Baldrick33

Yes it does! Rather than be any kind of criticism to the modern age of sims, it is why I am grateful we have the enthusiasts we do have as developers since the big publishers abandoned the genre. Developers need to be more creative now how they seek funds, most have commercial projects which help them fulfil their dreams of making “our” products. I often think they could make more money targeting the wider markets but want to make the products they do and I respect that. I hope they do make a decent wage out of us.

I still stand by my view that transmitting the sensation of flying and driving was far harder with tiny monitors, blocky graphics, desperately slow processors, non accelerated graphics and limited controllers. It needed to stimulate imagination to fill in the gaps. There were some pretty dire sims back then, so clearly some didn’t find it that easy!

The tricky bit has always been creating the “feel” of flying or driving. Looking back the frame rates were so low and the graphics such low resolution and few polygons that the developers had their work cut out to be in any way believable. That was the art form IMHO. The jump from Microprose Formula 1GP to Indycar by Papyrus was one such quantum leap in feel in the early 90s, still 320x200 graphics and about 15fps. Emulating real world stuff evolved the most dramatically in the nineties in my experience for all the reasons stated, it is what simulations are all about and far from easy and why some key people are revered by sim fans over the years.

In many ways the nineties is incomparable with now flight and driving sim wise. I “discovered” racing sims in a computer games store around Christmas ‘89, picking up a box and looking at the images and description on the back, it was Indy 500 by Papyrus. There was no internet to distribute patches or updates so the next update was a sequel. The difference between releases was massive, due to the aforementioned progress in hardware and also because we didn’t have the small updates we get with many modern games, DCS included. My recollection was that flight sims was “pretty big” back then and declined with the consolidation of studios. Microprose seemed a big player at the time, so Spectrum Holobyte appeared reasonably safe and a compatible fit until Hasbro came along with zero interest in the genre and just wanted the other assets. Compared to DCS the Microprose titles might seem a bit lightweight but at the time they were blockbuster titles and priced at premium rates, in the UK the equivalent of $112 at todays rates. Indy 500 was produced by Electronic Arts, now synonymous with simulations that include The Sims, FIFA and Simcity, very different to what we considered sims in the nineties… Last time I checked on Steam, Russian Fishing had a far bigger user base than any flight sim.

Comparing old games like the original NASCAR by Papyrus to modern sims of course the simulation is much better, the simulation in modern more arcade titles like Forza is undoubtedly better too, simply due to the limitations imposed on developers in the early nineties. The key thing is we saw a demise in the development of the more hardcore titles when the new publishers who bought Sierra had no interest in racing titles and the license for Nascar was acquired by EA for arcade rubbish and we had to wait for the rebirth of Papyrus as iRacing thanks to having a billionaire fan of the old series in John Henry. Normal market forces would never have given it to us. When I think of golden era it was for relatively hardcore titles for the time and I do think the nineties was the most active era for that. I don’t mean to sound snobbish but sales of Forza or War Thunder don’t really count, they are a different genre in my mind. The fact they are immeasurably better in every way to the old games is as irrelevant as saying a VW Golf is better than a Ferrari 308 because it can lap the Nurburgring faster, is more reliable, has space for a family and their luggage and is more fuel efficient. They are incomparable.

Obviously simulations today are streets ahead of what we had in the nineties. I would still look back on that period as a golden era in terms of rate of progression, both in software and hardware. We also saw the demise of some of the key studios post nineties as they got swallowed up by the likes of Hasbro and Vivendi who saw no future in hardcore driving and flight sims which became a somewhat depressing time for fans of the genre, wondering where the next big titles would come from. It took some time for other studios to emerge but they are still thin on the ground. The nineties saw regular blockbuster releases which pushed the driving and flight sims genres forward massively year on year. At the start of the nineties sound cards weren’t the norm, games would have to support the PC squeaker and CGA graphics, by the end we had accelerated graphics cards, the ubiquitous Soundblasters and CPUs many times more powerful. I don’t think we will ever see that rate of progress again, which is partly down to diminishing returns with hardware and also the investment from the big publishers.

Really? I just tried since updating and the same (at least with the mouse) This track is using the mouse wheel with the latest patch installed. f15 alt v2.trk

Here is a track. Using the mouse or assigning a button have the same effect - it skips 2989 f15 alt.trk

It seems to have been the same with sims since multiplayer became more than just the province of a few enthusiasts racking up telephone bills. "We need more players." "Not those players!" My experience with race and flyings sims is the numbers of genuine enthusiasts who want to treat a simulation exactly as they would the real life counterpart are very limited. What we always want is more like minded players, which are in short supply and generally managed through groups organising themselves, who do it very well IMHO.

It is the opposite of the world I lived in of competitive sim racing where bugs that can be exploited for competitive advantage need to be squashed in testing. I guess it exists similarly in combat flight sims but DCS isn't designed with fair competitive multiplayer as a primary goal. The development moves through various stages of unfairness in early access as systems get developed - missiles that have advantages they shouldn't, missiles that suffer disadvantages waiting for the development of radar and so on. To the extent that getting the early fixes is perceived as levelling up to the multiplayer community and worth the risk of a game breaking issue. It is a different mindset. One that with my background in sim racing I find a little hard to grasp but I can rationalise it. Whereas for single player the balance in single player campaigns has been tried and tested in stable, which each open beta needs to be reviewed. Hence campaigns tend to get updated in open beta prior to promotion to stable. Of course stuff can slip through but it kind of makes sense.

Multiplayer is an enthusiast playground. ED just provide the tools. There is way too much content to regularly populate servers with aircraft and maps a player might wish for, notwithstanding a myriad of difficulty options that player might desire. To achieve multiplayer for the masses you need an established base of users with a very limited content to create critical mass before you allow players to host their own servers. You need to make multiplayer more attractive than single player by either offering incentives to grind content or restricting access to it through limiting AI availability and/or capability. With numbers comes the opportunity to effectively matchmake and provide competitive environments for all levels of ability, which in turn grows numbers. This allows for growth of content without diluting the players on the core servers. There can be good business reasons to do so (think certain sim racing and war combat multiplayer titles) but that is a completely different business model where multiplayer numbers are key to success than we have here. Personally I would doubt it is worth the effort and pain. It can't be done half heartedly, there are countless sim racing titles where people bemoan the lack of people, the poor matchmaking and dire standards. The enthusiasts enjoy the freedom to choose and are prepared to put in the effort to organise events. Being at the very top end of the ability they provide a flagship for demonstrating the capability of the sim.

You have several options, you could edit the device names as mentioned and using the Virpil software change the button numbers to match your chosen equivalents on the warthog stick but that seems a bit convoluted. I would invest the time in JoyPro as @speed-of-heatsays, it will give the best flexibility if you have a number of modules especially as you might want to change which button does what as you get used to using the new stick. I am not sure there is a simple solution for changing hardware as there are no standards for button numbering so every device will be different and maintaining a conversion database for every device is too big a task for the devs especially as it is mostly a compromise with the sticks we have compared to the real thing. The best they can do is provide defaults for obvious ones like the A10 with a Warthog stick etc. After that it is user preference.

I have had both stable and openbeta installed for a couple of years, “just in case” openbeta is problematic. If you have the disk space it is easy to do and can copy the controls between versions. I haven’t used stable in all that time, it is just a contingency. Although there is always the risk, I would happily recommend openbeta.

I think you answered the question why a new a new module goes into the open beta release first. It is a new build, new modules often require new updates to the core software. It is possible new content introduces bugs into the build affecting other content and performance. Also if you don’t want to deal with bugs the first version of new content may not be for you, let the open beta community deal with it before it is considered stable enough.

I believe that can be achieved using the Chain container.

Pretty long thread on the Aero here:

With WMR you just need to set the the WMR profile to be the default OpenXR runtime, not sure how it works with Varjo

Just on the off chance, have you definitely not got SteamVR as the default OpenXR runtime in SteamVR settings?

Well put. Having worked in corporate IT for many years the costs of high availability SLA would focus the mind on just how critical down time really was. Presenting these costs to the managers of the complainers who demanded their precious reporting systems needed to be always on 24/7 unsurprisingly got a polite no! My experience of DCS is the uptime matches many business critical systems in corporate environments with much greater consequences for down time.

A quick go on Sinai in VR and the performance seems excellent thus far.

Those are two quite different experiences. The HP is a PCVR device, they had some issues with cables supplied and replaced them with an updated design on request where people experienced issues. The Quest Pro is sold as a standalone devices with a charging cable in the box. If you want to connect it to a PC that is an option that many wouldn’t wish to pay extra for a connecting cable.

Pretty sure you need the mobile app to get it setup. "Setup requires an iPhone or Android mobile phone and the Oculus app (free download)"

I think the issue is that comparing resolution doesn't tell the whole story. What we (as Reverb owners) can't do is simulate how the lenses work. The Quest Pro has the same resolution as the Quest 2. Yet people who have used both say the former is much clearer due to its lenses. The general consensus seems to be the Quest Pro is a visual upgrade, which has quite surprised me given the initial reaction to the device when launched but I guess relatively few had used the device for much time in DCS.

@mbucchia Thanks for the comprehensive reply, that makes it much clearer.

Thanks for all the replies re DFR. I don’t want to derail this excellent thread but what makes the Aero work with DFR & DCS whilst the Meta Quest Pro doesn’t?