vicx

I don't understand why people have to shoot down ideas that wouldn't even affect them. There's a lot of stuff in DCS that should have a visualization option AND it would do a lot more than just help people learn the systems. From my perspective it would help me work out some of the odd mysterious things that the sim does sometimes. The classic question; is this a bug or a feature would be more easily answered and a lot of bugs would be found a LOT quicker if we had visualisation tools for a lot of the black box functions of DCS. +1 to this idea but I'd say take it even further and allow us to see visualtions for damage and all sorts of other interesting stuff. You can't call it a STUDY sim if you can't study the SIM :)

IPD is definitely important to get right. I had discomfort until I tuned my IPD using comfort level as my guide instead of using the utility or an actual measurement. My comfortable IPD setting of 56.3 is a long way from my measured value. I used a VR experience called RPG-Room to help me tune the IPD. RPG-Room lets you move yourself inside a VR scene to test an IPD setting for looking at things close and looking at things far away. There is 3D animated water texture in RPG-Room that made me cross-eyed until I tuned in a comfortable IPD value. I don't disable the OVR service when running DCS. The method I use seems to work without needing to do that. When I" tested DCS with my new IPD value it was a lot more comortable. Everything close and midrange was easier to look at and the apparent scale of the cockpit while not perfect, was improved. In my previous comment about the Su-25T cockpit I will clarify my point. With the goggles on you can see flatness around indicators, certain dials and you can see ALL the rivets are flat and not raised like you would expect a rivet to appear. You see can see where the illusion breaks. If you want a cockpit that has 3D rivets, look at the Su-33. I use examples from FC3 because that is what I own. It would be interesting to rank the pits from a VR perspective. Poor Mig-29 is probably not going to be far from the bottom. While I would bet that the Mig-25BIS cockpit is probably the most geometrically detailed and beautiful cockpit we have available at this time. *Where I said rivets I meant screws*

Just got my Rift DK2 and fired up DCS. My first impressions after a short stint of non-combat flying in the Su-25T. You think a DCS 6DOF cockpit is detailed UNTIL you see it in the RIFT. The Su-25T has a well earned reputation as a nice 6DOF cockpit but in the RIFT every smooth or flat surface really stands out and looks unnatural. I wonder if even Normal mapping in EDGE will be enough of a solution for cockpit objects viewed in VR. It could be that millions of polygons is the only solution that will look right because flat textures look like cheap hacks in the RIFT. A higher resolution in the RIFT might actually make flat surfaces look even more flat :0 I'll be checking this thread again to see if anyone has commented on the Mig21BIS cockpit in the RIFT. I thought the detail being put into it was silly but I'll have to rethink that. Everyone who says the RIFT is not good enough for flying in DCS is to some extent right at the moment. For me the minmum level would be a crisp and readable HUD. It would be interesting to see a DCS: RIFT module not trying to model something real but just making a usable VR flight experience in the DCS engine. This would be worth having. What seems to work well is the 1:1 mapping of your head movement . Being able to look behind you by looking behind you is nothing less than awesome. It is that good. I also tested out using the RIFT as a TIR replacement. I installed Opentrack and wore the RIFT like a cap with my 30" monitor as the display. After setting the curves in Opentrack - perfect tracking. It works well.

Just got my Rift DK2 and of course I tested it with DCS. This isn't a RIFT thread so I won't give you my impressions on DCS in VR - I'll do that in the RIFT thread. What I will comment on here is how good the tracking is on the RIFT DK2. I decided to install Opentrack, wear the RIFT like a cap and try tracking with my 30" monitor as the viewport. It works just like a TIR but it will track even if you turn your head and look behind you (which isn't that useful but 1:1 360 degree tracking is still pretty cool).

It's fascinating the detail we have on these old weapons systems now. I wonder what the range and performance of a modern optical system is?

BBC:Satellite photo shows Russian tanks invading Ukraine. *Shows screen shot from DCS: Combined Arms* :/

Perhaps this should be DCS World feature. A switch for DK2 or DK2 tracking only.

Rosco, that tidy desk is a lie. Do you even sim? :smilewink: Can I ask a favour of you or other DK2 holders? I was wondering if it is was possible to use the DK2 just as a 6DOF sensor. Can you sim wearing the DK2 backwards, place the camera behind you and use your monitor as the primary screen. Is the 6DOF sensing decoupled enough to configure the DK2 like this? My DK2 is in the queue. Ordered in June which is quite late.

I was just playing around in CA this last day testing out [FSF]Ian's DCS-Witchcraft . I was only placing APC and IFV's and I noticed that the Russian troop carriers with ATGM absolutely slay. The Russian units are very heavy hitters and it seems to come down to the ATGM specialisation. On tanks you might argue the advantage is marginal (but is it?) but on APC and IFV the ATGM is huge because a 20mm/25mm cannon is the alternative armament. Anyway each time I spend in DCS Combined Arms I see very unrealised potential. I suspect it will be this way for years. I run DCS and Arma and I see the Arma modding scene making great progress with armoured units and simulation.

Thanks for the update Ian. It works well for statics and fortifications.

A debug mode that shows the damage would put these subjects to rest.

This is good to know. Thanks DA, and CS for the thread.

It works in the Su-25T. I tried it in the Su-25A and it did not work.

If you think DCS World is an eye candy simulator for jet fighters leave trees the way they are.

bump ... sick of playing hyperolympics for c64.

With the sensor fusion, iron man helmet and the ipad displays it is almost like the F-35 comes with a built-in arcade mode. Visualise all targets within 200km (including birds farting) by turning your head around Lock up a few targets by asking the avionics computer nicely Turn to launch by following the prompts Finish game of Angry Birds on way home

ericoh, Thats no moon. Love the idea, Marko. Crazy mods remind ppl that sims aren't just for srsbsns. I like the idea of a giant boss fight with a giant alien ship that goes across the map destroying airfields (which is basically IndDay). You have to scramble from the closest airfield to fire all your rockets into the "weak points" of the alien mothership to deplete its 50,000 hit points before it wipes out all the airfields. Would it be possible to make with just user mods? I'd try and make one of the existing models a giant as a proof of concept. Can you arbitrarily scale EDM models when you spawn them? Attacking a giant heli would be hilarious just for starters or a giant flying warship.

Yeah this argument that something is lost and something is found when new technology comes along reminds me of LAN gaming in the late 90's. On LAN twitch gaming was a better experience, but even with higher latency and lag, WAN gaming was always going to be the focus forever more. Twitch gamers on PC also thought higher framerates and lower latency were more important than higher resolutions and making every thing look pretty. We weren't wrong but as it turns out, these other things were worthy of pursuing. However I do like that the pendulum now swings back the other way with 3D stereoscopic gaming and VR. We now have 120hz monitors again (just like my old Sony CRT) and developers are now targeting low latency because you will vomit if the world doesn't update your VR viewport fast enough. Do you think that Sim users will not benefit from developers tweaking engines for high fps and low latency? Sims require low latency for sim fidelity even more than twitch games do. Now for a disclosure. I only came to DCS because of an interest in VR experiences. I thought about ordering a DK2 after seeing an Elite: Dangerous demo. I installed the free DCS World after reading that DCS will have native Rift support. I enjoyed DCS Su-25T so much that I bought BS2 and FC3 Two weeks later I ordered a DK2 because ... DCS will be an awesome VR experience. So I'm like a VR barbarian at the DCS gates. Kuky I totally agree with your prediction that VR will actually make you less competitive. I don't think there is any doubt that immersion will have to be it's own reward.

Guys I'm only new here and I know Devrim is on this. Keep an eye on his sig and be patient.

Lets imagine they they are working right now on making the Su-25T cockpit clickable AND fully 100% Occulus compatible so that it can be the be the free demo AND the demonstrator cockpit for new VR technology. It would waste development time to fix minor bugs when they are working on a larger update that incorporates the same bug fixes. So imagine they are doing this and don't worry about a small visual bug that won't matter twelve months from now anyway.

Some feedback on the installation. The instructions were good but I still needed to hit Stackoverflow to get it installed on Ubuntu. Specifically there was a problem with having an old version of npm. Solution was found here -> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12913141/installing-from-npm-fails sudo apt-get purge nodejs npm Then install from Chris Lea's repo: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y python-software-properties sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install nodejs After that I ran "node server.js" and it worked perfectly. So I will have to spawn a humvee on top of a plane and then remove the plane. I will try that at some point. Fine tuning placement of things is a killer feature. Is it possible to include statics? If statics can't be spawned could you create a work-around using dummy models for statics and do a lookup on the mission save function. It would be ideal to be able to position every model that is in the editor. I bought CA expecting the commander role to be little more fleshed out. The lack of feedback from units under command is something that is odd to me. Just having a simple feedback mechanism to indicate when units are transitioning from tasks and traversing waypoints or changing their ROE would do a lot to make the role more dynamic. A commander should be able to veto or counter-command a unit or group without interrupting flow. Units should radio in - if it is a realistic to do so. ETA feedback on movements and firing delivered via radio would also be better than wondering. Nice. A navigation aid for ground units would be good too. I thought the stack of humvees was genius.

I just tried this out and I'm calling the experiment a big success. Running the node.js server on an little Intel Atom running Ubuntu worked just fine. After stacking humvees I tried to modify the move-unit snippet so I could change altitude with the scroll wheel and drop a humvee from space. I will have to continue tommorrow because I ran out of time and I did not succeed. I'm not a coder but I found the snippets a very helpful introduction to LUA and the DCS mission data structure. Ian, I just wanted to say thanks for sharing this code. I also wonder where you will take this. I know it is a lot of work to anticipate what people might want to do but I hope the lua console server and the map client can be generalised to be the base for many solutions.

Well I am curious whether modelling armor and ballistics is something that cab be achieved with the current models. Do the CA models have a single box for the collision model or are there zones. Is there a way to get a look at the models to see this information or do you need the models in an unbaked 3D Studio format?

I bet there are cool things you could do with the old engine just because it is not doing all the work that the new engine is. You might be able to fill the skies with fighters using all the cpu power of modern hardware.

I bought into DCS partially because of the promise offered by Combined Arms. I am not really interested in dog-fighting but an air-sea-land combat engine that can be modified with LUA files is pretty interesting. It is clear that ED are committed to improving CA with the resources they have but I am VERY impatient which is why I like to keep an eye on what people are doing with mods. IMO it is a good sign when people start using your engine to stack humvees http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=126516. I've also been reading up on ROS http://ros.org lately; which is a Pub/Sub framework and a growing set of libraries for robotics. All the problems and solutions in ROS seem very similar to what you would encounter in a distributed simulation.