Dangerzone

Did you experience the motion smoothing with DCS at low level? Or was it with another game, or DCS at high level? For me, the real test will be DCS, Low Level and seeing how things like the HUD behaves while things are flying past fast, and how the HUD handles in the rotor blades of helicopters. With other motion reprojection I've seen this work from being fair, to very poorly. It's that mix of an image (HUD) superimposing over a moving background that is the real test and I'm excited to know how that goes.

So the CTD only occurred after restoring some stuff from the open beta, and then only in mp. What is this stuff that you are moving. It sounds like it could be contributing to the issue.

Are you saying that after renaming your DCS directory to DCS.BAK and starting DCS that issues went away in SP, but remain in MP? Or are you saying that the issues only occur in MP and you haven't tried that suggestion yet?

Or both. But definitely a percentage difference for sure! (For those who are lucky enough to actually own both )

Can you try navigating to your savedgames\dcs directory. Find the folder called DCS (or DCS.OpenBeta) and rename it to DCS.Bak (or DCS.Openbeta.Bak). Then launch DCS. Your settings will be gone, but that's OK (for now). Re-run the mission and see if it crashes. This will help to determine if a gremlin has come into your configuration / users config and is creating havoc, etc. You can then delete the newly created DCS (or DCS.OpenBeta) directory, and rename the .BAK one back to it's original name to revert back to what you had if it doesn't make any difference. Alternatively if it solved the issue for you, you can copy back over just your config/input folder, and change your settings.

In saying that 5090 release date this fall? Is there something I don't know about?!? Firstly - I would recommend trying motion reprojection off. I was stuck at 45fps motion reprojection, and was surprised when I turned it off, all of a sudden I was hitting 90fps the majority of the time. With some tweaks to my settings, I fly almost exclusively now with the HP Reverb and 4090. (Well - did until my HP gave up the ghost). Re your question, at the moment I don't think anyone can give a definitive answer. It's all theoretical until the Crystal Light is in the hands of general people and we start getting real life information coming back. Will their 60fps be far better than the HP's and not have that flickering effect? If so - this could be a game changer for many. Even dropping to 72hz could be a good option. We also don't know how much barrel distortion will occur if sub-sampling resolution, or how much worse it will make things, or if due to the high resolution it will still outperform a HP Reverb with clarity while maintaining similar performance levels. For me personally, if my Reverb was still working properly, I'd wait until both the release of the Crystal Light, and the Crystal Super to gain a real understanding of what the real world differences are going to be. I am one that is concerned about having no DFR - but I'm also now a beggar. With my VR headset dying - I need a new VR headset now, so can't afford to wait. It's reported that you can still use Quadviews with the Pimax Light. It obviously won't be dynamic though. How much it affects the outer edge is again yet to be seen (by the masses). Pimax also seem to have their own mirroring/reprojection which could be vastly better than what we see with the HP. I'm optimistic about the Pimax Crystal. I'm thinking (hoping?) that there are enough combination options/between FFR, Subsampling, Refresh Rates (including halving them) and Motion Reprojection that we're going to see it being practical for DCS use not only for 4090's but even as far back as the 3080/3090's. Dynamic Foveated Rendering of course is king, so as always with DCS, it's compromise and seeing if there are combinations that meet your satisfaction.

I can't test mine at the moment, but have you tried logging out of your account (in DCS there's a icon at the top right corner that should log you out of your account). Then try logging back in again when you next start DCS and see if it comes back. If that doesn't work - with DCS closed you could try renaming your saved games\DCS directory to DCS.BAK. Then start DCS (this will give you brand new configurations, and should prompt you to log in again). See if this works. You can always revert back to your old configuration by deleting/renaming the new "DCS" folder and then renaming DCS.BAK back to DCS again. This option really is just to make sure it's not an issue with your local config file. If both of those fail, can you try logging into your web account at digitalcombatsimulator and see if the module is still there for you. If it is, and the above 2 steps haven't worked, you may want to try contacting ED support to see if there's an issue with your account. Please let us know how you go.

Rubbish. I'm very disappointed that there have been no updates in 10 months. This needs to be discussed as I would definitely like to see their methodology change. There are legitimate concerns that need to be addressed and considered in the future. But slandering them by calling it abandonware when the dev's are still here and posting in this thread only 12 posts above showing progress is misleading at best and doesn't help anyone. Unless of course, you have some information that shows that the company has truly abandoned their product, and that the posts above by their dev's are fraudulent in nature, that you would like to share besides updates taking longer than you or I would like?

The 'indications' are that with all the options given (FFR, the ability to downscale, run at at 72hz instead of 90hz - of course 60hz is also an option of course) - that the Crystal Light should be able to run at the same performance as the HP reverb with "just as good, if not bettter imaging". Of course, there is room to increase those to amazing/incredible results by increasing these values to what your system can handle. So the indications I've received are at the very worse, be able to replicate the G2 with no screen door effects, but very likely to be able to achieve more than the G2 with the various options made available to us. Of course, these are 'indication's only. The practical confirmed results of this are yet to be determined. Only a handful of people have had their hands on the Crystal Light, and the real important data will come from real world users with the actual systems when we finally get it in our hands, and not from working through the tech spec's and options. If your G2 is still working OK for you I would strongly recommend to hold off and wait for real world results first. I can't - my Reverb is all but cooked, so I've had to take the plunge and pre-purchase just to get 'in the queue', although looking at some of the chatting on discord at the moment it sounds like the release hasn't gone quite as planned, with some users who ordered earlier than others not yet receiving their order status updates, where more recent buyers have. That's not going to affect the results of the performance, but it's probably another reason to hold off just at the moment until the issues with orders & shipping have been sorted out as well. There is the big screen VR headset as an option for you as well that might be worth checking out. Apart from that, I'm not sure what other VR headsets are currently on the horizon.

Well, this weekend will be 2 weeks from their 2 weeks™ video. If it actually released at the end of this week - this would be iconic.

Sorry I misunderstood you when you said "If no autohover so please to think about adding some kind of human behavior before release" (emphasis mine). Thanks for clarifying.

No - please don't. In saying that, I'm not saying don't include this. I'm all for looking into this as an option, but not the "before release" part. I would hate to see a module that (from everything I'm seeing with the video's coming out) looks like it's 2 weeks announcement may indeed be a week or so away, held up for a month or more over something as minor as this. By all means, consider making this change in the future, but not at the expense of the release please.

Sweet - thanks for clarification. I look forward to the next build.

Hi Skatezilla, My apologies, I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or not, but I can only find one place to set the custom launch arguments (Under Advanced Launcher Options), and it seems that this is a global parameter. (ie, I can't have different custom launch options per Build Slot). Is this correct? If so - do I need to create separate desktop icons instead for different custom saved games locations for the one install? Cheers DZ

It quite could be, but I think it's a matter of goals and priorities. There are 2 ways to achieve this. Start with the drift/realism as a higher priority and work the way to stability (aka, George) or start with stabilization as a higher priority and work the way towards realism. Whichever way is used, there will be an element of err, or 'not being far enough' on the side of caution. Given the issues I have faced with George over time - especially in the hover - I welcome the new approach of 'on rails'. While not perfect, I think it's the best of the too evil. As for not being perfect, what's the saying? "Perfection is the enemy of good". That's not to say I wouldn't encourage additional work down the track towards this goal, but not something I would consider a day 1 holdup to get right first, even in a non early access model. Also, if stability with just a slight drift was easy enough - I dare say we wouldn't have gone through the issues we faced with George either. There may be other factors at play that make this first more difficult than is perceived. In 30 years of professional coding I have learned that what appears, and should be 'simple' on the surface often has hidden obstacles that aren't revealed until part way through - and it can be very difficult (or impossible) to relay the reality of this to people who haven't seen those obstacles for themselves. As such, I often tend to give dev's the benefit of the doubt - at least until proof of concept is done by someone else where the code is visible.

I fear I've gotten to a point of module saturation. I look at the F4. See the fun others are having with it, and just go "I don't think I have the mental capacity to learn more, and remember all the new stuff- plus retain what I already fly", even though I want to. I already have multiple airframes that I purchased and never really learned including the A10II, F16 and F15. (Ducks for cover to avoid thewell deserved incoming 'how could you?!?') Helicopters aren't quite as bad, as normally most at least seem more simplistic, but when it comes to new fighters it seems when I try and learn new modules, I start getting messed up between the new ones, and the ones I already fly, and then have to go back and relearn the old ones - in which case I quickly seem to forget the new stuff. I guess IRL that's why pilots aren't active on multiple airframes of different generations simultaneously and maybe I'm expecting too much of my aging brain. I fly almost every helicopter. When it comes to planes, the only ones I feel I can do well in would be the FA18 and the AV8B. The F14 I don't mind with a RIO, but it's very rare I have one, so I rarely fly it except to enjoy traps on the carrier. The A10II, the F16, the F15 criminally almost remain always in the hanger, maybe getting pulled out once in a blue moon for a non-combat joyflight. I don't actually use them much at all because I am finding it too difficult to remember all the intricacies of the different weapon systems. So my question for those who maintain flying many modules is - how do you manage it? Do you actually remember and maintain all of them? Or do you just move from one to the next, and forget existing ones, and then relearn when the 'circle' comes around? Or am I not the only one that struggles and you find it difficult as well? Honestly - if it wasn't for my mental capacity, I would probably own all fixed wing aircraft, but I'm getting hesitant now about getting aircraft that I think is just going to sit in the hanger and not get fully used. It used to be that I loved learning more modules. Now it seems more like a choir. It probably doesn't help that I'm mentally exhausted in the evenings and weekends due to my work being so mentally demanding, but even so - I'd love to know if there are little tricks that people use that have similar challenges like me.

If it was reverted, and it fixes the issue please let us know.

Have you tried disabling CPU core parking to see if that fixes the issue?

I currently have 2 installs of DCS with different configurations, but I'm wondering if I can get away with only having one install, yet still have 2 different configurations for that one install. 2 installs worked in the past, because I used the Open Beta for testing, as well as additional mods, and the stable install for my live / mission days/nights gameplay. Now that ED only has the single branch, but I still want 2 different configs, I was wondering if I could cheat, and reclaim some disk drive space and have a single install, but with 2 (or even more) configs. Interesting. I'll have to check when I'm next on my gaming rig, but I don't think my stable version has a dcs_variant.txt file, only the second install 'open beta'. If so, creating a dcs_variant.txt for my base DCS install might resolve the issue. However I'm not sure what the autoupdate.cfg file contains, so I'll check that out too. Thanks! Oh sweet. Thanks. So if I just add the following to different launches, I could have as many saved game configs/variants as I want? dcs.exe -w DCS (For say my original install) dcs.exe -w DCS.OpenBeta (To be able to use my 2nd install, without having to have a second program install) dcs.exe -w DCS.Sanitized (To create a new one that's brand new/sanitized for debugging) That's neat! Thanks SkateZilla!

I haven't tried low cockpit textures in the AH64. I don't use low because in the UH-1 - the textures really are unreadable. They're a blotted mark at best, and as I fly multiple airframes I opted to keep away from low cockpit textures. That being said, there are 3rd party cockpit textures you can load into the saves games directory and I have used these before. Maybe that's why I'm not getting the hit that some others are?

I agree with you that the Apache certainly takes more GPU than other birds, I don't believe DCS has shot themselves in the foot with VR. In fact, it's VR that has captured me. I have concerns about the new modeling of under the panels in regards to whether that is going to impact on more resources or not. I accepted some time ago, that if I want good VR experience, I need to shell out and buy the top of the line hardware, so I purchased a 4090. That hurt the hip pocket, and I'm well aware that there are others that can't afford to do this. However I did run VR with a 2080Super for a few years before that, and that worked well back with DCS 2.6, and 2.7. It was only with more recent updates that I started getting to a point where I knew I had to update. Then... I updated to the 4090 just before DLAA/DLSS was implemented, so I never got to experience just how much of an improvement that would have made. There are definitely compromises when going to VR. However, I've flown MSFS in VR a number of times, and honestly, I don't see DCS being that bad in comparison. (I'm aware YMMV, but my experience on both my 2080S and my 4090 is that DCS is doing OK at holding their own in VR against MSFS). ED are being active. They implemented DLAA/DLSS, and are working on Vulkan. I know the wheels turn slow, and I know it's disappointing to have to wait so long. But fact is, if VR wasn't available in DCS, I'd probably walk away now (and I think there are many others that use VR that would too). I fail to see how they've 'shot themselves in the foot' by giving us options. If people don't think DCS should have implemented VR - they still have the option to fly 2D, so I disagree there. This isn't to say their can't be improvements. The F10 memory leaks are indeed a concern. Being a Dev, I know how damn difficult it can be though to track down those memory leaks too, and have sympathy for the dev's that are trying to find them. Thankfully I have not experienced F10 issues since getting the 4090. It's a pitty that NVIDIA didn't throw more RAM at the 4080. (I think I read the other day someone mod'd the 4070 with more RAM and it outperformed the 4080). Hopefully they are able to identify the memory leaks soon, or Vulkan is closer than it seems and it brings some much needed solutions to the table.

Flappie is a unpaid beta tester volunteering his time. He's offer to help you was generously of his own doing. He (and others) have taken time out to test themselves, and has been unable to replicate. As a result he has asked numerous times for a track file so he can replicate the problem and observe what the causes can be so he can try to help further. He's not getting paid, and I sure don't blame him for not wanting to spend any more time with the ungrateful responses such as the above. Something as simple as providing a track file would be of real help. If you don't have the patience to simply provide a track file as requested, why do you expect anyone, let alone non-paid volunteers to have more patience than you? To invest more time into your alleged bug trying different things that they already have done, and have been unable to reproduce unless they topple the gyro's? Yes - some bugs can be fixed without tracks - many probably because someone else was able to replicate them at a later date. That's what track files do. That of course is in situations where it is really a bug, and not another cause such as pilot error, of which we have no evidence one way or the other so far - which a track file would provide too. Or it could be specific to certain scenarios, such as particular units used, configurations, certain places on certain maps, etc. Stuff that could take weeks to try and identify, or... if someone who had already come across it and provided a track file so it could be replicated - could possibly be identified within minutes. I get it. Bugs are frustrating. Things that aren't bugs, but I can't figure out why they're happening or what I'm doing wrong are frustrating too. Considering that the people who have been trying to help have volunteered their time out of their own good will, you may want to consider leading by example the advise you gave from your last paragraph.

Hi Calvin, You have answered all my questions beautifully. Thank you! All answers were favourable. This was probably the most exciting for me: You've just won yourself a customer! Not sure whether I'll be selling it in 6 months time and upgrading to the Super though. But what's very encouraging for me is that Pimax are willing to continue to support their product and customers after the warranty period. Without going into the whole details, I come from experience with another headset provider that had a known issue with a $20 replacable cable that they would make available or sell to people out of warranty, leaving an expensive paperweight behind. As such - this approach from Pimax's approach is extremely encouraging! Thank you!

Thanks for the incredible work SZ! With this utility, is it possible to have once install of DCS use multiple saved games profiles? I know that dcs_variant.txt I can specify where the saved game install is located. I was just wondering whether or not there are settings in this app that would allow me to specify different saved games locations, and when I launch DCS with Skatezilla, it would either automatically update this file (or otherwise launch DCS with parameters that pointed it to another saved games location if such a parameter exists?) Also... I notice with my current install (I have 2 DCS installs, one used to be open beta, the other used to be stable), in the app, it shows Slot 1 pointing towards my original Stable release, and the second pointing towards my open beta install (to be expected), but the SG Path for both point to the same location (saved games\dcs.openbeta). It doesn't matter what I do to try and change this parameter (including manually editing the config file), it keeps defaulting them both to the same location. This doesn't appear to make any difference to DCS launching. (My original 'stable' install still uses the saved games\DCS path - so I'm guessing that this is a display/cosmetic only label, and doesn't have a bearing on the actual launch parameters), but didn't know if this was a bug, or a potential issue with my install.

Hi, I have a few pre-purchase questions regarding the Pimax Crystal Light that I was hoping any Pimax rep's may be able to answer (or anyone else who has seen this questions answered elsewhere) please: PC Cable From what I can tell the cable is attached/fixed directly to the headset, not plugged in anywhere. If the cable becomes damaged / worn out down the track (out of the warranty period)... Will it possible for the user to replace the cable themselves? Will Pimax sell the cable as an optional accessory / repair item? Will Pimax provide a paid repair/service option for the cable in the future when the headset is outside of warranty. (Being a HP 'refugee', knowing that Pimax has our backs and will continue to support their customers outside of warranty period is of great interest to me) Lenses I see, unlike the Pimax Crystal, the Crystal Light does not have removable lenses. In an unfortunate event that a lens is damaged / scratched, etc... Is it still possible for the user to replace the lens themselves? Will Pimax sell replacement lenses as an optional accessory / repair item? Will Pimax provide a paid repair/service option for the lens? Controllers Is it, or will it be possible to purchase the controllers at a later date if someone only purchases the Pimax crystal headset to start with and then later wants controllers? If someone buys the headset with controllers, and doesn't want them, if they sell it to someone who has no controllers, can the controllers be re-paired to another headset, or are they hardware locked to the original headset they were first sold with? Headphones Is it possible to completely remove the headphones for those who wish to use a 3rd party headset, and will a 3rd party headset fit over the crystal lights head-mount? Shipment / Release Date I have been seeing emails/chat about the Pimax being released to early adopters this month. For those who haven't ordered yet, but still pre-order, what is the expected wait time before shipment? (ie, is their a backlog of orders, and could we be waiting months, or could we expect to also see shipment within a few weeks from the first shipments)? Also, on your website, it states the first 50 customers will receive international shipping. Then for those who follow (which I presume would include anyone who pre-orders from now onwards), the website states Source: https://pimax.com/pages/pimax-update-flexible-shipping-choices-for-crystal-light-launch If the unit is being shipped via a local warehouse for the >50 purchases, how is GST/VAT handled for online orders, or is that included in the price? Also, for any warranty/returns - can we ship back to our local warehouse, or do we have to ship back to HQ? (I'm in Australia). Thanks in advance... DZ