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First of all, the F-15 motors are pretty much inline. In fact, if an F-15 pilot goes and flies in the civil world he/she would be able to translate that mil rating to a multi-engine but with a centerline thrust restriction. Having a motor out on an F-15, 18, etc is no big deal as far as handling. Wide spread motors like the F-14 are a whole other animal. 2nd, its absolutely not true that a catastrophic failure of one motor would result in losing both. I'm sure it's happened but it is definitely not the norm. Lots of Eagles, Phantoms, Hornets etc have come home on one motor. Certainly if you take an Archer up the nozzle of one motor, its likely to take out both. But there are many many many reasons a motor can fail (bird strike, mech failure, AAA damage from one side, etc) that would not take out both motors. Conversely, there are a lot of Vipers put down in the dirt for precisely the reason that they did not have a 2nd motor. They were not called "Lawndarts" for nothing. I may be wrong on this, but my long understanding was the Navy specifically always leaned toward twin engine jets precisely for the safety redundancy, especially during Blue water ops. Going to the single engine F-35 caused a lot of gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth within the the Navy halls of the Pentagon as I recall.....

That would be cool.

Finally, I turned everything off - all shadows off, MSAA and AF off. Still very little to no change. Something seems wrong here. My machine should be able to easily handle this at 45 FPS with everything on low or off. The one thing that jumps out at me is it seems like my CPU is maxing out. Could there be something running in the background that is eating up resources??? I took a look at task manager and saw there were multiple instances (15) of Steam VR Webhelper open. WTF?? How do I fix this?

This time I turned MSAA OFF and AF off.

Next I turned Grass/clutter, tree vis, etc way down (preload radius still max) and cockpit illumination off. No improvement

This time I turned Steam VR SS down to 100% and left everything else the same. It actually got worse.

I m in the middle of updating (or rolling back) to 2.5.5. But before I did, I took a series of screenshots that were interesting and at the same time baffling. So here is the fpsVR running with the Sim on 2.5.6 / everything set to high as before, MSAA x2, Shadows flat, global cockpiut illum on, AF @ 8x / PD 1.0 and Steam VR SS @ 150%: Poor frame rates as I approach the outskirts of Vegas on the Instant action Free flight scenario.. Poor frame rates as you would expect with those settings. However, see the next series of posts......

Ok cool, I think I'm going to roll back to 2.5.5 now and re-attack the settings. They were running well on the stable version back in early Jan (whatever that load was) before I switched to 2.5.6OB. As for the screenshots, I think my issue is I'm using F12 to take the screen captures because that's taking them through Steam. I'll try the print screen button with full screen to see it that works. Thanks.

Thanks, that's very helpful. Are you running 2.5.6 or previous versions? I'm coming more to the conclusion I need to roll back to 2.5.5 OB until the .6 gets sorted out by ED.

I have PD set to 1.0 as per previous advice from StuartAston and imacken. I'll try those others as well. I've never completely understood what global cockpit illum does. Does it light the cockpit even if it would be in shadows?

Anyone? Bueller?

Yep, I'm aware of that. But others seem to be running similar HW and are able to get those settings up pretty decently. I'm just trying to figure out if I have any settings off that would be throwing my system into slow FPS?

Ok, I feel stupid for asking - but how do you get a screenshot with the fpsVR window showing? I have it up in my HMD fov, but when I do a screenshot - its just the cockpit only. No fps VR window. Is there a trick to get it to display?

Screenshots of the DCS settings and Steam VR settings

batch 2 of my settings

Hi All, so based on various threads and advice - I've been trying to get my rig running as smoothly as possible. However, I'm running into some issues that I'm not able to solve. My system setting are in my sig line below. I'm running an HP reverb v2 and flying DCS through Steam. OB 2.5.6. The screenshots of settings to follow. But in short, no matter what settings I run - when I fly over any sort of city (Vegas in this case), my settings go from a stable 45 FPS down to 30 and occasionally less. I've tried the DCS settings with all shadows off and MSAA off as well as shadows on/flat and MSAA x2. There seems to be no difference in frame rate but obviously the pic with MSAA x2 is much less shimmery. I've also been experimenting with Motion smoothing and SS in Steam VR. I've tried both setting SS to 100% 150% in both global and DCS application settings in Steam VR. Again, the frame rates are about identical between the two settings - with obviously the 150% being clearer and better resolution. Can you VR gurus please take a look at the settings and see if I've got something set wrong? The ting that jumped out at me from running several back to back experiments with different setting in the F-16 / NTTR / instant action / Free flight scenario was that both the GPU and the CPU memory seemed maxed out. Often 10+ of 11 GB GPU RAM was being used and about 50% or more of the CPU RAM was being used. Lots of Red in FpsVR. Thank in advance for any help or advice. Edit: I can't seem to add more than 3 attachments per post - so I'll add the other screenshots in subsequent posts.

I do this with the trackball and it works quite well.

I could never go back to a flat panel after using VR in DCS. The immersion of VR is what makes this sim addicting in the first place. Going flat panel would be like looking at playboy mags when you have a naked supermodel living in the house with you. :megalol:

That kinda reminds me of the scene from the Final Countdown when the Tomkitty's got into a BFM fight with the two japanese Zeros.

Yep. Hitting movers with a GBU-12 is as much art as science. It sounds like DCS doesn't model the PWII characteristics all that well. What were the TGT speeds out of curiosity? Edit to add: Attacking Movers were one of the primary reasons why the GBU-54 was developed because the GBU-12s were so difficult and limited.

It's not incorrect, but it's far more complex and nuanced than that.

That's a common understanding but it not exactly correct. There is a lot more to it that. ATRK is typically used for larger less defined targets like the roof of a building, or a runway or a bridge abutment. However, it can certainly be used very effectively on small discrete targets such as a vehicle. PTRK is usually only used on small targets that offer very good contrast with sharp edges so that the PTRK tracking gate can "grab on" and hold on to it. If the target is too large or too undefined, the PTRK gate will often move around - latching first onto the turret of a tank or the hot hood of a car or truck. But it can also easily lose the track altogether if the target aspect changes and the PTRK can't see that spot anymore or the contrast changes. PTRK IRL often has a mind of its own - moving around the target when you least want it to. As a general rule of thumb (ROT) for employing LGBs, For a static target it's usually best to always use an ATRK as its often more stable than PTRK. Even on non-moving vehicles. For movers, if you're simply tracking them and not bombing them yet - PTRK will allow you to do it mostly hands free as it will latch onto the vehicle and stay there (you hope). However, whether to use ATRK or PTRK is often personal preference and is driven by the target features itself. Moving targets are more complex than just building a PTRK and dropping the LGB. For PWII bombs (GBU-10 and 12), you need to lead them with the crosshair. IRL, if you have a PTRK on the vehicle, the bomb will miss unless it's barely crawling along. Anything over about 10mph and you need to lead the truck/car/tank whatever by some amount for the entire time of flight. So PTRK won't work at all. If its a GBU-24 or GBU-54 (future maybe), then PTRK is the way to go. I haven't played enough with the PWIIs in DCS to see how it replicates hitting movers. It could be that PTRK works fine, but is unrealistic. Finally, you need to understand that there is a huge difference between LGB and GPS weapon employment, and from your follow on questions - I'm not sure you get that difference. LGB weapons need the laser on the target for at least the last 8-10 sec before impact. Without the laser spot, they will likely miss. However for a GPS weapon (JDAM, JSOW, etc) the laser is not required at all. Hell, the TGP is not even required. You can type in coordinates only in the UFC and let 'er rip. The TGP w/ laser, as others have said, can quickly send those TGT coords to the bomb without you having to fat finger them in. The laser is not required, but using it during the designation gives you much more precise coordinates than without the laser. However, once you release the GPS bombs, they cannot see the laser or targeting pod AT ALL. So what you do with a track after release is totally irrelevant. You can boresight the pod and the bombs won't care.

That's fair enough. I hadn't thought of it from that perspective, thanks.

Out of curiosity, why? Do you move on to a new aircraft as soon as they come out? Do you ever master a single platform or is it more of a survey of different aircraft for you. This is not criticism in the slightest, I've just been curious how people treat the different modules.

I wasn't sure if this was a wishlist or a question for 2.5 world, so I put it here instead. My question is would ED possibly entertain the idea of an aircraft module evolving over time similar to how real aircraft evolve with upgrades of hardware, Software loads, added weapons capability, etc. First of all, I understand the ED model of picking an aircraft configuration and timeframe to model rather than trying to make it a Frankenstein of many different configurations. I have no issue with that mindset and it makes sense. However, let's take the example of the F-16 Block 50 from 2007. Ok fine, The Ed Dev team needs to drive a stake in the ground and work to a specific configuration and tape load. But let's say by the end of this year it's all complete and everyone is happy (fingers crossed). What I'm talking about is in say a few years, ED could upgrade the 2007 Block 50 F-16CM to a newer configuration with more current weapons such as GBU-39, JASSM, JSOW, etc. It seems like it would be a natural evolution to pick another time point in the past - for instance 2015 and remake the current F-16 module to be the newer one. Maybe it gets a new motor like the PW-229, or the V9 radar, etc. I would think this would not only be a natural evolution of an airframe that mirrors reality, but would be a great pay model for ED to introduce new upgrades without having to offer an entirely new aircraft. People could pay to have the new upgraded F-16 with newer capabilities or stay with the original as they choose. I would bet most would pay to get new capabilities. But those that don't can still fly - not unlike real life ANG or Reserve units who sometimes fly older models. It just seems like people will get bored with a module that stays stagnant once completed. I'm not suggesting upgrading it constantly, or we would be in EA and OB forever. But maybe every 2-3 years (even every 5 years) a module could evolve IF (and that's a big IF) data becomes available on open source in order to correctly simulate it. Thoughts? To the Mods, any feedback on this business model?