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Ok, ignore Laser guided BOMBS completely for a minute. We are talking about using the laser to generate accurate coordinates to send a solution to GPS weapons like a JDAM or JSOW. The TGP generates coordinates essentially by using trigonometry. The jet theoretically knows where it is in space and it then uses the angle measurements of the target pod to generate where the crosshairs are looking on the ground. You are correct that if you are holding the crosshair on something like the roof of a 5 story building, the bombing computer will not know the building is there and instead draw a straight line beyond it to the ground well past the building. The bomb will likely miss because the jet is drawing a triangle to the wrong point. This is where the laser comes in. By firing the laser at the roof of the building, it is giving the computer the correct slant range to the TGT (i.e. the hypotenuse of the triangle). There is a bit more involved than that, but that's the basic principle. That's why firing the laser when generating coordinates or making a designation - completely aside from using it for terminal guidance - is critical to getting the most accurate designation possible. Even if you were dropping dumb Mk-84s and you had a TGP - you should always shoot the laser to designate your target to get the most accurate spot for the jet to calculate the release parameters. Again though, I have no idea if DCS models this correctly or not.

Sigh, you're misunderstanding. I'll try to explain later after dinner. :)

For a pilot, that's very technical. :megalol:

A "Class A" mishap is simply that there was more than $1M in damage to the aircraft, loss of the aircraft, or loss of life/severe injury. I think the new number these days is $2M. But in any event, you can almost scratch a fan blade of a modern jet fighter engine and incur $2M in damage. So just because it's a class A does not necessarily mean catastrophic. Check these links out for stats on USAF single engine vs Twin engine Class A's https://www.safety.af.mil/Portals/71/documents/Aviation/Engine%20Statistics/USAF%20Single%20Engine.pdf?ver=2019-12-05-121311-920 https://www.safety.af.mil/Portals/71/documents/Aviation/Engine%20Statistics/USAF%20Twin%20Engine.pdf?ver=2019-12-05-121310-513

That's strange. I thought most jets of that era had Over-G trip sensors that would alert MX to an Over-G condition so the pilot couldn't hide it. In addition, I figured it would show up when the MX guys hooked up the electronic download thingy to the jet to record all the MX and BIT data. Did the F-16 not have this too?

This is one of the reasons why you should fire the laser to get the most accurate coordinates.

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.