Baldrick33

I didn't see any real improvement using this. I tried lots of settings but the loss in quality and gain in performance seemed similar to simply reducing the SteamVR SS.

Removing as much "stiction" as possible has been key for me to enjoy flying this aircraft. I did the spring mod for my Warthog stick - removing the big spring and moving the four small coil springs from bottom to top. It makes for very light resistance ( I also have a 10cm extension) but will still recentre although not from full deflection. I tend not to bother trying to trim it and seldom have the joystick centred and I find I have the most control this way. The Warthog throttle on the lightest friction and angled down isn't a bad collective but also using it for aircraft messes with my muscle memory (old dogs, new tricks and all that!). So I have re-purposed an old CH flightstick, removed the pitch spring and angled the base at 45 degrees and it is a super precise collective albeit with no friction to hold it in place. It makes for a great experience as long as you keep holding the controls. With the mouse buttons mapped to the CH buttons there is little need to take a hand off although I have also mapped the collective up and down to the CH hat, so I can drop the collective, immediately pull that hat back to restore it to level flight and then let go if needed. In VR the CH makes for a surprisingly immersive collective

I find it the same in sim racing, to be ultra competitive I would still recommend triple screens but for a sense of being in a car VR wins hands down. I have no sense of flying an aircraft with monitors now, I have tried a number of times.

Once in the cockpit I get a blue cross either way. Mouse off the blue cross moves with my head. Mouse on the blue cross moves with both my head and mouse. Same open beta version.

I would say if you can manage Half Life:Alyx you should be fine with DCS. I cut my teeth in VR with race sims and never had an issue with DCS. Maybe a fixed wing aircraft might be better to start though.

The key thing is to try for short periods, the moment you feel nauseous then stop as you typically can't get through it, things just get worse. My first go I believed VR wasn't for me, I felt really bad which lasted for over a day. I tried again a couple of days later just for ten minutes or so and stopped. I gradually increased this to 20, 30 minutes and in a week or so I had got my VR legs. That said I still can't really manage games where you walk or run without using transportation locomotion. Seated games like flying and driving are perfect for me but it took a little while for my brain to adapt to movement I could see compared to what I could sense.

I can throw it rally style around the agility training course https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3309227/ even get in the hangers and turn it around and out again, land on roofs including the curved hanger ones. However my big challenge is slowing down to hover speeds, where I often end up spinning to the left which takes me ages to recover, sometimes not all all, or descend too fast and am unable to recover. For example landing on the ship in the instant access free flight Caucasus everything seems fine until I get near the ship and I am following it with full right rudder and sometimes it starts yawing to the left. I feel I need to drop the collective but don't have enough height, pushing stick forward seems to make it go backwards more. Eventually some forward and left cyclic seems to slowly address the spin, providing I haven't already crashed! Generally I feel it is my impatience to rush the manoeuvre and inexperience but once I am on top of it I find it as easy as the Huey, just getting on top of it from fast to slow, high to low is a real challenge for me!

I have use mouse on. Note the mouse still works with VR in addition to where you look (which can be a downside as you have to stay still when moving the mouse accurately), the blue crosshair moves with your head and the mouse. I just prefer not to use the mouse in the cockpit preferring to look at the switches and use a bound button for LMB, RMB and rotary for mouse wheel. If I need to move the cursor without straining my old neck then I use the aforementioned mouse up/down bound buttons.

I use Joy2Key to bind vertical mouse movement to a rotary but it could be to any hotas button pair. This dispenses with the need for using a mouse in the cockpit to get at those awkward to get places. I have another button bound to recentre the mouse position again using Joy2Key.

There is a thread for this under bugs and problems:

The P47 feels like a more recently developed aircraft, both in terms of visuals & sound but also in how it feels. Maybe it is simply the extra weight but it just feels like it has more fidelity to the model to me. Of course whether that makes it more fun will come down to preferences as the P51 is faster and more nimble. The P47 just feels the newer simulated model to me.

I am in what I expect is a very small minority that didn't get on with PointCTRL. I think it is an ingenious solution and well implemented , I just never felt as immersed as pressing a more physical switch. I have also got pretty adept at accurately looking at a switch, quickly locating the button box for a right or left click or to rotate the rotary button. It just feels more physical than pressing a micro switch in mid air. This is real preference stuff mind. I also use a Logitech Quadrant for gear lever, flaps and canopy (RPM on warbirds). I don't want to be staring at the lever whilst flying and can easily locate these with a bit of muscle memory, just like operating a gear shifter in sim racing in VR. Personally I have found the whole control aspect of DCS using VR quite fascinating and have tried many combinations of physical switches and clickable cockpit controls to improve immersion. If I spent as long flying I might be a bit better at it by now All I know is I enjoy the experience of flying in VR with DCS immensely.

Joy2Key has a neat function to centre the mouse which I have mapped to a button next to the buttons mapped for mouse buttons. As I said I also have a rotary mapped four mouse movement up and down. I never need the physical mouse to do anything. it is a preference thing but I like voice attack solely for comms. It doesn’t feel quite right talking to a relatively old tech aircraft like a modern car, probably just me though!

I dislike using a mouse to operate cockpit controls so I have bound a right and mouse click to a button box which is close to hand and easy to find in VR and just look at the control and press the button. I find this more immersive. I use rotaries which are clickable and then use the rotary for the mouse wheel. I also a rotary to move the mouse cursor vertically if needed to get at those hard to get places without straining my old neck (like oxygen switches right at the back of side panels)!

I have a few Arduino boxes which sometimes get swapped. Initially I created a batch file to swap the controller files in the input joystick folders. I copied this into each Aircraft’s folders and ran it. More recently I have used Joystick Gremlin to merge the Arduinos into one virtual controller and hidden the Arduinos from DCS. This seems to prevent any swapping of devices. Usually though it is unplugging them that causes the issue more so than a DCS update.

There are quite a lot of missing keybinds, it is just part of early access and stuff to do as I see it. In the meantime there are some clever folk who have worked out how to add them and providing them on these forums which is much appreciated.

In the Service tab you can check "Check for update on startup". Then you will be prompted every time there is a new update available.

Thanks for these, very helpful. Took me a while to work out the folder structure as the DCS folders in Mods/Aircraft have been named Mi-24P and Mi_24P. I didn't spot that for a while!

You can do however many you want.

I don’t know about the VPC software but you could certainly do this using Joy2Key

If the only thing bothering you with the Vive pro 2 is the fluctuating resolution then I would think you could comfortably set it to a value that is both safe for performance (i.e. the high figure never goes above x) and a better image than an Index (when the figure drops to y). Now I liked the Index but the resolution is unfortunately at a previous generation from the Reverb & Vive Pro 2. Unless there are other things you think the Index would be better for?

Image quality can be a bit subjective, a mix of clarity, colours, shape of image etc. Whilst I found the colours better out of the box with the Vive Pro 2, with reshade now we can improve the G1/G2 but still the VP2 is a bit better. yet clarity wise it was a real wow moment putting the G1 back on. Of course it could be down my eyes, getting a proper fit (although I spent hours fiddling with the Vive Pro 2 straps and swapping face plates trying to get a decent view). Whilst the FOV is nice the binocular overlap where clear lines of the lenses could be seen in the image bothered me, it just detracts from the immersion I just don't get this with the G1. Of course others will find the G1/G2 too restrictive FOV wise, I just like the clear view it provides. The VP2 feels a big clunky headset, I never felt comfortable with it and the back of it kept hitting the race seat I use. For me the image quality in terms of clarity was a retrograde step but then I don't mind moving my head to get the sweet spot in view nor worry too much about FOV. I actually found the Index the nicest FOV as it had extra vertical as well as horizontal over the G1. In fact if the Index had a higher resolution panel it would be my choice. It is what I hoped the VP2 would be like. In the end it just didn't work for me but there is only one way to find out!

I got two base stations and a single controller off of eBay. During setup I bricked one of the base stations doing the recommended firmware update. I didn't need the controller at all. One base station ran fine. I later fixed the other one by finding out how to copy the firmware from the good one to the bad. I noticed no difference in tracking with the second one connected. I never did use the controller. Regarding controllers the Vive Pro 2 has a system button on the headset, the only thing I used a controller for the Reverb for - to set up options in Steam dashboard. This is a plus and minus - you don't need the controller but it is easy to hit putting on the headset but a swine to find to turn it off!

For exclusively DCS I would recommend the G2. It is plug and play in terms of the WMR software then you just need a couple of free Steam apps and you are good to go, all will be loaded when you fire up DCS. The inside out tracking is fine for seated applications and the so so controllers will just sit on a shelf. You don't need to rig up and power base stations. Having tried Reverb G1 & G2, Index, Pimax 5K+ & recently the Vive Pro 2 the Reverbs provide a clearer image in spite of the extra resolution of the Vive Pro2 and just has a greater wow factor for me in a DCS cockpit. That is at some cost of FOV but I would always put image quality over FOV, at least whilst I can move my head around comfortably. Speaking of which the Reverb is a lot lighter and for my head much comfier although it will vary by head shape etc. The Vive Pro 2 has a clear distinction where the lenses overlap (like binoculars) which bothers me, doesn't bother others, whereas the Reverb has much more of a single viewport to the virtual world albeit a smaller one. The Vive Pro 2 will definitely need to be modded in terms of face plate as crazily they have cut holes in the sides to allow for glasses which allow a huge amount of light in. If you have a window or bright lights it will create terrible reflections of your room in your view. Not a great issue as face plates from other devices fit and are readily available . The Vive Pro2 is a big headset with a lot sticking out the back so if you have a high backed seat it is easy to keep hitting the headset on it as you look around. Not a deal breaker but the Reverb (even the G1 with its clunky connector) is less obtrusive. By now you will gather I don't really like the Vive Pro 2. It didn't fit my head very well even with a variety of different width face plates, I ended up stuffing foam to fill the gaps between my face and the plate to stop reflections even after ditching the stock one with cut outs. It was hot and uncomfortable after 15 mins or so. It doesn't play nicely with iRacing needing revive to make it run as an Oculus. I frequently lost tracking for a few seconds if I touched the headset (EMF interference with my sim racing kit I believe - I have had that with every headset using base stations). I had a few extra steps to remember - turn on the link device, power up the base stations. Hardly a big deal in the scheme of starting up aircraft in DCS but personally more of a faff then WMR. Plus in an effort to get close tp the image on my G1 I had to crank up the settings really high with the inevitable impact on performance. At the same settings the VP2 looked woefully inferior. That said the G2 lenses are designed to use higher supersampling than the G1, so the G2 vs VP2 performance may be closer. The problem we all face is a lot of what I have said is subjective, some of it probably irrelevant (EMF issues) and some definitely down to my head size and shape, maybe even my eyesight (I actually find it easier to read the writing on the dials in a DCS cockpit with my G1 than I do my real world car!). However, I do remain convinced the Reverb display is of a higher quality then the VP2 regardless of resolution, much like a top of the line 4K TV is a better picture than a budget 4K TV when you look at them side by side in a store. Also the other benefits of tracking and controllers become irrelevant if it is seated use only.

I am using this: https://github.com/fholger/reshade/releases/tag/openvr_alpha2 I assume this is the same thing being referred to for VR? Just copy the contents of the zip file into the DCS World bin folder