[It took me checking the Corsair to notice something about the F-5E FC...]

and being saddened by the fact the Corsair doesn't come with a menu OST, noticing the F-5E FC has an instrumental version of good old Horse Of The Rising Sun in it, pretty much makes up for it for the time being. It literally had me baffled for a while...

 

Can we have some sort Aces of the Pacific / Baa Baa Black Sheep -esque piece for the Corsair, though? 

 

For anyone wondering about how I called that one piece, here's a very well-made parody of that Animals classic:

Spoiler

 

 

[Patch Note Discussion December 2024]

35 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

DCS - Core

• VR. VR controllers disappear after selecting the VR tab in settings - fixed.

 

Thanks! That was a nasty one...

[Upcoming plane directors patch]

Can't wait to get the plane directors. But I must admit that I'm not fond of the teleports. ED actually should consider adding a black screen fade effect to those so they're less immersion impairing. Check out how Valve solved this with the blink mode for movement in VR with Half-Life: Alyx. While I've been playing roomscale VR with continuous movement ever since, I tried it to see the difference and it's bigger than you might think compared to the instant tele.

And also, once Aprils Foal's hits again, just add an "A Few Seconds Later!" meme screen in between for the LOLs!

[Patch discussion August 2024]

5 hours ago, YoYo said:

Currently 1TB for DCS is not enough, the simulator does not grow, it only swells. After Kola I changed the disk to 4TB only for DCS, each map now weighs 100-180Gb, plus new modules etc. If it continues like this, by the end of 2025 DCS will have 2TB.

In general they should change the strategy and release all the earth with autogens, with the current strategy, at some point people will stop buying new things due to the size of the maps and some of modules.

 

 

I've been using junctions for ages to get around this issue... and I'd recommend using Link Shell Extension to do this, although I still use Mark Russinovich's junction tool from Sysinternals, even though mklink /j [folder name] [target path] can do this out of the box since Win 7 IIRC. Currently having 400GB worth of DCS maps on my 2nd SSD which is a 4TB one (Crucial P3 Plus) for just games, while DCS sits on my sys drive which is a 1TB 980 Pro. Still gotta flash the firmware of the 2TB one that initially was my 2nd drive because of this and then making it my main drive, which involves taking out my chungus grapics card (ASUS Noctua Edition) multiple times and even my CPU cooler (Noctua NH-D15) once as well. DCS also takes up 445GB on my main drive currently, being almost half of its capacity.

 

4 hours ago, peachmonkey said:

"Graphics. Moon is oversized - fixed. "

dang it. That was my favorite feature for the past month!!

 

Dangit. I prefer my Moon(butt) to be "oversized" as well.

Spoiler

 

[Patch discussion July 2024]

23 hours ago, ricktoberfest said:

The oculus (meta) beta drivers don’t work with openxr toolkit. It crashes on loading. 

 

I guess, and I hope so that it won't affect running it through Virtual Desktop just using SteamVR. Never really had any visible or noticable advantage with OXRTK, probably did everything wrong with it (I gained a few fps with turning on FFR, but that's just waaay too visible in a Quest 3 and IMHO not worth it). And since it isn't being supported by the dev anymore, its decline is evident.

 

Still waiting for my Moza AB9 anyways. And since I wanna learn some new modules, I better do that with the new setup.

[Patch discussion July 2024]

On 7/12/2024 at 5:40 PM, C3PO said:

Superb changelog and great work from all the team!

PS: Next month can you add this:

FIXED: Razbam-Eagle Dynamics dispute

Seriously can't wait for that and them getting back on track, no matter how much of a wishful thinking that might be!

[Patch discussion July 2024]

42 minutes ago, YoYo said:

The answer is simply, link cable has better compression, its very visible. On air link you can use only 250 Mb/s bitrate, on the cable 960. Near 4x more.

 

That is, if that hot garbage even works at all... both Air Link and wired Link have always been quite a laggy mess for me, ever since (Quest 1 since May 2020, went through 2 and 3). Virtual Desktop, however, just works. And yes, I did all those OTT bitrate shenanigans and other "fixes" that I found, nothing ever helped. I do prefer wireless anyways, so that's not the biggest deal for me, luckily. And with my complete and utter bullcrap eyes, I couldn't even tell the difference anyways (I still only use like 120MBit/s over Wifi 5, actually)

[Patch discussion July 2024]

11 hours ago, koen330 said:

I just upgraded, and my handcontrollers are not working anymore in VR. 

The handcontrollers work in the new Launcher window, but then you are still in the "PC interface".

As soon as DCS starts up, no more handcontrollers. They are still enabled in the DCS settings as before.

I use Quest 3.

Can somebody confirm similar behaviour, or am I missing something?

edit: on discord more users are having same issue....

 

 

I just did a quick test with no HOTAS stuff attached with my Q3 and I could use the controllers - but I'm running Virtual Desktop. Most users still prefer inferior link calbes for some odd reason...

 

  

9 hours ago, Badger1-1 said:

ED please listen! The new MP UI is really good, BUT! Why wouldnt you make it, that we can click on the Airfield and choose the airplane, instead of still having that awful list....

 

Totally agree, that list has to be swapped for base-specific lists.

[FC3 doesn't exist?]

Running into the same issue, glad it's known.

[DCS 2.9.6 Delay]

On 7/5/2024 at 6:29 PM, YoYo said:

I know, probably yes, but they wrote clearly:

so that's why few pople are surprised .

For me Discord its a waste of time for scrooling and chat only. Good for possibly quick information, with lots of LOL, ROFL and WTF, thats all.

 

Same. Useless junk which barely even works (phantom notifications, anyone? No, not about the Ph-4! Also, that complete and utter POS - Piece Of Software - is unable to save most of the settings. Once I log out, they're gone and I have to reconfig almost everything again everytime, it sucks! Also, sound quality typically reminds me of good old Roger Wilco. Anyone still remember that from the 56k age?) that is for me, and to be fair, it's literally a glorified IRC with mediocre voice chat and slightly less mediocre than Microsoft Teams video streaming bolted to it. Oh, and it's Discord. Same goes for Asocial Media (somepone has to spell it right!). But well, classic forums apparently don't appeal to hipsters these days. It's boomer stuff...

 

And to be fair: It happened before. I clearly remember having heard of ED's smaller news bits dropped on Discord and or Elon Musk's massively overrated 𝒫яØи site 𝕏itter (IPA: /ʃɪt.ə(ɹ)/) only a lot previously.

 

I can patiently wait for the update, got enough other stuff to do and I'm waiting for my Moza AB9 FFB base (= sAlVaTiOn! Finally!) anyways.

[Cyber Taurus FFB base]

OK, now Thrustmaster, VKB and VPC have to come up with those as well, or they're gonna be dead in the water straight. What shall I say? First Moza and now Winwing? I mean, VPForce does exist, but we need more players in this sector. Finally!

[Flaming Cliffs 2024 | Supercarrier Updates | Launcher]

On 6/14/2024 at 6:21 PM, Gunfreak said:

As far as I know there was never planned a MiG21 FC4, MiG21 is Mag3 and not ED, so probably not something ED can just do

Maybe it's time to refresh your memory. Apparently FC2024 is what initially was planned to be relased as Modern Air Combat in Autumn 2018 as a standalone game. That one was to include all the FC3 planes + the ones FC24 will now come with + the MiG-21bis and the L-39ZA. But well, I guess they just went with the easier to do ones now and dumped the trainer for reasons (probably not that popular) and the MiG-21 because it is a 3rd party module and would require M³ to work on it as well.

[OH-58D Announcement]

Bought... site was a little slower than usual, but it worked fine.

[Mastering your First Phantom Flight]

Thx.

 

Also: Screenshotted and put into a special locker. I've seen Victory's content disappear phipheever before.

[DCS F-4E Phantom II Release Date Announcement- May 21st 2024]

Listen to the soundtrack, it's on Meteor's bandcamp...

[DCS Patch notes discussion May 2024]

Meanwhile, why don't you go over to Meteor's bandcamp and drop him some nice $6.90 at least for the amazing soundtrack he made for the module and enjoy that until the update is ready unless you got the vinyl already?

[DCS F-4E Phantom II on Steam, Merchandise and Keys - News]

On 5/8/2024 at 8:18 PM, IronMike said:

Come next Monday, May 13th, we will also discontinue the merchandise and special edition packs on the Heatblur Store. If you still wanted to grab a t-shirt or vinyl for yourself, or one of the special edition packages, we kindly suggest you do it before then.

 

Bummers! That's why I couldn't find it on the store page anymore two days ago... guess it's the regular version then. Probably missed it by just a few hours, if not minutes.

Please make it possible to get a bundle with all the vinyls (so, hopefully three then) with the next module and I'm fine. Can wait. And I'd love some bigger sizes for the shirts as well in the future. Thx!

[[solved] Can't map my devices anymore, everything is greyed out]

Came back after a few updates that I didn't fly with... Title says it all, not all devices are affected, though. Can't map my Sidewinder FFB2 and Crosswind pedals anymore, anywhere. They show up in the mapping page, but all actions are greyed out for them. My previous mappings are still in the user folder (made a backup, just in case), but aren't being loaded up. I don't get any new Win/USB-GUIDs for them apparently. Any ideas?

 

Edit: device list and sys specs in profile

 

Edit 2: I guess I found the culprit... just tried the UH-1 and it's fine in other modules. So I bet it's being caused by the input luas, going through a repair now.

 

Edit 3: That actually was it. Works again

[DCS Newsletter discussion 10th November 2023 - Mi-24P New Campaign and Pilot Model | AGM-45 Shrike Development | Virpil's Shadow's Trophy 23]

Quote

The AGM-45 Shrike missiles were widely used in the US Air Force by many tactical aircraft since the Vietnam War. In fact, they were the main ARM of both the multi-role F-4E Phantom aircraft and the specialized F-4G Wild Weasel. In DCS, you will be required to select the seeker from a special weapon settings panel in the Mission Editor. 

 

I hope that will also be possible through the rearm & refuel panel, the comms menu or the kneeboard during a mission while staying on the ground, ideally in a way that other devs can make use of that as well like the A-4E-C team even. Sounds great!

BTW I wish the screenshot showing the menu was in higher res.

 

Edit: Maybe I should have read the thread before... but anyways. Good to know this will be accessible during a mission!

[Long standing performance issues that I could never really fix (especially with Quest headsets)]

 I've been having performance issues in VR for quire a while now, with two major impact points...
- the first of which being somewhere in late 2020 crippling my DCS performance heavily when using a Metabookulus Quest of any kind (don't have a Pro, though) - which I couldn't solve yet
- the second being a major performance impact in VR only with the 2.8 update last November, apparently only really affecting that WMR garbage with the Reverb G2 which was very promising when I still had the 1080 in the rig, but basically didn't gain any performance at all by upgrading to the 3070, plus adding a ton of WMR crashes since (still got the old cable, waaay out of warranty, and I honestly don't wanna fix that anymore while having a Q3 with way better lenses) already before taking the hit, which it only partially recovered from with the step to the MT - and now the addition of DLSS.

I started typing this in the patch notes thread with this, but thought it'd be better off as a single post over here:

 

Imagine being just barely able to run the thing at 30ish fps in the G2 at 2456x2404 per eye on a 3070 that was over a grand and then reading this... (and yes, I know the 4090 is a completely different piece of kit)

16 hours ago, KCOOL said:

At 4852x47xx, someone said it was optimal for G2

 

Weirdly enough, I'm pretty much locked at 90fps in the CV1 at 2160x2400 per eye. Quest performance is almost similarly as bad as the G2's, I just recently was happily able to post a 90fps screenshot based on the Snapdragon Game Super Resolution thing and Synchronous Space Warp in Virtual Desktop. Only to find out later that VD displays twice the frame rate that DCS does with SSW enabled. I'm literally pegged to 180fps in pancake at 1290x1200 with the same settings, but even DLSS doesn't really seem to help in VR.

My specs are in my profile, I need to update the driver versions and settings though, so here are my current ones:

Running MT client with --force_enable_VR --force_OpenXR. As opposed to my settings in the profile banner, I've disabled the single pass stereo line a while ago and kept it off as it apparently doesn't make any difference anymore (it absolutely did a few years back). HAGS is off. Can't enable REBAR (requirement checker is all green-lit, but it doesn't work and basically kills all my system's S3 state capabilities), so I left that off in BIOS.

I'm still on the 537.13 driver, though, but I guess I won't see any major impact through updating since I'm having the issues with the Quests which are my main target to fix for years now and no driver update ever changed that. Something kills my performance for WMR and the Quests in both (Air/Cable) Link and Virtual Desktop. Only VR that runs nice and smooth is the CV1. I'm carrying around this issue for 3 years now, went through 2 new Quest lines, a completely new rig, a GPU swap in that one and an OS reinstall as well as trying all the shenanigans and settings that others suggest both here and in various YT videos. I literally had better frames in the Reverb G2 at the default 3168x3100 with the same rig, but still the 1080 instead of the 3070 in there...

I've basically tried anything except for taking the step to Win 11 and using the OpenXR toolkit. I just want to be able to really enjoy my DCS in VR again... thanks for any help in advance!

[Reverb G2 OpenXR hand controller does not work since 2.9]

VR controllers don't work for me either since the update. Tried CV1, Q2 + Pro (Air Link), Q3 + stock (Virtual Desktop) and G2. Someone else already opened up a thread saying their Index Knuckles won't show up either. So I highly suspect it's a general issue not related to any specific headset / set of controllers. It's stimply just broken currently and all we can do is patiently wait for a fix.

[valve index controllers not working after update]

I have it on keyboard and it doesn't work there...

[valve index controllers not working after update]

Same with Quest (3) controllers. They're completely gone in DCS.

 

Edit: Same with CV1.

Also: Can't recenter anymore. DCS' "VR recenter" keybind in UI Layer is dead.

[New spotting is great / New spotting is overcooked feedback thread]

9 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

Hi, 

we will be taking in the feedback from everyone over the coming days and tweaking in future updates.

thank you

I'd suggest that any changes should probably result in an option selector in the difficulty settings that can be set and enforced on all clients in a multiplayer environment. This is the only way to get most of the people happy, by giving them all the options to choose from. Those should be the prior system, the current one and probably new one that's kinda a blend of both which probably should be the default one as well.

 

Wouldn't want to have better visibility for a patch or two, only to have it taken away from me just because most of the community thinks it's not realistic and maybe even making a radar for finding bogeys superfluous (which it totally shouldn't). Ever player/simmer is different and they all have different setups. Making it possible to scale it to everyone's preference is the right way to go. It also makes it more barrier free for people with vision impairment. And making it so that a server can enforce a setting will kill any discussion about exploiting it right at the get go. We've been through that with the label thing a lot already. And I think using the label system as a substitute workaround in the past for what was added now apparenty (didn't have the chance to try it myself yet) is a thing that needs to be replaced, and the moment for that is right now with the new approach. It just needs ways to customize for best possible personal experience.

[New spotting is great / New spotting is overcooked feedback thread]

This is quite literally upping my hopes of finally being able to do some air to air stuff even remotely again. I've been having A LOT of spotting issues in DCS ever since (even before my eyes went bad), the only times I didn't was back in the olden days of LOMAC running at just 800x600 or 1024x768 (remind you, Lock On did have 2x2px black dots over every object at any distance) and when the 2.0 Alpha was a thing with those impostors that actually were too big and made it too easy even for me.