BeastyBaiter

Impossible to say when as not even Wags knows tbh, but we got our first official tutorial video (just an intro) yesterday. So I suspect it's not more than a month or two out.

Don't overestimate how tough aircraft are in real life. The odds of an aircraft surviving a missile hit are vanishingly small. A near miss is a maybe, depending on angles, how close and blind luck. 12.7mm rounds should in theory, be stopped by some of the armor plate at long range (for 12.7mm) but of course, there are lots of vital things with no armor. The purpose of armor in most ground attack aircraft is to protect against handheld weapons, such as 5.56 and 7.62x39. And even then it's to protect the crew and the most vital systems so that they can hopefully limp home or ditch so that they can fight another day. There are of course many parts of an aircraft, regardless of type, which are just empty space. These can take lots of hits and do a whole lot of nothing. But it's hard to riddle those areas with holes without eventually hitting some other, more vital area.

I think you might want to think about this a little differently, the direct competition in DCS for the upcoming AH-64 is the Ka-50, not the Mi-24. The Mi-24 will have its place though, just up to mission designers to create reasonable scenarios for it. Of course, it can surprise some people too, I'm sure there will be more than a few videos out there once the Mi-24 is released of people gunning down F-16's dumb enough to try to flat turn with a chopper or go head on. Bonus point for smacking a fighter with an AT missile or unguided rocket.

My guess is it is very simple; they have access to a Mi-24P with the SPO-10 and so that is what they are modeling. It is a very pragmatic choice on that basis alone. There is also the argument that when modeling an aircraft, it should represent the typical configuration. If the SPO-10 is more common in the Mi-24P, then it is rational to use that system in game.

Flanker 2 I think. Played off and on ever since. It does strike me as odd someone thinking currently that this isn't one of the better known flight sims as I'm pretty sure it's the best known combat flight sim unless you count some free to play sim-light stuff.

Nearly all modern games use at least 8 CPU threads reasonably well. DCS uses 1 fully and about half of a second. For CPU reviews, take a look at their CS:GO benchmarks as those are going to be more representative of the kind of difference you can expect in DCS. VR is an FPS challenge and while one can always make the game GPU limited, if we're going for 90 fps (or more), then it tends to be a battle with CPU limitations on that single heavily used thread.

That's the other side of it. I don't post anything particularly controversial anywhere but Facebook/Google/etc are not known for being fair, consistent or even remotely rational when it comes to banning people. Steam does carry a risk too of course, but I've not heard of steam running around banning people on a whim. They seem to be one of our more benign tech overlords. No agenda to push, they just want everyone's money.

I had been considering selling my Quest for a while as I rarely use it unless at a hotel (not common these days) and the FB account requirement was the final straw. I sold it on Ebay a week ago. I still have a Rift S, but it's also going to ebay once I can get a Reverb G2. I do have a FB account and use it occasionally, but I don't post anything of much interest there and certainly don't stream my living room to it.

For the 20xx series I'm thinking of the super line. So they came out with the 2060, 2070, 2080 and 2080 Ti. After a few months, they released the "Super" versions of each. These followed the typical approach of releasing a "Ti" card but they named them "Super" instead. The only outlier being the 2080 Ti instead of being called a Titan. Given Nvidia has been doing this pretty much since Nvidia was founded, I expect we'll see Ti or Super versions of all these cards in the not too distant future. Given the current price brackets chosen, I also think they'll do like they did with the 20xx series and simply replace the old cards with them at the same price.

Nvidia redesigned their cores, so 10k of the new cores are not equal to 10k of the old ones. What they've done reminds me of the old AMD FX CPU's where they in theory had 8 cores but had a built in bottleneck so it was really only 4 at best.

One could simply wait 6 months for the 3080 Ti or Super or whatever they are going to call it. Nvidia always does it that way. Probably going to just replace the 3080 entirely, much like the 2080 Super did to the 2080. I can say that pretty confidently given that the 3xxx pricing is basically identical to the 2xxx pricing, so I expect we'll see the same thing again. There is also AMD floating around, I doubt they'll compete at the 3080 level given their current GPU situation, but we don't really know yet.

I figured FB was abandoning the PC space pretty soon given how development of the Quest vs Rift S has gone (I have both). I expect those two devices will be the last Oculus headsets I get. The Reverb G2 is looking pretty nice and the Index is also really cool too with the hand trackers. Neither is in the budget at the moment but one of those is on my wishlist.

I don't think I know enough about current headsets to say, but definately something with a 60Hz mode. 80/90 fps that you get with the Rift S or most headsets is not realistic at this time due to DCS limitations on CPU usage. So that means you'll be running at half that FPS during combat typically in any kind of significant mission. Some headsets have a 60 fps mode though (Reverb maybe?) and that should still be doable. 60 fps is a hell of a lot better than 40 or 45 fps. The one I'm looking at right now is the Reverb G2. I currently have a Rift S and a Quest. The Quest doesn't get used with the PC, it's just too janky. I previously had the original Rift.

Renewed means used which for amazon means it got mailed back to them as defective. Never, ever buy "renewed." :smilewink:

Realistically the whole thing needed to be sent to the great gaming room in the sky about 5 years ago. Basically any GPU you could possibly buy today is going to be choked badly by that FX CPU (I assume it's an FX chip). So simply upgrading the GPU doesn't make any sense. Similarly, any new CPU you get is going to choke on that budget GPU from 6 years ago, so once again, no luck there. I can only recommend starting fresh. The good news is basically anything is a massive upgrade, so you'd be amazed at what can be done for as little as $500 USD. For an ultra budget build, I recommend something like this: CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 ($100) RAM: 16GB DDR4 3200 ($100) Motherboard: B550 ($100) GPU: used GTX 1070 ($175) The above requires you to reuse the case, power supply, drives and other odds and ends. I recommend an SSD if possible, a 500GB SSD only costs $50-60 these days. That makes a world of difference in overall system speed, though not necessarily gaming performance outside of load times and stutters.

The SPO-15 would be preferable to me but I think we can make do with the older SPO-10 if need be. I do think they serve a purpose, at least in the context of DCS. In DCS it's easy enough to dodge a SAM by ducking behind cover as long as you aren't doing anything too dumb. And SAMs tend to just run their radar all the time, so you can detect them from a safe range that way. Even against fighters, a good RWR would be very handy. Forget the SPO-15 and imagine something like what the western jets or JF-17 have. You see a fighter headed your way from far behind his range, no worries, find a nice shady spot to land and wait him out, then move on. I wouldn't expect anything beyond the SPO-15, but I mention it to point out the foolishness of those saying an RWR is useless. It's no more useless on a chopper than it is on a F-18 or JF-17.

i5-10600k, Z490 board of your choice, DDR4 3200 or better. That's well under $1k if you reuse the rest of the stuff. The gtx 1080 will be the bottleneck for VR but a new generation of GPU's is coming very soon so I recommend waiting a little before replacing that part.

My recommendation is a 27" 144Hz 1440p monitor. It's what I run my desktop on. It's a good size for general gaming usage while still fitting on a normal desk. That said, I do not recommend a triple monitor setup for flight sims. It makes a lot of sense for doing work, but for gaming my vote goes to VR instead. VR is cheaper and more enjoyable than a triple monitor setup for flight sims. As a side note, I have 2x 1440p monitors on my desk, a 144Hz and an old 75Hz one. I do use both when doing work or web browsing, but for gaming I strictly use the 144hz screen. Depending on the game, sometimes I'll unplug the 2nd monitor since not all games play well with more than 1 screen plugged in.

At this time you don't have an upgrade option that makes sense. If your CPU can hit around 5.0 GHz, you're doing fine on that front. If it falls short at maybe 4.5GHz, then a CPU/Mobo upgrade maybe your best action if you want something today. If you can get to around 5 GHz on the CPU, then the GPU needs replacing. The problem is, the 1080 = 2070 Super or close enough to it. Additionally, a new generation of GPU's is coming in the next few months from both Nvidia and AMD. So I cannot recommend buying a high end GPU right now. The performance boost just isn't there at the moment and they will soon be replaced by things that are hopefully a lot better than the 20xx series have been. As a side note, I have a 2080 Super and previously had a 1080 Ti. Long story as to how that happened, but trust me, that isn't really an upgrade. I know your 1080 is a bit less capable but honestly I recommend waiting at this point. In fact, rumor has it the 2070 Super and up are no longer being produced.

I would have expected significantly better performance than 60 fps average and 47 fps minimum. You should be getting around 130-140 I would think with minimums around 100 fps. I don't know what SSLR is, so that might be the cause. Heat effects high is a resource hog, but not at that level.

There are a few aircraft that I think are safe bets for future additions. The Apache is one, the Blackhawk is another. It would just be downright strange if they didn't eventually find their way in. Would be like if the F-16 never made it. The Su-17 and Su-24 fall into that camp too I think. Might be a long wait, but eventually they will come.

As fun as it would be to trade blows with a human F-4 in a MiG-21Bis, those are definitely not even remotely modern aircraft. If we go by the standard of what was still in use in the 1980's as a 1980's onwards plane, then the MiG-17 is a modern jet fighter since N. Korea is still flying them to this day. This discussion is mainly fighter aircraft that are basically current generation aircraft. The F-16A is an option, but do you really want 500 different variants of 3-4 American fighters instead of a bit more variety? I for one don't see a particular reason to add the F-16A to the game at any point at any time in the future. The F-16C makes it redundant. If you want an F-16A, you just restrict the C to sparrows and older sidewinders. It isn't perfect, but it's good enough if that means getting a full fidelity MiG-29 to fight it.

AAR is almost unheard of in MP in my experience (been here since Flanker 2), so having it on by default is a bit problematic as most of the populated severs just take the default aircraft settings, whatever they maybe. I build my own missions when doing SP and constantly switching it off for every flight isn't very nice either. I am curious why you think having it be an armament option would be a problem. Why should it only be set by the mission builder? I'm honestly curious as I can't imagine a situation where that would be needed outside of some very coordinated mission for a private virtual squad where you can't trust your members to not do something overly stupid on the loadout screen:P. Obviously for SP it doesn't matter since it can be changed there either way, though it's just one more thing to remember.

Yeah, I can't tell a performance difference with the probe but it certainly obstructs vision to the right side some. I think most mission makers just don't bother checking those settings, and so it's always on since it's default. It would be better to have it as an armament option if possible or at the very least, turn it off by default.

It should run it, I wouldn't say it would run it well. Expect 40 fps with a Rift S or 45 FPS with any other headset at low-ish detail settings. That said, I think it's still worth it. TIR is dead to me, it's VR or nothing for flight sims now.