BeastyBaiter

Umm, IPD stands for inter pupillary distance. That would be the distance between your eyes. It has nothing to do with resolution. And I seriously doubt you have 90mm of space between your eyes unless your a dragon or a T-Rex.

Been loving my Rift since summer but decided a bit more resolution was needed, so I bought the Odyssey. On paper it has 30% more resolution for 77% more pixels. Unfortunately I quickly found the cockpit text to actually be harder to read than with the rift at the exact same settings. I spent all day tinkering and only ever managed to match the rift in readability, never exceed it. So I'm wondering if I got a dud somehow. I also noticed a ton of shimmering around trees and buildings, don't have that at all with the rift. One area the Odyssey beat the rift is the lenses. No death by lens flare with it unlike the rift. So it certainly isn't those giving me problems.

I really don't see the AIM-54 being shockingly good. On paper, the R-27ET can smack targets from 150km away or something stupid. Don't think I've ever seen one land a hit from more than maybe 30km though and that's head on. The same will apply to the AIM-54. Yeah, you can launch it from 100km, but in the minute or two it takes to reach the target, too much will happen for it to have any chance of even reaching it, nevermind actually coming close enough to damage or kill the target. Throw in a low G limit and this is simply a non-issue. As for balance in MP, that's partially up to mission builders. Developers need to include the tools to make a balanced mission, but we already have that. So really it's all about the mission builders. As things stand right this instant, it is entirely possible to give an airbase 100 AIM-9M, 100 AIM-7M, 12 AIM-120C and 2 AIM-54 if you so desire. You can even have them be replenished by flying a chopper to the airbase and dropping sling loads from a supply depot if you want. I've only rarely seen such systems used in DCS, but they are possible and it has been done occasionally. But as said, I don't think the AIM-54 is going to be a MP balancing problem in the standard 104th everything vs everything with unrestricted weapons mission. If looking at something resembling an historical mission, then it could be an issue. I suspect MiG-21 vs F-14 with or without AIM-54's is going to be rather one sided in most cases. But that's more of an argument in favor of adding the MiG-23 and 25 to the game. :smilewink:

LOL, how is that even possible? I get more than that per day with CPU mining. Something is seriously messed up with your configuration. I'm averaging about $4-6 per half day (use it the other half) with nicehash with my GTX 1080 TI + i7-8700k at a locked 4.7 GHz (non-gaming daily setting, under-volted). Admittedly the GTX 1080 TI is bit more potent than an RX 480 8GB but it isn't *that* different.

Yep, with a hefty CPU overclock + a newer GPU you'd still be good to go.

Ralfi can be fun to fly with but he isn't a good reviewer. Ergonomics wise, the X-55/56 throttle is the best on the market. The stick is a bit weird at first but you get used to it after a while. It would be more comfortable if the head of it was recessed a little like on the X-52. It isn't a deal breaker but is worth mentioning. At that price point, the only other option is the CH Products Fighter Stick + throttle. CH leaves a lot to be desired but will never break. You could drop a nuke on them and they'd still work. I have their pedals. They are imprecise, rough and definitely not the most comfortable, but they are indestructible.

Prices on GPU's will probably drop in a couple weeks. The price of all the crypto currencies has tanked hard, so I doubt many will be clamoring for new mining rigs for the next couple of months. It's still profitable to mine, but a lot scarier for people expanding or just starting.

I've had my X-55 for a couple years, still works fine. In general, reviews will tilt negative as those who get what they expected typically don't say anything. It certainly isn't the best, but the better options are vastly more expensive. At $250 USD, it's already a very high end system. There are those that will call that cheap crap, but they ignore the existence of nearly every mass produced joystick out there. The X55/56 and TM Warthog are as good as it gets without going with a tiny garage operation like VKB and waiting 6 months for the guy to do a production run.

It's related, so should be fine. If you are fine with 45 fps, then more or less, yes. I'd switch AA off and use PD at 1.4-1.7 instead and set heat blur to low. If you want 90 fps, then you will need to drop shadows to medium, visibility range to high, turn off clutter/grass, set trees to 10km and use terrain flat shadows. That is for NTTR.

I've read they plan to add that but I haven't read that it has been added yet. Regardless, it isn't an important feature for DCS. We need better CPU utilization, which Vulkan can provide if coded properly.

Ok, that voltage makes a lot more sense. For 4.7 GHz all cores all the time, I set 1.296v fixed with LLC 2 on my board. At idle, it holds 1.28v and under 100% load it drops to 1.23v. For 5.0 GHz I set 1.35v with LLC 1, this gives 1.36v at idle and 1.36v at full load. Yes, there is zero droop and yes that voltage is 0.01v higher than I set. This is with an ASRock Z370 Extreme 4 with bios v1.30.

Bitmaster, I noticed in your signature that you have your 8700k running 5.0 or 5.2 GHz at only 1.17v. That seems hard to believe, would you be willing to check the actual voltage with HWMonitor? For me it takes 1.28v at 4.7 GHz and 1.36v at 5.0 GHz with no AVX offset.

Do not get a reference card. The factory overclocks are meaningless but the reference coolers sound like a hair dryer. Something far less obnoxious is well worth the extra $10-20 USD on a $700+ graphics card. Other than that, great card. Paired with an 8700k at 5GHz, it runs 1440p at absolute max detail at 60 fps or VR at high-ish settings at 90 fps over NTTR.

In regards to the frame rate being locked to 30, that's probably MSI afterburner. I had that same issue at 89 fps a while back. Had to uninstall afterburner, physically remove the 1080, replace it with an AMD card, wipe all the drivers and then reinstall the 1080 TI. Needless to say, I will never install afterburner again. For multithreading, this is a somewhat complicated topic I'd rather not get into here. But by default Windows will sort it out for you. If you are manually assigning affinity, then it is best to put it on as many physical cores as possible. To that end, I recommend logical cores 0 and 2 or 2 and 4 and so on. Make them either all even or all odd core id's. But as said, there is no real reason to do this.

AMD GPUs gain substantial performance with DX12, Nvidia get basically nothing in most cases. Both brands see big improvements with Vulkan over DX11. In regards to multiple GPU's, Vulkan doesn't support that at all last I heard. But honestly, the problem with DCS is it's single threaded graphics engine. Even getting it on 2 cores would make a massive difference. And that's what Vulkan allows in addition to a solid +30℅ fps in GPU bound situations.

DCS is a single process that can use 2 CPU threads/cores. However it sounds like you told windows to restrict it to a single core for both threads. This will dramatically decrease performance. Additionally, DCS 1.5 cares far more about CPU clock speed than what GPU you have. At 3.8 GHz, your CPU is far too slow for DCS 1.5 in VR at any graphics setting. You should still see 45 fps in DCS 2.x, and thanks to the graphics card, you should be able to run it at max detail except for trees and visibility range. Even in DCS 2.x, your CPU must run above 4.7 GHz to fully utilize the GTX 1080 TI. I have a 1080 TI and an i7-8700k at 4.7 to 5.0 GHz, depending on the profile. That's the clock speed required to get it running smoothly with the GPU fully leveraged. Even then, DCS 1.5 runs between 19 and 90 fps with GPU usage rarely exceeding 30%. So 1.5 is just trash in general in VR.

I'm surprised RAM would be cheap, it's stupid expensive here in the USA. I recently eBay's some old DDR3 that I bought for $80 a few years back for over $100. It wasn't anything special, just your standard 16GB dual channel kit.

It's on by default in every game. You can turn it off with ctrl+numpad 1 but must do so every time you launch the game. It doesn't save the setting. You can switch it back on with ctrl+numpad 4. 2 and 3 also do things, one of them locks frame rate to 45 with asw and the other without. In regards to unplayable fps with the 1600x, that was in 1.5. In a completely empty mission, I would consistently get on 20-something fps near the coast on the deck at any graphics setting in VR. With the 8700k, it drops into the 30's but is mostly 45 in those same areas. On NTTR, it went from 45 fps all the time to 90 fps everywhere but Vegas in VR. Both 1.5 and 2.x were absolutely fine with the 1600x at 1440p, it's in VR in DCS (and only DCS) where it fell apart.

I've seen these rumors on various youtube channels too. But I'd be genuinely shocked if they hit those clocks and core count. I moved from a 1600x to an 8700k because VR in DCS is unplayable at 4.0 GHz on either Ryzen or Intel and I really don't think Ryzen will hit above 4.5 GHz in the next iteration. A 25% clock speed bump is an awful lot and it isn't like Intel chips where the stock clock is 3.5 GHz but it will hit 4.5GHz while also reducing voltage and overall power draw. My 1600x had a 4.0 GHz single core boost, and it maxed out at 4.0 GHz all cores all the time at the lower quoted max safe voltage (1.375v, LLC off). Ryzen is moving to a smaller process, but it is only a minor shrink, not a huge one. Combined with some assorted improvements, I think 4.5 GHz with +3% IPC is reasonable. But that still has it falling short of an 8700k/8600k/7700k/6700k at 5.0GHz in single thread. If they do manage 5.0 GHz, that will put them in a really superb position though. Intel really scrambled to get something out to compete with Ryzen 1 and if Ryzen 2 is that good, Intel is pretty much back at the drawing board since AMD can always just add more cores to Ryzen (see threadripper). Intel just can't scale like that with their current setup and they are having terrible problems getting off of 14nm. If they lose that clock speed advantage, there just isn't anything left for them (except marketing/bribes).

Bit late to this party but I recently moved to an i7-8700k + GTX 1080 TI + 16GB DDR4 at 3200 MHz. This is, for all intents and purposes, the absolute best possible rig at any price for DCS. You may be surprised at how the game performs with even this system, as it is far from perfect (especially in 1.5). DCS 2.x over NTTR is very smooth at fairly high detail settings with 1.4 pixel density. Dodging buildings/trees over Vegas does drop it to between 45 and 90 fps, but everywhere else it's locked at 90 fps in every aircraft I've tried, including the Harrier, Huey, Ka-50 and Mirage. I have not tried the A-10C yet with the new system. CPU and GPU usage tend to mirror each other I've noticed, so they are well matched. Over Vegas itself dodging light poles and signs along the strip, both are completely maxed with fps around 45. Everywhere else, 90 fps is typical with both CPU and GPU usage droping down substantially. So having a proper mission isn't an issue once away from Vegas. MP also works well (F99th). In DCS 1.5, it's a very different story. I don't think I've ever seen GPU usage exceed 50% while FPS is often below 20 on the same settings I use in NTTR. The reason is the single thread performance of the 8700k is approximately 1/4th what it needs to be to hold 90 fps along the coastal areas of the Caucuses in the 1.5 engine in VR. Inland a bit or at high altitude, 90 fps is normal, it's just the coastal town areas that are the problem. Interestingly, towns themselves aren't the problem as major towns further inland don't typically drop FPS all that much, certainly not below 45 fps. Heading out over the Black Sea also sees CPU usage drop to next to nothing, allowing for massive battles with 90 fps locked. My recommendation for you based on the above: So with that wall of text out of the way, I think your system is actually fairly balanced as is. If you get a 1080 TI, it won't be utilized in DCS 1.5 due to CPU usage (anything over a GTX 1060 or RX 480 is pointless imho since the CPU can't keep up). If looking at NTTR, then to get the most out of a GTX 1080 TI, you'll also have to crank an Intel or Ryzen CPU to 5GHz or more. Ryzen won't hit much above 4.0 GHz and 5.0 on an Intel is more than a little dodgy in terms of voltage and thermals. My 8700k will do it without too much trouble (no delid required), but I seem to have a silicone lottery winner going by what everyone else is getting. In regards to RAM, there is no point in more than 16GB for NTTR or 1.5 at this time. I don't know off the top of my head what ram usage is exactly with the 1080 TI (11GB VRAM) or my previous RX 480 8GB, but it is between 8 and 16GB with windows and other crap in the background. Outside of professional workloads, I don't know of anything that will break a 16GB RAM limit. Having 11GB of VRAM also helps reduce RAM usage in some games, not sure if DCS is one but I have noticed it will chew through an awful lot of VRAM with PD stepped up. Off the top of my head, I think 1.4 PD at my settings uses around 10GB of VRAM. Trying 1.7 PD in 2.x is a bad idea, it hits FPS pretty hard. In 1.5 it doesn't impact FPS at all,I think I cranked it to 3.0 once for a laugh and still had a CPU bottleneck.:lol: As for Vulkan, a properly multi-threaded Vulkan graphics engine would allow DCS to run locked at 90 fps in VR with an appropriate GPU with any quad core CPU made in the last 10 years. Even those $100 Athlon II's from 6 years ago (I had one, it sucked). But I wouldn't count on that update happening anytime soon. No details were given and it took somewhere around 3-4 years to move from DX9 to DX11. That's a relatively easy transition compared to DX11 to Vulkan, the move to Vulkan requires a complete rewrite of the graphics engine from scratch. I look forwards to such a transition, but I suspect it's going to be a long wait. This type of thing is not easy. Incidentally, I'm learning Vulkan right now. It's, umm, complicated...:juggle:

Got it sorted, control wasn't binding properly.

Title says it all. I turn the system on with the knob on the right side and none of the 3 release hotas buttons does anything. Only thing that works is the dash button, which doesn't seem to have a shortcut.

Ryzen is excellent for VR, just not in DCS sadly. If looking exclusively at DCS, you're best bet might be an i5-7600k or 7700k, depending on your budget. the new 8600k and 8700k demolish them in performance (as does Ryzen outside of DCS) and so retailers are trying to dump their stock for whatever they can get for them.

Typically a host does not need to own the aircraft in order for it to be in a mission. The carrier is an open question. I honestly have no idea if it will be restricted to harrier owners only. I hope it isn't, as that would effectively make the ship unusable in MP unless it's a harrier only mission (I think, how is the WW2 assets pack handled in MP?).

Yeah, when I bought the 1600x I had no plans for VR but then Oculus cut the price in half. What I found is DCS was unplayable in 1.5 while NTTR ran at 45 fps all the time regardless of detail level. The 8700k still doesn't muster 90 fps consistently over the two areas tested but does hold 45 well. Other areas do get 90 fps most of the time. Of course if DCS used even 2 CPU threads for graphics rendering then it wouldn't be an issue for even something ancient like a phenom chip. But honestly, I don't have any expectation of ED doing that.