Vertigo72

That was sort of my point. Sorry if it got buried. Let me make it make more tangible; I have a 1070 GTX, Ryzen 2600x. 16GB DDR4-3200, NVME SSD. Performance with the low resolution VR set I had (Rift-S) was mostly fluid when in single player, caucasus map, P51, no MSAA, ~100% super sampling, but it looked IMHO, like a pixelated mess. Trying to read instruments it reminded me of F16 Falcon on a VGA monitor. Upping MSAA and super sampling makes it look better, though still not all that great and already made performance borderline in SP and unplayable in populated servers while flying F14. Framerate drops well below 30 FPS and stuttering is annoying on a monitor, buts its extremely nauseating and completely unplayable in a VR set. And for me to consider ditching my monitors for a VR set, I fear i need at least something like a pimax 8K with wide FoV and reasonable MSAA and SS settings, and I dont believe there is a PC on this planet right now that will do that in multiplayer - if at all. So my point is; you probably want to buy no more than a midrange gaming computer, and adjust your usage to what it can do. The difference between what a ~$5-700 / second hand / midrange build will do compared to the highest end, isnt that great. They will both hit a very similar bottleneck a single threaded performance where a cheap I3 or the cheapest ryzen is only marginally (~20% or so )worse than the most expensive CPU on the market. And they will both run DCS with low-ish VR settings in single player, and neither will do MP with high VR settings on a high resolution VR set. As for me; I may revisit VR once we have eye tracking and foveated rendering. That might make it feasible to have the resolution and FoV that VR sets need, without requiring ridiculous amounts of GPU power. I bought the Rift-S to test if I wanted to splash the money on a pimax 8K and CPU/GPU that could possibly drive it. But current tech doesnt cut it for me.

I disagree. Its a snapshot that provides relevant data. Blender is also updated every few months, its still used as a benchmark in every CPU review ever, and the results are still relevant to me. The only thing irrelevant is comparing old benchmark results with new ones. Although even that is not irrelevant if you keep the hardware the same, as it may show improvement (or not) in the software. If reviewers want to recycle old results, nothing prevents them from keeping an older copy of DCS and use that. It will still be indicative.

LOL. But if you do that with MS SW FFB2, you would want a different solution to at least make use of the force feedback. If that is even supported for rudder ? ? I do have 3 spare ones. I might just try it.

Im having trouble installing this. I think I extracted it to the correct place, but its just not showing up in DCS: I am using steam edition (open beta). What am I missing?

Did they change that mission recently? I would have sworn the F14 AAR built-in training mission (or instant action)? was with an S3 tanker, and I found that completely hopeless. But now indeed -at least on the open beta- its a KC135 MPRS and there is no problem with its speed, only my skill set. BTW I did only now notice how much yaw just extending that fuel probe induces. It needs a lot of rudder trimming. Given how close it is to the centerline I have doubts how realistic that is, but hey, what do I know, but it certainly helps if you trim it out.

As a brave/stupid newbie who decided the F14 is the best module to learn DCS, I can fully understand where the OP is coming from. Ive a few 100 hours or so in the cat now, and a few hours of AAR trying, and I havent yet hooked up once, and I dont think Im even close to doing it regularly. However, I dont really want an AI doing it for me. That would teach me nothing. Instead I want some "cheats" that help me do it myself. One such cheat already exists, its the info bar at the bottom, so at least in the F14 you have a good idea of your airspeed and you can much more easily learn how your throttle controls your airspeed and build up that muscle memory. But I need more and I would really like some steering guidance too. its so hard to look out of the F14 and then there is an offset fuel probe to make things even harder. So maybe show me some fake HUD, much like the suspended rectangles that are shown in carrier landing tutorials, that show where I need to steer my nose, along with maybe some relative velocity indicators. Another idea is auto throttle to match the tankers speed, though that does really feel more like a real cheat rather than a help and I struggle less maintaining correct speed than I do with lining up correctly

I would really appreciate a built-in performance benchmark; for a variety of reasons, but one very good reason is that it may make hardware reviewers add DCS to their game benchmarking suite. That would help us DCS users a lot when making purchase decisions as every new CPU or GPU would be benched on DCS, and its also free publicity for DCS. It could be as simple as a standardized track that can be played back from the free DCS version, and average (/min/max/99%) FPS being shown, though I am not sure how representative the performance is of playing back a track vs actually playing the game? Does the physics and AI engine work in the background? Also the last time I experimented with playing tracks and benching them, I also found the results could vary wildly between runs for reasons I dont quite understand, this would have to be improved too.

Not sure if this helps, but it popped up in my recommendations: As always, some people make it look so easy :) But Im gonna keep training on big tankers first before I even attempt the S3 again.

Before the last OB update, AFAIK you could unplug and hot plug a FFB stick. If you do that now, the stick is recognized if you plug it in, but there is no force feedback - I believe until you restart DCS. (You might wonder who ever does that. Well me. I just discovered unplugging and replugging a joystick is a trick to to fix trackir losing connection to the game, as DCS will not only recognise the stick but then also rediscover the trackir. Trackir losing connection to the game is another issue Ive been having I think since I switched to OB.)

How much RAM do you have? DCS is a memory hog, but the F14 seems to be worse than most. I have 16GB ram, and I really have to pay attention closing as many background apps and browser windows, or I simply run out of ram and DCS may not load or just crash to the desktop.

As far as sound goes, yes, I assume so. I dont think RL pilots can actually hear their afterburner. However, RL pilots do have a functional "butt sensor", and Im equally confident they can feel the acceleration if they engage the AB. We sim pilots cant. Hence, I dont think its "more realistic" to disable it. Its just an audible cue to replace a physical one that cant be simulated, and I welcome the option.

I found it totally impossible with the built-in training mission. Mind you, Im a noob. I find AAR totally impossible period, but it might be the problem you described as I kept overshooting it and losing it completely. What Im doing now is making my own mission. For starters I use a KC135MPRS. Having a big tanker makes it a *lot* easier to spot and match speeds. I have no problems initiating the precontact. Only then do the problems start lol. Also, enable the status bar cheat at the bottom so you get an accurate airspeed indicator, that greatly helps learning how your throttle impacts speed, as the read out there is instantaneous and very accurate (unlike the useless and unreadable airspeed indicator in the tomcat. What genius decided to put it there?). I found the speed of the tanker does deviate a little from what I set in the mission planner (set it to 430 Kts default, found its really 407) but that might be a TAS vs IAS thing, and its speed is consistent. The failure to actually refuel is entirely due to my shoddy piloting.

Im guessing ~2060. Not the nvidia RTX 2060 card, or $2060 dollar amount, but the year 2060. Seriously, there are performance issues in DCS that until they are worked out, kinda limits what you can hope for. Running DCS in VR smoothly in multiplayer and on a budget is not one of them. Even if you are not budget restrained and buy the stupidest most expensive hardware out there, it doesnt really solve the performance issues. The problem is that past the mid range point, hardware gets exponentially more expensive per performance, and the resulting performance increase in DCS isnt even linear. If you where to trying to get from 75 to a steady jitter free 90FPS in VR, one might consider spending on a 2080 videocard, but when the reality is that you will often be getting sub 30 FPS and stuttering, its hard to justify spending another 1000 to go from 25 to 35 FPS. So instead of upping your budget, scale down your expectations. If you are ok flying mostly single player (or maybe very lightly populated multiplayer servers) and with reduced settings, VR can be made to work even on reasonably priced mainstream gaming machines. But Ill let others share their experience, as I had my VR set for 2 weeks and returned it, its not for me. Too cramped FoV, too low resolution, too impractical to see hotas and use keyboard/mouse. I also found it much less immersive than I expected. I mean, you do feelimmersed in a game, but I never even remotely felt like I was in an actual plane (and I doubt I ever will without G forces). YMMV, but a large screen and headtracking for me is still the superior solution. Its also cheaper and performs better.

1) Am I right saying that in the openbeta the "use FFB trim implementation" in special options is always on? Trimming the F14 moves the stick regardless of this option and I dont notice anything different with it on or off? 2) When using autopilot, the AP seems to use the trim to "fly". And because of the above opton, the trim moves the stick; this leads to a trim runaway when your hand is not on the joystick (FFB force is disabled then, at least on MS sidewinder 2 FFB sticks). The AP still tries to compensate for any attitude change by moving the trim further and further, but this has no effect because no force is applied to the joystick which stays in place. This causes the trims to max out after a few seconds and of course, the AP doing nothing useful I wouldnt call this a bug, and its probably not even fixable as I dont think software can detect the status of the joystick hand on grip sensor, but its something I spend a long time scratching my head over. Even (or especially ) with autopilot enabled, you can not remove your hand from a force feedback stick in the F14. This is a good reason to have the a working option again to disable the "use FFB trim implementation". Or to put some tape on the grip sensor.

Got it, thanks!

I just saw this in options.lua ["F-14B"] = { ["CPLocalList"] = "default", ["FFB_TRIM"] = false, I have a FFB joystick and some issues trimming the F14, does anyone know what this setting does?

If you have the tomcat module, I would be interested in seeing your results in this test: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=240207 Although the test doesnt seem to be GPU bound for almost anyone, instead its CPU single thread and CPU IO bound, Im under the impressing AMD GPUs do better, possibly because their drivers incur a lower CPU overhead. If you dont have the tomcat, then maybe you can post your result for this test here: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=240131

Interesting. Ive seen this in my similar F14 benchmarking thread as well: PCs using amd vega do pretty well, and that is despite the fact, the main bottleneck is overwhelmingly CPU, not the GPU. So my interpretation isnt that vega performs well (which Im sure it does, but at 1080p in DCS it doesnt really show), but rather it appears AMD drivers incur a lower CPU overhead in DCS.

To those who object to having the option of a fast alignment because its not realistic, I propose a mod: if you eject in game, you're barred from flying DCS for at least a few days, possibly several weeks if your virtual pilot broke any limbs; and if you get killed in the game, all your DCS licenses are permanently revoked. Compared to actually dying, thats surely a pretty minor consequence, but at least its slightly more "realistic" than having a refly option?

Oh just noticed your setting for civilian traffic. Turn that off !

With the large curvature radius of most screens, you hardly notice. But indeed, the projection is incorrect and will distort. The smaller the bend radius, the bigger the problem. I recently build a simpit for condor (a glider simulator) at my club, and used a 55" curved 4K tv for that, because, well it was the same price as a flat one, and I figured if I cant do multiple beamers on a curved 180 screen, at least it will be something a little like it. On hindsight, that was pointless and if anything, inferior to a flat screen because there are some projection issues (although pretty minor), its harder for bystanders to view it properly and the screen needs to be perfectly aligned to the viewer both horizontally and vertically and on both axis or it looks even weirder. You can solve the projection mismatch by using warping software like fly-elise. Thats worth it when you use (multiple) beamers on a curved projection screen, but its so overkill for a single almost-flat display, that its silly. The software is rather expensive and processor intensive. Anyway, as long as games dont support cylindrical projection, curved screens seem pointless to me. Either the curvature is so small it doesnt really add anything to the immersion, or if it is curved sharply, then the incorrect projection becomes noticeable.

To compare hardware, we all need to use the same graphics settings, otherwise the results dont mean anything, thats why I chose "DCS default high". If you want to do some testing which of these settings hampers your framerates most (visibility range seems the most likely), feel free, but its a different topic. I will say that at 1080p resolution, the GPU hardly matters at all. The bottleneck is entirely CPU single thread performance, and to some extend IO (ram speed). I hope you have better uses for that 12 core cpu than DCS (which only uses ~2), and better uses for that 2080 than flying DCS @1080p, because both are wasted on DCS.

I cant really overclock my CPU either, but instead of suspecting, do as I did: underclock. Both CPU and GPU (one at the time). If framerates are not affected by the underclock of the component you are underclocking, the bottleneck is elsewhere. If framerates drop linearly with clockspeeds, then you are entirely bottleneck by that component

Reran this test after receiving my DDR4-3200 10-05-2019, 16:47:19 DCS.exe benchmark completed, 14646 frames rendered in 218.609 s Average framerate : 66.9 FPS Minimum framerate : 13.9 FPS Maximum framerate : 136.1 FPS 1% low framerate : 13.1 FPS 0.1% low framerate : 10.4 FPS For reference, this was with DDR4-2133: 01-05-2019, 17:13:35 DCS.exe benchmark completed, 12898 frames rendered in 219.532 s Average framerate : 58.7 FPS Minimum framerate : 12.4 FPS Maximum framerate : 112.9 FPS 1% low framerate : 11.5 FPS 0.1% low framerate : 5.3 FPS The performance boost is even more significant in the F14 module where I got a 20% FPS boost just from upgrading my ram...

My new ram modules arrived: Without mirrors: 51 FPS @2133 ram Without mirrors: 56 FPS @2400 ram Without mirrors: 60 FPS @3200 ram CAS 16 Without mirrors: 61 FPS @3466 ram CAS 17 With mirrors: 43 FPS @2133 ram With mirrors: 47 FPS @2400 ram With mirrors: 51 FPS @3200 ram CAS 16 With mirrors: 52 FPS @3466 ram CAS 17 Havent tried pushing them to 3600 yet.