Stringer52

Great job on the ICP. I took a look at the 3d printing project and had to chuckle .... there was a day when I would attempt something like that; however, at my age (71, longtime retired, widowed, kids grown, downsized house) I can afford to simply buy anything I want. But I feel feel sort of done at investing much more in this hobby. Although the Winwing ICP is almost too good a deal to pass up. I've been flightsimming since the days when our only choice of aircraft was the Wright Flyer and everyone was just beginning to ask, "What's a polygon?" In fact, just today I packed up my Honeycomb stuff after a short flight in MSFS after the realization that it had gotten kind of boring, except for flying the MD500 in VR. But flights in a GA? I think I'm done with that. So many of the hobbies I had counted on to carry me into retirement, some of which I had been doing since childhood, have simply played out and I don't want to do them anymore. So, I think I'll just stick to what I have and make the best of it. Besides, I need to focus if I ever to hope to master even a small part of DCS and the Viper.

Yeah, I;m really of the same mind. I've built panels for other sims, but I always begin to realize I'm doing more building and tinkering than flying. Also, I simply get tired of all the wires and stuff entwining the computer desk. A 2D setup is fine for practicing, but with my 4090 card and Reverb G2, VR is the way to go. I have the Winwing Viper HOTAS, and that seems to be enough in VR. And I have the old Thrustmaster MFDs attached to a small second monitor that work well in 2D. I'm having a really hard time resisting ordering the Winwing ICP because it looks so cool. Besides, reaching for the mouse and manipulating those great in-game cockpit panels can't be any more time-consuming than reaching for all the switches mounted to the desk. And I never lose situational awareness in VR. I firmly believe less is more and prefer not being stuck to one plane, or sim. I have the Tobii, but for some reason headtracking in 2D just never did it for me. Those elaborate cockpits some have built do look cool, but then they have small monitors that would kill it for me. To each his own, I suppose. This is my setup I built strictly for the Viper. The desk behind it is where I attach the Honeycomb stuff for other sims and a second monitor for Navigraph. All are removable so the desk can be cleared for 3D designing, printing and other stuff. When I fly the Viper, I simply place the monitor and rudder pedals on the Viper. Very modular and with minimal mess. Here's the flip side. I've even attached an old Logitech throttle quadrant to the side of my chair for helicopters. I just remove the Honeycomb Alpha and clamp my old joystick for copters or Spitfires. All very quick-change.

I've set a goal to really get to know the Viper in DCS. I'm also getting into 3d printing and some doing some DIY panels using the Arduino and DCS-BIOS. I was just wondering if anyone can suggest a short list of panels you feel are essential to have at my fingertips while flying? I don't see the point in replicating all the panels, particularly not those accessed only on the ground, such as during startup, raising and lowering canopy, et. I'm sure I'll figure it out once I'm airborne, but I'm interested in hearing the community's ideas. Thanks in advance. John in Indiana

DCS and MSFS 2020 were the only apps I used in VR while sitting at my desk. All the others - of which there are only a couple (I'm not too into VR yet) - were played sitting or standing in the middle of the room, so no jitters. And not while going through the VR setup. I did notice a little tracking problem when I played Lone Echo (using PC Link cable), but it cleared up when I moved to the middle of the room. I suppose I should move back to the desk to test it out, but whether that is why the jitters stopped or not, it works for me, and I'm leaving well enough alone.

Yeah, Crispy, that was one of the things I tried right off. But making sure there were not objects in front of the headset .... desk, in particular ... cleared it up.

I recently started using the Oculus Quest 2 in DCS, and after a very short time, I was ready to throw it out the door. For some reason, as soon as I appeared in the cockpit, the view became all jittery and the scene was tearing as I moved my head around. I searched every forum and site I could find, trying to fix this. Changed this setting and that setting. No go. After narrowing it down to the headset tracking, I even installed a new overhead light in the empty bedroom where I had it set up, thinking the room wasn't bright enough. No change. Perhaps it was the PC monitor causing bad reflections. So, I mounted the monitor onto the wall, separating it and the desk on which I had my Thrustmaster HOTAS mounted. As soon as I activated VR, I turned the monitor off. Problem still there. I moved the desk to the middle of the room .... still no difference. The last thing I could think of doing was to isolate the headset. So, there I sat, in the middle of the room, just me and the headset. Lo and behold, the jitters and tearing stopped. Problem solved. It was the desk the HOTAS was mounted on that was causing the tracking problem. So, I took an old office chair that was gathering dust in the garage and built myself this little rig that leaves the immediate area clear of any obstacles. It sits serenely in the corner, leaving half of the room for a Guardian area whenever I'm using the Oculus for some other task. The Spitfire in DCS looks and performs wonderfully in VR. Good thing, too. I was ready to move to another house in a different state.

I am pretty adept at exporting screens, but ran into a little trouble adding a third one for the the HSI and the RWR. I get stutters pretty badly when I fly. Take away tthe third monitor and the stutters go away. I'm running a pretty good machine with an Invidia RTX 2060 Super. I'm trying to understand if it's me, the monitors or DCS, so I'll know where to start looking or just give u p. I moved everything over to a larger second screen and all is well, although I prefer the setup I had wit h the 12-inch and 8-inch monitors. Maybe it's positioning? Perhaps the "large" screen resolution is just too weird. Any ideas? (Jeesh it's hard to type with a bandaged right thumb)

Yes, that's true about Helios. I've always had mixed feelings about panels taken outside the sim. To have one in front of me and yet have the one in the sim swinging around as I look around with TrackIR seems less immersive. There's even a learning curve just reminding my brain that I don't have to look for the MFDs in the sim that at first almost covers the same amount of time as it does to reach for mouse and then focus on the screen. It also seems as if I'm finding myself still looking at the screens in the sim to make sure they show what my panels are showing. Only natural, I suppose. There might even be a name for that phenomena and a study that looks whether you save any time or not. If not, you PhD candidates out there, might be a good topic for a thesis ... LOL

Actually, I was surprised it was so easy. My biggest stumbling block was that I thought it was something I had to accomplish through the Helios program, since it was the first thing I encountered when I began to think of of exporting the panel. I had a "eureka moment" when, while scrolling through some posts about home cockpits, I picked up a fragment of a post where the writer said something about you only need Helio to export the panels, not the actual display. That was done inside DCS with the monitor setups. From there I was on my way and in about 15 minutes had it up and running. My next step is building some panels with switches, but I haven't progressed enough in the F-16 to know which ones I need at my fingertips during flight. I don't, for example, want to make one for turning on the battery, since I'm satisfied using the one in the sim.

All it took was the Thrustmaster Cougrar pack, a 12-inch monitor I got on Amazon, and a simple monitor setup lua file and flying the F-16 became reealllly fun.

Yeah, I don't like that, either. What I do is zoom in on the HUD, eliminating most of the panel. I'll probably go back to one monitor till I get to the point of really getting into combat, then Ill revisit it.

DCS.jpg Well, got everything working. Helios looks good; Cougar sits nicely at upper left (will put right one in later). Saitek switch panels at left work well using DCSFlightPanels software. I have lots of buttons set up. VoiceAttack handles comms. The only thing is, the indicators are a little jerky; not as smooth as in the sim. The nice thing is, it allows me to sit a little closer to the HUD, and I can set my TrackIR profile so I don't look down, just left, right, above, etc. However, can't decide if I like coming "out of the sim" like this. I suppose I'd get used to it, but it seems a shame to waste those beautiful cockpits. What do you think? John in Indiana

This is my first time posting, so I apologize in advance if this is the wrong place. DCS runs fine on my system; however, whenever I exit the sim, I get some crazy behavior in Windows, requiring that I reboot the PC. If I try to run Explorer, I get the message "Working on it". Tabs in things like the Task Manager flicker. It all clears up whenever I reboot the PC. Not a major issue as far as usage, but I just hate workarounds and not understanding what's going on. I would think it's a video driver issue, as sometimes after rebooting the PC, I have to also restart my monitor, as it looks almost like a negative of a photo. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.... John