DeltaMike

I was playing that stupid six-gun game on oculus the other day, noticed you can draw or reload with gestures. Wonder if gestures would be useful in DCS. That would give me something to do with my left hand during takeoff. Would definitely like to have a gesture to slap the gear up. Come to think of it, shoving the throttles to the wall is a pretty simple gesture too. As is slapping down the hook lever. I like using oculus controllers for switches,feels very intuitive. I love the right-click strategy which is brilliant. Being able to punch buttons by stabbing into thin air -- I dunno. Gestures for some things, on the other hand -- the stuff you're supposed to be able to do without looking, basically -- would be cool. The salute before the cat shot in the upcoming F-14. Stuff like that.

OP-- just as an experiment, take off sometime without touching the stick at all. It'll take off by itself (eventually) and fly away. I think that's the feeling you're going for, letting the jet fly when it's ready (pursuant to the above advice) rather than trying to peel it off the deck.

Thanks for the replies. Yeah I see now how the chaff is supposed to work Part of why I let him shoot first is I want to catch him turning into me. I give up some energy this way but it puts the mig into a pickle. Best way to avoid is to go for the deck, which sets me up for the second shot. The AI always shoots too soon, I imagine this might not work against a human. Gotta break soon enough to cross in front of him, if we fire at the same time Im probably in trouble

Can you use it as a modifier in DCS control settings?

There's a lot about AIM-120 tactics out there but not as much about the AIM-7. Here's what I'm currently noodling, looking for critique and comments. In this scenario, I didn't lock him up until he locked me up. Soon as he did, I cranked right until he fired. Cranked all the way to the other side, firing when the nose passed over the target. Held that line, counted to four, let off some chaff and then turned back into the target, switching to sidewinder. Took that shot, which turns out was unnecessary. Then I skeedaddled. Should have held my line a little longer in the first turn. I did force the missile into an S curve but could have done more with it in the first few seconds if I'd a been patient. That said, as sloppy as I am, I don't usually get hit with the first missile. My idea was, keep my eye on the little bugger, maintain altitude, keep him busy, set up a second shot while he's all defensive. Doesn't always work; one MIG broke contact, took off at high speed. I chased him until he turned around and shot me in the face. Probably not smart in a Hornet; I think spiraling in from up high is the way to do it. Otherwise probably best to make like a tree and GTFO. I guess. I dunno. What do you think? Am I even close to barking up the right tree? tacview.zip.zip

AMD is kinda handicapped in DCS, I'm running an overclocked Vega which isn't much better than a 1070 in DCS, go for the nvidia if you can afford it. Windows should be able to handle the swap, if it doesn't it's easy to fix, just check back in. Gonna need an SSD if you don't already have one, check into the m.2 ssd's. Even if you just get a little one, and load DCS onto that, that'll enhance the experience. I'm assuming you got the inspiron game desktop. Nice box. You could mine the crap outa cryptonight on that sucka. It'll definitely push some jets around. But get the 1080ti, nothing is ever enough around here

Get an aircraft like a tanker on your nose, look at it head on and then look at it out of the corner of your eye. That's where I saw the most difference with the msaa mask.

How to do that is not immediately intuitive, believe it or not. Right now I just plonk down an SA11 launcher. Where it says "unit 1 of 1," change the last number to "4." You'll see 4 launchers now. Now change one of the launchers to a command unit using the dropdown menu. Change another to radar. All from the SA11 family. It'll work. SA11 is a good compromise. Hard enough to make you work for it but not impossible.

In the shader mod you can reduce the size of the msaa mask, you only really need that in central vision. By the time I figured that out I had memorized my ddi buttons and, I dunno. I missed some of the eye candy. I'm coming around to the idea if you run anything less than a 1080ti, life is easier if you resolve to live without shadows and msaa, get pd where you want it and go from there.

There's a lot of depth to the Sim but ironically it's really easy to fly. It's fun from the first minute. That said, proficiency takes time. I think the hornet is worth the time, partially because it is multi role. Effective today you can put together a decent strike package with just hornets. Should be able to entertain yourself with this thing for a good long time. Don't let the WIP status bug you, it fundamentally works

Thanks for the replies. I really like the Aggressors campaign, which I think hits the high points. The Nevada map is VR friendly, yeah it's gorgeous at sunrise. And each mission is really focused, with a lot more attention to radio messages than AI units running around. I was a little worried about spotting targets, but I think VR is good enough if you're careful to include the right navigation information and the right visual references. Through The Inferno strikes me as a good setup, you can do a lot on that map but only certain missions are active at any given time. That said, I spent a little time on Georgia At War, which is pretty much a 24/7 charlie foxtrot (I love it!) but my little system handles it fine for the brief amount of time I'm typically still alive. I imagine if all those blue force units were AI it would be a different matter though... suspecting multiplayer is the way to go for complex missions... wonder how much of the AI movement is off-line... a lot I'll bet... Right now focused on fun single-player training missions for F18. First one was aerial refueling, navigation, and Maverick targeting. Working on a GBU scenario now. Once the HARM comes out I'll set something up but it'll probably be run SEAD then rearm/refuel and do the bombing run, rather than trying to hand any of that off to AI which I agree, seems kinda pointless.

Does the game resolution have anything to do with VR? Thought that was just for the monitor... Also curious about your experience with anisotropic filtering, not clear to me that it does much of anything

I think this is the thing, for the sim. Last night in muliplayer I tried running the pattern at sane speeds, midfield break at 250. Dump flaps on the downwind at 145 and the jet falls out of the sky. Get on the throttle and it points to the moon. Rinse and repeat. (I thought about you, OP, with newfound empathy.) Until they fix the low speed handling, I think we are better off dumping flaps at 250. Which, if you're gonna do that, you could flip the switch 40 miles out if you want, they come out at 250 anyway.

+1 Also getting accidental activations. Mainly just whacking the hook down by accident. Still. Whole thing is a little touchy. Funny you get used to it really quick. Once you do, it really works. Flipping switches with the oculus controller feels very intuitive. Stabbing into the air for a button press does not. The finger mouse guy is working on a touch board concept for button presses, which I think is cool. Also think it would be cool to have like a bracket you could attach to the throttle to hold the gear lever and flaps switch in the right position. You'd have to fiddle with the IPD to get it right but if you could pull it off -- get stuff in the right position where what you feel matches what you are seeing -- would be darn cool. Like what they are doing with virtual rifles for FPS. The guys who are fabbing up panels are on the right track I think; that could help us VR types too.

Not just that, but you're rendering it at higher than native resolution, and having to scale it back down for the goggles. Interesting thing about the Pimax is that (supposedly) it doesn't require any more horsepower than an Oculus, because it doesn't need supersampling. In support of the OP, having lived with and without MSAA, I vastly prefer to have it in my central vision. If I were playing say a FPS, eye tracking would be the bomb. THing about DCS is, we know where the instrument panel is, we know the target is in front of us somewhere, or at least where we are looking. So we kind of know where the MSAA mask needs to be. I guess that's not the only thing you can mask, you can mask what's rendered way out in your peripheral vision. In that case, eye tracking would tend to obviate the benefit of wide screens. Masking the pixels you aren't using doesn't grow more pixels on the side where you need them, right? Eventually you gotta turn your head. Flight sims is a different kind of thing. The ideal flight simulator would be a physical cockpit with the world projected onto a dome. We are sitting in here, and the world is out there. That is a simpler problem to solve than some other things. VR goggles is not the perfect solution, but they are relatively cheap. My question is, what's the marginal utility of eyeball tracking for this sim. And I think the answer is, not much.

Ditto. Messing around with the oculus supersampling utility, it became clear you gotta turn on one or the other -- PD or SS -- but not both, they seem to be doing the same thing and are at least additive. Also, PD appears to have an exponential effect on GPU workload, backing that off a tad doesn't hurt your image nearly as much as it helps the GPU. Some say the higher PD makes it harder to spot aircraft at a distance. (I can't see the durn things either way) MSAA really helps text and aircraft images IMO. If I had your card, I'd start with a PD of 1.2, MSAA 4, I would turn off any external supersampling, and see what it looks like. Crank up the PD a little at a time till you like it.

I set up throttle as slider with a little curve to facilitate low % handling eg in formation flying and to push AB to the end of the scale. Might stick some velcro tape in the groove to get a tactile indication of AB at some point. TDC slew I reduce Y saturation, trying to flatten out the curve, still working on that. Rudder needs a lot of curve with max Y sat, like 30%. Even then you have to be lined up perfectly on takeoff. Hold the nose off the runway as long as you can when landing. Keep your eyes on the end of the runway. Even then it's kinda twitchy. You get used to it, sort of. Stick, I dunno. I have a little curve like 10-15%, YMMV. Personally I don't think it needs much if any curve. Everything needs a dead zone of about 4%, helps the autopilot and keeps TDC from jumping around. Not a bad rig but it needs more buttons. Having a modifier helps a lot. Still need more buttons. Used a USB keypad for a while, now I'm using a gaming mouse with programmable buttons. On my mouse, I have comm menu mapped to a button. Middle mouse button calls up kneepad, scroll right and left toggle thru pages. I also have flaps and gear mapped to mouse buttons but I think I like it better mapping those to HOTAS with the modifier. So the toggle switch controls speed brake, with modifier it controls flaps. Button 1 controls ECM, with modifier it controls gear. (I fly in VR so messing with the keyboard is a PIA. ) I map HUD to the hat switch. Note you can squeeze more functions out of the hat switch if you use a shift pattern. Forward is nav, up is bvr, down is guns, back and up is next waypoint, back and down is prior waypoint. Radar modes to the 4-way below that. Forward is TWS toggle, up is vertical scan, back is boresight, down is radar on/off. The bottom 4-way: forward chaff, rear flare, up and down control simple radio comms. On the stick, I map autopilot on, autopilot off, and jettison to the top three buttons using modifier. Otherwise its NWS toggle, weapon select, weapon release. On the right side of the base I have startup and shutdown (canopy, power, engines on/off). On the left I have lights and stuff. HUD toggle (easier to cycle thru HUD colors than to deal with brightness controls). If you use a center stick I suppose it's easier to map gear and flaps to the base but I like a side stick. You can map radar range to the slider on the stick but it's easier to slew the TDS. Run it off the top of the screen and it increases radar range; off the bottom and it decreases it. To flip from WVR to BVR, snick the hat switch up to BVR, adjust range with TDC slew, adjust radar elevation with pinky wheel, ready to kill MIGs.

I dunno. There's a difference between looking at a monitor and wearing one. How often are we holding our head still and flicking the eyes around? Helpful if you're flying steam gauges I guess, but I think you get the most out of VR by keeping your head moving. That's the key and I think Kegetys has the solution

I'd turn off AA get pixel density as high as you can. Check out the shader mod. Ditch the shadows and trees, learn to love the desert. Key is to habituate to the screen door, look through it, convince yourself it's not there. Nothing is ever enough, watch your wallet. But yeah I've been doing flight Sims since the late 80s and VR is a game changer

I do a pre-landing check usually before even entering the upwind. Dump flares, set up ddis, safe master arm, check antiskid etc. I whack the flaps to full, figuring they will deploy when they are ready. I'm bleeding off speed and altitude in the break but still typically wind up high in the downwind, I don't get on the throttle until I need to. I think that helps the trim thing but really the hornet is so compliant, it sorts itself out pretty quick. That said I find myself really busy in the downwind trying to get into stable flight. Meaning, aoa nailed, pipper on the horizon. I have not had success trying to fix things in cross and on short final forget it, if I have to touch the stick much at all I screwed up somewhere. I work the throttle silly on final but not the stick. I think you're right, downwind is where the action is, and it ain't easy. My current strategy is to err on the side of being high rather than low, late on the throttle rather than early, hoping to settle down into the groove rather than trying to chase it around. I'm sure that's the wring way to do it but I hate having to make it up every time

You get used to putting the controllers down in the same place every time. You can do the same with a trackball. There's a lot of interest in wearable pointing devices. Google up captoglove, technology is still kind of raw. Best idea I've seen yet, a forum member developed a finger-mouse. You wear it like a ring, has little buttons you click with your thumb. I still think it's helpful to have some keys available. I got a USB keypad and mapped some stuff to it eg kneeboard, carrier hookup... You definitely want a stick and throttle. If you don't want to drop a ton of money check out the thrustmaster tm16000 set which is competitively priced and very serviceable. If you're mainly flying jets you might not need rudders but the bundle is so cheap I'd go for it.

How do you map the rift controller buttons? I'm assuming there's a script file?

Yeah. You can also press the Oculus button on the right controller and recenter from the oculus environment. Extra steps but more likely to get you centered correctly in the cockpit if you get discombobulated.

Are you using TARGET? I wouldn't, it's do-able but complicated, prone to conflicts and doesn't do much, let the app detect your hardware Plug in the gear, go to Game Controllers, make sure Windows can see the stick and that it's responding correctly. Then, start DCS, go to settings for F18 sim (not game). First task is to clear the defaults. Click anywhere in the column for the joystick, hit "clear category." Do the same for the throttle. Then go to axis mapping, make sure the columns are clear, then map your flight controls. Then start mapping out your buttons. I've tried it both ways and the app does way, way better than TARGET.

Have you seen the DCS updater/launcher utility? It's like a command post, it can handle all that stuff for ya and more https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=160053