS to 72FPS helps as a workaround. I suspect DCS since this was working smooth on the previous version of DCS but the latest updates cause issues. (And rolling back to previous version works fine again). The reasons I can only guess - but the effects are plainly obvious. For me - without RTSS I'm removing my headset after 10 minutes with a headache due to the very obvious and significant stuttering. With RTSS at 72 - the major stutters have gone (the odd micro stutter remains),but I can play for hours. I also just tested again too - running with no limit gives me 72fps in VR with significant stutters. (72FPS dropping to around 60FPS as reported by DCS as well as is plain to see - no placebo). I see CPU Binding flash between yellow and green in the DCS FPS window as well. Then, setting RTSS to limit to 72FPS, the DCS FPS window shows a green 'GPU Bound' the majority of the time, with the occasional stutter - and I see a more consistent 72FPS in the DCS FPS window - I definitely see far fewer stutters. Cheers DZ

I'm curious about this. In my case it's definitely not a placebo. I can literally be in my headset - see what DCS is doing - while DCS is still running set the FPS limit in RivaTuner, come back and see a significant difference in what I experience in DCS plus what the DCS FPS Window is telling me. If this is not supposed to have any impact - I'm very keen to find out why it does - as anything I can do to remedy the issues DCS is having another way - I'm all up for learning more. However if I change RTSS to 60FPS - it definitely locks my DCS Frames to 60FPS in VR. My best guess is that there's some sort of over-rendering happening with DCS behind the scenes, and limiting it to 72FPS helps DCS to not 'race ahead' - but all I know is what I've done from experimentation - I'm no expert at this. Are you saying we should be enabling VSYNC for the VR mirror / monitors sake instead? I don't believe I have any VSYNC enabled. The only limitor there at present is Rivatuner? I'd be happy not to have a mirror at all on my desktop - if it meant better experience in VR, but I don't think that's possible?

Yes. Does your ISP give you the option to 'opt out' of CG-nat and get a public IP address? Many of decent ones give this option to their customers. It's worth checking.

Wow - this thread almost made a week with no responses. NL and BN must have enjoyed a break. Is 6 days the new 'high score'? One thing I found interesting though. I bought the AV-8B. Really enjoyed it. I heard a lot of bad stuff about it, but I'm guessing I came on 'late' when it had matured. When the F15-E was announced, many predicted disaster with it being in the hands of RB. I was one of those that thought they were naysayers and were holding a grudge about something no longer relevant. I enjoyed the AV8B, and FWIW - I thought the F15E was coming along nicely as well. Such a pity that things didn't work out - as it looked like RB were actually kicking goals and developing a product that was loved and enjoyed by many during it's early access.

I've found RivaTuner to be my best option. I've also found it helps change the yellow and red 'cpu bound' to the green 'gpu bound' status in the DCS FPS inspection. (With the exception of the stutters that I still haven't been able to overcome). However different people for some reason report different results with limiting the frames. For some like me, it greatly improves the experience. For others, it creates more complications, so give that a shot and see whether it makes it better or not for you. I've been trying to figure out what the difference is between those who limiting works for, and those it doesn't, but haven't found something yet. For me - I'm 13900 on 4090 with 64GB RAM. Other options for you are to use DCS to limit to 75FPS (and let your headset do the rest), or lock it in with NVIDIA Cpanel. But as mentioned, I've found RivaTuner works the best for me, but may not hurt to try all options as YMMV.

That's what I was insinuating. ie: the last two versions having the stuttering issues. Seems that we're the beta testers, but also the ones that need to diagnose and resolve the issue. Closed Beta always existed, but we also had open beta. Now, that extra step of testing has been removed (the open beta) leaving one less level between them and us (by 'us', those who used stable release). Since one of those steps has been removed, so we're all in the open beta testing together. For those of us that used to favor stable release - there's definitely a difference - but I also appreciate that there re those that never really understood the concept though between OB and SR or just always ran OB as their version - so I understand how some would see things from a different perspective. Tomato/Tomarto...

There can be - but people seem to have differing opinions. I've tried both DCS limiter, and NVIDIA limiter. I've found the best one to use (if limiting) is actually RivaTuner instead. It allows for more precise limiting than DCS (plus you can change it without having to pause the game) to see the effects. I think a big no-no is using more than one at the same time. For myself - I have noticed that I get smoother FPS by limiting using RivaTuner to the same Hz as my headset. I'm still getting stuttering on the latest DCS version though - but if I limit below 72hz to around 68 - the stuttering goes away. Unfortunately 68 though on a 72hz headset is not real nice. But in the end - you're going to get different answers from different people as some find limiting works better, others find it gives more problems. The only real way is to try it yourself.

Very wise. Works great if you're single player, but if you're into multi-player, it's a little less helpful. Being so new, you probably didn't know that we used to have 2 versions - an Open Beta and a Stable release. Those who wanted a more stable option could opt for Stable release, and those who wanted the latest changes yesterday could go with O.B. This worked OK IMO originally for those who wanted to use it (even if a number didn't really understand it properly), but then Stable Release got neglected, going months without updates, and no real 'bedding down' of a version occurred before moving onto the next version, and eventually it because unmanageable for stable release server operators with more forced to move to Open Beta to keep up. Eventually ED dropped Stable release altogether, and only carried on Open Beta as the main version. I have wondered about actually starting some sort of website/voting thing where people give feedback as to which are the better / more stable releases of DCS so there's a list we can work with for a multiplayer aspect who want stable again, but after thinking about it for a while I don't think it'd be that popular so probably wouldn't work.

Not really. This is more stuff directly related to DCS itself. Edit: I'm sorry - I shouldn't have said that. I didn't really have 3rd party software for VR in mind when I was asking the question - however in reflection, if 3rd party community based VR software is essential for people, then that would be considered a community contribution. Sorry for my poor response yesterday.

I’ve heard that most DCS players focus on single-player. My own experience is mostly MP, where community contributions are essential — hosted servers, mission design, scripting tools like MOOSE/MIST, SRS, Overlordbot, and the list goes on... It’s made me wonder: is my reliance on community-created content typical, or am I in a niche? This poll is a way to gauge how much of the DCS experience really depends on volunteer and community input — whether it’s essential, just a bonus, or barely needed. Even in single-player, many missions and tools come from the community, so the impact may be larger than it appears. I’m curious where others stand. Feel free to share thoughts in the comments as well. Obviously if you play multiplayer, unless you're hosting your own server and creating your own missions without any third-party tools, you are relying on community contributions such as the hoster - but I don't know how much of an impact this has if the majority of players are SP as I've been told...

Normally the different levels I've observed are 1) ED acknowledging / being aware that some people are having issues 2) ED able to replicate the issue 3) ED working on resolving the issue. At the moment we don't even know if we've reached level 1 yet - as I've seen no acknowledgement from ED that they're even considering there's an issue. Sometimes it's done in silence, and I was hoping that it's just lack of communication and they're actually aware of an issue and are looking into it, but after hearing your experience that they don't even know what this is about is concerning indeed. It's understandable that with so many different hardware configuration and user settings that this isn't an easy one to deal with. But if the common denominator here is the latest DCS update among a variety of different users, it would seem that we're at the mercy of ED actually investigating this internally.

There is no single threaded version anymore. Unless you downloaded a year old(?) install which really is impractical for me as I enjoy the MP cooperative side of DCS. Bit you are right, these stutters make VR difficult to use. I’m definitely flying less these days, hoping that these issues may one day actually be acknowledged by ED, and they might throw us a bone. At the moment, I get the feeling they don’t believe it’s a DCS issue and we’re on our own trying to find workarounds. But given nothing is consistent and YMMV is very much a thing, unless ED find a fundamental flaw with their multithreading, the average dev and support people would be as much out of their depth as we are. Especially given there’s so much different hardware combinations out there that seem to be affected differently.

That one could be your preload radius, or it loading in additional map. For instance - if you spawn in a helicopter, and then rotate the helicopter, you may notice it stuttering when you turn 180 degrees. (I don't know, but i think it might be loading more textures in the direction you face). Then keep rotating back and forth a little, and you may find it dies down. Likewise if you're flying in a direction, it could be periodically loading more parts of the map. If it is the preload - you could try reducing the preload radius to see if this helps.

Good to know. I have the issue, even though my mouse is a standard 'poor mans' mouse too that only polls at 125hz, but still seems to interrupt the FPS. I've found locking the FPS at 72 using Rivatuner stops this from happening in the main menu, but I think it's only masking/hiding a deeper issue. If you're using any sort of FPS limiter (whether in DCS, NVIDIA Cpanel, etc) - it might be worth removing the limit while diagnosing just incase it's masking issues. As for your wager, I'll take that bet. I have a 13900KF with 4090 and 64GB of RAM and a poor mans mouse - and I'm having stuttering issues too that I have to constantly fight, so it's a sure bet for me. I've been playing around with limiting different cores in Process Lasso (using SETS and not just affinity to reserve those cores solely for DCS) but still haven't found a solution yet.

I hate to tell you, but expect to spend as much time (if not more) tinkering with your VR settings as you do flying in DCS. Not only can VR be time consuming to setup, but it can also eat up a lot of time with diagnosing/trying to fix settings. Just something as simple as a DCS update can ruin previous smooth experiences. (The latest DCS version has created micro stutters for me that weren't there before that I had to go finding and tweaking again to try and get a better experience). Windows updates can automatically revert settings that you've set (such as re-enabling core parking, windows game mode, etc), so it's worth having a 'check list' of the things that you've changed that you know work to go over if you start experiencing problems again in the future. I would put VR under the 'experimental' category with DCS. Both Pimax software, and DCS seem to be released in perpetual "BETA" states now - and I'm not a fan of how windows takes full control over it's updates either. That's not to say that it can't ben an enjoyable experience, but the first thing I highly recommend is lowering your expectations to ones that are realistic. That way you won't be as disappointed, and can start enjoying the positives. I didn't watch the video - but a few things that's definitely worth checking: Disable HAGS in Windows Disable Windows Game Mode Make sure your NVIDIA CPanel is set to 'Prefer Max Performance" Windows Power setting to Ultra Try Rivatuner and lock the FPS to the same as your headset. (ie, if running 72hz, then lock to 72fps to see if this helps). Be prepared to experiment with this. You may find a better experience going to 120fps in your HMD even if you don't hit 120fps). YMMV - Everyone seems to have different experiences with DCS as to what is better for them. Disable windows core parking. (This is a big one - park control is good software for helping with this). Consider restricting DCS to P-cores only (using process lasso). YMMV - some say to do this, others say not to - so you need to try and see what works for you. Turn down mouse (and keyboard if you have a gaming one) polling rate to something lower than 1000. Start with extremely low/conservative Graphic settings, and get it smooth / working OK for you first. Then you can increase the settings to what you like. This helps eliminate whether it's DCS settings itself that's the issue, or something external. Disable TACView if you have it installed (at least until you have things working smoothly). Don't be afraid to rename your saved games\DCS folder to DCS.OLD, and let DCS create a new 'fresh' configuration for you that you can play with. This helps eliminate any previous settings/mods/etc from the equasion until you have something running smooth. You can always copy DCS.OLD back to DCS to revert (or copy just things like the config\input directory) if you get a better experience with a fresh config without having to rebind your whole setup again. Test on a resource-friendly map first. (ie: Caucasus), and not in the Apache, Chinook, or other aircraft that are demanding with textures, but something easier if you have a module that's more simple first. Consider dropping Pimax back to version 1.29 if nothing else works (Again YMMV - but I've heard of some users that are staying on that version for the time being until there's a solid release/update). In addition to this, I would also consider dropping back to 2.9.14 in DCS if you're still experiencing issues and see if this helps. As mentioned, numerous users are having problems with DCS 2.9.16 (and .15 might be OK - but IIRC some are dropping back to .14) and stuttering/FPS issues - so if you seem to be having no luck after trying all the main things you can find on the internet - it may be worth rolling back to see if the current version might be a contributing factor to your experience. In a strange twist of fate, I've found that DCS can't hold 72FPS with the latest update in Germany CW. It stays at 72FPS mostly, but drops with stutters to 60 however if I change my HMD to 120fps - it can maintain 120FPS and drop to 110 around the same interval. Why it can't maintain 72FPS at 72HZ but can stay above 100FPS if I switch to 120HZ is a mystery. I can lock onto 60fps no problems without the stutters though, but of course Pimax doesn't have a 60hz refresh rate. This was the biggest problem coming across from HP which I had a smooth experience, to Pimax -as for whatever reason, these stutters are caused by momentary 'cpu bound' messages in DCS. I think it may have something to do with polling/interrupts and DCS not handling these efficiently with it's multi-thread implementations but that's a total guess. I'm no hardware/IRQ/interrupt expert (even if I do recall having to learn how to set the IRQ manually back in the DOS era with soundcards ) Good luck - I hope this is of some help.

Check your BIOS settings. IIRC Gigabyte's BIOS has a setting for 'automatic download/update of software'. It's a BIOS setting that literally takes over your windows and does downloads and installations of their software onto your OS automatically without you knowing about it, and I believe it's set by default to ON (and resets after every BIOS update). Definitely worth disabling this before trying to uninstall the software, or you may find it just installs back over the top again. Then you may be able to uninstall the software via windows safe mode.

With the Crystal Light, it's my understanding that the LCD screen is not direct, but offset out on an angle slightly which can cause some discomfort. Additionally the focal point is set to 1m from your face (as opposed to 3m which I think many of the other headsets are set to). Both of these can cause some discomfort or weird feelings similar to being cross-eyed. I see you've already found the offset in the advanced options, so looks like you have been playing around with that. Another thing you could try is pulling the headset away from your head a little and see if that helps with the discomfort. (Moving your eyes back a little from the screen). If you do find some relief in doing this, getting some comfort spacers may help. This of course reduces the FOV, but can make it much more comfortable for viewing for some users (such as myself), and the little loss in FOV is made up by the less eye strain. I'm not sure how you work with Glasses and the VR headset, but the other thing is to look at getting prescription lenses for the headset itself. If your glasses that you're wearing are for distance, but the real distance your eyes need to focus at is only 1m - this could be also contributing to some of your discomfort/issues instead of helping. It might be worth finding out what your prescription is for 1m, getting some contact lenses as trial at that distance, and seeing if having those focused at 1m (instead of distance) improve your experience. If so - you could consider prescription VR lenses. Hope some of this is of some help.

Out of curiosity - when you're at the main DCS screen, if you bring up the FPS does it show locked? If you then move the mouse around, does the FPS become unstable?

The last 2 updates have significantly increased their load times, that's for sure. I have had it go non responsive "Program is not responding, what do you want to do. Close, or Wait", but I don't think I've had it crash out completely - just takes ages (and I mean ages sometimes) to actually load in. Some times it can appear as though it's locked up, but it's still working. If your SP only, it may be best to stay on 2.9.14 until this issue get's recognised and fixed. But if you MP, it might be worth pursuing; What are your PC specs, and how long are you actually waiting? Also - are you on SSD's, or HDD's?

Have you been seeing the WIP media? (The latest released about 2 weeks ago showing some incredible lighting / night in the cargo bay). It's very difficult to see your posts as anything outside of trolling. If you are serious, why did you decline to actually engage with the developer with a meaningful response when they've reached out to you so they could actually address your allegations (which personally I don't think holds any weight, but still... they were actually willing to engage with you, and you weren't interested). The actual developer themselves tried to engage you 2 times to address your concerns. They asked you: "Short of a full release trailer, what else would you like to see as evidence that the project is alive?" and "Do you still think the project is dead, though?" You had 2 opportunities, and you said nothing. And now accuse them of being the ones with cricket sounds?

What are the benefits of running on the latest client? I'm still way back on v 1.29 - been too concerned to break something that's not broken. Is there any significant performance improvements with the latter version? (Or significantly better motion smoothing, FFR, etc) that's worth risking updating to the latest client software? I see that the latest version is 'swimming' with Mbucchia's QVFR - although I don't use that.