ignition22

I am stunned that you believe that. Next time you are in a passenger in some ones car watch the wheels of another car as you slow down from speed and pull up to traffic lights. A couple of years ago I watched a Lancaster start up I could easily see this affect in the props.

I fly the campaigns as single missions and if im far into a mission and something goes wrong will often just skip to the next rather then play it through again. For me a save option would align with how I tend to play games but the ED people say its not practical so its all moot point I guess.

Do you use Alt + Enter when in VR mode to full screen and prevent DCS from losing focus? I'm guessing maybe you don't know that it is a thing.

Agree with op actual lol

I am pretty particular about my audio setups. I use voice meter banana and effectively 3 sound cards. With voice meter you can take one input and split it into 3 different outputs each with different eqs and crossovers applied etc. One channel play all frequencies to my Oculus Rift S which essentially acts as a sound card. This makes sure I get directional queues and so I can tell what is coming from where. In DCS I also set my Rift S as the only sound output for headset sounds (comms etc). One channel play all frequencies but in mono to a 5.1 home theatre system in my sim room via my motherboard soundcard. I wired up the back speakers to play the same sound as the front even though it is not getting a 5 channel input and excluded the front center speaker. This gives depth to the sound I am getting also from my Rift so it doesn't sound like all the sound is being sourced right by ears, it sounds like its coming from out in the environment. One channel is low passed to play only low frequencies and runs to Dayton bass shakers connected to my rig which uses a usb sound card. When you first compare between having setup like this and just having it all in Rift S headband its like night and day, its just far far more immersive. Probably after playing for 30mins you kinda don't even really notice anymore it all just blends into the experience

Yes it will work fine presuming the chair is mounted solidly to the wooden frame. The more isolated you are from shakers the less effect you will feel ie the chair cushioning etc but you should still be able to feel it a decent amount. Personally I find that with Buttkicker are a bit more expensive then they should be. Worth taking a look at parts express for other potential options.

Yep I have 4 speakers now, one in each corner of the room and use voicemeter banana to control audio output form the PC which you can use to set the speakers in mono although i've left them in stereo. Because I also play the sound through the Rift S and it is right by your ears that gives all your localization queues, ie where you perceive directional sound coming from. I also set headset sounds in DCS to the Rift S so voice comms only come through the Rift. Its not perfect for sure but sound wise when you fire up an aircraft like a huey it really does sound like you are right in that environment. At first I just did it as an experiment with two spare bookshelf speakers sitting on the ground in front of me but my immediate impression was wow what a difference.

My wife's friend lost her only child and husband on this flight. Its tragic that this continues to happen.

I don't agree much about the performance complaints. I run a PC I bought second hand for $1k about 3 years ago and its fine. Pretty similar performance to iracing and other games I play. You also have to remember that many FPS games run on the same few engines as each other which means there is a lot more time and money that can go into those engines. FPS games have been done over and over where as DCS is breaking new ground and boundaries. This is how software development works. Software is extremely complex and humans are by nature not very good at building it. Spending 75% of your effort finding the last 5% of the bugs before release is not viable for dev companies hence why there is a beta release channel. Its accepted for near all non mission critical software that you know that bugs will be released accidentally and found by users. Imagine a major metropolitan city decides to widen all of their sub way tracks. A massive undertaking that is to take years. Over such a long project goal posts inevitably move, large unexpected problems are discovered and need to be addressed, things are done once then need to be redone again and again as new lessons are learned and standards are redefined, important people leave the project and are replaced with people that take months to build up the same knowledge and capability. Big projects take a long time and projects done over a long time inevitably change substantially. A very big % of large software projects fail and attaching a strict delivery date is often a contributing factor to that failure as towards the end quality is sacrificed for the expectation that doing so will increase output. Also the internet enables toxic people to spew toxic stuff and influence other people to their way of thinking. Providing timelines even when stated a thousand times that they are subject to change gives those toxic people more things to be toxic about. DCS has been around 10 years probably with maybe a hundred people contributing to and changing the code base at any one time when you include all the 3rd parties. I think people that haven't worked in software don't realise just how massive and complex that project code bases can become. People used to complain that DCS World 2 was taking forever but it came out eventually and it was a great upgrade. I'm sure ED will complete and release the changes as soon as they are able. Personally I wouldn't expect anything this year.

That's a lot of fancy gears For me id skip the headphones and go with external/room speakers and split game sound between Rift S headband and room speakers. Imo much more immersive with the sound coming from all around you then right by your ears. This isn't a common thing to do though, just something I personally found to be much better while testing things.

Sweet just dropped into this forum to see if there were any kiwi groups, super keen. Am just about to head out of town for 2 weeks but will reach out when I'm back. Been flying DCS on and off for a while but never done any multiplayer. Stoked you guys run helis as well.

There is no precedence for 2 maps to be merged. It would be such a big feature/change that it certainly would have been advertised. That aside the two maps are made by different companies, they are different products, probably made quite differently with different textures and likely colouring/shading in different seasons, possibly models, level of detail in different sections etc. Flying from one to the other would probably be quite jarring from a visual perspective if they were even right next to each other or overlapping (which it doesn't seem like they will be). Its probably quite unrealistic to consider it a possibility tbh

Technically true :P Personally for me I found the positioning to be too high if the stick base is on top of the seat, especially if you also use an extension. Also if the seat is reclined then it has to also clear the front part of the seat where it is highest. But I guess most people center mount a stick that way so certainly doable. For a short while I used a wheel stand pro I had spare as a joystick base because the post is telescopic and rotatable its easily adjustable to many positions but not sure if id recommend it as a permanent solution.

The harder part would probably be making a hole or cut out in the cushion without destroying it. If your comfortable doing that or know someone who can sew or make you another seat cushion with a U shape missing from the front then you could find many different ways to mount the stick in the right spot.

Picked up a used Onkyo 7.1 channel HT amp for $140. These sorts of amps are great watts/channels per $ value with 7 rca channel in and 7 amplified channels out with plenty of power you can run all sorts from them. This is replacing a bunch of two channel amps I was using before. For now I'm running 6 shakers from 4 of the amp channels with plenty of headroom to add another 4 shakers on those same channels later on. Likely use the remaining 3 channels for room/environment speakers much further down the road. I use voice meter banana to mix audio and effects channels and direct different audio to Rift S headset, room/environment speakers and bass shakers. It seems that ED just recently added the ability to send headset and other audio streams to a different sources which is perfect. Over the last few days I started the right side pod to match the left side one. Got a trackball to try instead of a mouse, hoping will be more practical with less physical movement and it being fixed in place. Also trying out angled front parts on the side pods to see what feels right before committing.

Not sure how you would go without a mouse considering you need right click and scroll wheel as aswell. I just recently got a trackball so at least its always in the same place and I wont bang it into things as I blindly move it around. Also.. I think the learning curve can be as steep as you want it to be really. For example most aircraft you could start up with 10 or so clicks and have it running or you could do all the pre-flight stuff, read all the manuals and do the super indepth training sessions and spend 10x longer with 5x as much to remember. Personally I just learn the basics of what I need to learn for each aircraft, fly them around for a bit and do a mission or 3 then later on come back and fill in the blanks. Also quicker to learn the advanced stuff later I think when you already understand the basics. Then when you move onto other aircraft there will also be familiarity so each aircraft gets slowly easier to learn.

Just spent 30 mins flying around and landing next to each isolated looking tree i could find until eventually got shot down. Pretty frustrating.. "land by the tree on the opposite plateau" actually made me lol when i heard it, need to have other kind of marker. At least a video run through would be good though jumping in and out of VR to try and find out what your supposed to be doing isn't ideal either.

But it doesn't really. Its like complaining that Samsung released a new TV when their cell phone has some design issues they need to resolve. This is explained a million times in forum posts and facebook comments etc but people seem to think that the generic term "software developer" means that all devs can do all tasks so why is ED building a new map when there is a bug in the F18s radar. Its like saying an engineer who works on the construction of bridges has the same skills and abilities as the engineer who designs car batteries. And that alone avoids the myth of bug free code in large software projects. If any company with a large software project made sure their code was perfect before building anything new they would quickly go out of business. All software companies must work on a scale of spending resources on bugs/maintenance vs new features/development.

Seems like a pretty low land mass so surely much faster to develop then other maps

I stuck with Rift S headband sound but also play the audio in mono through room speakers. Radio chat is a little odd ill admit but having the aircraft sound come from all around you and at distance is much, much more immersive then having only on or near ear speakers.

Never? As in technology will never progress past what we have today? That is a strange assertion. DCS will improve and technology will move forward and that's besides the point that many DCS VR users already believe that DCS performs well in VR today.

Its been fine so far.. guess since its meant to be an office chair its designed to be used for long periods of time. Also this is the one room in the house that doesn't have sun side facing windows so is the coolest in the house. That reminds me actually, something I was going to mention in my initial post. These cheap office chairs are appalling made.. its not until you pull them apart you realise they are not remotely straight or symmetrical. Bolt holes etc are off by inches, drilled in on angles and generally look like they have been done by hand in a hurry. I couldn't just make one side of the chair and then copy it to do the other, I had to make both sides separately while still trying to get them to join up. I think the end result works well though and should be much more ergonomic then if I just built a wooden frame and made my own cushions for it.. atleast this should be shaped and designed for long term comfort.

Mine are the Pro which I think have been recently replaced by the Sprint series. Still a little over a thousand 2nd hand in my local currency, I guess about $750 usd so not super cheap but should last a life time. I was on the lookout for some Fanatecs but when these turned up I couldn't say no. Interesting story on those actually.. one of the very few used items I bought and was sort of scammed. The throttle pedal was totally dead. I contacted Heusinkveld and said I had bought them used and the throttle wasn't working and could I buy just a throttle pedal from them. Well they shipped me a brand new free pedal with free shipping that somehow went from the Netherlands to New Zealand on the other side of the planet over a weekend as if they personally escorted it here themselves. Typing this now I still kinda cant believe it.. just an absolutely ridiculous level of support.

I started building the sim cockpit side pods with basic size and shape taken from how the F16 cockpit looks in VR within DCS. They taper in towards the front and the ribs are more rounded at the back getting slightly straighter towards the front as well. I flush mounted my warthog throttle and scored a near new razer tartarus v2 for $100 as well. The gaming keypad will come in super handy for additional buttons and is easily programable with macros etc as well. These are very much first stage and im currently trying them out for a bit before making further adjustments and starting the right side pod. On the black friday sales I did the side grade from my Oculus Rift to the Rift S. That little bit better picture, inside out tracking and much better fitment for glasses all made for a worthwhile $200 upgrade (after selling my original rift). However the audio from the Rift S is nothing short of tragic. I first tried out some ear buds but it felt completely unnatural to have the sound originating from inside my ears. I had an idea and wired up some old speakers i had so i could play the game sound from both those external speakers as well as the Rift S headband and struck gold. You still get the localization ques of the Rift sound but you also get this environmental sound in the room that really sounds like its coming from all around you especially with the vibration motors as well. Back to the second hand market i found someone selling an old dvd home theatre setup a few streets over for $20. Using VoiceMeeter Banana on the PC and an extra usb sound card audio now plays through the Rift S, the vibration motors and also over RCA cables to the inputs on the dvd home theatre. I wired the back speakers in series with the front speakers to get sound to play through all 4 speakers, skipped the center speaker but do play audio through the sub as well. This all works really well for now but as an audio nut i just have to eventually replace the HT setup with some purpose build speakers of my own much later on in the project. I had to get some appropriate art work going on to make the room a little more interesting and themed. Lucky for me my wife is a talented graphic artist and she whipped these up from some screenshots i took from the DCS model viewer. $10 to print out high quality A3 size and a couple of cheap frames later im pretty happy with the result. This is just a start with bigger plans for artwork to come down the road. Ok so thats all caught up to where im currently at but progress should be pretty decent so hopefully more to come soon. Thanks for reading

Was browsing the forum the other day, came across this section and clicked that it would be a good idea to start a thread for my cockpit. Hopefully help me keep motivated and just generally add to the collection of ideas out there for others to draw from when planning and building their own. I guess first some things about me, my approach and my home cockpit pit. There are some amazing, high quality, super life like home cockpits in this forum. I can tell you right not this build will not be one of those :P I am unapologetically not a perfectionist, my personal approach is to do whats needed to achieve the objective so this will be a for the every day person type build. Im not really the type who enjoys the building of things, more so the type who enjoys using the things and so you wont see me spending a pile of time getting some minor thing just right. I do enjoy being creative in finding solutions though so hopefully there might be some outside the box ideas in this build. I fly solely in VR and all types from helis to WW2 to the Sabre and modern jets. For my purposes it would not be suitable for the cockpit to resemble one particular plane but more to be multi purpose with many design choices based on whats easy to build and what space i have available. Because I fly in VR i need to be able to find buttons and switches and my mouse etc based on memory, feel or the occasional glimpse out the bottom of the VR headset without being able to fully look around the cockpit. Couple other things / points about what you are going to see.. 1) I like to do things on the cheap, most things will be sourced second hand, previously broken or repurposed. My Thrustmaster HOTAS is second hand, my Fanatec and Heusinkveld race gear is second hand, my PC, my Obutto Rev, pretty much 90% of my stuff i own. 2) I tend to build things in temporary form and try them out for a bit then either finish it off, completely redo it or decide its fine as is. So you will see things done to a rough standard and things done and then redone again. Alright so this will focus on my flight sim but is actually part of a larger project to fit out a spare room I have as a sim room. With both flying (DCS) and racing (mostly iRacing). I had been working on, flying from and racing from a single Obutto Rev and just switching gear around depending on what I was doing. Even though it would only take 10mins to swap racing gear with flying gear etc i was finding this was still enough of a mental and time block that it would stop me from flying sometimes. Add to that the realisation that car seats with their large side bolsters really are no good for flightsims as they somewhat prevent you from turning around to look behind you etc. I really was making a lot of compromises for my 3 in 1 solution. So first step was to split my work setup and race setup with a plan to then build a flight setup. I bought a secondhand, broken, but near new office chair for $20. The original owner had tried to use it without the arm pieces and bent the bracket the holds the chair back to the seat. I took the obutto seat of the obutto and mounted it to the office chair legs/wheels making my new office chair. A sheet of waxed mdf and a couple of ikea trestles became my new office desk + we did the same for my wifes office desk so they match. I found a used replica bride racing seat for a $300 ish locally and mounted that to the obutto instead. I know this is a flight sim build.. ill start getting to that shortly :P Ok so now i just had my office chair seat and back. Found some dimensions online for an A10c ejection seat and use those roughly to determine height and angles of the ejection seat. Cut up a couple of bits of MDF to hold the seat to those angles, rest the chair seat and back in place and try to sit / balance on it to gauge the feel without it all collapsing. Next thing was to see if i could cut a piece out of the seat for the center mount. Using a multi tool I cut out a square of the wooden base from the seat and the using a knife cut through the seat padding. The outer seat vinyl I cut in a triangle pattern so that i could then fold it back into the whole i had cut and for now have just used black duct tape to cover from the top of the seat, through the hole and taped onto the wood underneath. I thought this might not work out and i might just ruin the seat but it actually went pretty well. I'll try get a better shot of that sometime. Here is a pic of me putting the joystick on a bunch of boxes to try determine what height and angle would be best to mount the stick. Now that I knew the seat wouldnt be a total right off i added to the base that the seat rests on so it could balance without throwing me on the floor when i tried to sit on it. Next was time to design and cut the sides. This was mostly just designed as i went, doing one side first incase i decided to scrap it and start again. Its based loosely from the A10 seat and other peoples seat designs found on pintrest. One thing i wanted for certain was front of seat handles i could use to help turn around when looking behind during dog fights etc. I finished off the top of the seat for now.. added a top piece and a piece behind the top of the seat on the vertical plane for aesthetics. I am going to come back to this and also i removed the vinyl cover from the back of the chair so i can make a ejection seat looking headrest at some later stage with a cushion of the same material. Im hoping that will make it look a lot less like an office chair but thats for another time. I have been a bit of an audio nut since i was a teenager and will be trying out a bunch of things as part of this build. Here you can see two of the four dayton puck bass shakers / vibration motors that i added next. However its my first time trying this particular type and i cant say im a fan. Unfortunately they seem to have an extremely narrow effective range of 30-40 hz. Anything within that and they will vibrate you like crazy but below is nothing and above is barely noticeable. I am controlling them with major eq adjustments for now but they will need to be changed to something better at some point. Unfortunately the likely hood of finding them second here is near 0 and shipping costs as much as the bass shakers do but i guess thats just what happens when you live in New Zealand. At this point im just using a couple of old speaker boxes along side the seat for placing my throttle and mouse on and i have started to make this spare room my sim room. The race setup moved from my office to this room with the flight setup. I use my old triple monitor stand i got with my second hand obutto but never used so that i can mount a monitor in front of each setup. I scored a couple of 19" monitors for now for free from my brother in law and i built a box to sit under the monitor stand with spaces to eventually mount a home theatre amp (explanation coming later) and a larger pc case for when i build my next pc (when RTX 3080 comes out). And.. i have reached an image limit..