TED

I fly a lot with nvg, especially this time of year. We are using the newer generations of white phos goggles, so the image is black and white. Just to be clear, we do not view anything in the cockpit through the goggles. If and when u need to check anything inside, we look under the goggles. This means the goggles cannot be too close to the eye. As a rule 2-3 fingers between the eye and the goggle tube is what I use. Then looking under is pretty simple and comfortable not requiring too much head movement. You can absolutely see the outer rims of the tubes when using them. Very often when new pilots start using nvg they do try to adjust them as close to the eye as possible, as it’s natural to want to be able to see as much as possible, and it feels a little unnatural in the beginning to have such a narrow fov. However training this away is an important skill and a perishable one. After 25 years of flying with nvg, I still feel rusty quickly if I haven’t flown goggles for a while. Good scanning techniques and discipline are vital as well as regular looking outside under the goggles for LED lit masts. Unfortunately many of the modern gen, whilst offering greater clarity and sensitivity, do not pick up light from LED lighting. What dcs could probably do is simulate this double environment with the goggle fov, then outside that, instead of black, it’s the normal night lit environment, with clear view of cockpit elements and outside environments according to the light conditions.

Couldn’t agree more. The a10 was the first module I really got into in dcs. Over the years I’ve learn others and really enjoyed them all. The a10 somehow always has something else for me. After probably a year away focusing more on f15, 16, 18, I got a bit bored of the fast jet stuff. Too clinical and efficient. My real enjoyment is cas and a2g so I have come back to the a10c again and I love it. The systems, the pure role, the weapons and loiter as well just the way it flies. It’s my firm favorite dcs module by quite a long way, and I’m not implying there is anything wrong with any of the other modules. They are all fantastic and have given me so much, but the a10c is just something really special.

Yeah, I just spent another morning trying to get this thing to track. Following all the specified directives, distances correct, heights good, lots of adjusting. I’m done with Pimax. This just ruins my dcs experience when I spend 30-45 mins just trying to get the headset work. All worked fine a few days ago with the 2 base stations. Nothing at all changed and now they will not track at all, so I’m done getting frustrated with the 8kx. The Pico 4 is giving me an infinitely better experience, as it actually works.

I’ve had an 8kx for a while now and have to say when it works it’s amazing. The full fov is just beautiful as is the image. There is the issue - WHEN it all works. The constant tracking issues are just a mystery. Everything will work fine one time. Next time, nothing changed, no adjustments to the 2 lighthouse base stations and it will never detect them. I’ve gone through every fix on the net and the mystery just continues. It seems since the last software update it got worse and less reliable. The strange thing it does now is that the boxes for lighthouse bases in Pimax software remain grey, but it does not say “not tracking” under the headset, even though lighthouse is selected as tracking option. If I unplug the base stations the grey boxes remain. It’s a lottery as to what it does next time I switch on the computer. It may work straight away. It may take 30 mins of unplugging and plugging in and restarting before it works or it just may simply not work at all. All this has lead me to pretty much give up on Pimax, which is a shame because I really love this headset, but the frustration is just too much. The forums are full of the same issues and there is a complete lack of any solutions. A headset such as this should be a bit more robust and user friendly. There are lots of comments mentioning how other electronics can interfere with the tracking! I mean, come on, seriously? Something designed for using in a simpit around a pc is sensitive to other wires and interference? Smells a bit fishy to me as far as explanations go. I now have a Pico 4 as well, which just works perfectly every time and straight away. The image on the p4 is fantastic and on a par with the Pimax, except with better clarity edge to edge. I just really miss that wide fov.

I have pico 4 and an 8kx. Had a reverb g2 before that. I love the pico 4. It does everything I want and does it well. Works great in VD. The lenses are great. Resolution is Really nice. It’s clear from edge to edge almost. I can read all gauges an displays easily without having to move my head much. For me it was a clear upgrade from the g2. I have recently be comparing the 8kx to pico 4 and surprisingly the pico 4 is my preferred option. The Pimax is nice and I wanted to love it, but it has too many little flaws, however that fov wins it many more points, but the tracking and setup up every time is a real pain in the ass, and sometimes it just doesn’t even pick up the base stations. It can take anywhere from 10 mins to 30 mins to just giving up to get the Pimax to play. On top of that there is a little bluriness with the Pimax due to the fresnel lenses that is non-existent in the pico. For the price of the pico it’s an amazing little headset. It’s comfortable, fantastic image quality, works every time, good tracking that’s never once failed on me and decent audio too. Edit - playing again today with the 8kx after resetting all the tracking files and firing it up again, I remembered whats great about this headset in dcs! On large Fov and all adjusted properly on my head with full resolution, it’s just amazing and I don’t think anything can beat this.

I actually just got something working last night. Using openkneeboard with a pink page. Then adjusting the size of the box to cover the ufc. I can then bind a control to switch it on and off if I need to input into the ufc. Stages were - 1. Make a pink png file. I used 255 red, 0 green, 255 blue. 2. Enable passthough in vd. Unfortunately this is only possible in high settings (not ultra or godlike) 3. Configure passthrough with 5% similarity. 4. Open dcs and use the openkneeboars settings to move it into the right position and set size accordingly. This is not an ideal solution but it does work. Of course graphics settings are lower. Theres a lottle reflection from the desktop, but setting similarity as low as possible reduces this. Alignment can be a bit tricky and with the pico 4 there is a bit of parallax error so it's not really possible to align 100%. If u can love with the downsides though its useful to be able to see the ufc when punching in coordinates and other ufc info.

I'm using wifi with a dedicated router next to my PC, which my pcnis connected to via ethernet cable. I then connect pico to the same Internet via WiFi. With amd I found hvec not to work well andnuse h264+ with bitrate at 400 mbps. I disabled openxr toolkit and run pico är 72fps and cap fps in dcs to 75. All dcs settings High or max. Msaa x2. Depending on mission u may or may not want to reduce shadows.

When u r in game have you tried looking at the task manager performance graphics to see what is maxing out and throttling performance. Following that, u might get a better idea of where to investigate further.

Did u try experimenting with different codecs? I found for me h264+ works best. I ramp up the bitrate to max no problem. Are u using oxr toolkit? Try disabling that too if u r.

Ooh this was a while back now. I managed to get rid of pretty much all stutters after last update. I did a couple of other things that may or may not have helped. I cleared out a lot of mods and started again with adding only what I needed. I installed QVFR. I upped my RAM from 32 to 64gb. It seemed like in the previous release it was metashaders that was causing some problems. If I deleted them before starting things were way better. I increased all dcs settings now to max and in this case increasing the distance rendering seemed to actually reduce stutters. Finally I uninstalled openxr toolkit. That seemed for me to fox some things immediately. Either way now as of Feb 2024 everything runs very smoothly again although I can't say 100% for sure exactly what the cause or solution was unfortunately.

Great work! That's exactly what I was thinking, although I thought it wasn't possible to actually edit or change the official modules because they were encrypted! How did u actually manage this? Please do share the files. I'd be very interested to give this a go and perhaps play with it and tweak it if I can. DM me if you prefer.

I feel the optimal solution to this would be a at the modeler/developer level, whereby they can produce an option to have a mask layer over certain components in the modeled cockpit. Or indeed simply change the existing color completely of the various cockpit panels/controls to one single unique color. For example a magenta mask over the ufc, the edges of the MFD’s and any other panels we wish to have a physical view of. If they were to do this we could then simply use the VD pass through to exclude those masks, thus giving us the view of the physical panels. Unfortunately we do not have access to the various module design models, but if sufficient demand and pressure was put on the developers, I’m pretty sure this would not be a particularly difficult or time consuming task, requiring them to render some extra options for MR ability. I’d expect in theory a community 3rd party free mod aircraft would be a place to start and would require someone with a bit of blendr experience to create the masks. These could then be presented as “options”. Surely we can’t be that far off actually achieving this. Perhaps one of the better community mods would be prepared to give it a go?

I was thinking the same. They clearly have their eye on the f15 and it does seems to be stealing a lot of the popularity from the f18 in dcs. I never expected it to be as good as it is, especially on EA, but I’m not sure I’ll ever touch the f18 again now with the f15 in my collection. I’d be very happy to see a ufc.

FWIW om using a 7900xtx With 5800x3d, 64gb ddr4 ram and a Pico 4. the performance is outstanding. Previously I’ve had 3080, 6900xt, and it just doesn’t come close in comparison. Admittedly i haven’t tried a 4080, but I can’t imagine it comes close to 7900xtx in performance. I run pico 4 now on godlike in VDXR. All dcs settings to max, with 4x msaa, all shadows on, max draw distances etc etc. literally nothing dialed down. Recent small tweaks to dcs in updates seems to have made a lot of performance gains (for me at least). I also use QVFR. Game play is very smooth, looks amazing and I couldn’t be happier. Mostly I play dcs liberation campaigns so they are busy and lots going on.

I may be getting out of my depth on this one but my curiosity has been ignited by the possibilities of mixed reality in the latest vr headsets. With Virtual Desktop there is now the possibility to add a pass through mask. This would require the textures of the areas to be masked (therefore allowing the headsets cameras to omit) to be altered. For example, if one had a physical UFC for an f18 and wanted to use it in vr, in theory we could create a mask on the in game model over just the UFC in a unique colour- pink seems fairly common to mask with. Then the passthrough mask will show the physical ufc only or at least the physical area through it. Of course some alignment would be required to line up the physical ufc with the virtual cockpit. So my main question is how feasible is it to do this and manipulate the cockpit textures in this way? Can anyone give me a few pointers on perhaps whereby start?

I sold my g2 and got a pimax 8kx. Never really got everything ironed out with that so bought a pico 4. I couldn't be happier with the pico 4. A great headset.

I'd also go for an ....x3d cpu. I'm running a 7900xtx and 5800x3d and run everything on max. Used various different headsets but all on max or over sampled res. 64gb ram I think also us a good idea going forward. Right now I'm on 32gb and it works fine, but I see with each update it's getting more and more utilised.

I'm very pleased with the announcements. For such a relatively small team, i really do think ED is punching well above their weight in the amount of quality development they are pushing out this last couple of years. I'm very excited about quite a few things here for 2024, but mostly the iraq/afghan maps and the CH47. Having served and flown there, this really will have a special relevance and realism for me. The amount of new missions and interesting campaigns becoming possible really adds a lot of growth to an already great platform. Huge thanks to ED from me.

I have to agree. I have quite a few other expensive hobbies too, especially motorbikes! But for all the money I’ve spent on dcs - hardware, software and other bits and bobs, for the amount of sheer enjoyment and time I’ve had out of dcs over the years, it a minuscule price and worth every penny and more. Can’t say the same for everything I spent on my bikes over the years!

To be honest I’d be very happy to see a price history masking function in the shop . Not just to mask from my wife but also myself. ED has pushed out too many great modules that I’m like a kid in a candy shop sometimes.

Yeah, I probably don't really need to lock the fps but it's a bit of a habit I picked up from pimax and reverb. I ended up becoming too OCD about micro stutters and this helped. Probably very much mostly in my own head now too .

As @CptBligh mentioned, I'm also using a 7900xtx (with 5800x3d cpu) and I'm extremely happy. Cutrently using a pico 4, but was also using a pimax 8kx. I fly mostly dcs liberation/retribution campaigns, so very busy with assets and effects. I have godlike resolution on pico, textures high, shadows on, and most of the dvs settings high. It all works and looks very good. A lot has improved this year as well with the dcs engine and multi threading helped a lot. I actually prefer to use it a 90hz on the headset and then lock 45fps in dcs settings. It seems that this gives me the smoothest game play, although by turning down a few things I could easily maintain 72fps but I like all the visual effects to he there.

Yes. I have a 5800x3d.

The issue was mostly with loadouts. I had an agm154 center pylon and cbu97 loaded either side. I could fire off the 154 but the 97 would not show up on 5e armament page. Bit weird. I’m still on version 1.2.0 as I can’t for the life of me work out how to update to the latest 1.2.1, so that may have something to do with it.

Has anyone managed to get dcs liberation or retribution to work yet with the f15e? I managed to get it to fly but weapons don’t all seem to work or show up properly.