AlpineGTA

Ok, that's good to know. Thanks.

To launch DCS VR (stand alone, not Steam) with my HP G2, I first click on the SteamVR desktop icon, which then starts Windows Mixed Reality, once they're both running I then click the DCS desktop icon to start up DCS, which works fine. The only problem is I then have two desktop windows both showing what's going on inside the headset, one large vertical rectangular one and the WMR one above it. My question is, are these two windows taking up CPU resources that might be robbing me of some VR performance? Do they both need to be running? Am I starting DCS VR in the correct order? Is there a way to close these windows but still keep DCS VR running? Thanks.

Ok, thanks for the input guys. I suppose I should just try it for myself and see...

I did a back to back comparison between my Quest 2 and G2 using the same DCS settings and same missions. Interestingly I was getting roughly 5 FPS more with the G2. As I've said before, I don't obsess over FPS, as long as it's smooth, I was just using it as a benchmark to compare. I was only getting 25 FPS in the Viggen at low level in a thunderstorm but the F3 view flyby was smooth with the G2 and unusually it looked less smooth in the Quest 2. The performance of the Quest 2 did seem worse than usual but I have been messing with some settings using OTT to get better performance in MS Cloud Simulator. I think that's why in the past I haven't bothered with OTT as I never found it gave any performance improvement. I always found it better to just turn ASW off and tweak the settings in DCS. Anyway, I will be sticking with the G2 from now on, I was just curious to do a final back to back before I stopped using the Quest 2. I have a question though - I have MSAA x2 turned on in my DCS settings. If I turn that off have you noticed a significant improvement in performance and does it look noticeably more jagged with it turned off? Thanks.

I've not had time to get back on it yet since my initial few hours getting it set up last Friday evening when it arrived. But to be honest my initial impressions were not good. A lot of this is subjective and down to personal preference, so caveat, this is just my initial thoughts. Just overall, I think the Quest 2 is a better all round VR headset. It costs half the price (minus link cable) but it feels like a much more finished product both on the hardware and software side. It feels better built, particularly the controllers, the controllers are more comfortable, require less batteries and last longer, the software is easier to set up and has slicker features, the wireless stand a lone feature really is a boon. And I don't particularly find the G2 any more comfortable. Despite the spongy bit for the back of the head it's still just velcro straps. I much prefer the head strap on the Rift S for comfort, but obviously that could be subjective and down to the individuals head and face shape. The cable also is stiff and unwieldy compared to the Oculus link cable. Regarding DCS, again the Oculus software seems to do a better job at running smoothly at the same FPS. So for example, if I drop as low as 25FPS in the G2 it can stutter, whereas 25FPS in the Quest 2 can still be smooth and comfortably playable. Although the image is sharper, I wouldn't say the leap of the G2 over the Quest 2 is as big or as noticeable as that of the Quest 2 over the Rift S was. I think the Quest 2 runs the G2 very close. Most gauges are still perfectly readable and clear and the sweet spot seems much bigger. I didn't really notice as massive improvement in ease of spotting either - although I have increased vis. range to extreme to try after you mentioned it and I haven't gone back yet to the Quest 2 on the same setting to compare. But, yes, I think the black dot of a distant aircraft does look sharper and less of a 'smudge'. If you already have a Quest 2 then I think you should be perfectly happy with it and shouldn't feel the need to rush out and get a G2, at least not just for the extra image quality, the FB thing is another issue. Now, having said all that, and like I said a lot of it is personal and subjective. Do I regret buying the G2? No. I'm happy I bought it! The colours are better. The clarity is better (although, like I said, I don't think it's massively better and if you have a Quest 2 the clarity is perfectly good and I think anyone would be happy with it.) And after some time tinkering and applying all the tweaks and settings found reading up on the forum I've got it running smoothly with a nice clear image. And I'm glad I'm no longer tied to Facebook. I'm happy! I'm sure with more time there are more tweaks to be done to get it even better, plus I will be upgrading my GPU eventually so I can turn more eye candy back on the DCS settings. Also, I freely admit that I'm a bit of an old curmudgeon, a Victor Meldrew and some of my criticism is down to that! I'm sure I'll warm to it more with more use. So to simply sum up: G2 - better, sharper image than a Quest 2? Yes. Do you need to upgrade to a G2 if you have a Quest 2? No.

Absolutely this. My first experience of VR flying was Ace Combat on the PS4 and it left me hungry for more, something far more realistic, so I downloaded DCS just to try out and I was immediately hooked and bought a Rift 2, then a Quest 2 and now I have a G2. Even before I had the clarity of the G2 I couldn't go back and play DCS in 2D, it was all about the immersion for me. The other week I did a poor weather mission in the Viggen, I returned to base, landed, taxied to a stop and then I found myself just sitting there for minutes listening to the sound of the thunder storm and the rain lashing down on the canopy. It might sound silly, but I found it hard to end the mission, it was just so amazingly immersive. I almost enjoyed just sitting there more than I did flying the actual mission! You just can't experience that in 2D.

Do you start the Oculus software, connect your headset and enable the Link before starting DCS? That's the order I do it in and it works fine.

Well, I've received an email to say my G2 has been delivered so I'm looking forward to getting home and playing around with that tonight. It was very quick, I only ordered it on Wednesday evening and wasn't expecting it until next week at the earliest! Interesting, I'll try my visible range at extreme and see if I notice a difference in spotting. It seems like you're getting good FPS anyway. I'm guessing you've got a stronger GPU than me. Btw, to turn ASW off just Alt+Tab so that your Oculus software is the window of focus on your desktop, press keys Ctrl+KeypadNmb2, then Alt+Tab back to your DCS Window.

I just use the keyboard shortcut: 'Windows key+Print Screen' to take screenshots and then paste them into the default Windows Paint program to crop and save them as jpegs. Quick and easy. Tricky to do in the middle of a dogfight though! For displaying the FPS I use the built in DCS 'Ctrl+Pause Break' keys command. Using external software might be more accurate but it's only for comparison purposes whilst playing with settings. Btw, the third screenshot - VR Options, I've also tried with Shadows set to Low and Anisotropic Filtering set to x8 but haven't noticed much difference in FPS. I also have Civ. traffic on medium and some chimney smoke enabled. Turning these off probably gives a bit more FPS but I like my world to look a bit alive and lived in. Everything depends so much on what module you're flying, what map you're on, how low you're flying, what city/terrain you're over, how many other assets/aircraft are moving and flying around, the same settings can give varying FPS. A real test is the BF 109 instant action bomber intercept mission on the Channel map. Try and get good FPS on that. When I roll in to attack the bombers on that mission it turns into a 10 FPS slide show. I am planning on upgrading my CPU and GPU for the G2 when GPUs are back in stock again at normal prices.

These are my VR settings for my Quest 2: Sorry for the slightly wonky DCS screenshots, I couldn't be bothered restarting in flat mode! As a benchmark, with these settings in the F-16 instant action free flight mission over the Persian Gulf (I find the F-16 to be one of the most taxing modules), I'm getting 25fps, low over Dubai: and 40fps high over the sea: The initial spawn in is horrible and jerky but it settles down after a few seconds. Another benchmark - In the M-2000C instant action "guns guns guns' mission in the Caucasus I'm getting 39fps on the initial spawn in. And this is with all the cockpit lighting turned up to the max as the Mirage has a dark cockpit. Some say having cockpit lights on can impact fps, I don't know to what extent that it true but it sounds probable. You can see the bandit in the HUD just above the gunsight and just to the left of the 31 heading indication. It's a lot easier to see inside the headset: Around 30fps during the dogfight. As I say, I have no trouble spotting and tracking planes but maybe I'm just accustomed to it. The bandit is the black dot just above the HUD glass and slightly left of centre. Again, it's much easier to see inside the headset. Much easier to see in the second picture, but I am much closer: Also, my system specs: i7-3770 @ 3.40GHz, AMD 5700 XT, 32.0 GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB Samsung SSD I don't use Oculus Tray Tool with DCS. I've tried it but I don't find it gives me any performance benefits. Also, after starting DCS up I Alt+Tab to the Oculus software and press Ctrl+Numberpad key 2 to force 45hz, ASW off. Otherwise I find it does jerk and stutter a bit. An easy way to check I have 45hz and ASW off is a quick press of F3, if the plane ghosts and stutters during the fly-by it's not off. If it flies by smoothly then it is ASW off. I also notice stutters when I move my head around the cockpit if it's not off. Obviously this is what works for me with my hardware, it might be different for others. And by the way, I did win that dogfight but somehow still managed to end up floating in my parachute next to my foe in his parachute, whilst a pilot-less Mirage flew in circles around us in full afterburner! Don't ask...

Do you mean image stabilisation? You can stabilise the image using Oculus mirror but obviously this is only useful for Oculus headsets, it won't help you with a G2:

I'm not at home at the moment but I can check later and post some settings. It may just be that I'm seeing the same as you and what you would consider terrible but I'm just acclimatised to it because I don't know any better. I don't have a top spec either, I'm only running an old i7 and an AMD 5700 XT, but I do have 32gig of RAM. I play only single player too and I'm quite tolerant of low fps. I'm comfortable with as little as 25fps, as long as it's smooth and I'm not getting any stuttering I don't really obsess over what my fps is.

Thanks for the info. It'll save me a bit of trawling the forum for all the setup tips. Yes, the plane spotting is one thing I'm interested in comparing because I don't really have a problem with that in the Quest 2. I don't use labels and have gotten quite good at spotting and keeping track of planes in dogfights. So if the G2 is even better that should be pretty cool.

Good summary, thanks. I've got a Quest 2 and I've been really happy with the improvement over my previous Rift S. The clarity and lack of screen door is so much better over the Rift S. I can read most dials, text, gauges and MFDs in most cockpits without having to lean in or use VR zoom. The untethered stand alone part is also brilliant if you fancy a break from DCS and just want to enjoy a bit of quick VR gaming fun, without having to power up your PC. You just whip the headset on and bang, you're there! It really is great. The double tap the side of the headset to look through the pass through cameras and quickly see where you are is a great feature too. I use it often when I want to quickly jump out of my HOTAS chair and walk through to the back of my Mi-8, C-130 or business jet in MSFS2020 to enjoy a bit of chill time watching the scenery fly by. The finger tracking is very handy too (no pun intended!), I use it all the time to do things like quickly enable the Link cable without having to reach for a controller. The controllers too, from what I've heard, are better, less bulky and more comfortable than the G2 controllers and the batteries last an age. But... I've just ordered a G2. I'm intrigued by people, such as yourself, saying the clarity is even better than the Quest 2, which itself, I thought, was a bit of a "wow" improvement over the Rift S, so I'll be interested to see for myself. I also hate the fact that my Quest 2 is linked to my Facebook account. This is another issue entirely, but I'm pretty sick of all social media at the moment, I've been using FB less and less over the past few months and I really want to leave it completely but I'm prevented from doing so at the moment because it'll brick my Quest. So, I'll be sorry to lose some of the cool features of the Quest 2 but I'm looking forward to the social media freedom, the (hopefully) even better visuals, better comfort of the head strap (the Quest 2s is crap) and most importantly, the hours, days and weeks of constant tinkering getting the settings just right on yet another headset! I'll decide after I have everything set up whether to keep my Quest 2 or not. Maybe I'll just deactivate my FB and keep it as a backup. Hopefully another non Oculus headset will be along soon with the comfort and clarity of the G2 but also the cool features of the Quest 2. The DecaGear could be very promising but who knows whether that will really come to fruition or is just pie in the sky...

Can you use these without panels, just the buttons mapped to the MFD functions? I'm thinking it would be great also for VR to save having to use a mouse, pointing device or controller to select the MFD functions. I already select certain functions by feel using the keyboard so I'm sure I could quickly get used to pressing the correct MFD button by feel also and it would be much faster and more immersive than reaching for a controller or mouse.

The other day I was playing that other pretty flight sim that currently seems to be flavour of the month and I'm fortunate that, the way my setup is, I have a lot of open space behind where I sit and the back wall of my room, so I'm able to do silly things like stick the plane on autopilot, get up out of my seat, walk behind my chair and through to the passenger cabin of, for example, the business jet, pretend I'm sat in one of the passenger seats and gaze out the window watching the world fly by. The feeling is amazingly realistic and strangely therapeutic. (I'm surprised someone hasn't already uploaded a YouTube video doing, what seems to me, to be such an obvious thing to try.) Anyway, I decided to try a similar thing in DCS. The only aircraft I could really think of that you can do something like this in is the Mi-8 and the Huey. So I fired up the Mi-8, went for a flight over Syria, got it trimmed out and went for a wonder around the rear cargo compartment. It was amazing! Yes, the textures are a bit low quality because it obviously wasn't originally intended to be shown this way, but the immersion is fantastic, you can really feel the scale and space of being in the back of the aircraft. And if you open the side doors, it's just brilliant sticking your head out of the side, seeing the rotor blades spinning overhead or the ground rushing along below. You can almost feel the rush of the wind! I tried also opening the rear clamshell doors but they wouldn't open in flight, I don't know if that's normal. They did open when parked on the ramp and even that was pretty cool, being able to peer down the length of the aircraft and out through the open doors at the back. It got me thinking, if the Mi-8 had multi-crew implementation similar to the Huey, imagine a full VR crew where your have door gunners, or even someone manning the winch station in the back, calling out instructions to the pilot in the hover, trying to drop off or pick up some cargo. Or a full team of combined arms soldiers, all in VR, ready to jump into action out of the back of the aircraft! It would be fantastic fun. Has anyone else done any other unusual things in DCS VR other than just sit in a cockpit, or think of any other cool uses it could maybe be used for in the future?

Brilliant mate, thank you. I've been getting back into flying the Viggen a lot lately and found your old guide extremely useful, the new one looks even better. Thank you for all your hard work.

Ah, ok, thanks for the reply.

Has anyone else tried the new warbirds instant action train strafe missions on the Channel map and noticed the train isn't actually there? It's not just a problem with the Bf 109 but this particular mission with all the warbirds. You can see the white steam plume of the train travelling along the track but there's no actual train there, it's invisible! I've tried strafing where the train should be according to the steam but there are no hits being recorded. The same mission on the Caucasus map works fine, the train is there. It's just the Channel map.

I was confused why it wouldn't detach so I did the landing tutorial as a refresh and there was an instruction to press "Ctrl+D" followed by another command to detach the chute. I was head down in the cockpit and only caught the "Ctrl+D" command, the second command flashed off screen before I had time to read it. So I'm guessing "Ctrl+D" must be for opening the cover then? I'll have to look down to check next time. A good suggestion to open it as part of your start up though. Thanks.

Flying the Mig-21 this week for the first time in a while I noticed my FPS wasn't dropping like it used to with the radar on. I assumed that ED had maybe fixed it but then I remembered there was an update I installed for my AMD graphics card drivers the other day. Maybe that was the fix. Interesting though that I'm using AMD and not NVIDIA but still seem to be experiencing a radar FPS fix with a GPU driver update. I was having a similar issue with the Viggen radar. I'll have to fly that too to test it.

Yes, I was having the same issue. I have detach chute bound to a switch on my throttle but it wouldn't detach. I found, for some reason, if I pressed Ctrl+D then pressed the bound switch on my throttle, then it detached. It will also detach if you can find and press the "Drop Chute" button on the left side panel in the cockpit and click that. It's under a black switch cover, behind the three flap switches behind the throttle. The MiG-21 doesn't seem to have the most ergonomic of cockpits. The detach switch is nowhere near the deploy switch.

Just a small update on the link cable. My official Oculus Link cable has arrived and it's a little thinner, less stiff and more flexible than the non official one I was using, so there's some comfort gains there. When I'm using it for DCS I feel less tugging on the back of my head. This is obviously subjective to the individual and there may be people using non official cables that are just as thin and flexible as the official one. I also did a connection speed test; my non official one was getting 1.8Gbps and the official one is getting 1.9Gbps, which seems pretty par for the course doing a quick Google search on other people's results. Some people achieve faster, which is probably more down to how good your system is rather than the cable, it seems. In any case, I seem to be getting a slightly faster connection with the official cable. Every little bit helps!

Just a tip for those who may not know. After launching DCS, Alt+Tab so that Oculus Home is the window of focus on your desktop, then RCtrl+NumberPad1 to disable ASW. Remember to then Alt+Tab back to your DCS window. I find this gives me quite a few more FPS and eliminates any jerky head movement inside the cockpit. You can tell whether ASW is disabled by using F3 to watch an external fly by shot of your aircraft. If your aircraft looks likes it's ghosting and stuttering then ASW is probably still enabled. If it's solid and flying smoothly through the shot ASW is disabled. You can also Ctrl+Pause/Break to bring up your FPS on screen to check whether you're getting more FPS.

Thanks, I'll try that. But doesn't that mean you're starting Oculus Home first to enable the Link cable and not just clicking on DCS and have that start Oculus Home automatically? And, yes, even with my Rift S, if I clicked on DCS within Oculus Home, it never starts. I don't know why. That's why I use the just click on DCS and let it start Oculus Home method.