Tinkickef

Well I just tried out my NTTR test mission with Reverb and the new 1903 patch. What can I say other than :pilotfly: 2.5 hour mission, not one rogue USB disconnect, not one tracking glitch, not one black screen, CtD or stutter. Tracking is better than Rift ever was as that used to glitch every now and then. Tomcat cockpit looks pretty much the same, maybe a little clearer, but nothing I can shout about; but external details seem much sharper. sharper as in flying over Tonopah Test Airfield at 39000ft in moonlight, in the F14, looking down and seeing all the tiny aircraft shelters on the apron standing out sharply in 3D and with their own moon shadows. Never ever seen that level of detail on the ground from so high before. The whole shebang seems much more dialled in and more solid than before. So it appears I have spent the thick end of £1400 on upgrades yesterday, to cure the annoying tracking glitches and USB issues for nothing; as I became convinced they were motherboard related after crossing from Rift to Reverb. Now it seems the windows patch fixed it hours after I ordered the stuff. Always maintain I am not lucky in life. Still, looking on the bright side, I am looking forward to the new build. :)

Great stuff. I just finished downloading the latest incarnation of 1903, but being almost midnight here and having a beer or two, I shall refrain from trying it out. Reverb is great, but is no way on earth to be compared with beer goggles. Beer goggles can shrink a whale to the proportions of a Polynesian beauty. Reverb cannot manage that, no matter how much you experiment with IPD. :D

I have been asking myself this very question lately and after a bit of poking around, finally bought the I9 9900k and a mid range Gigabyte Aorus Z390 Ultra motherboard. Both were cheaper on Amazon than the 3900x and the mid range x570 boards out there at the moment. Plus since I use my rigs for DCS first and foremost, Intel seemed to be a slightly better solution. I simply don't play to the strengths of the 3900x.

I have just ordered the bits to construct a new PC as my old rig is getting on for five years old now. So far so good. The fly in the ointment is the fact that I have a shockingly slow rural internet connection and we are too far from the main infrastructure to get better. I manage a giddy two and change, megabits a second on a good day. Since I have most of the modules DCS has to offer, downloading this amount of data takes well over a week, night and day. I have an SSD on my old PC purely for DCS. Is there any way at all of using the bulk data on that drive and avoid a humongous amount of downloading? I have plenty of activations left and intend to keep the old PC in a pretty much workable state as a backup. Maybe even buy a dual licence for the tomcat and give backseat rides using my old Rift.

Thanks for the advice guys I read that also. I avoid "going round the back" and playing with voltages, timings ect. I tend to just look for a "super turbo gaming mode" and switch that on. :) So I'm currently looking at a i9 9900k (£20 cheaper than the 3900x currently and the ryzen 3 motherboards seem more expensive), the Aorus Ultra Z390, looking at Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3200 RAM. Of course, then there's windoze to buy. And now a quandary... I build my rigs to be updated with new parts on a regular schedule, I updated the GPU, PSU, Water cooling and case late last year. This year it was to be the time for the CPU and memory, but was holding off a little while Vulkan was talked of being implemented. The tracking glitch moving from Rift to Reverb has made me think again.... My trouble is I have a two megaBIT /second internet connection, it takes weeks at constant day and night running to download all the windoze, steam VR, especially DCS World plus all my modules. My rig will be out of action all this time. So now thinking of starting again and rebuilding into a new case with new PSU, boot drive ect and just running from inbuilt graphics to download everything, while still being able to use my old PC, deactivating modules immediately prior to downloading and installing them on the new one. Then moving the GPU, plus all my secondary and tertiary drives across. It's a pity that DCS doesn't allow modules to be installed in a carry file that allows the user to use the data on an existing drive to be utilised on a new machine, then reactivated. I have a drive on my PC exclusively for DCS. It would save literally weeks of downloading and work. :cry: Edit: Decision made. Just ordered enough to be able to start downloading stuff from the internet without disabling my current PC. So. 19 9900k Aorus Z390 Ultra. 32 GB Corsair Vengeance 3200 DDR 4 RAM. Thermaltake rgb 360mm water cooling. Thermaltake view 71 full tower case. Evga supernova gold G3 850w modular PSU. 1TB Crucial M2 NVMe SSD. Windoze home 64 bit on flash drive. Jam sandwiches for dinner for the rest of the month I fear. My working overtime special treat account is somewhat diminished..... In the fullness of time I may get a AMD GPU for my old rig so I have 2 VR capable gaming rigs in the house. With a dual licence for tomcat and my old rift I suppose I could give rides in the backseat for family and friends.

Just started planning a new build. I decided to go down the Intel route in the end after much googling and stuff, esp as by the time I get around to ordering a 9900k, I expect them to be discounted in reaction to Ryzen 3 and cascade lake. Also getting 5GHz in turbo mode will help with DCS in its current form. Looking at Z390 motherboards and am looking for opinions about the Aorus Z390 Ultra. I pretty much usually go down the Asus route, but I have had tracking jumping around occasionally in Rift and this seems to have continued with Reverb, despite having dual PSU directly powered USB expansion cards as well as the on board ports. Glitch continues whichever port, whichever usb controller channel and whichever power saving checkbox is unchecked. This makes me think something is not quite right in the Asus firmware for VR and am looking for pastures new. So any opinions ? Never had a Gigabyte board before and unsure of quality of components. They certainly seem better value than ROG / STRIX stuff, but where are the savings made?

I thought the original plan was to have different airframes, some really beat up and others fairly fresh to simulate getting assigned different aircraft on the squadron. The idea being that you could either choose your own aircraft or spawn into any of them randomly. Or did I dream this? Either way, no sign of it.

Tried 60Hz. Did not like the fast flicker on the screens. Went straight back to auto.

Looks like that in Reverb... A lot of things have turned out to be Rift related, not DCS related as I found out since I got the Reverb. Rotating clouds - gone. Distant clouds flickering in and out of existence - mostly gone. Sky banding at dawn and dusk - gone. Thousands of stars in the night sky - yes with Reverb.

Good call. Never thought of that.

My main bugbear with the F14 is the sound of the engines when operating the canopy. I usually Taxy with canopy open, closing it at the runway hold line, and opening it when I slow down to Taxy speeds after landing. Trouble is the external engine sound does not get louder with canopy raised as it should and as other modules do. This is quite the immersion killer in VR where little things are greater than the sum of their parts. I can appreciate that it is not a big deal on carrier based missions, but us few landlubbers who are interested in the flying more than the killing, use concrete predominantly and actually enjoy the Taxy out to the active and Taxy back in to stand, really miss this feature. Are there any plans to rectify this omission?

Yep, always Taxy with the canopy raised, unless it's raining! My main bugbear with the F14 is that the sound of the engines does not rise when the canopy opens. It's fine taxying out because I can hear the sound of my wingman's engines behind me, but not after landing. Just the change in noise level adds another layer of immersion.

Just a quicks heads up if you have not updated your Drivers lately. Looked at Reverb drivers and found a new one that it has just installed. I hope its not part of the dreaded 1903 update.... will report back. EDIT: Just jumped into the F14 cockpit and the instruments are as readable as before, if not very slightly crisper. Just done a 2 hour mission and I'm a little hot and sweaty, so don't yet know what has changed. Don't want to wear the headset again for half an hour or so.

Traditionally my missions tend to last a couple of hours in the hornet and tomcat (three hours in the Hog for a similar distance), then I always land and take off the headset for an hour or so. I may then go back for another mission or tweak something in ME. I never spent a full afternoon in the headset, even with Rift. Wonder if this is why I never see these flickering problems?

Yep, you have to go through every usb selection you have. Some have a power management tab under properties and some do not. Despite USB power management supposedly switched off, I still had to uncheck half a dozen devices. Windows power management is the work if the devil. It will try to stymie you at every turn, I hate it. The nanny state in action. Bit like your TV soundbar that will suddenly switch itself off mid way through watching a movie, just in case you fell asleep. Nanny knows best....

Well I have now had the Reverb for three weeks, albeit, for one of those weeks I was out of the country. It's certainly been a rollercoaster ride, mainly on the software side, much of which those who already had WMR headsets would have avoided. At one point I seriously considered sending it back, but perseverance finally paid off. So the hurdles. I had to spend days downloading and updating large pieces of software on a poor net connection. I had to come to grips with this unwieldy and totally unfamiliar software and get it set up with much help from this thread. Then the constant disconnects. I had to come up with a modification to stress relieve the cable connector in order to cure it. Then fighting for hours and hours with an audio mirroring system that just would not work, no matter how I set things up. Then finally removing the earphones completely and using an in ear solution - this is the single most, biggest improvement to comfort I have ever made. The difference is staggering. Junk those phones, the sound quality does not justify keeping them. Then having tracking jumping around occasionally, maybe every 15 minutes, hearing USB disconnect sounds and losing my rudder pedals and getting them back again. Thought it was some sort of Reverb /WMR USB issue as so many reported... Tracked that one down to Windows USB power management settings being reset by an update, then further discovering that the windows power plan USB power saving disable setting does not actually work across the board. I had to go into device manager /usb root hubs/properties and once again uncheck many of the "allow the PC to switch off power to these usb ports" check boxes. Again, that update had reset everything and the advanced usb power setting had failed to disable them. That cured the tracking. Then the comfort again, the nose gasket rested heavily on the bridge of my nose and it hurt after 30 mins or so, I thought it was my glasses, then tried it without glasses and it still rested on my nose. Just like the Rift, you have to wear the strap ring low down on the back of the head. This cured the weight on my schnozzle, and thankfully I was still in the sweet spot. Then performance issues. People were reporting 90fps and performance I could not match no matter what I did, then I realised that people were reporting fps, but not what aircraft or what map. Penny dropped, I was using the Tomcat in Persion Gulf, taxying on the ground in a very static object populated Al Dhafra. Probably the most performance demanding, worst case scenario there is at present. So solved that one. NTTR is very much better. So the upshot of all this? I now pretty much have a Rift CV2, but made by HP in a Windows environment. I fire up DCS, put on the headset, the headset comes alive after about 20 seconds and it all just works - every time pretty much. Its been an arduous journey, but finally I can say I'm happy with it.

Landing on the carriers, the few times I attempted it was always by eyeballing it in Rift. Approach looks ok, landing deck picture looks ok, land and pray. I'm a landlubber, my navy birds have marine skins, not webbed feet skins Then this afternoon I tried a carrier land with f14 and reverb for the first time after Rift... Hmm. Two green lines on the left, that must be the Fresnel lens. Seem to be a little high so chop a little power.... hang on,what's that red thing that just appeared above the green lines? Its dropping towards the green lines, is that the ball I read about so many times? Jeeze I think it is... try to get it between the two green lines and it'll be peachy.. Red ball between green lines. .. trap first time. Never, ever saw the ball in Rift.

Try dropping your SS to 160% and dropping the refresh rate to 60Hz, then manually take it back to 90Hz. Set visual quality to high. This has been found to work for a few people and the refresh tip is straight from HP apparently. Have you done the cable mod? It really solves a lot of issues. I have not seen any real difference between CV1 and the Reverb either brightness wise or in any colour except really deep black. Your rig is far superior to mine, so you should be getting better results than I am. Finally, try a set of in ear headphones and physically remove the originals. I have been using in ear phones for a couple of days now in my quest to get buttkicker working and yesterday, finally got around to taking the OE headphones off completely. It is a very much improved headset in many respects with them off. It makes a big difference. BREAK. Slightly off topic... I have been thinking of pre ordering the new version jetseat, the one with the flight package. Question to those who have one, does it use telemetry from in game, or just sound like the buttkicker? With all the problems I have had getting the Reverb running (almost) seamlessly, I don't want to order one and find the same problems with it, and WMR. I figure a few who will spend £1400 on a GPU and £600 on a headset who are on this thread will likely have tried buttkicker and the jetseat. Is the jetseat a worthy successor to buttkicker? For those that never tried buttkicker, it's like VR, once you walk down that path you can never go back. Downside is that even though I mounted my chair on metalastic mountings (think engine mounts), it can still shake the house a lot. I hear jetseat is quiet in operation, but does it still deliver the shakes, rattles and rolls as good as my buttkicker gamer 2 setup? EDIT: after watching a couple of youtube reviews I preordered the Realtus Jetseat and downloaded the simshaker for aviators software.

Outside the cockpit clarity.... Of course Reverb has twice the resolution as the Rift, so everything you see outside is twice as clear. You can see buildings better and from further away, aircraft look better, but the only practical thing you will see over Rift are the very fine details. An aircraft at a couple of miles away in Rift may appear as a 4 pixel blob. The same aircraft in the Reverb will appear as an 8 pixel blob. Yes the shape is a little more fleshed out, but if something needs 80 pixels to properly define the larger shape detail for ID purposes, then clearly there is a long time and a lot of money to be spent before we see that. I reckon I will be retired before then. General terrain details are better low down, but the terrain itself, being a relatively low resolution construct is not much improved. At higher altitude the terrain looks sharper, but this is mainly due to much reduced screen door effect, rather than more visible detail. One aspect of the Reverb that is clearly better than Rift is on night missions, you get very much reduced banding effects at sunset / sunrise and the night sky is absolutely rammed with hundreds of stars that are simply not visible in Rift. As for blacks at night, in cockpit blacks are very much better than night time sky black because of the way the lighting engine paints the sky. It paints it black using colours that never really allow a good black to be observed, it is a kind of murky very dark grey, just the same as in Rift. Hope this helps.

Agreed about design, build quality and esp the USB. Even more so when they are using the same USB to carry audio input and output. It kills every other audio option. Aside from the really poor WMR software, my main struggle was getting audio working. I have tried every suggestion and spent many hours trying to get audio to mirror between earphones and buttkicker amplifier. Tried mirroring setting in WMR, tried mirroring just about everything in steam VR, tried unsuccessfully with my previously working voicemeeter banana setup and even tried the "use built in audio" in DCS. I did get it working once, but the latency was shocking, the buttkicker was maybe lagging by over half a second, no good at all. The Reverb phones are not the best, certainly not as good as Rift, so my solution was to remove them, plug in a splitter and use earbuds with buttkicker cable plugged into the other side. This works quite well, but bass is a little flat when buttkicker is plugged in. Again, that usb setup. I guess the current is just not there to drive both. This is why it needs a dedicated audio option. I do have a Fiio headphone amp that I used to use with my Sennheisers, but it's ridiculous having to use one to get decent response out of a set of earbuds... With all the stuff lashed onto the headset, I am starting to look like a Borg drone from star trek. Other than that, no problems so far now I have pretty much addressed everything else. Only thing I eventually did to finally get butter smooth performance with high settings was to have motion reprojection on permanently rather than on auto. As for someone sending theirs back, I have decided to wait and send it back under warranty when the updated reverb makes an appearance. I have three years warranty, so may as well keep it and use it for now.

It can do no harm. Rift certainly needed extra power to push the sensor and headset. This was before touch and two sensors were released.

Look who came up with the cable mod in the first place :smilewink:

Interesting. I never had flicker, just disconnects. But I also run a 12" fan at all times, it stopped sweaty face and misting up lenses in the Rift. Also have the powered USB cards. So who knows. If you try one with no change, at least there is something else to try.

I just use Windows 10 system image utility and back everything up onto a 2TB external HDD. I only do it after a large download from DCS - terrain, large update, or new version. The drive is then unplugged and put back in the drawer. Takes about three hours to back up the entire image as everything is completely overwritten each time. Never had cause to use it in anger yet, but it is an insurance policy against a very poor internet connection.