Baldrick33

Over the years I have found that I favour specific developers for race and flight sims. Not out of any sense of brand loyalty or sunk cost fallacy but simply because they work best at "feeling real" for me and fooling my brain. Looking back at some of the early race and flight sims, it is hard to imagine how I found them convincing but that is part of the developer's trickery working with such limited technology. I do believe that trickery still exists and will continue to do so for some time. I have tried pretty much every other flight sim and for me as a package DCS works best for me in creating an illusion of flying. My first ever flight as a passenger was as an eighteen year old in a Cessna piloted by another eighteen year old, taking off on a grass strip on a blustery day and including a brief flight myself (don't judge!). That was an unforgettable experience that I doubt any domestic affordable flight sim is likely to come close. I find flying Cessnas in sims as dull as ditchwater, devoid of the feelings in the stomach of "dropping from the sky". DCS does come close though to providing me with the visceral sensations through such glamorous combat aircraft coupled with its flight models and immersive sound wrapped in virtual reality. Of course there will always be more that can be achieved through improved modelling and hardware but that will always be the case, the quest for perfection is never ending but the continual development is the developer's strategy and as a community of developers and players we keep on pushing. Priorities will always differ, however, and missing or limited FM features may be a show stopper for one and of little relevance to others. It doesn't just reflect our real world experiences but how we are wired.. We only need to look at how some F1 drivers have adopted domestic sim racing titles as hobbies (and are very good at them) whilst some others don't get on with simulators at all.

I will add that I have no regrets on purchasing the modules I seldom if ever use. Back in the nineties I bought many racing, flight and combat fps titles, each new one rendering the older ones obsolete as graphics, physics, modelling etc. all improved. I remember visiting game shops (remember those!) on release dates. I now focus on a race sim and this combat flight sim and consider the modules part of the continual development which helps the older stuff not become obsolete and grows the package as a whole.

DCS is an enigma. I am drawn by the air combat, other more famous non combat sims leave me cold, yet I spend most my time flitting between many aircraft doing cold starts , take offs and landings. To the extent I own all the aircraft and terrains but master none. That said I have destroyed an awful lot of relatively soft targets! I am happy to support the developers although that isn’t my primary motive, I have just found a natural partner that fits my hobby desires. Coming from a corporate IT world where “tin” (hardware) is relatively cheap compared with applications DCS seems quite good value compared with the costs of some decent flight sim gear, so I don’t fret about the modules that get used the least. I use JoyPro to manage the controls for a wide range of aircraft. It is invaluable IMHO.

I agree. My background is sim racing and whilst this maybe not by any pilot instruction manual I just take off a taildragger by the seat of the pants with lots of small but rapid corrections. I never bother to trim, if the aircraft starts to yaw left I apply right rudder and vice versa, if the nose drops I pull the stick and so on. The rudder dance is much like managing oversteer to rotate a race/rally car with almost constantly applying small corrections to keep the car rotating as desired. I am no great pilot but I just re did that campaign mission and took off without any issue. Maybe my reactions have been honed by many years of sim racing but it all feels kind of natural. VR may help a bunch too when it comes to feeling the sensation of movement as soon as it happens to apply the correction.

Which aircraft is this happening with?

I agree. The attachment of multiplayer to Open Beta makes a genuine “use at your own risk” beta version concept unlikely. I would fully support a third branch to accelerate testing feedback with a wider range of hardware and settings than a closed testing group can achieve.

On my system (8600K @4.9Ghz, RTX2080Ti, 32Gb DDR4 3200) the instant action missions vary from being GPU limited to CPU limited depending on the mission, aircraft and map. So there isn't a simple answer. For example the Apache seems to need more CPU, a furball mission in a WW2 aircraft quickly becomes CPU limited with the number of objects and some of the ground attack missions do the same. So I believe there is plenty of scope for significant single player improvements as the load on the CPU gets shared across more cores.

You can’t please everyone but I am sure many (like me) are very happy to get such updates. Moving into internal testing is a significant project milestone and well worth communicating IMHO.

By default, Windows has lots of stuff running you don't need (want) for a gaming PC. e.g. productivity tools which can be useful for a general purpose PC but eat up CPU cycles, RAM etc. in the background. There are some useful guides of what to stop running, uninstall etc.

On a desk is too noisy for me, so mine sits on the floor and I just deal with cleaning it every now and then. The room is only used by me and the occasional pet visitor doesn't get to go in it, so I don't find dust a great issue. The DIY rack is awesome though!

I also tried my Alpha Prime I have connected to my joystick base and that had the same problem, so my issue seems to be adding another grip. Even though windows kept saying a new usb device was being added it never showed up. It appears to be the product Id changing. Manually changing back to the one in the first grip profile fixed it but I couldn’t find anything to suggest this is an issue anyone else has come across. My only thought since us whether the VPC software doesn’t have rights to create a new usb Id, so perhaps I need to run it with elevated rights. It is working now and I can switch grips so don’t feel like messing it up to try! Now working, the Alpha L grip works well with the Rotor Base.

Got it working in the end. I created a new profile and edited the Product ID to be the same as the working Sharka profile. Exported it and the imported it again and the device showed up in Windows Controllers with all the buttons and axes working. I am not sure why I needed to do this but it works!

I have a VPC Rotor TCS Base with Sharka-50 Grip all working fine. I just received an Alpha L Grip to switch the Sharka for the Apache and although everything shows up correctly in the VPC Configuration software with the new Alpha Grip selected with the base, it won't show up in Windows (nor the VPC Joystick Tester). I have calibrated all axes, updated firmware and created new profiles to the device and saved it multiple times (also rebooted several times) Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? Update: I get the same issue replacing the Alpha Prime R on my T-50CM3 Base with the Alpha L. I see all axes and buttons in the VPC Configuration software but the Base won't show up in Windows Controllers with the Alpha L selected. Note there is distinction between Alpha L and R in the VPC Configuration Software but there is for the Prime.

I think the Open Beta concept is quite sound. People get to choose if they want to be early adopters of the shiny new stuff, with the knowledge there are risks some stuff might get broken. This isn't some kind of corporate app which undergoes massively time consuming regression testing to ensure there isn't a bug in the reporting output (with a standard build client PC), the users provide feedback across a myriad of hardware and volume of testing which a smaller closed group could never achieve. Personally I would prefer a more conservative approach to promoting to stable, such that stable is a more bug free environment but I guess ED know that the majority would prefer not to wait too long for new modules and updates. The multiplayer aspect is a massive conflict as DCS is not predominantly a multiplayer game and Open Beta will often create issues for certain groups of players, be it hardware or features installed on specific aircraft which either creates bugs or imbalance. I guess there is some history as to why Open Beta is widely adopted for multiplayer but with a clean sheet of paper it seems an illogical choice if the aim is for stability and fairness.

It is definitely Input on mine: C:\Users\XXXXXXX\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Config\Input

I have inadvertently moved folders by dragging them in Windows Explorer. Maybe search all your drives for "Input"?

I leave it on the seat next my flight sim seat but now always cover it. I managed to burn the screen on my previous headset leaving it uncovered in sunlight. Something to be wary of (It wasn’t sunny when I left it!)

That is my experience too. As a long time VR user, the first adoptions of VR in race sims lacked positional tracking and many found this both immersion breaking and motion sickness inducing. Once it was added the issues went away. It is even more of a necessity in flight sims where you move your head much more. Also in the early days of VR tracking was more prone to breaking, which again was horrid as you moved your head and the car or aircraft would move with you. The alternative for clipping is to temporarily break positional tracking. Many find that worst possible solution, myself included. It has been discussed many times as a possible option but often the request is for it to be mandated as some perceived quest for realism.

I agree. Sticking your head outside the cockpit is immersion breaking so in my experience I quickly learnt not to do it, just as if I hit my head on the glass in a real cockpit I wouldn't keep doing it

My understanding is the CPU plays a major role in the rendering process and the requirement to render in stereo effectively doubles the CPU work to render in VR

I use motion reprojection on always in OpenXR (or previously on auto using SteamVR). For me it makes 45fps or even 30fps much smoother.

Do you still have the Rift S to test how the 3090 compares with the 3070 with the same resolution settings. By default the G2 will be set to significantly higher than its native 2160x2160 resolution. What resolution was the Rift S running at? by comparing Rift S & 3070 with G2 & 3090 you have introduced a number of variables, WMR, SteamVR or OpenXR, different resolutions etc. all which can require tuning.

I have eject mapped to a toggle switch which has a cover. So I am not concerned about pressing it by accident even in VR. I don’t want to have to turn a toggle switch on and off three times so I use Joy2Key to map it to a key which repeats quickly, I than map this key to eject or eject (press 3 times) depending on aircraft. JoyPro allows me to do this in one go and map across every aircraft.

1. Plug into the dp on the graphics card 4. Yes I can’t answer the glasses questions

PCs can be fickle beasts for sure. My recent experience went like this. Well known race sim had dire performance in VR with my Windows 11 22H2 install (quite old, an upgraded Windows 10 install) Nothing to suggest it was a general issue and everything else including DCS ran fine. I created a fresh Windows 11 22H2 partition. Had the same problem, which again seemed unique to me. Deleted the new Windows 11 partition. Installed Windows 10 and stopped it upgrading to 11 in group policy. Problem solved but nothing to suggest there was a problem with the race sim with Windows 11 22H2. Just me! It could be an issue with your PC, the Windows build, drivers installed and DCS 2.8 that isn’t an issue for others with the same Windows build and drivers. Digging out the actual dll or update may prove incredibly time consuming, far more than trying another Windows build. I do appreciate the frustration though when a perfectly working hardware and software combination gets updated and stops working!