pittlebelge

Hmmm, DCS may be non cohesive but to be fair, so are we as players. Some love these old war-birds, some live by Vietnam-era rotary flying machine and others seek high-speed, near underground interdiction. Perhaps I look at things the wrong way but it seems that DCS is not dedicated to any of those but tries to establish key technologies for all of them. A few years back we didn't have supersonic jet's high fidelity flight model, now we do. Same goes for 2 seaters or additional campaign by the dozens (I didn't count). Personally I'd love to have the carrier ops and a TAW style dynamic campaign. But military aeronautic is a vast subject and we all have our favorite parts. More to your point, the introduction of ground radar was a major limitation for the expansion of the 4th gen. With the release of the Viggen and the upcoming F/A 18, one more key technology will be present. But even then, the problem of acquiring data to accurately simulate and the licences to legally simulate might be hard to move obstacles. But I feel your frustration, in a sense this is truly Digital Patience Stimulator and it might be worth the wait.

Hi, I got a small feature request for the mission planner and the editor. Could we have the altitude of the cursor displayed in both feet and meter (perhaps 1000 ft/ 304.8m) and also add the QFE of the cursor. The altitude in both units is mostly for convenience when switching modules. And for the QFE, well it makes life in the Viggen just easier. Thx.

A minor one: the landing light elevation varies depending on what you are facing. If facing an upward slope (top of mountain) the light points upward (sometimes above the rotor disk. And if facing a downward slope, the light points down.

Nevade following the gazelle release: I'm not good with gimp...

About the vibration, I like the huey option where the front panel vibrates relative to the airframe, it makes it easier to see the vibration with the rift.

The friction between the skids and the ground seems super strong, there is some mean superglue effect. Especially noticeable in Vegas parking lots.

Like with the huey, takeoff gets easier with a bit of trim. But since I don't hav the feel for it yet, I use the china-hat trim instead of the force trim. I give it 3 or 4 tap back and one tap right. Aint perfect but well practice will fine tune it.

Ok, first flight in 2.02 so that flashlight control... I'm not sold. I find it hard to click multiple switches in a short time. Perhaps it just needs me getting used to it. Now the new menu are great. To be able to lean in to read smaller text is so great. On the other hand that Su-27 in the menus, I just loved it. Too bad I can't really go around it in my small room. I'd love to be able to pick witch airplane got displayed in the hangar and have the ability to rotate it. EDIT: Also the rift stops detecting motion on mission debriefing.

I tried to TIR whilst driving... Came to my senses quikly enouth though. On the mouse in VR: while I'm not a big fan of the current implementation, I dont find it immersion breaking. My biggest gripe is that ithe cursor wants to click someting slightly to tits side. But even with that inconcenience, ever since I received the DK2, I Loved the DCS VR experience and I have never looked back. The resolution is a major issue and I cant play combat mission in the A10 because I cant make anything on the TGP. But I never have had so mutch fun just flying around. On a more active note, I recently got the M2000 and I'm having a blast dogfighting the AI over the Georgian mountain in the sunset. On the control side of things: HOTAS HOTAS HOTAS. Sure the VR technology is not yet compatible with cockpit building. And loosing the functionnality of those MFCD must be a pain. But to be fair TIR is out of the picture too. Perhaps one day we will have a cool glove that allow us to seemlessly interact with the in-game cockpit. I'm sure that many accomodation are necessary to get the VR technology to meet with the entierty of the DCS experience. But going back to just TIR on my 24' monitor is just not an option.

I'm wondering about the general long term strategy of ED regarding Steam. Right now, the biggest reason why I stick with Steam is the download size required to switch. As I understand it, every new terrain and every new fully voiced campaign will make the transition even more painful. Now, I know that Steam haters are likely to bash me but you got to realize that there is a sizable crowd playing on steam: http://steamspy.com/app/223750 In the long run does ED plan to level the module accessibility between Steam and non Steam release? I understand that in the current situation (1.5 and 2.0 alpha existing together) it might induce more confusion. But once 2.5 gets released, will a Steam user be able to download early access products otherwise available in the non Steam version? In other word, should I switch ASAP or should I wait for clearer skies? Cheers.

Thx, i'll give it a shot.

Hi. Using Steam and DK2, I had a lot of problems getting it to run. The first step was getting Steam VR. Without it DCS wouldn't even start. After installing it, DCS worked. Once :( Then I fiddled with the oculus config utility and by going into tool/service/configure/ and by setting the server login level to none, I got it working once more. I insist on the once, It wouldn't start again. After flying a bit I quit and tried to launch again. Same problem occurred at launch. Hmmm. So after some iterations I figured this method witch works for me ( i5-4590, gtx 960: 355.98 ) 1. Get Steam VR 2. In the rift config utility set the login server level to none 3. You can play once 4. Close steam 5. Stop the oculus rift service/runtime (in the rift Configuration utility tool/service/stop runtime) 6. Restart the rift service by clicking on the config utility icon 7. Restart steam 8. You can play again It may seam painfull but compared to the extended mode it is seamless... As for my experience, I played with Vsinc off and there was sitll a bit of jutter. Objectively I cant say if it was more or less... On the plus side, cockpit shadows, better graphics overall and most important rift enabled menus. All good. I should also add that there is a copy of the rift display on the main monitor witch helps a lot when getting a friend to try the rift with dcs. On the not so good side, well the 1.5 update didn't change the rift's hardware resolution so no magic on that side. Also, I had intermittent issues with the rotor blade's shadow in the ka 50, when the shadow would go over my eyes, the right display would partially black out for a fraction of a second. I didn't have the issue with the A10 and the black out frequency seemed to fit with rotor blades passing overhead. It was annoying but not dramatic. My biggest complaint is so minor it is ridiculous but I'm gonna say it anyway. The smoke effect of the ka 50's gun is no longer the awesome supercloud visible from inside the cockpit and taking 1/2 of the field of view. Oh man, I loved that smoke. But on the other hand, in 1.5, a good volley of rockets will make you happy just with their smoketrails. Have fun, next stop, Nevada.

Illusion of speed is an interesting problem. I'd like to point out a few things. While flight sims are a niche market, there is an analog problem in the driving sim and well, many other games. The odd thing is that no matter the graphical power of the hardware, at any time, for every generation of console or computer, some games manage to get the illusion right and some don't. To me this sound like an artistic problem. Let me elaborate. The feeling of speed IRL is much more than just visual detail moving a certain way. We have many other senses that reinforce the feeling. We hear engine noise, or wing blowing. We have a nice accelero-meter in the inner ear and the guts to tell us that we are subjected to acceleration and vibrations. Our whole skin sends messages to the brain telling "this is not right". The point is : since in games we can only work with audio and video, to get a sense of speed, we must cheat. And cheating our senses is sort of the jobs of artists. Now cheating is a dangerous game especially for us as we tend to like Realism. There are many tricks available but lets just point out a few. Close static references. Since we have a greater sense of speed when objects fly by close to us, we could have some particles in the air let's say these : http://absoluteairmartinez.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/pollen.jpg If they are limited to low level and if we have a nice slider in the option menu to change their density (down to 0), we could have a nice increase in our speed sensation. It's a trick that is common in space sims as there are not always reference point in the FOV to tell the player that the ship is moving. Another trick is to have subtle "brush strokes" in the textures and to have the strokes point to the center of the screen. Perhaps some obscure shared technology could help. FOV : We have the immense luxury to be able to change our FOV "on the fly" and I love it. But lets imagine that we would allow for a few degrees of FOV to change depending on acceleration. This is also a common trick and it works quite well as our brain knows that speed is integrated over acceleration. Anyway I'd like to hear from you guys what games most conveyed that sense of speed. Cheers