Frusheen

Too rich for me. I had my pre-order day with rift. Good luck to all those who will be pre-ordering Vive and here's to an exciting future in flight simulation.

I agree with you. There isn't a huge difference between flying a helicopter with a game pad versus a traditional spring hotas. With practice you likely won't see much difference as they are both equally lacking compared to proper helicopter controls. It depends what you want from the experience, how precise you want to fly and of course your budget. I'm of the opinion that purchasing the likes of a thrustmaster hotas or x55 is a waste of money IF you want it for flying helicopters. They are good tools but the wrong tools for the job ;-) The same is true for a monitor vs a VR headset. With a monitor the helicopter cockpit remains static while the the view outside changes. In real life to hover you fix your view to a static point outside the cockpit in the middle to far distance and it's the helicopter which moves relative to that view (VR allows you to do this). Yet again more outlay in the pursuit of realistic simulation and again depends on budget. It largely depends what you hope to achieve. If it's increased precision then a more expensive 'traditional' joystick isn't the best answer. As a side note I think your video also demonstrated one of the short comings of the Huey flight model. Drift follows pitch as seen in your video. If you watch real helicopter footage it's the reverse. The helicopter drifts first with pitch following afterwards. You would never see a helicopter behave in real life like shown in your video. Perhaps the pitchiness was deliberate to provide feedback for the user based on the limitations of using a monitor which I mentioned earlier. EDIT: I'm not trying to come across as snobbish. There are alternative cheaper options to the Komodo sim stuff which WILL be better than the most expensive HOTAS. I mentioned Komodo as they are the best I have used. Here is a video I did as a joke following a challenge set down by one of the group members on Facebook. I think it illustrates how precise helicopter controls help with control. I don't think I could have flown like this with a warthog or a gamepad. Of course it costs a hell of a lot more money!

A traditional hotas is a complete waste of money for flying helicopters. If you want helicopter controls then look at Komodo Simulations etc. A helicopter cyclic has no spring so a TM warthog will be very unrealistic. If you want a new hotas for fixed wing planes then that's a different story.

Have you actually experienced DCS locked at 75hz? I have to question if you've ever experienced low persistence because your posts on the subject of fps are utter nonsense.

Well every engineer at oculus and valve disagree. They've been striving for years to reduce latency. I'll take their word for it over yours. If you're ok with judder then good for you - I'm not.

How could you possibly describe fps in the 40s as no problem? It's a juddering mess at that frame rate. Maybe your immune to judder or just didn't move your head the entire time but for the vast majority of people 40fps will be unbearable. With asynchronous timewarp you can have dips in fps but not a constant low rate. When you experience VR locked at the higher refresh rates I think you'll appreciate the difference. I had NTTR locked at 75fps and it was fantastic. Since the last update things have worsened and it is not nearly as comfortable. As we move out of alpha I'm sure it will improve again. A good example of timewarp is flyinside. It's not comfortable at all in P3d for extended periods with low fps but the judder is improved with slight dips.

Objects are undoubtedly the biggest performance issue in DCS right now. My bet it's an optimization issue. I delidded and overclocked my 4770k to 4.6Ghz with an already overclocked 980ti and there are still issues in DK2 with the NTTR map. CV1 performance will be dependent on asynchronous timewarp and further optimization of objects.

I'm of the view that a substantial amount of vives traction has been down to the anti Facebook brigade. The trustworthy reviews of Vive pre that I've seen mention poorer visuals due to what's described as a kind of veil over the image (as opposed to screen door) and inferior optics. Of course it's much better than what we have now with the current dk2. It's heavier and less comfortable than the consumer rift (unless the revised strap in the consumer version is a big improvement over pre). The only plus I see is the chaperone system for those who need to see their keyboards. That's not something I need and honestly I think it was dreamt up in the legal department not engineering in an effort to avoid legal action over trips and falls. The only way I've seen to activate it is from the Vive controller which in a seated cockpit environment with hotas etc sounds like it will be harder to find than your keyboard. Everything else isn't really relevant to flight sims. Standing and walking a few steps and tracked controllers.... Don't get me wrong. I'm delighted Vive is coming to market. Based on their share price and some notable defections I honestly thought HTC would be gone bust by now. Competition is good for consumers and for VR. The fact they are selling at only a few hundred dollars above oculus is testament to that. Most commentators thought the price would be higher. I think the most important thing now is compatability. We don't need it turning into a standards war. The more software shared between headsets the better. I definitely won't be canceling my rift order in favour of a Vive though.

Do you mean CV1? DK2 is no longer in production. It was mentioned that different rift (CV1) packag s would be available after release which may mean headset only. The only option now is the package which includes Xbone controller.

It's nothing to do with HTC or Facebook in the case of Rift. All imports to the EU have VAT added. I'd expect the Vive to be about €900 delivered.

I really think you should do your best to try before you buy. The outlay sure would cover a lot of real world hours. Last year I had savings set aside for a platform but decided to buy a paramotor instead. A motion platform will never be as immersive as real flying.

They say that it can interface with X-sim which does support DCS.

A note of caution. Be very mindful of the issues with Rift on a motion platform. when the platform changes orientation your view will also change. A 3dof platform for example will lean backward and forward to simulate acceleration and deceleration. This results in the view in game looking up and down. The camera being mounted on the platform will help but it is limited as a greater percentage of the tracking info comes from the headsets internal IMU. I have not tried it personally so I can't comment on how much of an issue it causes but any videos I've watched clearly show the view bouncing around and reacting to the platform movement. This could feel ok or it could be a recipe for serious nausea. There are companies developing external IMUs which can be mounted on the platform to offset the measurements of the unit in the headset. It remains to be seen how well these can be integrated into the oculus runtime. It likely requires a custom SDK which could be problematic with titles which don't natively support it such as DCS. I'm building a G-Seat to ensure I don't run into these issues. I'm using X-Sim which can get its orientation and acceleration data from DCS. I'm still bench testing and can tell you it does take a fair bit of work to get setup correctly.

I recorded at 60fps. The issue with recording off a 1080p monitor is two fold. When rendering direct to the rift in DCS it is not a 1080p render target. The pre warp image is much higher resolution. This is to account for loss of resolution when the image is warped for the rift lenses. The final image is 1080p but that is after the warp is applied. The image is also only rendering a 100degree FOV. So it has a higher initial resolution image being warped and spread over a narrower FOV which results in many more pixels per degree. In the experiment I tried I have a 1080p image pre warp. Which after warping in a third party program looses much of that resolution. In order to provide head tracking it is covering 180degrees FOV this further degrades the perceived resolution. All you need to do is select stereo from the monitor tab in game and edit your FOV to about 170 degrees in your view.lua. Record the image with shadow play or fraps etc then play it back in a VR player which allows you to warp the image be that on the rift, Google cardboard etc There is no major editing of files needed. With a 4K monitor the initial stereo recording could be set to much higher resolution in which case it may work.

I got it working but it is not acceptable for viewing. I set the screen to render in stereo. I then edited the view.lua to give 170 degrees FOV. Played back a track and recorded the output. I then played it through a VR player and it renders the image in 3d and you can look around the cockpit but the resolution is crap. The problem is that I'm capturing the two stereo images on a single 1080p monitor. Once played back in VR and spread over a 180 degree FOV the pixel density drops WAY too low. If you had a 4k monitor it may be worth trying otherwise I dont think its a runner.

The camera is only 60hz. Several have reported it does not update fast enough to correct for unwanted variation on the IMU readings caused by the platform.

I have seen that project but without integration in the oculus SDK it's useless for closed titles such as DCS. I think ultimately the best solution is for oculus themselves to release a second IMU which could be mounted on the platform (it could be contained in the existing camera case and auto detected by the runtime). The values from the IMU in the headset could then be corrected. It's not something I expect to see released in the near future though. That is why I abandoned my plans for a 6dof platform.

@Dot and Toykilla how do you get over the head tracking issue with a motion platform in VR? For example your platform tilts back to simulate acceleration - the rift tracking now thinks you are looking up so your view changes upwards in game. Any videos I've seen of motion platforms with VR the view is jumping all over the place. Wouldn't that be very distracting or even sickening?

I didn't explain it very well. I'm also talking about people without physical switches. There is no issue at all with what you describe until you put the gloved hand back on your hotas controls/joystick. If the hotas or joystick aren't positioned in the same physical space relative to your glove as the virtual controls in the rendered VR cockpit are relative to the avatar then there will be an issue. While your hand is on a physical stick or throttle the virtual animated hand could be floating in the completely wrong place.

I was going to experiment this evening but I got called into work. If I get a chance tomorrow I'll play around with it a bit and let you know how it goes.

There is an issue with animating the glove as part of the pilot avatar. I'd love to have a haptic glove of some sort for switches but when you have your hands on your actual controls where is the glove rendered and how do you do the animation? Consider if your physical controls don't match up perfectly with those rendered in game (desktop hotas setup used for several different aircraft for example). I think a transparent virtual glove which can emulate a crosshairs and be rendered in 3D space would be a better option initially. It's going to require clever implementation to not be a distraction in the virtual cockpit.

I don't think that's a good idea. It's a recipe for pretty bad motion sickness. That is a very interesting idea. You'd want a stereo dome view (sphere would be better) then play it back in any VR player. You could basically create a 360 video of DCS similar to what's done in real life here: (watch on YouTube preferably with iPhone etc for tracking. You'd need to write a custom view lua to give you the FOV and the split images. I don't know how you'll manage the warp though. I'd say it could be done with a bit of work.

I was messing about creating a star citizen setup recently. I ended up with this: Plenty of buttons and FFB. I had the grip left over after modding the base for SC and Elite Dangerous. I needed lateral, longitudinal and vertical strafe on my left hand and the CH throttle didn't cut it. So it ended up on the fighterstick base. Too many old joysticks lying around but at least I'm VR ready as far as cockpit sims go. (Notice the VR reference, see we are still on topic ha).

I'm not a warthog owner myself but I recently started messing about with Star Cirizen. A SC guy I'm subscribed too on YouTube just posted this video. I thought it may be of interest to some of the warthog users in DCS that may want to smooth out the gimbal response a bit if they find it sticky.

Preaching to the choir Derek. I'm still working on my g-seat for the rift. Tensioning belts and seat flaps to simulate g forces. Without any actual movement which would mess with the rift camera (confuse platform movement for head movement resulting in unwanted view changes). I'll also be mounting my Jetseat motors in the foam of the flaps. I like some of the DIY solutions. Ian's BFF yokes are a good example. A stick version would be great. I don't think he provides code to read our output lua files though. I built his shaker system and had it working very well with X-plane using XPUIPC (similar to fsuipc for fsx). I don't have the knowledge to code it to DCS though.