John Hargreaves

I had a Canon EOS 5 film SLR back in the early 90s which had eye controlled focus. It would fire infra-red laser beams or something into your eyes and 'learn' your retina pattern and you could accurately control where you wanted the focus to be. I actually liked it much better than the current predictive focus systems you get in the digital SLRs. Point of story: we had aspects of this technology in consumer products 25 years ago, so surely we must be on the verge of having it in VR. Yes I know infra red laser beams aren't a real thing, but you get the idea.

Well I never knew that, thanks for the tip!

I agree, if you are used to flying, driving, fps type experiences, I don't think it's such a big deal. I had a friend back in the day who used to get really sick playing quake on a 15" crt monitor. I tried the Deus Ex VR 'experience', which had proper fps type movement, albeit at a walking pace, and that was fine. If I play a DCS replay track though in the rift, as soon as it starts, because it records all your head movements, it feels bad to me. I don't think the Huey is any better or worse than other modules, the Spitfire does this to me also, but if the replay camera moves without you wishing to, it can be a bit barfy. If the DCS replays just played the movement of the aircraft, it would be fine. Project cars replays in VR are great, as it just feels like going along for a passenger ride, in VR in the replay you can look where you want.

I've never played anything fps-like in VR, they do say that's the worst of all, but there is little opportunity to test that out as most titles seem to have already chosen to not have that kind of movement. There must be something about having a still cockpit like the Huey around you that helps to avoid nausea. I've tried Mission:ISS (which I would highly recommend) and that has completely weightless disembodied movement, and it's fine in terms of nausea for me, but in real life I'm terrible for motion sickness. To be honest, I hate flying in real life, but absolutely love it in simulators.

Try to play a replay track and sit in the pilot seat view to watch it. When the camera moves in a way your head doesn't, gets me every time.

I can understand that, as the helis fly in a very different way to fixed wing, there's a lot more swooping around. I love the Huey in VR, but I took it fairly slowly at first, 10-15min at a time and got used to it. The second I felt any nausea I would take a break. Doing that I've barely had any VR barfage up to now. Also, I would imagine that if you took a real Huey out for an hour the first time and did some crazy stuff, you would be looking for the sick bag, so in that respect it's probably quite realistic. At least in DCS you can press esc. and let the guts settle a bit.

I think that's a good point, so when the next gen of higher resolution sets come out, it might not be so hard to run them because we are already using supersampling and rendering more pixels anyway. If the number of pixels is higher and denser next time there will be less need for AA and SS, so performance could be on a par with what we have currently. We might even be able to read those dials and see the baddies coming.

At least those videos appear to be like for like comparisons, that looks fantastic to me, a big step up. Second generation VR is going to be worth the wait. As you mentioned above dogbite, all the titles we are currently playing were retro fitted with VR capability, but the ones currently in development will have better visual performance and be designed with VR in mind in a much more fundamental way. I wouldn't have been without my CV1 for a minute, I love it, but one thing you can usually be certain about with tech is that something better is around the corner. Future is looking bright, can't wait.

Please post back here with your experiences, there isn't too much info about direct experience of this headset out there, so the more opinions the better. Good luck with it.

I too share that opinion, best thing I've bought for ages, and a first generation consumer version for the price of a mid range TV I think it's good value for money too. Still looking forward to CV2 and the rest though, I'm already saving up.

Yeah, I saw the movie after seeing the TV show when I was a kid, and remember being surprised that the theme tune had lyrics. The TV show was a little bit lighter in tone than the movie, but both were great, and more importantly, made that Bell 47 (even though I didn't know what it was at the time) one of the most iconic aircraft out there. On another note, I can't seem to get my pilot's body showing in VR, is there one do we know?

I just installed the Bell 47 mod this weekend, and I have to say it's a great piece of work. Flight model is very believable and the 3D model is excellent. The work of all concerned is very much appreciated. It must be very draining to produce a mod like this, but hopefully the appreciation of the community will give you the encouragement to continue your work. I've been flying along singing 'suicide is painless' all weekend, thanks again for your efforts guys.

I don't quite get the anti Steam feelings, I think it's pretty good, and the sales are always good for picking up bargains. There are lots of titles that I have discovered through steam, DCS being one of them. Gone are the days of having to patch games manually, Steam just automatically keeps everything up to date. I've had some good DCS bargains on there, modules that I would never have bought at full price, so ED haven't lost any business, the opposite in fact. It's always nice when you get the 'an item on your wishlist is on sale' email too. Fine if you don't use or like it, but you don't need to try and stop anyone else using it, just let it be I'd guess this situation is out of ED's control for the time being, but once everything is unified it may settle down, no point ED wasting resources changing all the modules at this point as everything is due to be brought together anyway.

That's really interesting to read, and is genuinely the first time I've ever heard anyone say that. Could you expand on how you feel you wasted your money? What was it about the rift you didn't like? Which games or experiences made you sick?

Have you seen the prices of DDR4 RAM recently, prices are going through the roof, your PC is probably worth more now than when you built it

The trick is to balance the components together. If you have a weak cpu, then a $600 graphics card will do little to improve anything, equally if you have the latest i7 screamer and just use a cheap GPU then you won't get the full benefit. If you do get a GPU that's way better than your CPU can feed, you have another upgrade step there down the line, so you'll be getting the best you can on current CPU, then upgrade that down the line and you will see the benefit. RAM and SSD will also have an effect. I had a 970 before my 1070 and it ran DCS quite well, so one of those or a 1060. Something like this might suit you https://www.cclonline.com/product/214819/ZT-P10610A-10L/Graphics-Cards/ZOTAC-GeForce-GTX-1060-3GB-Graphics-Card-PCI-E-3-x-DisplayPort-HDMI-DVI/VGA3599/ I think Zotac have a five year guarantee also.

I have a GTX 1070 and it is the biggest graphics card I have owned. I would definitely check the sizes of any card you intend to but with that case. They do make smaller versions of various cards from time to time, so you will find something I'm sure.

You do need to have DCS installed through Steam, but once you buy a module on Steam, you can activate it on your standalone install, you don't have to play through Steam, although you have some HDD space used up. As you say, it doesn't work the other way round though.

That 3D skin change looks great, a simple but really useful idea.

Excellent work there mate, and plenty of spare surfaces to expand in the future and add loads more bits.

It's definitely a faff setting up your controls in VR, so do it all in 2D first and it will carry over. If, like me, you only want to get a plane up and fly around a bit, without pressing all the buttons from a cold start, that is perfectly possible, and you will have enough buttons on your HOTAS to operate the plane. You have to accept that if you buy into a simulation, it will take some time to set up, that's just the way things are whether you are driving, flying or whatever. That is also part of the fun, so go with it. The rewards are more than worth it when you are landing a spitfire in VR or swooping around in your Gazelle like you are wearing it.

Mmm, fascinating stuff guys, looks like CA+VR isn't quite there yet, so it's back to 2D for a while. I really hope that CA+VR+WWII assets in Normandy will come to pass one day.

+1, definitely need some of those to play with, great piece of kit.

Nice one thanks, the learning curve just with CA alone in 2D will be steep enough for me, I'll also report back with my findings if I get up and running in VR

I've just bought the CA module in the Easter sale, mainly with a view to roaming around Normandy at some time in the future. I've searched the forum and read a few posts about the VR implementation and it seems a bit mixed, and a lot of the posts are quite old. So, I was wondering if anyone had any recent experiences of CA in VR. I asked a similar question over in the Normandy map thread, but I guess this is a better place to put it. I get the impression that actual combat in VR is problematic, but I'd be happy enough to drive around in a jeep, so if blowing stuff up is less of an option so be it. I think that the Normandy map has great potential for CA, if it works the way it does in the blurb that is.