Voyager

TLDR; Anyone know a good, current breakdown of how PC VR systems communicate with the game software they could point me to? So, saw the thing about DCS now natively supporting OpenXR, and trying to wrap my head around what that really means. It sort of sounds like it's an API layer that a headset and game application can interface with, with or without the SteamVR application layer, unless the headset or your applications require SteamVR? And because this is an open standard there are open tools that can access functions and tune things more finely than the closed source versions like SteamVR, Oculus or the WMR system? For an analogy, I'm hearing "dropping in this new Engine Control Module makes the engine produce more power" and I'm looking for "You need the right fuel/air mixture or the bang happens at the wrong time" Thank you, Harry Voyager

Are you thinking of the Mig-29? I'm talking about the Mig-19, Razbam's lone soviet plane, and a weird intermediate stage between the sub-sonic Mig-15 and 17, and the iconic Mig-21. You know, this guy: And as far as I can tell, it has two engines, so this would not be the first dual engine plane Razbam has released. That's why I'm wondering, are the engines separately modeled there? If so, I'd expect them to be for the F-15E as well when released.

Doesn't the Mig-19 have two engines?

I will admit I am curious what happened. From the wording it sounds like something ridiculous, i.e. a squirrel tried to eat the power transformer substation and blew something important, or a helicopter dropped an air-condition on shipping and receiving while the contractual paperwork was in the mail box so now they have to get everything re-signed and noterized. You know, the sort of things completely unrelated to the normal development process that seem to swoop in right when you have to meet that key deadline.

@silverdevil Ok. Since I've got my flight sim stuff on a dedicated drive, I'll try the repair and see if it works. This will be a full fresh Windows 11 install. Doing hardware upgrades and want to see if I can fix some weird crud going on with my VR system, as well as set up a Linux boot for a secondary project, and thinking going from 10 to 11 will leave oddities behind.

Getting ready to reformate my OS drive and migrate from Windows 10 to Windows 11, and wondering if it is possible to keep the core data files on the computer so I don't need to redownload everything, or should I just download and reinstall the whole thing regardless? Thank you, Harry Voyager

@Thinder I can see how the CPU/ram would be the bottle neck with the Quest 2, but if he goes to the Pico 4 or Aero, I'd expect the GPU to hit a wall hard as well. I'm give to understand you need a 40 series card to run the Pico 4 in the virtual desktop mode at all. I'm running a VP2, which, while it is not an Aero or Pico, does chew up a 3080 Ti well enough that I'm probably going to upgrade the GPU soon. On CPUs, the Zen 4 Vcache chips are coming out in a couple of weeks. Given fluid dynamics is apparently known to love lots of cache, and flight sims' adjacentcy to it, I'd expect those to be very good for DCS. May be worth waiting a couple of weeks to see if they are good, and going for an AM5 build. On B-die kits, need to be very careful when hunting for them. I've had at least one kit I got turn out to be a later rev that had changed the chips the Hynix.

If you are only using flatscreen, the 1080 Ti is good enough, even up to around 4k, though it is definitely straining then. VR is where it falls flat on its face. On the 4070Ti, at least in the Il-2 testing it does seem to be a little worse than the 3080 in 4k, which probably means it's going to fall behind in VR as well. I'd expect a used 3090 to handle DCS VR a bit better than a 4070 Ti for the price. However, I'd also expect a 7900 XT to handle it better once/if AMD gets their driver support in order. That could be a year out though. That said, it does seem to be on par with the 3080 Ti/3090, and it is looking like AMD is mostly trying to clear their RDNA2 stock out before dropping the 7900 XT price. But it's really hard to recommend anything right now. Basically, if I've got the money to burn, the 4080 and 4090 are great cards for VR. The RDNA3 cards should, in the future, become good VR performers, but that day is not today. The 4070 TI seems marginal compared to last gen, but with the used market still being so high it's hard to recommend stuff. Maybe a 6950 XT if you have to buy now? Those are going for $700 now, while AMD clears stock out, and the RDNA2 drivers are a lot more mature than the RDNA3 ones.

For reference, DLSS 1.0 and 2.0 render the games at a reduced resolution and then use algorithms to upscale the image back to the display resolution. This is the same as FSR 1.0 and FSR 2.0 DLSS 3.0 instead generates additional purely GPU frames between the engine generated frames. As I understand it, it holds the current frame until the next frame is ready, then generates an interpolated frame between them and displays all three in sequence. Basically you're always a frame behind, but you get double the apparently frame rates. Both DLSS implementations are game specific. NVidia, at least used to, take the game in question, do a bunch of chewing on it to generate algorithms that reliably upscale or generate intermediate frames, and that dll is what goes into the game to implement DLSS. I gather they're less dependent on that for DLSS 2.0 now, but I think it's still required for DLSS 3.0 to work right. As far as impact on DCS, DLSS 2.0 will increase full frame rate and reduce latency at the potential decrease in fine detail. From what it looks like, the loss has become almost nothing, but we will have to see in game. DLSS 2.0 will run on all RTX GPUs. FSR 2.0 should also run on all GPUs, including GTX cards and AMD cards. I believe we're getting both DLSS and FSR 2.0, but could be wrong. DLSS 3.0 would effectively double the perceived frame rate smoothness, but at the expense of input latency, and possibly weird HUD things. Apparently it does not play nice with game UI elements, so it could get dicey with aircraft HUD stuff. That's an unknown. DLSS 3.0, as far as I know, is not being implemented in DCS. If it was, it would require a 40 series card. AMD reports they are working on an FSR 3.0, that may be their counterpart to DLSS 3.0, but at this time we don't know much. To recap, DLSS 1.0, 2.0 and FSR 1.0, and 2.0 are Image Upscaling. They work on all RTX cards, and FSR works on everyone else. DLSS 3.0 is Frame Generation and is only supported on RTX 40 cards. AMD currently does not have a competing Frame Gen tech, but may be developing one. Both Image Upscaling and Frame Generation have pros and cons, but they are also different pros and cons. Image Upscaling is being tested in DCS, but Frame Generation is not. Yes, the naming convention is wildly, absurdly excessively confusing. Sorry for the wall of text. Hopefully this helps.

Interesting. I was not aware that the F1 flew similarly to the F-4. I've been interested in the plane, but hadn't taken the dive into it, mostly because the Dassault avionics are just so different from everything else. But this might be a good excuse to start, and start with pure BFM and Sidewinder operations.

Going to be getting back into DCS after a long time away, and slowly zeroing in on wanting to do pilot side multicrew. Given everything, I think that probably means my focus planes will be the F-4 and F-14, since they have talky AI backseaters. Given that, is there a likely best way to get prepped for the F-4 when it does go live? I.E. Learn F-4 systems and night Ops though an MSFS module? Focus on the F-14 for now for the missiles and multi-crew side? Pick another cold war era aircraft to learn that generation of electronics and capabilities? I'm curious what people think, and what they are doing to get F-4 ready?

@kksnowbear On the front rad, one thing I wonder is, how it that different from having an internally exhausting sir cooled GPU? Isn't the heat going into the box, as is? Looking at the 4090s, and the MSI AIO one does seem to be the most readily available one at MSRP, and debating it or one of the rather large air cooled ones, but I've got an AIO radiator for the CPU already, so would need to either dismantle the whole PC or replace it to top mount the GPU cooler. On the other hand, I may need to dismantle a lot of stuff to mount the MSI cooler as well, so not sure whether it would be an easier mount than an air lead brick model. Also a bit concerned about the sheer weight of the air models bending things over time. On the "This is fine", as I recall, Jay was referencing the "this is fine" meme, not saying that was the right way to mount things.

Hellhound RX 7900 XTX Takes on the RTX 4080 https://babeltechreviews.com/hellhound-rx-7900-xtx-vs-rtx-4080-50-games-vr/ In the early drivers, the 7900XTX seems to have a lot of frame time problems. I think that's more down to the maturity of AMDs driver team than a hardware design issue, but it will probably be six months+ before they get it sorted. Maybe a year for VR since it's pretty rare still. From what I understand, 12-16Gb of VRam is fine, though in the multiplayer servers it can end up being on the small size.

Better to think of AI as a more effective way to run monte carlo processes to useful conclusions. It really solves different problems than conventional thinking. Problems where you don't know if there is a solution or what it even might be like, but also have a very easy to define "better" as really good things to sic an AI on. The tricky thing with programming is probably going to be defining the rules that the code itself needs to follow, though I can also see how image quality evaluation would also have some big subjectivity questions that would need answering as well. Quack or 3Domak03 2.0 anyone?

Will be interesting to see how it plays out. I wonder if this is part of how nVidia is planning to handle the end of Moore's Law, and the likely need to transition away from monolithic does past 3nm? The thing is, if nVidia is successful at gaining real optimization improvements via AI, we could see the same from AMD, and they've definitely got a lot more room to grow here too. This is going to be fun to watch

I'm interested is seeing what DLSS 2 and FSR 2 can do for performance. I'm also hoping we could get foveated DLSS/FSR. Even fixed foveated provides noticable improvements in performance without costing center view precision. Frame generation is a different beast. I expect they'll get it working in VR, but I'd have to see it myself to decide whether or not I would like it. From the reviews I've seen, it sounds like you really need a 80-90 fps already for it to work well.

The thing I worry about is how do you ensure stability? There's nothing quite like doing a 1h long recon mission in a campaign only to have the GPU crash on landing. Ask me how I know...

So jut found out Leap motion was a thing. I'm wondering what overall is the issue? Do the hands just not interact in the modules? Or do they do things, just weird? I recall using the controllers for buttons it was fantastically easy to knock the canopy jettison...

Given the extensive work ED has in sound on the R-2800, I suspect the Hellcat will have a smoother start. Flying the Hellcat in the civilian sim was a real revelation for me. It is an easy and comfortable warbird to fly. My first love will be the P-47, but I understand why nearly every pilot who flew the Hellcat loved it so much. That is a plane that wants to fly and fly well. The Corsair seems like a much more temperamental thorough bred. Faster, and in some ways more manuverable, but with some vicious characteristics that will bite an inexperienced or distracted pilot. I suspect the Hellcat's biggest advantage was that it did not drain its pilot to the same degree that contemporaries could, so when the pilots hit combat they were able to function at a much higher level of effectiveness. And if the plane does take a few years? We've got a really solid version in the civilian sim to play around with while we wait Why yes, it can bush.

It looks like it's a larger percentage of cards than the 12VHPWR issue (as I recall debaur had 48+ people offering to send him a card, when Gamer's Nexus was only able to get 4 melted cables), but at least from what @EightyDuce posted (thank you!), it sounds like it's not a safety issue. Overall, if AMD is able to get the word out quickly enough, this should calm down pretty quickly. Knowing that there was a specific batch of cards that had a manufacturing defect, and that an RMA process is already standing up to replace them really restores my comfort level with them. Now if they can sort their driver situation out in a few months, it will become a real decision whether I go for a 4090 or a 7900XTX to replace my 3080 Ti. Won't have time to do any upgrades until February, but definitely going to be watching.

I recall some throttles also have a rudder bar on them. I gather that's a bit more precise than the twist axis, but may not work well with aircraft that require a lot of throttle knobs like the P-47. Isn't Nick Grey also unable to use pedals? Does anyone recall if he leans towards twist axis or a throttle rudder bar?

I think it is still possible, but will depend on whether or not AMD is able to sort out their Navi 31 issues in a timely manner. Pretty much any die they could turn into a 4090 TI they could also turn into an RTX 6000 and sell for $6k+ to data centers and commercial users. And they will be gone at that price. I don't think they could move a 4090 TI for more than $3k, which means they'll effectively give up money on every TI they sell. The only reason I can see them doing that, especially in this retail climate, would be if they felt they needed to preserve the #1 spot.

Yeah, if you're talking 1080p, you are pretty much CPU limited. Even 5120*1440p is still 60fps+ on a 1080 Ti even at high settings. VR is literally the only reason I upgraded from a 1080 Ti.

@SkateZilla Did you two try it in any games or just synthetic benchmarks? From what I'm seeing in reviews, it seems to do as expected in the synthetic benchmarks, but the issues seem to crop up during live games instead.

@Johnny Dioxin Try to wait for January. There are rumors that nVidia may drop the price on the 4080, especially if 7900XT sales undercut it. The 7900XTX is a competitive card at its price point, even if it is under performing where we all expected it to. And the 4080 is very poorly positioned. On the XTX supply, MLID is saying that AMD is mostly shipping XT models, not XTX models, but there should be about 2-3x cards on shelves by the end of the year as the Lovelace cards. My suspicion is AMD is off-loading the XT dies early while supply is tight and they haven't solved what's going wrong with their cards.