BeastyBaiter

Would certainly be a nice option, though giving up a physical joystick is a no go for me. Combining the two might be tricky due to buttons/switches near where your physical stick is (mine is just on the desk). An interesting side note, I've noticed DCS maps my virtual hands to my Rift's touch controllers. I can't seem to do anything with them, but they are there. I only noticed cause I had my "hands" sitting just outside the cockpit of the Mirage once. The controllers were sitting on a second desk next to me. Couldn't touch anything in the pit with them but I could move them around. Was a bit surprised by that.

Thanks tout, about halfway through is exactly what I was looking for. It seems 90 fps is possible at medium-ish detail in most situations over NTTR. Still leaves the question about DCS 1.5.

Oh I agree, there is no going back to a monitor after trying any flight sim in VR. But DCS's (and BoS's) single threaded limitation means that performance tends to be a bit lack luster. What I'm trying to do with this thread is see if there is anyone who is able to fly at 90 fps all the time regardless of location or aircraft. It can be in an empty mission and minimum detail. I just want to know if there is a single setup on the planet that is capable of this. And so I listed the 2 lowest performance places in DCS that I know of and used tree top altitude so that we're getting the worst case scenario in an empty mission. Overall VR performance (and monitor performance for that matter) leaves a lot to be desired in DCS. Everyone knows this, Wags admitting as much in a recent interview and saying they are working on it. This is due to the way CPU usage is handled. There are VR games that run great of course. You can max out Robo Recall, a damned good looking game, with an RX 480 and I5-4690 (non k) and still get 90 fps locked. Admittedly that's a very different kind of game, but it shows what can be done when utilizing modern computer hardware effectively.

We're talking about VR performance, not monitor. You're right of course, it's a programming bottleneck. DCS uses 1.5 CPU threads, which on my 6 core 12 thread CPU is equal to 12% overall usage but 100% usage on a single thread. The rest of it doesn't matter. I'm asking if anyone is getting 90 fps at any settings in any aircraft at those two locations at tree top level. If not, what do you get. And finally, system specs and game settings in either case.

Ok, let's reframe the question. Flying tree top level in any aircraft, do you get 90 fps flying north along the beach from batumi and do you get 90 fps doing the same through the Las Vegas strip? If so, what detail settings are you using. I get about 30 fps and 45 fps respectively with medium object distance, 10km trees, 0 clutter and no other detail settings having any effect. Bottleneck is CPU at about 12% usage. Specs: R5 1600x at 4.0 GHz, GTX 1080TI and 16 GB DDR4 @ 2800MHz.

That's why I'm asking. I have an R5 1600x and GTX 1080 ti and yet NTTR runs at 45 fps and DCS 1.5 runs at 22 to 45, depending on the area.

Title says it all. Is anyone consistently getting 90 fps in both DCS 1.5 and 2.x in VR? If so, what is your system and what settings do you use? Is it only at high altitude or also on the ground and at low level? Related, if you don't manage 90 fps, do you get close?

It's a lot closer than that though. Put it up against a Skylake chip (6600k for instance) and the Ryzen is actually slightly faster. Against the kabylake cpu's, it's slightly slower on a clock per clock basis. The new 8700k coming soon is expected to have lower single thread performance compared to the 7700k. The only advantage of an i7 is pure clock speed, which does make a difference in DCS and BoS, there is no denying that. But this isn't a repeat of the FX8350 vs I7-2700k either. In inycase, I don't recommend an AMD CPU for DCS VR, but I don't recommend an Intel CPU either. DCS is very poorly coded and simply does not have adequate performance in VR. It's barely passable on a 2d monitor with either CPU.

What specific I7 are you talking about? I don't think it will be a problem but I can't say for sure unless you specify. Other than that, should work well for a normal 2d monitor. I ran 1440p on medium-high detail with an 8GB RX 480 very well in both DCS 1.5 and 2.x Alpha (NTTR map). The RX 480 8GB has virtually identical gaming performance compared to the GTX 1060 6GB. I've since moved to a GTX 1080 TI (for VR in DCS), a 1060 or RX 480 won't cut it for that. A system using AMD's R5 1600 or 1600x is also worth a look. That's what I'm running, very satisfied with it in DCS and all other games.

I'd prefer ED's coders doing other things, like splitting the graphics engine thread off of the rest of the game engine. The current UI could be a little better admittedly, but I find it perfectly adequate as both a mission builder and player. If I want to build a serious mission, I just disable the headset for the bulk of the build and only leave it running for fine tuning and play testing. And funny that Asseto Corsa gets mentioned, I absolutely hate the way they swap constantly between monitor and the headset. It's terribly inconvenient imho. Is there a way to switch it to HMD only? I just got the game today so I'm still trying to figure it out.

You can set oculus home to require admin permission to run, that will keep it from launching whenever using steamVR or DCS stand alone. You can still launch manually so long as you are admin. Link to post on OR forums explaining how: https://forums.oculus.com/community/discussion/53317/how-to-prevent-home-from-starting-when-playing-steam-games It's in the first post.

It is strange, my old i5-4690 had 1 core max boosted basically all the time with the stock cooler. And there really isn't any reason the 1600x couldn't do this on at least 2 cores. As is well known, getting a 3.9 to 4.0 GHz all core overclock is trivial at AMD specified safe voltages.

I tried disabling 2 cores once, it made zero difference in overclocking my 1600x. For the related question of how it handles single thread using boost + XFR instead of an overclock, the answer is 3700 MHz all the time for all cores when playing DCS, BoS or any other game in VR. If using high performance mode, it keeps everything at 3.7GHz even when idle. When set to balanced, it will park cores at 2.2GHz and randomly boost 1 to up to 4.1GHz. however, it will not exceed 3.7GHz with any sort of load, even a simple browser tab. Basically, XFR gives an auto 100MHz boost but the boost function doesn't actually work. And so a 4.0GHz overclock is better. Also, this isn't a thermal issue with boost mode since it's running around 40°C under a light load and 60°C under an all core stress test when overclocked. Not exactly a hot chip.

Launches fine for me, I have DCS and Oculus on C drive but Oculus Home games on D drive. I haven't had any crazy GPU stuff go on.

Precog, you are CPU bottlenecking hard. I know it only looks like you're using 50% on each of 4 cores, but the reality is it's using 100% on 1 core all the time but bouncing around the 4 cores constantly. This is causing all the cores to average a little under 50% during the update period MSI afterburner uses. What gives it away is the overall CPU usage at 36% and the fact that DCS only uses 2 cores anyways. If you want confirmation, you can set the CPU affinity of DCS to just 2 cores, you'll see no change in performance but 1 core will be 100% and the second at around 30% with the other 2 at 0% or close to it. Sadly, in DCS 1.5 there isn't much you can do about that except not fly in that particular area.

2.0 isn't totally free of CPU usage for the graphics, you can't see it in the 1440p results but CPU usage is very high (90%+ for nearly all of it). It's simply that the GTX 1080 TI tops out first in most cases. These were empty missions other than the player aircraft, so in a more interesting mission, a cpu bottleneck is likely. Though it shouldn't be a problem, I really haven't had any issues with it in any sort of reasonable mission. Getting away from Vegas will also collapse CPU usage. You can see that in the 45 fps VR result when looking at a mountain. So in general play, NTTR runs very well in both VR and 1440p. Sometimes it has a GPU bottleneck, other times CPU, but in both cases it stays pretty smooth so long as you don't go too crazy with the AI units.

Agreed with Demon, the GTX 1060 6GB or RX 580 8GB are plenty for 1080p. Hell, my RX 480 did 1440p on fairly high settings in both NTTR and DCS 1.5 solidly. I only swapped to a GTX 1080 TI due to grabbing an Oculus Rift a week ago. In any case, I recommend an R5 1600X over the I5-7600k. The CPU is the same price while being nearly 3x as fast due 50% more cores and 3x as many CPU threads. That won't help in DCS since it's single threaded, but it matters basically everywhere else. The B350 motherboards are also a little cheaper than the Z270's, so you can put an extra $50 towards your graphics card. Other than that, rest looks fine. Though the 1600x may require a different cooler or an adapter, not sure if the one you are looking at includes an AM4 adapter yet. Edit: My 1600x cooler was $25 from newegg and included an AM4 mount. I can recommend it, works great and is dead silent with a 4GHz all core overclock. Linky: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835856005

And you'd be wrong, should have waited for part 2. :P What's going on here is 1.5 is basically DX9 pretending to be DX11, thus nearly all graphics processing is done on the CPU itself. DCS 2 is properly implemented DX11 and thus it mostly falls on the GPU to process. The CPU still has to pass it the basic model info, hence the high cpu usage in an empty mission, but it is dramatically lower than if it had to do everything. One can only imagine how bad it would be over Vegas if it were rendered in the 1.5 engine. There is still a lot of room for improvement though. Splitting the graphics thread off from the game logic (including physics) would free up a fair bit for more units as well as probably allowing 90 fps in VR. Another thing that can be done is having AI units occupy n threads instead of just 1. That's a relatively easy thing to do and would allow for some crazy big missions for those of us with high core count CPU's. Unfortunately this does have its limits with DX11 as the graphics will still be single threaded. In order to have multiple CPU cores feed the GPU, DX12 or Vulkan must be used. I don't see DCS making that switch anytime soon. I tried to teach myself Vulkan and it's, umm, complicated. OpenGL and DX11 are idiot proof by comparison.

I know DCS 1.5 wasn’t encouraging, but this review is about to get a whole lot more positive. Let’s start with NTTR at 1440p. Spawning in the lovely F-5E at Nellis, I saw 130 fps when looking ahead. Looking to the sides had little impact, the lowest being 122 fps. But what about over Vegas? This is typical: Note the 99% GPU usage above, we have a GPU bottleneck with a 1080 TI! It’s at 109 FPS, but still, it isn’t fast enough for the 1600X here. Heading out of town brings fps up to 140-160, it largely stays in that range while on the deck. And it isn't just in the open desert either. Climbing up a bit and looking back at Vegas give us a very respectable 130-ish fps. If only 1.5 ran this well when looking at Batumi. And look at those mountains (and the fps). Right, so that went amazing well. So how’s VR? Starting over back at Nellis, looking ahead shows an uninspiring 45 fps, but both the CPU and GPU are well over 50% usage at least. Looking to the side changes nothing, except upping GPU usage slightly. Heading towards the strip brings the GPU usage up but has no change otherwise, it remained at 45 fps all the way into the main event. Getting out of town finally sees the FPS go up a little bit, but it is a bit jittery given it’s a 90Hz display, not 60Hz. It also isn't consistent, it doesn't take much to drop it right back down to 45 since none of the frames reach the 11ms mark. We could drop the graphics to low and try to get 90 FPS or up them a little to fully utilize the GPU while accepting a permanently locked 45 fps, but that seems like a poor choice. I see only one sensible solution to this problem, graphics level: stupid. Setting everything to as high as it will go (forget flat shadows, use high and default!), including setting PD to an utterly insane 2.5 and we have… And thus I successfully made NTTR run as badly as DCS 1.5 near Batumi, though due to a very different bottleneck! Incidentally, this is effectively displaying DCS at absolute max detail at 7020x3900. That’s 27.4 million pixels, or equivalent to a triple 4k setup. So what about stupid detail at 1440p? Here ya go. Still totally playable. Final verdict on 2.0, works pretty well. 1440p runs fantastic and you can pretty much max it out with the 1600x and GTX 1080 TI. If in a large battle, you may want to tone it down slightly for a bit more GPU headroom for explosions and such, but it works. You probably aren't going to have a massive battle in the Las Vegas strip either, then again... I have this great MP mission idea! For VR, I find it's smooth enough. Realistically, it's never going to go above 45 fps but you can throw an awful lot at it with high detail settings and still keep that 45 fps. End result, it's a good experience. I greatly prefer NTTR in VR over a regular monitor at 1440p. Spotting isn't a problem either. The resolution is poor, but that just means the pixels are bigger, thus easier to spot. My actual VR settings are basically high, but with the full shadow effects instead of flat nonsense. It looks really, really good despite the low resolution like that. With ASW on, it's even pretty smooth, though there can be some graphical artifacting with props and rotors.

This is a two part review where I take a look at Ryzen, the GTX 1080TI, 1440p, and VR across both DCS 1.5 and 2.0 (NTTR only). First, the system specs: CPU: AMD R5 1600X clocked at 4.0 GHz all cores. GPU: EVGA GTX 1080 TI SC2 ICX (@ factory overclock only) RAM: 16GB DDR4 @ 2667 MHz Motherboard: MSI B350 Tomahawk OS: Win 10 Home Monitor: 27” 1440p TN panel (supports 60Hz and 75Hz) VR: Oculus Rift CV1 (purchased a week ago) All tests use the following settings: high preset and for VR, pixel density in DCS set to 1.4. Oculus home was closed for 1440p tests and minimized for VR testing. Additionally, I turned off ASW for the VR tests. An important note about VR: VR has a highly rigid display timing of 11ms, 22ms and 44ms. This is due to always on v-sync plus a second synchronization between the left and right eye. As such, it displays 90 fps, 45 fps and 22 fps. It is physically incapable of showing 60 fps, as an example. It can alternate between 11 and 22 ms frame timings, giving the illusion of 60 fps but it will also be super microstuttery when doing so, since it can't actually do the 16ms required for 60 fps. Starting out with 1440p in DCS 1.5, I spawned at Batumi airfield as that particular area is the absolute worst performing area in all of DCS 1.5 and 2.0. As you can see from the two following pics, facing forwards pins core 11 at 100% while the GPU is at a lowly 46% usage, fps is 129 though. Looking to the right tanks it to a pathetic 39 fps with only 25% GPU usage. This isn’t a one off, the rest of the 1.5 test goes the same way for both 1440p and VR. With that out of the way, I took off and headed north along the coast. Flying over the town of Batumi matched what was seen from the runway, almost no GPU usage and horrible fps when looking in some directions, but then shooting up past 90 when looking in others, and not just out to sea either. Once past the CPU crushing city of Batumi and getting a little altitude, things improve dramatically but are still highly dependent on view direction even if there isn’t much of a difference between them in terms of what’s drawn on screen. This spot has fps from 120 to the high 50's, depending on where I looked. Once again, note the heavy CPU bottleneck, the GPU is barely touched regardless of view direction. Moving to everyone’s favorite part of the map for dog fighting, we see much improved frame rates, though it’s still the CPU holding us back. But at 150+ fps, does it really matter? Moving to other parts of the map has results everywhere between the two extremes. DCS 1.5 is incredibly CPU dependent in all areas, often ignoring the GPU almost entirely. Overall I think 1.5 is certainly playable with the 1600x and in some areas where there are fewer draw calls, it runs great. But then there are spots like Batumi where it chugs. It’s worth mentioning that the I5-4690 this chip replaced had it even worse. On average, I gained about 10 fps in the Batumi CPU grinder at any given graphics setting. Now let’s look at VR, but I’m sure you can guess how this is going to go… Yikes. It doesn’t get better once the wheels are up either… So where does it get better? Getting away from Batumi of course. In the same places the 1440p result got above 60 fps, VR finally hits the first proper display step of 45 fps. In the mountains and most of the plain areas, it runs pretty well. And hell, I even got 90 fps when consulting the witch doctor, sacrificing a goat to the gods, chanting the correct verses and waiting for the stars to align properly. But I really wouldn't bet on 90 fps. And don't think a 7700k is going to save you either. It's 25% faster in single thread, due to 25% more clock speed when on liquid cooling and hooked up directly to a high voltage powerline.:P Final thoughts on 1.5: The engine is trash, everyone already knows that, including ED which is why they are remaking the map to use the newer engine. Despite that, the R5 1600x handles it far better than my previous I5-4690 ever did. In the Batumi CPU torture test, the 1600x is, on average, about 10 fps faster at the same settings. Additionally, the low fps is due entirely to draw calls. This creates some interesting options in VR, since pixel density can really improve the quality and it falls entirely on the GPU to handle. I chose 1.4 PD for this test to keep it consistent with 2.0 and NTTR. When actually playing 1.5, I do not fly near the Batumi/Kutaisi area and I also crank that PD up to 1.7 and am considering going even higher. In fact, no reason not to run on anything less than super ultra detail except with medium view distance and 10km trees, as those are the only two things calling on the CPU. That applies to 1440p as well. Hell, I could probably run a triple 4k setup without losing a single fps over Batumi.

I'm writing a detailed report on my experience with DCS 1.5 and NTTR with a 1600x and a GTX 1080 TI but probably won't be able to post it today. The very short version is amazing in NTTR at 1440p, good in VR, inconsistent but mostly ok-ish in 1.5 at 1440p and barely playable in VR for 1.5. All that is at stock clocks. I'll try to get the proper report out tomorrow morning.

My takeaway from this is under normal DCS conditions, the missile either hits within 30-32 seconds at any normal altitude or it does not hit. I think that makes it the longest ranged air to air missile in DCS.

Looks good, I think you'll be pleased.

Probably going to have to wait a week or two like me.

I ordered one like 2 minutes after they went on backorder at Amazon, hopefully it includes the Xbox controller. Amazon claims it will ship in a week. Backorder for those buying now is 3-5 weeks!