M-Flux

On the DCS on Linux topic, we have this starting point for resources: https://github.com/TheZoq2/dcs_on_linux/ There is also a Matrix channel linked there, which in the last 10 months has grown from 3 to 33 people. Feel free to join, too :-).

Hi, I'm having trouble setting the datalink in the Red Flag 21-1 campaign. I have both the GPS switch and MIDS LVT on. On the DLINK DED, NET STATUS page I tried toggling "GPS TIME" between on and off as others have suggested, but did not seem to help either. SYNC says "FINE", NTR is OFF. Though the "TIME" itself under "NET STATUS" stays empty (is that expected?). Also the HSD says "XMT: TNDL". And the TNDL STN page seems to list other flight member track numbers. However on the HSD I see no other aircrafts in this campaign. I'm probably missing something obvious, quite new to datalink. Thanks for the help!

Of course they could still buy those. The immediate benefit for the borrowing player would be that the only time constrain they would have is when the lending player would like to fly that plane again themselves. And that is a lot more flexible. Just like you can ask your neighbor if you could borrow his/her lawn mower for one more week, as things got in between and your lawn is not done yet :D. And if unexpected things get in between with the free trial then you'd feel that you have wasted that opportunity (at least until you can try again 6 months later.). If the "shipping" fee for lending is small enough and I have a good friend who actually has a spare plane to lend then I might prefer that over the free trial for testing due to the extra flexibility. Good question :D. Just a scenario that came to my mind. We have a lot of RC model plane clubs here though. I could imagine that they might want to add a flight sim room for interactive multiplayer studying and leisure purposes to their facility if financially feasible. Of course, they could just create an account per plane for multiplaying. But maybe lending to other accounts would be easier to manage. Also from a security point of view, you wouldn't need to expose the login credentials of the module owning account on these PCs. So if some rogue member/visitor stole the login credentials from those PCs at an unattended moment somehow, you could just cancel the lending to those PCs' accounts from the club's private, main account.

@SharpeXB for a player to be able to lend the plane, they'd have to have purchased it first, of course. So someone has payed for the plane already. In contrast to a free trial. And that's why I also wrote that the "shipping" fee would need to find an economical sweet spot. If it were the full module price, then it wouldn't make sense to lend planes. If it were too low then it might reduce profits, because ED would ideally like to sell all planes multiple times, both to me and my new friend, even if unused, of course (which is what I guess you were referring to?) @Tom Kazansky maybe it's just me and my head :D. But I'd have to check my schedule first if I'd have time to optimally use the free trial. And then I'd have to estimate if there could potentially be a better time for a free trial later. And I'm not quick/good at making such decisions :D. Ah, that's an interesting idea, too! That would likely also solve my perceived downsides of just using the free trial. And would likely indeed be easier to implement. On the other hand, I'm still wondering if having the option to lend ones own planes would increase the perceived value of a plane. It would feel more like having bought something "real". And would make it easier at least for me to actually buy a and try new plane(s), as it would increase the feeling of having bought something valuable. Like I'm hesitant to buy trainer jets. But if I knew I could lend it to a friend to get into DCS, I would buy them. (and then this could get my friend hooked to buy the more expensive, non-trainer, planes. Which I prefer flying myself and might not currently be able to spare for lending as I fly them myself.) Edit: > @M-FluxOk, but If you wanted to fly the same type if aircraft with your friend to show him how it works, you are better off with the trials. Right, and if we both wanted to fly the same plane, then we couldn't. That would be a small downside, yes. But maybe that could then also be another incentive for the friend to purchase the full module instead. Or it could be an incentive for me to buy a two seat jet trainer twice on the same account .

@Tom Kazansky Yes, I am. Like I wrote above I don't consider the free trials as fully "uncomplicated"/suitable though, as I'd have to decide when best to use the free trial without wasting it. Activating a free trial is not something that I would be able to decide in 5 minutes. Lending one of my planes to a friend for a fun weekend for $5 or even $10? <- That's what I could easily decide in 5 minutes. Also the free trials don't have the "Other (potential) benefits" I listed above, I think.

Just a thought/idea, if this could be fun to boost the DCS community, without reducing profits: Lending ones own planes to other players. For a "shipping" fee to be payed to ED. Allow player A) to lend his/her purchased planes to player B) Add a "shipping" fee to pay to / determined by ED (maybe ~10% module price?) Player A) selects if he/her or player B) pays the fee Player B) confirms the transaction Player A) can't use the plane then while player B) has it Player A) can however reclaim the plane at any time free of charge After reclaiming player A) can lend the plane again for the same "shipping" fee to other players, or use it again themselves Main goals/motivations: Having an easy, uncomplicated way to have an ad-hoc way to play/try DCS with a friend who is new to DCS. "ad-hoc" meaning spontaneously, with no commitment and with no downside other than the "shipping fee". Right now doing "ad-hoc" is a bit tricky because of the prices for full purchases or not wanting to "waste" the free trial. Being able to transfer/spread bought planes to different accounts to be used on different PCs for local events (LAN parties, DCS showcasing events). Where it would be infeasible to make extra accounts / purchases just for this weekend event. Interaction between people, enhancing the community spirit. Other (potential) benefits: Would make less popular planes (like jet trainers?) more popular: I'd be less hesitant to purchase (especially trainer jets) if I knew that I could lend them to others, that they wouldn't become a mostly unused, "wasted" purchase that accumulates dust and rust in my garage. Makes it feel more like a real, physical asset than a digital commodity, leading to more engagement / perceived value? From an economical standpoint the trick(y part) would be to find the sweet spot for the "shipping fee". Where it would overall lead to more customers/purchases. --- I was also wondering if adding a fixed (maximum?) leasing time would make sense. Or as an option, for a discount on the "shipping" fee. But I think that would defeat the purpose of being an uncomplicated/easy option, where you don't have to think / calculate / worry about the best options too much. So I'm not sure if that would make sense. Another thought was whether it would make sense to then allow purchasing identical modules multiple times for the purpose of lending. I'm mostly thinking of a local flight (sim) club scenario who maintains a room of PCs / sim gear for its members. (But not sure if this could lead to some weird secondary market effects? But maybe that could be prevented by disallowing third parties selling leases in the general terms and conditions.)

Hi, Just wanted to ask politely, with no pressure, but to avoid that it is forgotten: What is typically the procedure here, is this issue on some internal bug tracker now, so that it might get a proper fix at some point? Would be great if those of us owning an x56 wouldn't have to fumble in changes to Lua files for the workaround after every update anymore, that would be very appreciated :-). And I'm hoping that a proper fix wouldn't be too complicated? Cheers

@BitMaster There was quite a bit of progress. Correct, plain wine v7 did not work. But either the protonified wine-GE and I think also wine v8 should now work (I use wine-GE at the moment though, as plain wine does not have VR support and has issues with my custom keyboard layout). It also works without Steam with Lutris instead, which should take care of a properly configured wine environment for DCS. Lutris has nice installer scripts for DCS World: https://lutris.net/games/dcs-world/. Which is also what I'm using. Headtracking should be possible, too. There is some documentation for that and DCS on Linux in general here: https://github.com/TheZoq2/dcs_on_linux, where we try to collect our findings. There's also a Matrix chat channel listed, where we try to help out each other as, yes, during the initial setup you might experience some turbulences. @VirusAM Getting the Reverb G2 working with DCS on Linux was not easy though, I needed several manual steps to set it up [0]. Generally, VR is propably the easiest to set up on Linux via Steam+SteamVR - if you have a non-WMR VR headset which is natively supported by SteamVR - which the G2 is not. On the other hand using Monado instead of Steam/SteamVR, which provides an OpenXR runtime which DCS than can connect to directly, seems to be a more open, standardized and a lot cleaner approach to me and maybe is therefore also more performant. And Monado has very active development at the moment, through both volunteers and the Collabora company. And also the new DXVK project probably contributes to the nice DCS non-VR and decent DCS VR performance. It translates those DirectX11 calls to Vulkan. [0]: https://github.com/TheZoq2/dcs_on_linux/issues/26#issuecomment-1528227256 --- Edit: I just noticed and am hoping that I didn't create confusion with my initial post. To clarify: The screenshots with 75fps vs. 23fps were without VR. With VR I'm using the VR graphics preset and then get maybe around 30fps when at < 100% VRAM usage.

Hi, Generally I get great performance with my Linux and eGPU setup here with DCS. And can even use a Reverb G2 VR headset via OpenXR, yaiy! However there is one specific case where performance greatly degrades for me and I'm wondering if that's the same or different on Windows (and if it's not the same then that would strongly indicate that this would be a point for improvement in the Linux (AMD) graphics drivers): When DCS allocates more VRAM than my Radeon RX 6650 XT has then performance degrades. The more VRAM is overallocated the worse the FPS get. This is especially an issue for multiplayer gaming for me and makes multiplayer unplayable, even on the lowest graphics preset. Could it be that DCS just always tries to load textures for all models and vinyls into VRAM which the server operator has set up and allowed? No matter if such a plane or object is in visible range or not? And then my eGPU's 40Gbit/s Thunderbolt 3 port becomes the bottleneck when the GPU needs to constantly access textures in RAM over this "small" bandwidth, bottlenecking port? (While when using <100% VRAM, it does not have to stress the TB3 port as all textures are already available on the GPU itself?) The issue is not multiplayer specific though, I can also reproduce it in single player if either: I set the graphics presets to high and then load a detailed map like Syria. Or if I keep a Firefox browser open, which eats 1GB of VRAM, and then with high presets load Caucasus (without Firefox VRAM on Caucasus is just below 100% / 8GB VRAM and then FPS are great). Or in the following example I'm using medium graphics presets 1920x1200 and loading the F-16 Caucasus free flight mission. First as is and I get an awesome 75 FPS at 59% VRAM usage: Then I restart DCS, go through all planes in the encyclopedia, which already fills up and overallocates VRAM. And then start the same free flight mission. Then I'm only at 23 FPS at 186% VRAM usage: I also did some more detailed tests a while ago with a lot more settings here: https://github.com/TheZoq2/dcs_on_linux/issues/23. Has some older software versions though. So I'm curious, are Windows graphics drivers smarter in paging less or unused textures from VRAM to RAM? Anyone here with eGPU + DCS experiences on Windows?

Hi, In the latest DCS World Open Beta after locking, shooting and hitting the STYX in this lesson, as instructed, the lesson does not seem to continue. I get no new instructions. In Tacview I also see no additional targets. So it seems to me that the lesson is stuck and somehow did not recognize the destruction of the STYX? Tacview and track file are attached. PS: Another minor issue I noticed in this lesson is that at the beginning the instructor says: "The next step will be to set the radar to Boresight Mode (BORE) by pressing OSB2 two times." However that only gets me from "20" over "60" to "SLEW". I have to press OSB2 a third time to get to BORE. Tacview-20230601-183853-DCS-Lesson 14 - Air-Air ACM and HMCS Use.zip.acmi Lesson 14 - Air-Air ACM and HMCS Use.miz_01062023_18-51.trk air-air-hmcs-debrief.log

Just wanted to do a little confession on my stupidity... It took me a while to figure out what the campaign wanted me to do. Pressed 2 on the keyboard and all buttons on the stick. Reread the briefing several times. Had to check a YouTube Video and then had to face palm hard when I realized it's the channel 2 preset on the radio :D. I'm not from the avionics field, but a programmer instead, specialized on network and WiFi. So I'm familiar with channels, frequencies, bands, modulations etc. But in all these years I had never had anyone calling a (wifi) radio channel a button there :D. --- But after my initial "takeoff trouble" I was blown away by the voice coms. It felt very immersive, great job! (If there is any recommended campaign one should try before Zone 5, I'd also be curious to hear.) --- Edit: I'd also be curious where the term button in this context comes from. Is that because early radios had one dedicated button for each channel?

Ah, haha, had been wondering if this was a general Nevada map easter egg or from the campaign I was playing. Now I know, who to thank . When you don't expect those coms, just cruising and chilling in the air, it actually spooked me a bit . When I landed at Groom Lake, I suddenly heard a big bang and saw a fire behind me and was initially confused. Did I drop something on my bad, hard landing? But then checked the Tacview record and saw that it wasn't me, hehe. (I guess that also teaches me that I should look around a bit more when flying, ). Thanks for this funny addition!

Before I forget again: Many thanks @YSIAD_RIP, that workaround works like a charm! Diff'd those files and could figure out the one line I had to add to create this custom button that works with the x-56. Still I guess it could be nice to fix this upstream, looks like several people stumbled over this and had to spend some time to figure out what's going on and how to work around it.

I have a Logitech x-56 HOTAS and would like to use its "(SLD) Thumb" "button" (JOY_BTN33) on its throttle console as a speed brake, to have it similar to where it would be and would be used in the real F-16C or F/A-18C. However with the following configuration I can extend it but then it stays stuck in the extended position: F-16C, not working: * SPD BRK Switch - Aft/EXTEND (Momentarily) -> JOY_BTN33_OFF * SPD BRK Switch - Fwd/RETRACT -> JOY_BTN33 Or: * SPD BRK Switch - Aft/EXTEND (Momentarily) -> JOY_BTN33_OFF * SPD BRK Switch - Fwd/RETRACT <> OFF -> JOY_BTN33 F/A-18, not working: * Speed Brake Switch - EXTEND -> JOY_BTN33_OFF * Speed Brake Switch - RETRACT -> JOY_BTN33 Or: * Speed Brake Switch - EXTEND -> JOY_BTN33_OFF * Speed Brake Switch: RETRACT<>OFF -> JOY_BTN33 In the "Adjust Controls" menu the two slider positions, JOY_BTN33 at Fwd position and JOY_BTN33_OFF at Aft position, are detected correctly though and selected/highlighted fine in there. If I assign only one of the two functions at a time, so only retracting or only extending then each function works fine individually. If I use a toggle switch on the x-56 throttle console instead, which uses distinct button inputs, for instance the top one has JOY_BTN_18 for up and JOY_BTN_19 for down, then everything works as expected. Also if I invert the assignment, so JOY_BTN33 (fwd) for extending and JOY_BTN33_OFF (aft) for retracting then it works as expected, too (but that would be inverted to the real thing, so I would like to avoid that workaround). Also interestingly, with the F-14 I do *not* have this issue - I can use the "(SLD) Thumb" "button" just fine for the speed brake there: (Disclaimer: I'm also on Linux. And I'm aware that I can't expect fixes/support for that there. But then I'd be curious to hear if this works fine for Windows users with an x-56 HOTAS and this "(SLD) Thumb" "button". That information would already help me a lot.)

@tomeye, I'm curious what your VRAM usage is saying. Could it be that when you hit F10 it gets saturated and system RAM needs to fill in? Maybe you can check with some tools? I'm currently trying a new Lenovo T14s AMD Gen3 + eGPU enclosure (Razer Core X Chroma) + Radeon RX 6650 XT here (but on Linux - so take any of my experiences/issues with a grain of salt, might be unrelated) and run into the following issue: Everything runs smoothely and with nice, detailed graphics until my 8GB VRAM gets saturated. Then depending on the amount of overallocation the FPS gradually decreases. And the VRAM gets saturated in the following two cases for me: A) High presets/textures + detailed map (like Syria), even more VRAM seems to get used when I hit F10. So with some settings F10 just brings me over the 8GB VRAM edge. Also Firefox takes 1GB of VRAM for me (so closing it helps a bit for me)... Or B) a multiplayer map, then even with low presets/textures DCS requests 12 GB of VRAM. Or ~16GB of VRAM with high presets/textures. When overallocating VRAM, I guess that would be particularly hurtful for us with an eGPU. If everything that needs to be rendered is already in VRAM, then Thunderbolt 3 is no bottleneck, I guess. Otherwise it frequently needs to copy stuff from RAM over the "slow" Thunderbolt link (slow compared to a direct PCIe link). I'm also curious if when you join one of the busy multiplayer maps if you get heavy stuttering (high VRAM usage?) immediately, too.