DeltaMike

I don't understand the logic of adjusting PD/supersampling in both dcs and steam. Aren't those at least additive? Does supersampling really add anything to high res displays?

You eventually get used to the hand controllers, but it takes a LOT of practice. See if you can find a trackball gaming mouse, ie one that has a bunch of programmable buttons (which is really handy for stuff like kneeboard, comms menu and stuff). Which is what I would have done if I weren't so dang stubborn.

Couple of hints. Stuff I wish I'd a known. 1. Don't use programming software, map everything in-game 2. Some things are keys, some are buttons, and some are axes. Some things require keyboard input (ESC menu, bogey dope). Some functions can map to joystick or throttle buttons. "Axis" is things like pitch, roll, brakes. They can be mapped to sliding or rotating controls or mini-joysticks. Sliders are cool, use em when you can. You have to click the "Axis" button in the settings screen to program them (eg, TDC slew) 3. Save a 4-way switch for comms. When you first start flying solo, all you really need is to map comm menu but when you start using realistic coms, or if you get into multiplayer, you'll be using at least two radios and sometimes more. 4. In general you want to map the same thing to the same buttons if you can. Every jet has a trigger and a pickle button, for example. Other things I have perma-mapped to the HOTAS include speed brake, target undesignate, nosewheel steering, chaff, flare, TDC slew and select, trim. I have left and right engine start, and lights, mapped to the base. You may want to map gear and flaps some kinda way. Other things are very hard to perma-map. For example, radar elevation (critical but works differently in different jets), weapon select, radar modes (ditto) 4. When you're mapping a modifier key, it can either be mapped as a "switch" or a "button." Switch is like a toggle, you have to press it once to act as a modifier and press it again to turn it off. "Button" means it's only active while you are pressing it. The latter will probably work best with your hardware. 5. Easiest way to know if you're in afterburner or not is to press RCTL-ENT. That brings up an overlay that shows your throttle position, handy and way easier than trying to map afterburner (a la Hornet) or modify the throttle to give you a detent

Unclear to me what CPU% is measuring. For VR, I think render time is a more helpful measurement. Check out the NVIDIA FCAT VR performance tool https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/fcat-vr-download-and-how-to-guide. Among other things, the guide is a great read. See if you can monitor both your CPU and your GPU render times. Both have to be 11ms to run 90fps and 22ms to run 45fps. I'll bet it's your CPU. Not all of your settings affect the GPU alone. Vis range, trees and shadows have an effect on CPU, and cutting back on those will help. Hardware-wise, it gets complicated. Personally I think a good motherboard was a good investment (for me anyway), "overclocking" RAM (which in my case just meant running the RAM at its rated speed) helped me a lot and if you're lucky you might be able to get a meaningful overclock on your CPU too. DCS is fun but hang on to your wallet. ETA: I guess your CPU will burst at 4.0GHz? That's not bad but it ain't gonna allow you to run much more than flat shadows or vis range more than medium and I'd put the tree slider about in the middle too. Won't be as pretty but the game will be playable. Good news is, you can crank up anisotropic filtering all you want. With that HMD you don't need much if any supersampling/PD, I'd crank the MSAA if I had your rig

It depends. Did you see this? https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/1787213/ In a turning fight, I generally try to keep it above 350kts. Have found things work out better if I keep it 400-450 or so and use yo-yo to tighten up the turn. Ah that file finally installed. Lets see... 376kts more or less. I was close. Still like the yo-yo, once you're out of energy you're pretty much dead. Nice to leave a little on the table.

I really like the b450 Mobo, if you shop around you can get a really decent price allowing you to invest in memory on a budget. And amd is committed to forward compatibility. So far the CPUs are sort of meh, single core performance is nothing to scream about. I did not personally find gen2 zen any better than gen1. Rumor has it gen3 will be much better and if you're lucky you might be able to overclock. You could justify a build now with a gen2 chip $160) and plan to upgrade in july

Moltar I just gotta say you put on a ******* AWESOME show. The professionalism is outstanding. It's clear a lot of thought and preparation went into this and look what a great show it was last weekend. Folks, tune in, you gotta see this.

DCS wasn't built for VR. DCS is complicated to begin with, if you look at the CPU load alone, it takes a beast of a machine to run at 90fps. At that speed, the GPU only has 11ms to render a frame. In VR, it has to figure out which way your head is pointing first, then render the frame *twice* in the remaining time. That ain't easy. I find it amazing DCS works as well as it does in Oculus. No guarantee it'll work that well if you're driving twice the number of pixels

I didn't intend to go amd intentionally, just worked out that way. I'm delighted with my El cheapo b450 Mobo, wasn't as impressed with ryzen2 cpu. Have high hopes for ryzen 3. I think there's an argument for ream red but I'd wait for ryzen3 this July, see if it lives up to the hype.

I agree, I like the voice acting. So far it's not particularly inane -- I'm thinking about a campaign I flew where about 90% of the (synthesized) speech is about the weather. Here, the dialogue moves the plot forward and the ATC in particular comes across as professional and believable. I noticed there are a lot of AI units running around doing stuff that I can't see, mainly ground units shooting at each other. It would be OK with me to leave those out, to save on development time and hardware resources. Agree multiplayer/coop would be cool. I'm developing a story -driven campaign and I could see the possibility of having it unfold online. So I'd run mission one for a week, then mission two the next week. Have the whole thing unfold like a mini-series, sorta like Band of Brothers. Given Baltic Dragon's production talent, I imagine he would put together something really awesome. Maybe using a Patreon funding model.

I don't have a Pimax (wish I did) but off the cuff I'd say the biggest drags on VR performance are anti-aliasing (supersampling, MSAA), shadows, and vis range and trees. I think the nugget of the thing is to see where your PD and steam supersampling are compared with other Pimax users. You could try setting vis range to medium, trees around 50%, grass/clutter off for now and see where you're at. But I got a nickel says its SS

Maybe I missed it but I didn't see you set your takeoff trim. Wonder if that's not the problem.

Kinda hard to beat the F15 for the price. I've been flying the F15 a lot lately, it's pretty awesome. There are some really immersive and professionally done campaigns (Red Flag and Georgian War are great). Up until the F14 came out it was about the only really effective NATO bloc air superiority fighter in the game, and to this day it has applications in multiplayer, whether you're talking PvE or PvP. For better or worse, it doesn't have a clickable cockpit. Setting up your HOTAS will still require some thought but there's a lot of helpful suggestions here on the forum. Main limitations are communication and navigation. Simple Radio expands the comms for multiplayer use, as for navigation there are some work-arounds but you'll be using dead reckoning and the F10 map a lot. That's the price you pay; if you want to operate radios or GPS you're gonna have to click something. Only thing I shoulda done was just buy the whole FC3 package to begin with. There are some really interesting Eastern Block aircraft in there. Believe me, there are MIG29's, J-11's, SU-33's all over multiplayer, flown by some very skilled pilots. Making life extremely miserable for people flying the "study sims" (eg, F18, F14). If you're not really into the whole clickable cockpit thing -- and if your idea of "fun" is something other than downloading and reading NATOPs manuals lol (and quoting them to your friends) -- get FC3. Or at least one of the major modules (F15 or Su33). It's still amazing -- everything in DCS is amazing -- just in a slightly different way.

In Oculus, and I think this is true for all HMD's, there's a "sweet spot" in the lenses. I've found it's really important to get the thing situated on your head so you're looking through the sweet spot. Regarding readability, any VR headset is gonna seem grainy, be glad you aren't squinting through an oculus. Try a lower PD with some MSAA, see if that doesn't make the text pop a little bit. Probably help with spotting too. Supersampling tends to make edges squirmy and fluid, hard to read a moving target. MSAA should harden up the edges a little bit. Using MSAA and PD together tends to flog your GPU. If it's a choice between the two, you might like MSAA better than PD. If you need to you can turn off shadows and set vis range and trees to medium, that'll free up GPU resources without affecting playability, and give you a little more CPU overhead besides.

When I was taking flying lessons, the challenge was to at the right altitude, right speed, right distance, and lined up at some point on final. I realized if I was that way on base, I was that way on final. Finally realized the key to the whole thing was to be that way on downwind, to be able to fly the pattern from entry to landing without constantly making adjustments. The later in the game you're making adjustments, the more likely you are to screw the pooch. I think that's true for the F18 also, only you can have yourself set up correctly while you're in the stack if you're paying attention. And for someone new at this, starting from the port side stack is worth thinking about. There's a lot of latitude to make adjustments during the break if you know how to do it. But, that takes practice. I would submit that starting the lesson with "30 degree roll and g=.1 speed" is a lot for a newbie to choke down, and may not be the best advice. I would suggest this progression: 1. Straight and level flight 2. Constant radius, constant speed, level turns 3. Takeoffs 3. Straight and level flight at high AoA 4. Constant speed level turns at high AoA 5. Shore landings 6. Flying the pattern in landing conformation, on speed, high AoA, watch your angles 7. Try some traps, learn how to fly the ball. 8. Over-the-bow break from 350kts, focus on managing conformation (gear, flaps) and speed through mid-downwind without messing up your angles 9. Learn how to manage the break at various entry speeds and break points 10. Once you have that down, and understand navigation, move on to case III and ILS Way I look at it, worrying about bank angle and g's is the last thing, well next-to-last thing a guy needs to learn, not the first.... air brake can help ya if you're stuck at level 8 :)

Everything is all up in the air right now with the next gen headsets, including rift s. That's probably going to disrupt the low end of the market. GPUs that can't drive a pixel density of much more than 1.2 with the Rift are going to be out of the market I think, if you can drive 1.4 or 1.5 you may be still alive, the new headsets may not need as much if any supersampling. I have high hopes for the 2080 but we just don't have a ton of data with this card and the new hmds. None with rift s. If you can score a used rift, there is an argument for a GPU in the 1070-vega-1080 range. Or whatever the equivalent 20xx would be. DCS will need a lot of work to run in high res VR, brute-forcing it has worked up till now but it's not totally clear to me that even the 2080ti is gonna be enough moving forward

Once you have memory sorted -- enough memory, fast enough memory, Mobo that can make the most of it -- look into setting TDR delay (Google it up)

I've been hit by a lot of missiles (I'm not very good) and I've never suffered no damage, can only think of two times I was still flying, including the event documented here. The ai is nuts, you see em do 13 10g barrel rolls in a row without losing energy, or consciousness. But live, I dunno. Does it have to be a one shot kill every time? Is *that* realistic? I don't know that it's the damage model as much as it is the ai flight model, I mean dang

Good stuff Deano. One big problem I had at first was getting the right distance from the carrier, focusing too much on bank angle and G's and not focusing enough on where I'm at. People tend to snicker at ya if you use your air brake, but I think it can help sometimes, especially when you're learning. Question is, when are you in the groove, at what point do you say it's all over but the singing part? When I first started I never knew I was in the groove until I hit the deck, after that I was focused on trying to get stable on final. Now I'm focused on being precisely where I need to be as I turn base. My goal eventually is to feel that way right before the break. But, where I'm at right now is, rolling out on the downwind at a certain point, at a certain speed, give myself a couple of seconds to take a breath before I turn base. I use the airbrake when I have to

https://www.cnatra.navy.mil/local/docs/pat-pubs/P-1276.pdf It's still kinda light on BVR tactics. Appendix C speaks to this but I think you'll find it mainly involves being aware of what's going on, having a flexible gameplan and communicating effectively with AWACS and your wingman.

I have it sorted into HUD control. Nav, ILS, BVR, next/prev waypoint/airfield (worth a hat switch imo) Radar control. Primary (ie, needs to be right at hand): TWS/RWS, boresight, VACQ, on/off Secondary (ie, OK to use a modifier): PRF, azimuth ("predicted target range"), cannon mode Axis: elevation Joystick: primary: undesignate/RTS, cycle weapon secondary: trim, jettison fuel, NWS range TDC: primary: range, azimuth slew, TDC designate (in other words, know that you can adjust range and slew by moving the TDC cursor around) secondary: TWS undesignate ECM. ECM, chaff, flare Comm switch: comm 1 and 2: reserved for SRS comm menu / voice attack receive mode Gaming mouse (I'm in VR so I need something I can operate by feel. A $10 USB keypad works just as well): Throttle overlay Kneeboard (show, page up, page down, mark) Chat window SRS (overlay, channel up) comm menu Base: power, canopy, rt engine on/off, lt engine on/off, cycle HUD, panel lights, exterior lights, landing lights, F10 map view (I use that a LOT), F1 cockpit view. I expect you'll want to map flaps and gear to your base switch also. I personally find autopilot and a/a refueling of little interest, ymmv PRF has been moving up the ranks, there's an argument says it's a primary function. I use it a lot and found a button for it. You don't use cannon very often, but when you need it you need it fast so don't forget where you put it. Very handy to have VR zoom available to your left hand, if you're a VR sorta guy. So, all I use the keyboard for is the ESC menu and cycling through units basically.

If you have ILS on, you can see where you're at altitude-wise on base, which I think helps a lot.

Seems to be working for me, with a load out of 6 120c against three targets. Mixed loadout maybe? As for launch order, personally I think it's easier to hit undesignate/RTS and start over. But. Let's say you have two targets locked up, say the one on the right is primary and the one on the left is secondary. To switch the order, place the TDC cursor over the bogey on the right, hit "unlock TWS target." The one on the left now becomes the primary (and, for now, the only) target. Re-lock the one on the right, now *that's* the secondary target. Prego! Now it's time to start flying, cuz while you were futzing around with that, they just launched about 20 missiles at you. Point being, this is kind of a cold-war-era system, designed to let an F15 or F14 take out a bunch of fat slow bombers from a long way off. Taking out four SU33's from 20 miles is another kettle of fish altogether (good luck with that). Among other things if you happen to have two targets close enough to give you a reasonably good chance of killing them, and you aren't dead yet, they are close enough to where the order probably doesn't matter much

I dunno man, I think it's a fair system. It's not like Wags is tooling around the Med on a super-yacht loaded up with hot Russian women drinking champagne and strawberries. We'd know -- there would be Youtube videos. "Today we are going to discuss the upcoming marine bidet module. I'll put this lady on pause so you can see some of the features...."

Yeah. My only thing is, if I wait until I'm going slow enough to take care of the trim problem I'm pretty late in the downwind and don't have much time to get stable. Not saying you're wrong, just because I'm used to flying the thing ***-backwards doesn't mean I'm doing it the right way...