John Hargreaves

Does anyone know how much will be going on below in the Normandy map? From what I have read it's set in the period after the landings, so for instance if you fly along the coast over the landing beaches, will we be able to see ships and pontoons etc working below like they had at Arromanches, or will it be more of a blank canvas upon which to build missions? I haven't been able to pick up on any details like that, but may have missed it or maybe that level of detail hasn't been disclosed yet.

Pretty cool that we can use the assets in missions on the other maps. Put my order in when I got home from work. Plenty of things to do between now and D-Day

The higher res is definitely superior for image quality, but the lower res is better for performance due to chucking around significantly fewer pixels. The balance of the other parts of the system is a factor. As regards size, you very quickly get used to having this screen on your desk, and it's great for general PC work as you can have several decent sized windows on the desktop.

+1 to that, the 34" is about the same height as a 27" 1080p, but with about 2-3" extra at either side. Perfect for flight and driving sims. The 29 ultrawides actually look quite small in the flesh to me. I've been very happy with mine. Edit: have you considered an oculus rift? check out the VR part of the forum, you might end up spending your money elsewhere. Most time I spend in DCS is in the rift these days, it's amazing.

Sorry I didn't pick this one up earlier, it's been a busy week over in pCARS2 world so I've been on wheels rather than wings recently. I'll upload my little 'Mission: Nothing Much' over the weekend, hope you like it.

+1 from me. The Huey, Gazelle and Spitfire have been among the best VR experiences out of everything I've tried. Add that to Project Cars and it's just about the best toy I've ever bought. I'm not great with the mission editor, but I've made a mission where it's just an airfield and stuff happens; planes take off, trucks drive around and soldiers march. A trio of Hueys take off and patrol, looping back over the airfield every five minutes or so, so you can tag along if you wish. There's an aircraft carrier sailing past to land on if you feel like it. No shooting, just stuff to do and it's great in VR just flying around watching stuff happen.

I made the jump from 27" to 34" when they first came out and never regretted it at all. For flight and racing sims, as well as general computing, the 34 ultrawide is a clear step up. Mine is the slightly lower res version (which means better framerates for slightly less image quality compared to the 3440x1440), which has about the same dot pitch as my 27" 1080p Iiyama before it. I have a rift and that is great for immersion, but when you just want to quickly launch a sim and fly or drive, I still use my monitor a lot as the overall image is beautiful.

It's just like Paul McCartney not having rights to the Beatles songs, feels very wrong, but it's how business works these days.

I guess you are getting a sneak preview of CV2, only without the proper tracking. Just imagine a screen that is so sharp it doesn't need supersampling and there is no screen door effect, but with the tracking quality of the CV1. I'm saving my pennies already.

I still play some stuff in 2D as well - it's nice to sit back and just watch the plane flying over a landscape say in Aerofly FS2, or race a track in Project Cars as the detail is so rich. That's the one thing I'd like improved in VR currently, but in DCS it's 100% VR for me at the moment as the sense of flying the plane is just beautiful.

Yeah, I can't fault the physics, and the fact that if you break the prop, the next time you load the game, the prop is still broken! you have to take it to the hangar to get it fixed. Now that is hardcore. I'm a bit of a lightweight in that respect though, the number of times I've broken my DCS Spitfire, it's nice to be able to hit esc. and fly again.

I use one of the little P2 boxes and it works great in VR, like you say, very analogue and tactile.

I thought the A2A Spitfire Mk1 for FSX was about as good as it could get in VR, that cockpit is a beautiful piece of work, but I have to say the DCS version is a level above that again. That and the DCS Huey are easily my favourite VR experiences out of everything available right now.

On the topic of DSD, button boxes work surprisingly well with the rift, as you have a kind of muscle memory as to where things are, and a tactile button is much better than trying to identify a key on a keyboard when you are fumbling around unsighted. It might be worth doing one aimed at VR users where the buttons all feel a little different, sizes, shapes & such, so they can be easily used without looking. All the little hats and switches on the Warthog are like that, based on real pilots being able to find things in the dark or a smoke filled cockpit I guess. It's great being able to feel for certain switches whilst in the rift.

+1 for rift for sims. When I was doing the research as to which one to choose, seated experiences with joysticks and wheels seemed to be the strengths of the rift, and I haven't been disappointed yet.

This should be the latest product from DSD, c'mon Derek, you know you want to..

Fascinating stuff guys, cheers

Yeah, it's probably just as simple as 'that's how the animation was done'. Just curious really, thanks. My favourite too, love it.

Question for some of our more experienced members; In any footage I've seen of real Spitfires taking off, the landing gear retracts in a fairly symmetrical way, not exactly, but more or less coming up together. Whenever I replay my take offs and landings for the DCS version, the port side always seems to take longer to retract and deploy, and you can feel this on take off as uneven drag, pulling the plane to one side. So, my question is, is it just me, does it happen every time, and is there a game design reason for it happening.? I'm guessing it's to do with how the hydraulics are modelled, and I did a forum search to try and find an answer, without much coming up, but I wondered if anyone can explain?

It puts the DCS Spitfire into perspective at a tenth of the price of that one. It doesn't even have invasion stripes.

Sorry chp, but none of that puts me off in the slightest. I know it's not perfect, but I believe that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages with the rift. I'm happy to put up with the shortcomings and look forward to them being fixed in due course with future versions. I pre ordered the rift back in January and haven't regretted it once. For driving and flying this really is the best thing we've had for a long time.

I found this too in VR, I realised that if you click at the top part of the box it works ok, if you click in the middle, it often doesn't register. In 2D you can click anywhere in the box and it works as expected.

I think it must have something to do with the style of glasses as well, there are plenty of people using the rift with glasses and plenty complaining they don't fit.

Already saving up for CV2, the only shortcoming I can see with CV1 is that we have got so used to crystal clear hi res monitors over the last few years, so the pixel gap is a bit off putting. It only really shows up as an issue with distant small shapes, they become a bit fuzzy, but close to medium distance objects are fine. I think that's why made for VR games like Lucky's Tale keep everything in the middle distance and look great as a result. DCS and Project CARS, my two VR favourites currently, rely a little more on far distance objects, but I don't think you could avoid that in any driving or flying sim. General rift image quality and performance has improved since release, and Project CARS 2 is making significant progress on the VR image quality front though, so there is still some improvement to come for rift users if devs are prepared to support it. Near and medium objects, like the cockpits and wings look amazing in DCS but the far landscape and other aircraft are less distinct. That will be where the next gen VR headsets come in. There is a cheap Chinese PiMax set doing the rounds with 4K resolution which by all accounts has no screen door or visible pixels, but it lacks software support. That means that 4K resolution may be round the corner. One big setback for VR is that Intel has barely increased processor speed and grunt in the last few years, concentrating more on power efficiency. They are sniffing the big bucks in mobile and corporate areas rather than desktops and gaming, so those big power hikes we used to enjoy from one cpu gen to the next just don't happen any more. We are gamers, we need more power :joystick:

I love reading people's first time in a rift posts, they never get stale. Glad you like it Don, it's one of the best things I've ever bought. I've set up a really simple mission that is just a landing in the Spitfire, and then take off if you wish (if you don't crash it) only takes a few minutes but I keep popping into it whenever I get chance. It's just a pleasure to be in that cockpit.