Torso

Unfortunately the view depicted on the monitor while in VR does not reflect in any way how it renders in the HMD. Night in DCS looks fine on my monitors as well for the most part. So Cibit are you saying that in the Rifts actual display you do not see odd splotches all over the sky and the horizon glow long after it should be gone or the giant stars and fuzzy/oversized ground lights, glowing terrain/ocean? I have 2 buddies, one with Rift one with Vive who DCS and they both see what I see when they try night flying in VR. But you don't at all?

Could you comment on if it resolves some of the night time flying issues in VR that exist, which I hope you have some awareness of? And I might have overlooked it, but will we be seeing this new control this week, or is it still being tuned? Are other image tuning controls possible and if it is possible, not saying definitely, could some others be added in the future? I am really looking forward to seeing this. Thank you for adding it.

Improving Night time performance in VR...PLEASE ED! nevermind..lol I look forward to seeing if this helps the issues that exist. Would be great if so certainly. Just the issue is this will most likely adjust gamma for everything, which may not be the exact type of fix needed to address the issues. Looking forward to trying the function though to see. I kinda would have hoped, someone at ED, actually has a VR set to test this with and we would know for sure if it fixes it. Sounds like it will be up to us to learn if so upon release. Maybe ED could pull a VR user into their fold to assist if VR isn't really available to test with internally. I just assumed ED had a couple Vives and Rifts at their studios for testing purposes. But have since heard that may not be the case.

Yes I just did a whole bunch of tests with night flying in VR over the weekend and again last night after trying some tweaks and I am not sure how you are not seeing the banding and graphic issues we all seem to see. I have no issue with color banding during the day. But night in VR in DCS is unusable in my opinion. I have made comments in several posts about it and how it needs to be worked on. The brown and purple splotches are all over the place. Last night I tested setting time at 11pm,12am,1am, should have no sun then, sure enough there is a glowing horizon like it is late dusk. Stars are way too big. They are as big as street lamps and flash/twinkle. And finally, all ground(street lamps, airport, etc) and plane(nav, interior, gear/landing) lights need to be reworked. They employ that cotton ball halo/looks like a physical globe or cone effect that just looks terrible in VR and even out of VR. Also, currently the ocean in Normandy glows, yes it glows now, however the ground no longer does as much as it does in 1.5. Also, in Normandy all trees turn red/burgandy as well at night. So...yeah. No night flying in VR though I want too badly. By the way I own a Rift and a Vive and night is the same for both. I also have a GearVR and Nolo coming soon for it so will try to run DCS through it to see if it gives a better result at night. I wish someone at ED took a look at X-Plane 11 with Flyinside. Night looks amazing in that in VR. I just wish someone at ED would take some time to fix some of this. I am sure some of it can be. Hopefully one day. I want to do night ops and night carrier landings in VR. But right now, it is just too terrible to really fly at night in VR PLEASE ED, look at VR at night, PLEASE work on fixing some of these issues. VR users really are limited to Day and Dusk/Dawn flying...except maybe capthaltl from the sound of it. Which kinda baffles me..lol

The long awaited and much anticipated clipmap fix really does make a big difference and really pays off and bumps up the experience another level. I think some of the textures themselves could be re-worked to achieve even better results but this really is more from my perspective flying heli's low and through the mountains. Don't get me wrong, they look good and the fix really improves things. Anything from a moderate to high altitude is just pure eye candy and really often jaw dropping especially with the added lighting improvements and I can say the same even for those nap of the earth flights too. I enjoy flying NTTR more than Normandy myself. Even more so now with the updates. In fact I have been curious if one day we will see some texture mods like ^certain^ talented folks have made available for Caucus map. Be curious what else could be achieved as always, options are wonderful after all.

Edited post: Well I have some crow to eat. I had set my water setting to high and yet it had not set the water to high actually it appears. I indeed went back in and re-selected it(actually wondering if there was an ultra setting I missed..lol) from the drop down, then went back in and the ocean in Normandy did look better than what i was seeing all this time previously since Friday. So that is nice. Thanks for challenging my findings and forcing me to go back again. Look forward to further tweaks. Now to go check out NTTRs lakes..those still have me worried..lol.

I too have raised the aircraft lighting issues in the past. It is not a map issue or even restricted to the B-17. It has been an existing issue for a long time with pretty much all aircraft. It is just how DCS currently appears to be set to handle these types of lights. All aircraft lights(and I would say airport lights as well) need to be reworked to remove the 'cotton ball' effect they posses(navigation lights, etc) and the hard physical cone that exists even in bright sun clear cloudless mid-afternoon time of day. On the B-17 it extends almost out to the nose from the wings and looks particularly bad when it is landing or taking off. I am sure ED will address eventually. Fingers crossed. I would also request some review of the stars/night sky is done. I am a VR user exclusively and night flying is currently pretty much unusable due to banding and even at 1am, a horizon glow remains when it should be long gone and the stars at night are as large as street lights. It seems they could be made smaller so as to appear more distant. I know bringing up other 'titles' is against the rules but there are a couple good examples out there that perhaps some tweak direction could be gleamed that DCS could benefit from. I never thought it was bad to have the "if there is a better way to do something, why not try to adopt it" attitude. Currently in VR we have severe banding issues that could be addressed but haven't as of yet. I think All maps and future maps would benefit from this. Again maybe I am only addressing things from a VR user standpoint but perhaps valid for non VR users as well. I am seeing some beautiful stuff in front of me as I have been tweaking my end and really once more work is put into the environmental lighting/shadows performance and perhaps some color tweaking of the map allowing for less cartoonish colors it will be amazing. I have been touring it in Upuauts Bell47 mod and it is really nice. I know we will get there eventually but this is a nice start for sure.

You can use the Nvidia control panel to adjust the picture in VR but you have to do it a special way. What you do is, since the HDMI port the VR set is plugged into is hidden you unplug your VR headset, and plug a monitor into the SAME hdmi port. Do not turn off or restart your pc for this. Just do a hot swap. If you have a Vive you can just unplug the hdmi cable from the headset to the hub and plug the monitor into the hdmi port on the hub as it is just a pass thru. If you got a Rift, then just unplug from gpu hdmi port and plug monitor into SAME hdmi port. Now, you can go into the NV cp and go to Display-Adjust desktop color settings Select the monitor you plugged into the VR hdmi port and select the Use NVIDIA settings option. Now, you just have to make some tweaks that you hope will achieve your goals. Add some contrast, brightness, gamma or remove whatever..I like to bump Digital Vibrance up by 5-10 from default 50 as well. So you make your adjustments. The only bad thing, is you cannot check how they are until you are back in VR but you will see your changes reflected on the temp monitor you plugged in so you have that to go by of course. So now that you made the adjustments you save them and close the control panel. Now unplug the monitor from the hdmi port. Plug back in your VR headset. Boom done, now the changes made are retained from Nvidia for that HDMI port, even through restarts even though it is hidden once VR is plugged into it. It still applies the setting you made to the port. Anyways, that is how you do it. Hope it helps some of you.

Well I left a rather long VR 1st use exp report that was a little long winded from my right out the box usage. Yeah, I was critical an own up to that. However I have since done some tweaking, using Reshade and SweetFX. I also utilized a trick to modify the VR picture by hooking a monitor up to the VR's hdmi port, then made brightness adjustments, color adjustments, then rehooking the VR up to it, the setting are retained and then allows you to have some additional control over VR picture qualities. This is a great start. Few notes on the water/ocean It appears the sun reflecting on it is too restricted. There is a band(which looks great when sun is at dawn or dusk) or spot light of sun(afternoon and not my fave effect) on the water surface and outside that band or spot there is no reflection of the water surface of any kind. I have it set to high. In fact in general there is a huge issue with water. Water is a reflective surface, even when or where the sun is not on it. You can easily see this by facing the sun in game over water, nice band of refection on the surface you see, then just turn away and the water becomes a matte finish surface. Water is not a matte finish. This really could use some tweaking please. Water, especially ocean water is like fractal or faceted. So even if you have the sun to your back, and the water below or ahead of you it will show surface variety as light, whether it be sun, moon or ambient or artificial is hitting all the little peaks and dips and rolls and swells, turbulence..etc. All those will reflect light, not necessarily sparkling sunlight, but whatever light simply is around. Another crazy thing to try is to turn on some fog, add some wind to get some movement in the ocean and when facing away from the sun it appears to take on a cloud like property. Kinda cool sure but not correct at all. Anyways. I know a ton of work has gone into this and tons more ahead and I look forward to seeing this evolve. Good start and I also have to say performance wise. I am impressed. I think NTTR runs better now for me even with some lighting engine issues now present and Normandy is like butta as well. So nice magic there.

Hey thanks for the suggestions. I did try reinstalling with and no joy after but deleted folder and redid it and, boom, it is working finally. I am loving it as a touring vehicle to check out the map.

NOTE:I have updated my thoughts at bottom but decided to leave my initial impression post intact because I stand by my initial impression. But it has evolved since I posted it as noted at end. I agree sadly. I was very much looking forward to this map and the update but both have fallen well well short of even my modest expectations. Especially regarding VR use. I am sorry to say but it seems a logical conclusion that little to no testing is done using VR prior to release. I am sure I will be told different but sorry, if it was, a note on release saying, sorry VR users, not this one yet would have been put out prior to release when TESTING showed it was terrible. NTTR finally get the much long awaited clipmap fix and it just reveals how bad some of the texturing is done in NTTR. Shadows are painted on the mountains/terrain still. Shadows are PERMANENT. Think about that. I guess it was a false hope to dream this would change. But now at least you can see how bad the texturing is on them a bit clearer. This also means there is no change in them regardless of time of day. There is no real time shadowing by the terrain OF the terrain in the game. In VR, the mountain textures actually shimmer and have shine on them. Sparkling. If you are flying a Huey low over them, and in VR just nod your head up and down, and these weird blackish 'patches' appear and disappear. ( I am using a 1080GTX with the latest drivers). Clouds. I wondered why we never saw a screenshot or pre-release vid that had clouds in them. So with clouds in the sky and setting the time of day to the one everyone loves to do with the pretty dusk and dawn sun, yeah with that lighting you literally can get strobe like flashes taking place that are flashing the mountain ranges around you an in the distance and it is pretty annoying. Textures, yes a TON need to be redone now because there is now a cartoonish quality to many of them now. I know photo realism is not possible(other than externals views, because I have seen some amazing shots by users) nor I guess the intent of DCS, but this new lighting just does number on the textures and create this odd cartoon quality to them. I know these will be addressed but it would seem all the 3rd parties need to do their own and I am curious how much of a priority is that to them and ED? Will we be seeing texture updates immediately? Or will we be in this state for months? Was ED coordinating with them prior to release and letting them get a head start on updates to correct this? Not a word said if so. I know, as a person in software and who has worked with 3rd parties. I damn well would have been pre-staging these needed updates. There is more of course but much has already been reported by others, the white wash issues, huds, black tracers, muzzle flashes, opaque cockpit glass, lockups, crashes, editors not working..yadda yadda yadda. Most are being reported by others so not needed by me to redo/ I guess my real question was, why were we not given a heads up that this was not really gonna be like what was pushed out for weeks in the Backers version? I mean I didn't hear most of this stuff, of course NTTR's specific issues only ED knew of, if they noticed them I mean. But, why were we all kind of mislead(I am sure that will get me in trouble of course)? I am sorry, but I am not alone in feeling we were misled as to the quality of this update. It looks like almost no testing was done on this. How can this be? How can the ED testers not experience what most all of us have? How could the results of that testing not incline ED to post some info on release saying, hey we got some real serious new issues since the Backers got their special copy using this new tech? I could list more issues in NTTR, shadows that are just flashing in an out, blue issue of course but others are so won't. But, what happened is all I want to know. How could it be dumped on us in this state with no warning? I actually would not have installed if I had known. Same with Normandy. It seems like issues were hid from us. Or were feature added that the backers did not get. Oh one last question. Why does the B17 not have any crew in it? It is an AI model, why did the dev team stop at adding a crew to it? Sorry, just an off question as I close this out. Too long I know, I was waiting for something. Edit: I know it is Alpha, wip, etc. I know ED will update and try to fix as much as they can. I know I will get over 1st impressions and learn to deal with it as it evolves. I know others think everything is just great and are happy campers. I hope to be one as well soon. Just a bit let down is all but it is just a game after all. If you made it this far..wow. Sorry..lol 2nd Edit: Well I spent a fair amount of time with more testing and tweaking and can say I did have some success improving my experience in VR with this release. I actually was blown away by what I was seeing several times, I am talking NTTR here as I think Normandy is a separate deal. I know I had a lot to say above and while I do think it is valid and will let it remain but I did consider editing it, but eh. I know ED needs this feedback to improve and they will knock out a lot of these issues given some time. I do have faith even though shaky at times. I still dig their product want to support them, especially growth cycles like this when support is probably needed most. I really look forward to the next cycle of updates as they tackle the reported issues as they can and I am sure us VR users will be even more amazed than we have been previously.

I was surprised too to see the water had no depth/movement at all when I got all working finally. So unless you set high wind the ocean is basically at a 'glass' setting by default it appears. Would be nice if ED made a change to make it have some minimum movement by default, so that it was not like a solid plane surface by default as it is now currently or rely on the user to set it up. I flew a couple quick missions and the mission creators appeared to leave it at wind 0 instead changing it so mission creators need to consider this as well it appears.

Well this is just a continuation of a let down day. I know Upuaut dropped forward progress on this but perhaps you can reach out to him for a fix. I know you guys have had communication in the past. Was so looking forward to this bird in NTTR and Normandy. And as of now, she is sadly grounded.

I have water turned up to high and in VR, over the water, it looked like a solid color sheet with no reflection. I could not even correctly gauge my height over it when i went low. Not sure why that is. I got a 1080GTX and ran all fine before. There are several already mentioned by previous posters so won't be relisting the issues. You should be able to see them yourselves. I was very much looking forward to this map update, and it is nice in several areas. It just feels what we got today is not comparable to what the backers got weeks ago. Which I kinda expected that with more weeks of tuning this release version would be better and more tuned than the backers version. So far sadly this does not seem to be the case. I know updates will coming soon to address some of the issues. Just a bit confused how these quite obvious and glaring issues reported seemed to be

Anyone get this to work in 2.1 yet? Mine crashes when installed with a uh1_protect.dll error. Was hoping to fly this around Normandy and Vegas.

Why is there a peer limit? Shouldn't all of us dling actually be creating more peers? I mean isn't that one of the benefits of torrents? I get same 48

Another +1 on pilot model scale. This seems to be an issue in several modules. They all seem to use very small pilots. With VR it is very easy to see as you can position your arms in exact location and then peak or switch back and forth and it always looks like the pilots are a 5'3" or so woman's frame. Seems to be a great time to address right away vs some off post release date :) Another question. One of the things about the Harrier is the amazing view the cockpit provides. Due to the VTOL aspects of it, it needs it. I have seen many real life pics where from the side, the jstick actually is taller than the side of cockpit canopy frame(In fact pics above show that) and the downward slope of it(the side of the cockpit canopy frame) makes it at pretty much almost elbow level and slopes further down forward. Is that accurate or are the pics I see misleading? Does my question make sense? I ask because I am really looking forward to flying this in VR and am expecting an incredible view and if not scaled correctly I am curious if that will affect that. Perhaps it is a stupid question, but I ask it anyways.

Man it sucks being one of the 1st to buy/own sometimes. Seeing these new option choices makes me wish I held off ordering. Still enjoy the stick, just wish I could have had the chance to pick from options now made available. Basically penalized for being an early supporter. Oh well. But a great sick. Real happy with it. Congrats on a nice launch Virpil Team. Base order incoming. Oh and +1 on below. Only shortcoming on this stick currently is no 4way+push button for thumb switch. If doable, please consider upgrading to it. A lot of us Warthog owners are very used to them and I for sure miss it.

Thanks for this link. Missed it. It would be cool to have some fields or farms with a few animals or flocks of like sheep and cow and stuff out in countryside. I mean if your willing to go down to bike against barn level of detail, which is fantastic, love those kind of touches, why not a few animals with maybe a simple behavior pattern ai.. Bail out of plane over Normandy, as you come down in a farmers field, the fading sound of your enemies engine and your planes explosion is replaced by the sound of moo's and sheep bleats..

+1

You kinda cherry picked my sentence there. The environmental lighting looks fantastic, all the play off the aircraft, terrain, shadows..etc all looks amazing. I was strictly referencing the behavior of actual lights, physical lights, on the aircrafts themselves. Heck, maybe since 3rd party and modules involved it is not even a sweeping fix/change ED could make on their own without the 3rd parties applying appropriate code change as well. I am not exactly sure of that but guessing so. And I also said that there was a very real possibility that things have been tweaked even further since backer release that could affect those referenced, the planes actual physical light behaviors, moonlight. We know already further work on the overall release has been non-stop and still going on AND will continue to go on. No way was it implied this is final. The only thing implied was that the lights mentioned showed no behavior change as of now. Unless ED wants to verify they will behave differently we have been taught to assume nothing until ED states it as fact. So, please, try not to take things out of context or look at such critiques/observations as an assault. We all look at things differently and notice different things. This is often how things eventually improve usually. The map looks great, the environmental lighting looks great, I am very much looking forward to it. I hope that it is a huge success and many more follow. I am ready to buy them when they are certainly and will to support ED as best I can.

I don't think they spent any time on lighting in regards to the planes lighting IE: Nav, Gear, Cockpit. Hopefully they will make a pass at improving a few of those areas that could use improvement to bring them up to more realistic behaviors soon. As for moon, only seen one screenshot and it was still pretty dark with a full moon. Not looking like it is as bright as one might expect. Maybe tweaked since Backer-Alpha access release of course.

I agree. I also play a lot of race sims as well and they seem to do a great job often of rain on windshield effects. Really great at times. Hopefully this kind of effect is not outside the possibilities/capabilities of ED to create. Maybe their engine just can't do it or maybe no focus has been put towards it. Be nice to see it added for sure.

That's pretty awesome. Once the black smoke puffs are added it will be looking even sweeter. I bet it looks cool in VR for sure.

Yes, we have heard this posted before by you. The question is, when will it be fixed EXTERNALLY? When will the actual user base see this fix so our map does not look like it does presently with low lod? Is there an actual deployment plan to put all the Normandy map lighting improvements AND this clipmap fix that is enjoyed internally but not by the actual users/buyers of NTTR presently? You said "the map is done, expect no more from it", yet it still says early access in the store. Shouldn't that be changed then to something else?