DeltaMike

Well, there are two things. The first is the limitation of VR technology right now. The devices are heavy and hot, prone to fogging up. Field of view is limited. Screen and lens technology are in their infancy. Remember how your mother said, "Don't sit so close to the TV, you'll go blind!" We have these little teeny computer screens right on our eyeballs, we can see every pixel, and we are going blind. That said, the hardware is still way ahead of the software. It takes a lot of horsepower -- a lot -- to pipe VR through two high-res monitors, tiny though they may be. We aren't sure what it will take to drive a high-res, high-field-of-view device like say a Pimax. GPU's aren't really optimized to brute-force software originally designed to run on a single VGA monitor (remember, DCS has been around for like 20 years). I get the feeling this is an active area of research on the software side, how to realize efficiencies on the software level. AMD for example is working with Vulkan on VR optimization. One potential solution that AMD is working on is, dual GPU systems, where each eye gets its own GPU. Which could be kinda slick but the software has to accommodate that. Given the circumstances, I find it amazing that DCS can accommodate VR at all, hats off to the engineers. And they are doing pretty durn well. I was flying around in the Oculus F18 app the other day. It's a native VR app and it looks like crap, DCS is way better. The Rift S is exciting because it inexpensively solves some of our problems. They swapped out the old screen for a new one, which makes instruments easier to read, without flogging your GPU too hard. Basically. So, you can get in the game with realistic hardware, in fact you can have fun in DCS with a 1080 and a modern CPU that can burst to 3.8GHz or so. That's still a lot of computer but at least you don't have to bring a GPU server to the game, which it wasn't that long ago you had to. VR isn't "there" yet. Hence the debate about whether or not it's worth it, hence all the people still flying around on big-screens and Track-IR. For some of us, it's close enough. Personally I find the experience amazing -- I'll put up with the pixels and the low graphics settings -- but you know how it is. YMMV right. I've been doing flight sims since the 80's, kinda lost interest until VR came out. In spite of all the problems, DCS is the killer ap far as I'm concerned. It's both astonishing and frustrating. Guess it depends on how you deal with frustration, and astonishment. (Note, having been to Burning Man several times, I don't use the term "astonishing" lightly.)

FPS is related to your render time. At 90fps you need to be able to render the image in no more than 1/90 of a second, or in other words 11ms. Pull up the Application Render Time HUD. I think you'll find that your GPU render time is pegged around 22ms. And it probably is. Render time is correlated with motion sickness independently of FPS. It has to do with the difference between where your brain expects to see something, and where it actually sees it. If you rotate your head 20 degrees, an object in your field of view should rotate 20 degrees in the opposite direction at the same velocity. If there's a lag -- the thing only rotates say 15 degrees -- there will be a mismatch, and your brain will report vertigo. World-to-eye latency occurs at the speed of light, so it's practically instantaneous. But your retina-to-brain latency is about 90 milliseconds, and you have a little wiggle room there. Oculus has found that you can tolerate up to about 20ms of latency to the retina before you start getting sick. So I imagine there's a strong motivation to crank your settings until you get to about 20ms, but no more. If you do that, you can expect your FPS to be somewhere around 45 or so. That said, 45 is kind of "sticky," even with ASW off. It'll stay at 45 through a range of render times, say 20-24ms something like that. So, even with ASW off, the render time is much more granular and I feel it's a better variable for benchmarking.

You're dreaming buddy. Those guys are good. I fly with a bunch of JDF jockeys at least 4x per week. I feel ya, it gets frustrating getting shot down over and over and over. Two options. Say "cheaters" and stomp off. Go back to Instant Action and let the truly pathetic AI have its way with you (and wonder if it's cheating also). Or learn how to fly the durn thing. Which is not easy. Let us know if you want some pointers. Nobody is gonna tell you how to do it; you can't, you learn by doing. But we can give you some pointers on how to find learning opportunities. To be clear, if you follow that path, you're gonna have to learn how to get up off the mat and say, "Let's go again." Over and over and over.

Regarding text boxes, you have two mouse cursors selected with the "clickable cockpit" toggle. The green crosshairs allow you to interact with the cockpit, the white circle allows you to interact with text and menus.

Please delete my prior post, test conditions weren't properly standardized I ran three trials, one CPU weighted and two GPU weighted. 1. CPU load. vis range hi, shadows med, trees 100%. PD 1.0, MSAA off OB frames 45. CPU render time 9.6. GPU render time 21 STABLE frames 45. CPU 11ms. GPU 21ms 2. GPU load. vis range med, shadows off, trees 64%. PD 1.4, MSAA off OB frames 45. CPU 8ms. GPU 22ms STABLE frames 45. CPU 10. GPU 21ms 3. GPU load. vis range med, shadows off, trees 64%. PD 1.2, MSAA2x OB frames 45. CPU 8ms. GPU 22ms STABLE frames 45. CPU 10ms. GPU 22ms. Specs in sig. Drivers: Oculus App Version 1.38.0.256587, Radeon 19.2.1 Comment: Pretty consistent 20% improvement in CPU render time, I'm just so heavily GPU limited it's hard to see a difference in framerate.

Thanks.

I get the feeling TWS doesn't do much for you if you have datalink. Yes? No? Does the R77 require STT to fire? (ie, I can put the TDC gate on a target and it should follow it, but I have to go to STT to actually get a firing solution?)

Is this one of those things where it helps to go into the registry editor and change the time out value?

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/nvidia-super-rtx-confusing-graphics-cards/ We are fixing to get market-segmented to death. We may be able to find some good values moving forward if we can figure out how much vram and how many compute units we want

Exactly. Action is always at the margins. I'm not gonna spend 200 on a warthog because it's not that much better than my T16K. But I would at least consider 400 for the f18 stick and a virpil base. Which is where this is going. Figuring out a way to beat virpil and other niche providers at the top of the market.

They are trying to figure out their price point. Eventually it'll sell along side the warthog at a different (higher) price. It has nothing to do with the cost of manufacturing (duh!). Everything with what people want to spend on a joystick. Some will spend 100, some will spend 200 and some will spend 500. TM has the low and medium price points dominated. Evidently they have their eye on enthusiasts who have $$$ and think the warthog isn't all that

"Flight, attack ground targets." "2, engage bandits." whatever is in the menus

haha I did that once. Sank all the way to the bottom and lawndarted into the mud. And broke through into what I can only describe as heaven. Sunshine, clouds all around. Floating through a vanilla sky. It was beautiful.

Wait'll you start doing carrier landings. You turn on to final and say, dang I coulda swore there was a carrier *right there* If it doesn't happen to take off in another direction, VR is really helpful. Even just being on the deck of the carrier is breathtaking

Or just have the gear go up when you say "gear up." It's more immersive than you might think. When you cheerfully announce to your flight "3, wheels up" you can program it to retract gear, wait four seconds and then retract flaps. Later when you announce "fence in," have it turn your lights off, master arm on, arm countermeasures, turn on seeker head cooling... you get the picture. ALso check out vaicom pro (watch the spelling, https://www.vaicompro.com/) which controls your comm menus. "Overlord, bogey dope" and "Chief, apply ground power" make stuff happen. It's really cool (really cool!) when youre working with a forward air controller. There are a number of possible solutions to working stuff in VR. For FC3 you need buttons and lots of them (or voice attack, which is pretty slick here). A USB keypad is another inexpensive way to get started. (hint: glue beads to some keys to help you find them by feel) For high fidelity modules, you need a pointing device. Miles's finger-mouse looks interesting. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=218861. Otherwise you can use oculus controllers, a trackball, or a mouse. Voice attack can help with both if it can accommodate the way you speak. It's not perfect. Whatever you choose will require some getting used to. Pick something and put the time in. I will say, you do get used to the mouse. Head movement is your coarse adjustment, mouse movement is the fine adjustment. You learn to coordinate the two. (hint: get a gaming mouse, that'll give you some extra buttons for common functions that are never clickable like map view, kneepad view or chat window)

Which I have. Wonder if VR lenses will help any, they let you set different IPD. In other news, one of my squadron mates is reporting solid 45fps with his Oculus S, running on a 1060 with MSAAx2 and PD 1.0

Is the f18 inherently unstable like the f-16? Ie has a hard time flying in a straight line without fly-by-wire

I've been practicing BFM a lot in the F15 and F18, and just starting with F14. Note practicing doesn't = winning so this is gonna be a comment on flight characteristics. Somebody else will have to teach the art of the kill. I'm currently looking at corner speed as a range. Above a certain speed it won't turn, below a certain speed it won't fly. With these three jets, the upper bound is fuzzy, you have a little wiggle room. The lower bound is pretty firm for the F15. Maybe when I'm better at the F14 the lower bound will be a little fuzzier -- I fly with one guy who does amazing stuff with the leading edge slats -- but for me, so far, it's absolutely critical to stay above ~390kts. So, to me, both the F15 and the F14 seem to require a light hand on the stick. The F18 on the other hand, I can yank the crap out of that thing and still somehow keep flying. I find myself pulling quite hard through parts of the turn to get my nose where I want it, then easing up to regulate speed. It's like drifting, kind of. I don't know that's the right thing to do, I'm just saying you can do that. Arguably pretty much all of the modern DCS jets have low wing loading. IMO that counts the F15 and F14 if you count the lifting body. Just understand you need a lot of speed to generate lift with the body. I think that's why those planes more or less fall out of the sky suddenly below a certain speed (maybe less for the F14 because of the variable wing geometry and leading edge slats). And why yanking too hard on the stick is an opportunity for a mistake. It can be done; the guys I fly against do an amazing job with that. Me, I find myself being very gentle on the stick in the F15 and F14, and rather suspect it's a requirement for the latter (I've noticed the wings kinda fall off otherwise). So. We've talked about stick pressure to maintain optimum turn rate. I've found you can also gain or lose altitude to accomplish the same thing. So for example if I'm a little fast in a turn I can pull the nose above the horizon and bleed off a little speed. I like the high yo-yo, you can bleed off speed and yet maintain a bit of energy. With that in mind, I try not to pull a lot of alpha. High yo-yo strikes me as subtly different from going vertical. With one, I'm trying to gain separation. With the other, I'm trying to reduce it. Either way, I'm not sure I see the point in pulling alpha right as you're starting to climb. I don't think you want to waste a bunch of energy with induced drag. Which I think might be an important thing. Yanking back on the stick induces drag. Question then is, can I get away with it. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't, it seems. With the F18 I can get away with it, up to a point. After that point, I'm figuring out how to gain horizontal separation while I'm waiting for that thing to accelerate.

@Strike Eagle: RE Radeon VII, I'd wait for DCS specific reviews first, NVIDIA is probably the safer bet. VII might be a winner but nobody is quite sure yet My experience is with low end systems, like the dudes I fly with. For Rift: 1070, Vega, 1080, and probably 2060 all kind of cluster together as being barely adequate. Rift S is driving more pixels, you'd have to give something up to make it work I'll bet. Maybe PD, and maybe giving up a little of that will be OK. I wouldn't count on getting MSAA and PD >1.0 with any of those cards. For the money, I think a used 1080ti is worth a look, that should be plenty. I imagine a 2080 will work (how's your experience, Don?). The marginal improvement by going from say a 1080ti to a 2080ti is pretty darn expensive, and with the number of unknowns out there (what effect will Vulkan have? What role will lens technology have in the future?) I personally find it hard to justify the expense. For a Rift S anyway. I do think the 2080ti will hold its value for a while, I get the feeling software development hasn't quite caught up with it yet, but that doesn't make me feel much better about it. Not for DCS alone, if you have other uses for it, that would be different. You just aren't going to get 80fps at high settings. Probably won't get 80fps with low settings either. Just gotta trust ASW and live with the good and the bad.

I find the F16 joystick interesting and was interested to know everyone's thoughts/experiences. My only experience was sitting in a military training simulator, which was pretty darn cool. - Looks like the stick is very similar to, if not identical to the TM Warthog, no? - The stick doesn't actually move, it just responds to pressure. Is it true, there's a way of modding a Warthog to do that? Does it work OK? - Seems like I remember CH had a replica F16 throttle. Looks to me like the Logitech X52 is close as well. - I had a CH combat stick way back in the day, it was nothing to scream about. The Cougar looks pretty slick, that uses a serial, port, right? I remember those, see em on ebay. People seem to like it. I don't even know if I have a serial port in my PC, I don't imagine it would be hard to find a card tho, assuming that would work? Really looking forward to seeing some F16 simpit builds, and interested to know what kinda controls yall are noodling

exception vaicom pro 2.5.10.0 just installed airio, keys all validated i moved DCS to my E: drive, registry path is correct, vaicom is pointing to the correct path voice attack is working When I press PTT I get: UNABLE TO INVOKE PLUGIN ... DUE TO EXCEPTION: "VoiceAttack.VoiceAttackInvokeProxyClass" does not contain a definition for 'Utility' ETA: aw ffs. I needed to update voice attack. it's working now. guess i'll leave this up in case somebody else has the same problem.

Gaming mouse or trackball is pretty cool, you can map some functions like kneepad, chat window etc to the mouse buttons. There are two mouse cursors, one for clicking on buttons, one for clicking on menu items, I think alt-C toggles that? That's helpful to map to the mouse also. Might need to "confine mouse cursor to window," that solves some problems. Save a hat switch on your hotas for comms for when you go to realistic comms or you start using SRS. Keyboard is not un-usable in VR. ESC and function keys are easy to find. You can map stuff to the spacebar or the numpad if you want. You're gonna have to get used to controllers, mouse, or trackball eventually. Right this minute, controllers are kinda tricky to use, so a mouse-like thing is probably the way to go. But take a look at this https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=218861 ... way way cool

Awesome. The pedals are adjustable in that track? Just like in R/L? Very cool, I like it! Two words: memory foam!

I kinda go back and forth on MSAA. MSAAx2/PD1.2 looks about the same as MSAAx0/PD1.4 and I think the latter is a tad quicker. I'd be willing to trade MSAA for some trees (66% works well with med vis range). That said, way to go man. The 2060 may be the new el cheapo king! If that sucka can drive a Rift S --and I'll bet it can -- you have a winner bro!

Haha that's pretty much it. Gotta map the hotas carefully, it's really hard to change the mapping once you get used to it. I usually start off in free flight to get that situated. Then I do a lot of takeoff/landing practice. Then get distracted by the next module. I pretty much buy em all. So little time... so many "whoa how cool is that" moments That said the fifteen bucks I spent on the F15 is by a wide margin the best $ I spent on here. Keep coming back to that.