Fangio

This. VR has been a barely supported afterthought by ED from day 1. Basically, they support it just enough for marketing to claim support but not enough to actually deliver a good experience to the average VR flyer. This continues and is why to won't see Vulcan until 2020 or later.

EA and DCS is actively developing VR support? Really? Because from my perspective VR support in DCS has been minimal and sketchy from day 1. More an afterthought or grudging effort than dedicated support.

Will missions created before V2.5 work in 2.5 or later? thanks!

I am coming back to DCS after a long break due to work and life... I updated to the latest version (I think) today, but I go into the game and try to fly and all my joystick, throttle, pedals and other control settings and profiles are gone. Also all the missions I had downloaded and played before seem to be gone. So did the update kill everything I had setup before? I sure hope not - literally dozens of hours and tedious setup work. If this is in fact gone I dont know that I have the time or patience to do it all over again. Any guides to updates or finding older configuration files and using them? Any help is greatly appreciated. Fangio

Hey! Yea - I remember Dawger! Good to run into another old timer. You ever run into any others from Warbirds back in the late '90s? Im swamped with work stuff at the moment but hope to get 2.5 downloaded and see if I can get it to run on my system with VR next week.

Folks always like to point to the US Dollar and say that it is not backed by any asset. This is primarily because the Dollar once upon a time was actually backed by gold. But a fully gold asset backed dollar disappeared a very long time ago and even the facade of gold backing it ended over 45 years ago. But just because the dollar is not backed by gold does not mean it is not asset backed. The US dollar is backed by the "full faith and credit of the US Federal Government". Hmmmmmm what value is there to the full faith and credit? Not much as far as I am concerned. "Faith" in the US Government? For me... absolutely NONE. Credit? Nope. Liars... cheats... crooks. But that still does not rule out the dollar in fact being backed by assets. Consider: The US Federal Government owns a massive amount of very valuable land. It also has the most powerful military force the planet has ever seen including over 2700 nuclear weapons, 14 Ohio Class ballistic missile submarines, 11 full size nuclear aircraft carriers and another 10 smaller carriers (amphibious assault ships...). Stealth bombers, armored divisions, in short - a monumental military capability. This may not be "gold" but which do you really think carries more power? The full ability to project actual military domination anywhere on the planet OR a bunch of metal in a vault somewhere? Rumors of the US Dollars demise I would suggest are highly over stated. Is this a good thing? Not necessarily. But it is reality.

I am looking for an online squad to fly with. I fly German WWII fighters and would like a squad that focuses on the same. I am into historical type flying with an emphasis on being as realistic as possible - no "Air Quake" or such. A historically focused squad would be awesome. The Bf-109 is my current favorite. I am fairly new to DCS and learning. I was once very active flying online.... but that was 20 years ago in Warbirds. I am struggling to figure out how to get online comms working and have not yet actually flown online but I suspect getting with a good squad could help with all that. Thanks!

Capitalism will solve the problem either way. If crypto-currencies continue to expand and drive prices up on GPUs - production of those GPUs will expand to meet the increased demand. More players will get into the market. Increased demand with static supply drives prices higher but higher prices and increased demand also drives supply up. One way or another, the current GPU price problem will be solved by the market. Unless Government decides to get involved. In that event - everyone is screwed. Terry

What is TGP?

Uhhhhhh THANKS for the 6 hour long video... Any chance you give us a hint where in this video there is a reference to the FFB stick you posted an image of? I just cannot watch 6 hours of that.

VR has the potential to completely revolutionize the flight sim world and explode it in popularity. I started sim flying in 1993 on AOL playing Air Warrior and in 1994 got hooked hard when the beta for Warbirds came out. During '96-'98 I can recall many months with $300+ bills from playing Warbirds at $2 per hour. Go JG26 and Gold Team! During that time, the Warbirds arenas would have 400+ players online daily. The flight sim genre in general grew massively during this time frame. I eventually drifted away primarily because the game play never evolved. Open war arenas, non-historical plane matchups and in general the "Quake in the Sky" environment created by the gameplay structure of Warbirds (and others like WarThunder or Aces High that continue to this day, with the same basic gameplay) meant that players followed a pretty consistent progression. You start off amazed at the ability to fly a simulation online with hundreds of others and it rocks. Then, as you gain experience you slowly begin to realize that the broad scenario never really changes and there is no bigger picture purpose to the "war". Thus, in time it loses the appeal and you drift away. The same general progression exists today. VR is a game changer in that once again we are back to a similar place as 1994. The immersion and overall realistic sense of flying in VR is MORE revolutionary today than the convergence of PC and Graphics capabilities along with the internet in the early 1990s. VR is going to generate large scale interest as the technology advances (though it is clearly not there yet). Yes, for flight sims that will initially yield growth in places like WarThunder where the learning curve is easier and the gameplay more welcoming for newbies. But many of them will go through the same old progression and the opportunity for DCS (and others) is in leveraging VR combined with a true more realistically focused "War With Consequences" historical gameplay capability to quantum leap the genre. Is DCS capable of both truly recognizing the opportunity AND rapidly deploying technology to capture the opportunity? I have my doubts, but the opportunity is there, it is real and somebody is going to build a great business around it.

Does anyone know if there is any documentation available that tells us what will actually be in V2.5? I get that it will merge together all the various versions but is that it? Will it mean a significant graphics improvement? Will performance suffer? Will 2.5 include code optimization such that DCS can fully utilize modern multi-core computer processors? Will 2.5 offer any badly needed VR optimization? Will it improve net code or increase the potential number of players that can be online together on a server? The letter is great but some of us more recent DCS arrivals feel a bit lost.

Any updates on when / if we can get the engine effect and other missing effects for the Bf-109?

Is there a link or such to instructions for how to get radio functions working on the server? Does it use Simple Radio? I am new to online play (have not flown online.... yet) and am trying to figure out how to communicate via radio while flying online. Any help is greatly appreciated. I have downloaded Teamspeak but have no good idea how to properly set it up.

I finally have gotten DCS and Oculus to run on my machine (barely) so now it is time to learn to fight. That means being able to track and maintain site on an enemy with whom you are engaged. If that enemy happens to be behind you, that is almost impossible due to the huge FOV limitations of the Oculus. In order to check 6 now, I have to shift back in my seat, take both feet off the pedals, rotate my butt and legs toward the side I wish to look, put one hand down on the seat and push to lift my body up off the seat and then twist my entire body until my face is basically facing directly away from the forward facing position. Sometimes, this requires letting go of all controls including the flight stick. This is of course absurd, but it is the reality of flying with a diving mask on your face that removes all peripheral vision and ability to focus on objects toward the edge of your field of view. I have been playing around with instead of the above process, turn my head and upper body as much as I can normally and then reach up with one hand and shove the rift further backwards thus manually skewing the view to make up for the lack in FOV. This works ok, but it requires not tightening the rift and having to constantly deal with re-positioning it on my face. While better than not being able to check 6 at all, this sucks. It would sure seem that a better work around would be to have the ability to map a sort of snap view that simply skewed the view further in the direction one is looking another 30 degrees or so. You could map this to a hat switch and then use it as required to help offset the FOV limit. IS this possible? Are there any snap views or other views offered by DCS that could be used in conjunction with VR to attempt and offset the FOV challenge?