ackattacker

I've always had a bad experience with motion smoothing but I recently gave it another try after tweaking some more setttings. I turned off HAGS (hardware accelerated gpu scheduling) and set the prerendered frames in the NVidia control panel to 1. Using Pimax smart smoothing (45fps) the experience was much better than I remembered. I can still see ghosting if I look for it, for example very low level looking at trees off at 90 degrees zooming past. Otherwise I don't notice it. Prior to changing those settings, smart smoothing was a mess. Aiming for 45fps I bumped up my graphical settings... I'm now running 1.2 Pixel density and 85% FSR. Turned some other settings (shadows etc) up. Result noticeably crisper. May stick with this for a while. That said, when I was running 70FPS on the 90HZ panel, I could see the micro-stutters but it didn't bother me much. Some people are more sensitive to these things than others.

It’s not an issue with older Pimax units. The issue is the new ones use a different hardware chip internally and a totally different firmware. You can read about it on the Pimax Reddit, pinned post at the top. If you have a firmware ends in .2001 you have the new one. If you hav anything else you have the old one. Again, Pimax claims they are working on getting the new one working with AMD and other refresh rates. Right now if you have an AMD card and want a new 8kx your best bet is to contact them directly and see if they will sell you an old one.

Keep in mind if you order an 8kx from Pimax right now it is locked to 90hz and also doesn’t work with your AMD card. Supposedly they are working on fixing that. if you have an older 8kx that works at 60hz you should be able to achieve that relatively easily with a little tweaking. I typically run around 70fps with my preferred settings. Obviously this is not ideal with a 90hz panel and you get uneven frame times. But I prefer that to 45fps reprojection. Everyone is different.

Just to pile on, I have used these Google daydream style things in the past to play around with and they have their uses. I still use one for flying a drone, and I’ve also used it to watch a movie on a plane. But for DCS the experience would be very very poor. The resolution, clarity, FOV, and tracking all leave a lot to be desired compared to even a 1st generation headset like a Vive.

I am curious to see the review of this, but I have my doubts. As a “poor man’s pointctrl” it seems to miss the essential feature that pointctrl is calibrated and tracks in virtual space, so that you point more or less directly at each switch and knob. This finger mouse just tracks relative motion using accelerometers, so I am picturing a situation where you can move the mouse pointer by waving your hand around, but it will have no relation to the actual thing you are trying to point at. In which case why not just use a trackball.

If you use the DCS updater utility to launch DCS, you can launch directly into VR and also choose which rendering driver to use. I have not tried Oculus with the Pimax though. Try it and let us know.

My experience of Pimax and DCS is that a little tweaking is a better use of time and money than chasing the absolute greatest hardware. 3080ti and 5800x works very well for me, I use VRperf toolkit at 90% and 10% sharpening, FFR, 100% steamvr resolution, kegetsys vr shader mod, high textures, flat shadows, no civ traffic, I get around 70fps single player totally smooth. Multiplayer server I get dips to 45 still playable. May upgrade to the 5800x3d should help with that. We are pretty close to the next generation of graphics cards will be pushing double the performance. Not sure I’d be dumping $2k into a 10% faster card. That said my 3080ti is overclocked and gets similar benchmarks to the 3090ti. Only real difference is the vram and I’m not convinced that is important at normal settings.

I think the VRAM requirements are a bit overblown, I run with a 3080ti (12gb) and performance is great with an 8kx. Yes you can overwhelm the vram if you crank everything to the max. So don’t do that? That said I would not under any circumstances but a 3070ti with only 8gb. For the same or less money get a used 2080ti with 11gb.

Signed up just to comment on this thread... Thank you to the OP you showed me the way! I did a variant of this mod and thanks to the excellent write up only took me about 4 hours. I did a few things differently. Started with MSFFB2 and Thrustmaster F-16 same as you (Sidewinder $50 from FB marketplace, Thrustmaster from ebay) I have not extended the stick, so no carbon tube. I don't mind playing with the joystick in my lap. So also no resistor mod. I used a Teensy 3.2 instead of a 2.0. This required a few small changes but overall was basically the same. Reason I went with the 3.2 was for the higher precision on the ADC in case I want to add the joystick axis to the Teensy in the future. Also uses micro USB instead of mini USB and I no longer have any mini USB cables lying around. I elected not to put the Teensy in the handle, I placed it in the base instead and ran the 5 wire ribbon cable down into the base. I removed the existing Sidewinder handle, cable, and connector intact (easy enough to stuff the connector sideways through the tube), then I took the guts of the handle (switch board, Z axis pot, and IR hand sensor) and made a neat little bundle out of it with tape and put it back in a convenient spot in the base (with the ribbon cable reattached). This way no wires cut. Because the IR sensor is taped up it registers as a hand always being present, if I want to cut power I just pull the plug. Because the Z pot it still present I don't need to worry about spurious signals. Also it would be easy to reverse the install if I desired. The tube for the Sidewinder handle is slightly smaller in diameter than the tube for the Thrustmaster handle, so I made up the difference with a few wraps of duct tape and a washer under the screw same as the OP. Once the handle was tightened down, it is very secure. My only "permanent" modification was to cut a very small part of the base to accommodate the extra USB cable. I added a little extra code to slow the SPI polling down, not sure this was necessary but the Teensy 3.2 slowest CPU speed is 24MHZ so I wanted to give the shift registers a fighting chance. Wiring of the Teensy board is basically the same except: Select Device is pin 10 instead of 0 CLCK is pin 13 instead of 1 MISO is pin 12 instead of 3 I loaded as Flight Sim Controls + Joystick at 24MHZ. Code here /* USB FLCS Grip You must select Joystick from the "Tools > USB Type" menu */ // Buttons are muxed into shift registers, use the SPI protocol to read them #include <SPI.h> const int slaveSelectPin = 10; unsigned int buttonInputs1; // data read from SPI unsigned int buttonInputs2; unsigned int buttonInputs3; // Use some macros to clean things up #define S3 !(buttonInputs1 & 0x80) /* Pinky Switch */ #define TG1 !(buttonInputs1 & 0x40) /* Trigger 1 */ #define TG2 !(buttonInputs1 & 0x20) /* Trigger 2 */ #define S1 !(buttonInputs1 & 0x10) /* Nose Wheel Steering */ #define S4 !(buttonInputs1 & 0x08) /* Paddle Switch */ #define S2 !(buttonInputs1 & 0x04) /* Pickle */ #define H1D !(buttonInputs2 & 0x80) /* Trim */ #define H1R !(buttonInputs2 & 0x40) #define H1U !(buttonInputs2 & 0x20) #define H1L !(buttonInputs2 & 0x10) #define H4U !(buttonInputs2 & 0x08) /* CMS */ #define H4L !(buttonInputs2 & 0x04) #define H4D !(buttonInputs2 & 0x02) #define H4R !(buttonInputs2 & 0x01) #define H3D !(buttonInputs3 & 0x80) /* DMS */ #define H3R !(buttonInputs3 & 0x40) #define H3U !(buttonInputs3 & 0x20) #define H3L !(buttonInputs3 & 0x10) #define H2D !(buttonInputs3 & 0x08) /* TMS */ #define H2R !(buttonInputs3 & 0x04) #define H2U !(buttonInputs3 & 0x02) #define H2L !(buttonInputs3 & 0x01) #define SPI_CLOCK_DIV8 0x05 // setup() runs once on boot void setup() { // set the slaveSelectPin as an output: pinMode (slaveSelectPin, OUTPUT); // start the SPI library: SPI.begin(); // configure the joystick to manual send mode. This gives precise // control over when the computer receives updates, but it does // require you to manually call Joystick.send_now(). Joystick.useManualSend(true); // Set SPI to run at 1/8 CPU SPI.setClockDivider(SPI_CLOCK_DIV8); } // loop() runs for as long as power is applied void loop() { // take the SS pin low to select the chip digitalWrite(slaveSelectPin,LOW); // send a value of 0 to read the SPI bytes buttonInputs1 = SPI.transfer(0x00); buttonInputs2 = SPI.transfer(0x00); buttonInputs3 = SPI.transfer(0x00); // take the SS pin high to de-select the chip: digitalWrite(slaveSelectPin,HIGH); // Write to joystick buttons Joystick.button(1, TG1); Joystick.button(2, S2); Joystick.button(3, S3); Joystick.button(4, S4); Joystick.button(5, S1); Joystick.button(6, TG2); Joystick.button(7, H2U); Joystick.button(8, H2R); Joystick.button(9, H2D); Joystick.button(10, H2L); Joystick.button(11, H3U); Joystick.button(12, H3R); Joystick.button(13, H3D); Joystick.button(14, H3L); Joystick.button(15, H4U); Joystick.button(16, H4R); Joystick.button(17, H4D); Joystick.button(18, H4L); //Joystick.button(19, H1U); //Joystick.button(20, H1R); //Joystick.button(21, H1D); //Joystick.button(22, H1L); // Determine Joystick Hat Position int angle = -1; if (H1U) { if (H1R) { angle = 45; } else if (H1L) { angle = 315; } else { angle = 0; } } else if (H1D) { if (H1R) { angle = 135; } else if (H1L) { angle = 225; } else { angle = 180; } } else if (H1R) { angle = 90; } else if (H1L) { angle = 270; } Joystick.hat(angle); // Because setup configured the Joystick manual send, // the computer does not see any of the changes yet. // This send_now() transmits everything all at once. Joystick.send_now(); } Stick is working wonderfully in DCS and MSFS 2020 using XP-Force.