Temetre

I mean we got it in other planes, or even other games. And looking up IRL kneeboards, it seems like they indeed got really small print on DinA4 or smaller sized papers. When I tried stuff like that in VR in the past, it was basically unreadable without some zoom function. You cant even put your face closer to the kneeboard often, because its on your knee. Even on an F-16, where the inclined seat makes it easier to get closer, it was kinda useless in the original size to me. And generally, text isnt as easy to read in VR usually, something about the pixel rendering and density or so. Just blurs over much more. Now to be fair, its been a while since Ive tested it, and maybe I had some settings wrong, but I wouldnt have much hope for realistic kneeboards in VR. edit: Actually found a link to another flight sim (thats not against the rules I hope?) where I tried it. Kinda looked like that and was basically unreadable to me: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/attachments/commercial-vehicles/1912818d1567657168-combat-aircraft-indian-air-force-kneeboard.jpg Even in 2D I had to zoom that in (1080p screen).

Always depends on the weight, its 33k top usually. In DCS, and probably in reality, you can land 37k or so too, but probably not done IRL because risk or airframe stress or so. Then again, if its a more even wartime scenario, ammo is short, then we'd actually see how far the US navy would be willing to go with landing restrictions. IIRC the old Harriers actually had to drop bombs almost every landing on a vertical landing, because the margins were so thin. Super Hornet and I think F-35 were specifically designed so they can at least bring some ordinance back to save money.

You guys can read kneeboards in VR? I find that anything even close to realistic scale is compeltely impossible to read. K-function or so works fine IIRC tho. I think you can disable it by default in special options?

Just wanna ask if theres anything new on mentioned topics? Couldnt find anything in the progress and news posts. Just if you want more specific what I mean: Damage to F-16 seems quite simplistic in some ways; you obviously dont "tank" damage in an aircraft, but its always massive fuel leakage, most of the time damage results in pilot kill, it doesnt feel realistic. Storage overstress isnt simulated, mostly no FPL features, etc. To some degree that also applies to the F-18, makes me wonder if theres shared systems being developed or so. Eg in an F-14 damage control and recovery is actually pretty interesting imo.

Thanks again. As far as Im concerned, my doubts are pretty much all gone.^^ Oh yeah thats perfect then. Sometimes thats even a bit difficult to read in 2D at 90 fov xD

Got a Pico4, which supposedly is pretty good in resolution/image for a wireless headset? Tbh im not so concerned anymore considering the many positive responses. Yeah I was mostly concerned about stuff like altimeter, speed, hud/HSD text and other gauges that are important. Stuff you often just want to do a quick glance on while flying/fighting. If those are fine like that, then it should be alright. Fun anecdote, on the A4 Skyhawk I found the gauges in VR somehow easier to use than on a 2D screen. Just somehow easier to do a quick glance at them.

Thanks for the answers! Good point about readability mods, but im mostly just concerned about flight instruments. I learned most of the pilot stuff just playing trial in 2D. When you say TACAN, do you mean the pilots manual TACAN on the lower left, which is alternate to Jesters TACAN? That seems like a minor issue, if anything on the front is fine. And I bet the test thingy is hard as hell to read, good thing its optional^^ Oh, and one specific thing: The HSD (the lower pilot display?), how readable is it? I remember the altitude/range text of targeted enemies being very small, and that seems like some of the most important text youll see in combat. Is that readable without zoom?

Thanks, thats pretty much all I needed to know. I mostly use mouse and sticks, not VR controllers, so Im probably fine anyway

So just kinda curious how is the F-14 cockpit in VR? Especially, how visible are the speed/altitude gauges and stuff visible in VR? I can play native 4k in VR now, but got a Pico-4 headset with wifi/streaming headset, so minor compression included. The A-4 Skyhawk gauges are extremely clear and readable to me in VR, but theres ofc a lot of talk about F-14 gauges being a bit harder to read in 2D sometimes. Is that, or any other cockpit stuff a problem in VR? Just worn text on switches probably isnt a big deal, considering you memorize those positions in 2D as well. Would love some opinions; ive did done extensive 2 week test on the F-14, to bridge the wait on the F-4. But considering the 4 seems ever further away, Im considering if I should get the 14 next sale anyway. Its an amazing module and plane after all, even if the price is a bit painful.

My bad, I shouldve been more specific. Im not saying the entire control should go away, just specific functions that proof problematic. Like block ONLY ctrl+c with the window being active/text marked/or so. Only functions that can be realistically used on the active window. I think thats also more intuitive: When OP marked text, and pressed ctrl+C, he clearly wanted to copy test, not blow the canopy. Hence it would be intuitive if this specific bind only did something for the window. To be fair, idk how expensive (time/money) that would be to implement into DCS' system, and it might not be worth the effort. Just wanted to underline that I think OP has a point^^ Honestly, I wish there was some way to write down and copy around notes when in the cockpit, without external mods. Like open a kneepad like a text window, maybe write and make notes in the briefing window about stuff. Seems like that stuff is probably an important thing during actual flying operations? Like if you IRL get info on requested CAS strikes, you note down the details and coordinates and stuff. Would also help a lot if it was integrated in VR, where you cant just have paper/pen ready outside of the game. But sorry, thats just me rambling OT stuff xD

What kind of deadzone you need, is completely dependant on your stick. Some sticks got a deadzone setting built into the onboard hardware (eg VKB sticks), other you need to set it in game or by software. Some sticks deadzone also changes over the life. Best example isnt a joystick, but the Thumbsticks on 360 pads: They start of wobbly, requiring big ~10% deadzones, and it can get worse over time. I think its impossible to have a stick without a deadzone. Its either built into the hardware, or set by the onboard software of the controller. With Virpil I assume its the latter, check the configuration software if you want to see it. My VKB got 3% deadzone set, looking at the configurator. Thats pretty low, makes it feel like there is no deadzone.

I noticed that the framerate always seems a bit lower than the frame-cap, even in the main menu. Also in the upper screen (i imagine the game is paused below) you also got a horrible frametime issue, with regular spikes.

Pretty sure "cpu bound" means the current bottleneck is caused by CPU. Aka the framerate is bound by the CPU, while GPU could deliver more frames. And yes, the CPU bottleneck situation is quite strange indeed. I got big missions with hundreds of units and horrible frametimes, but flying solo I got only somewhat better frames.

Oh yeah thats a very common and normal issue. When loading screens are on, your hardware might be so busy it cant really render the screen at any realistic framerate. Thats not a problem on flat screens, because theres no head movement and its not filling up your entire view. Let alone how ASW/smoothing/reprojection can make it even worse. But in VR, its extremely irritating and kinda painful, if they are so bright. Gotta close eyes. Would be nice if there was some way to have eye-friendly VR loading screens!

Maybe a solution could be a rule, if text in a windows is marked, certain combinations like ctrl+C/V doesnt affect the aircraft? I think thats how windows and other programs do it, if they consider "focus" to be on a text window, certain inputs change.

Real war is all about improvisation, reacting to the enemy strategy, and changing your own approach faster and more effectively than the opponent. "Cheating" is a game term, a concept of fairness that doesnt exist in war. The only time you ever do things "by the book" is if theres no alternative, or if you are in such a superior position, that doing things by the book is guaranteed to be succesfull anyway. The more serious a fight is, the more you get willing to throw over previous rules. Thats why eg Desert Storm saw less improvisation, compared to Vietnam, which basically just rewrote "the book". Arguably the USAF even took some wrong lessions in Vietnam, because while their upgrades to F-4Es & co were meaningful, they were not nearly as effective as the Navys focus on "just" better training. To some degree that even happens in DCS PvP: Phoenix come out, they are super powerful, till people start notching and learn how to defend when F-14s are around. In return, the F-14 pilots develope strategies how to use Phoenix' against opponents with those strategies. Or they just abuse the fact that they can force opponents to defend. Even if the Phoenix is easily defeated, its an opportunity cost to do so. As to how you wanna fly the plane, follow specific eras or situations rules... thats then more of a RP-thing, where you and others put limitations on themselves to create a certain kind of scenario. And ofc the AI has the issue that it doesnt know how to adapt to strategy. Thats why Im almost skeptical by principle when people talk like combat in DCS is only realistic if youre doing 100% by the book. Its more like, the issue is that we only got the book for how to use planes. And we dont even have the full book, because the miltary keeps everything beyond the basics secret. So its very difficult to actually create "realistic" scenarios. Thats not a dealbreaker, but I wish a lot of people were more conscious about that.

Maybe you know this already, but considerin you cite the max range: In most cases, "max range" is completely misleading, and especially with soviet/russian missiles there seems to be an obsession to list the most aburd, ludicrous theoretical max range in a semi-fantasy scenario that only exists to make the missile hit something at max range. If its even a theoretically honest thing, considering countries might just lie about stats. France eg gave constantly different missile ranges about a certain anti-air missile; that wasnt even dishonesty, it was if anything more openly showing how theyre not gonna tell anyone whats realistic. Like, an Aim-120C can probably go 200 miles if they bothered to give it enough battery life and capability. Maybe even hit something if its fired from 60 miles high at mach 2.2 in a loft trajectory, to hit a target thats stationary at 2 miles altitude, and which is pre-propgrammed into the Aim-120s memory. Because thats kinda what Russia does with missiles like R-37. But they didnt, because it wouldnt be useful. Realistic effective max range of that missile is 30 miles against a fighter, and sometimes less than 10 miles for a reliable kill. Same way how the Phoenix could go way further than 200 miles, but instead its going extremely vertical so it got at least a kill chance at 50 miles. You can add the same kind of doubt with the radar. Just think about how huge the F-14 had to be to even carry our current radar. The 80s F-14D supposedly got a radar capable of 480 on paper, but limited to 230 miles realistically. And like what, supposedly the soviets made a radar thats smaller but can see further? Old one up to 120 miles against fighters, new one supposedly 250 miles against a fighter sized targets, 400 miles against AWACS? With Soviet radars, which lagged behind the west? I dont know how good or bad the Mig-31 radar is, but I definitely know that these numbers are wrong. Same way how the R-37s range supposedly just doubled and tripple in modern variants, from 120km to 300km, with little weight change.

Thx for putting down some numbers for those two planes! Mach 1.1 with 12x MK-82s doesnt seem that bad. But of course, considering you could likely go 0.9 or so with a fraction of the fuel usage, so not very useful. Thats more like what I expected. Seems like generally Mach 1.2 is a massive barrier to overcome for planes flying low? Even a clean F-16 in DCS seems to struggle with that IIRC. Of course, gotta go very high for max afterburner to be ever not utterly wasteful.

Increasing pagefile to 32 gigs didnt fix the issue, neither did process lasso setting priorities to high. No meaningful change enabling/disabling use of HT cores. Apparently DCS was set to "lower than normal" priority for some reason? Increasing to high didnt fix the issue tho. Here a quick and dirty screenshot. This isnt a sanitized scenario, no point sending a trackfile i think. Last liberation mission, me on the runway, planes spawning in the air, friendly/enemy vehicles fighting closely. Also EWRS/splash damage script running, tho no IADS. Good extreme case test. Look at the frametimes, gues from 8ms to 40ms or so. This is a big mission, but smaller missions and even solo flights show this problem to a smaller degree. @BIGNEWYWhats best I can do to get help? Set up a simpler scenario with a trackfile? Also just to be safe, in case its useful, Im PM'ing you my settings+dxdiag.

Ill try some of the suggestions in this thread. Just some observations from a bunch of testing: Using a Pico4 for VR, now with a new GPU making me fully CPU bottlenecked, MT produces a LOT of microstutter. Its an issue as well in ST, but its much worse in MT. Its most notable in extremely jittery head movement. Turning head, moving it sideways is super jittery with constant overshooting. Its actually so extreme that the FPS-viewer shows framerate jumping between 40 and 80fps with ground action close to me, frametime graph looks like a rollercoaster sometimes (no ASW/smoothing active). Im still trying to analyze where the issues is coming from (planning to try process lasso, bigger pagefile). This is mostly an issue in reasonably big battles, on a smaller scale with higher fps its better. But even on an empty Syria flying the FPS is sometimes just 60-80 fps, and very minor jitter. The CPU is an I5-12400, which is a fairly strong CPU in other games. GPU is 6800 XT, tho Ive noticed the game managed to fill up 16gb of VRAM with high/high textures? Less V-memory usage didnt fix the issue tho. One peculiar thing is that while frametimes remain slightly rough, in non-VR big battles in DCS are way more smooth and higher framerate.

Lmao yeah those too. I even got my doubts about the lethality of stinger and strela launchers at this point^^ The bad AI is part of the reasons why im not touching helicopters yet, as much Id love to try them in DCS. Especially on detailed maps like Syria they could be a lot of fun, but not if the AI is just instagibbing you out of the sky. Sometimes I feel like even with an F-16 Im limited in my ability to do CAS, because the enemies are so accurate.

Yes, you can train yourself to not over-G a plane in a game. Of course you can do that. But thats not like flying the real plane then either, because your senses and mechanics in trying to avoid that stuff are completely different. And as said, theres so many reports of pilots over-g'ing planes, especially before modern limiters and hud-indicators. So real pilots actually do over-g their planes, and slavishly trying to keep the plane in their limits might not be realistic either. And its not like planes didnt support that; F-14s started rated as 7.5, got put down to 6.5 for maintenance reasons, but AFAIK those planes airframes are tougher than 9G-rated F-15s. Point being that some of this stuff doesnt translate well into a game, or even simulator. You can try hard to keep the plane always in its rated limits, or you can play soft and loose to a degree, but either of those is a compromise that doesnt perfectly replicate the real experience.

Thank you! Tho can you please tell what specific problem is tracked there? Ive thought about making a report on my own to report specific problems, but its a bit hard to tell whats even an actual issue and what not for me.^^

I have even multiple: I can play arcade battle setups, or more realistic and RP heavy missions. Both without trying to dictate other people how to spend their time. Funny how that works, if you just respect how other people spend their time, with a game of all things. Okay, thats your definition. And im sure "as close as possible" is defined by a set of your completely personal rules as to what is acceptably realistic and what isnt. Maybe you should take your own words to heart then, because you are the one trying to tell other people as to how theyre supposed to play the game. Even on their private servers. And you dont get how absurd that is. Well, they did accomdate other playstyles already, so that train has sailed.

G-forces are something you feel in your body. Visual and audio cues can give you some information, but they can NEVER make up for that. The visual and audio cues arent even as good as in reality, since vision/sound is so much more limited in games. That is so obvious im not sure why its even a discussion. And btw, real pilots struggle to not overstress their problems despite all of that. See the F-14s. So if you think "its easy", then something is wrong either way. Sure you can treat military simulators also like a game, rather than a military training tool. But now youre the one treating the simulated "plane" in a way thats not at all like you would in reality, youre treating it as a toy. But we arent allowed to do that in a video game? So now youre saying gladitorial combat 1v1 plane dogfights people do for funs, are realistic, because military 1v1 BFM training is a thing, and thats why people should fly the aircraft as if its a real plane? Okay, we just ignore respawning, we ignore the laughs we have, we ignore the plane explosions and the pilots ingame literally dying. But the paddle is the problem, because the planes we just blew up might be reduced in maintenance... if they were real planes. And if we didnt kill them. If we were military pilots. I dont understand how you can justify that train of thought. These are two laughably different scenarios, which differences that go way beyond some silly g-limit maintenance topic. First big point here being, you are extremely inconsistent, you are morally offended by people pulling the paddle, but ignore all the other nonsense that people, and im sure you as well, do. Its like youre saying only what bothers you right now, is "bad", and everyone should accept your opinion. Im not asking about silly modifications to be added to the plane. Im just pointing out you hardly know how anything about this works. Youre just trying to get some picture based on extremely limited documentation. The documentation might be wrong, and you might be dead wrong as a result. So you, just like me, we are both extremely ignorant about those planes and their usage. Let alone how they would be used in hypothetical conflicts. But thats not the issue; the second big problem here is, that despite that limited knowledge, you take yourself, and your opinion, so extremely important that youre trying to tell everyone how to play their video game plane fighter game, even when its just a fun matchup with no rules. You take yourself so important in your idea about how planes are flown, that you think a silly 1v1 dogfight between friends has to be flown exactly as to how you, personally, understand the usage of the plane in a real world scenario. Like... have you never thought about how silly and pointless that is? Even ignoring that people dont care about what you tell them, because its frankly just rude.