New comp and vr advice

[Sublimearrepentido]

Whats the ballpark for a good comp thatd run dcs well andnpurdy with vr but wont break the bank?

2k absolute limit, and thats REALLLY pushing it. 1 to 1500 would be much better. Is that really possible?

[GunSlingerAUS]

I spent AU$4500 on mine 6 months ago, and found performance terrible on my Reverb. A 55" LG C9 is a much better option, but having said that, some people are ok with the relatively poor performance and lower detail visuals due to the sense of immersion.

[Vertigo72]

Whats the ballpark for a good comp thatd run dcs well andnpurdy with vr but wont break the bank?

 

Im guessing ~2060.

Not the nvidia RTX 2060 card, or $2060 dollar amount, but the year 2060.

 

Seriously, there are performance issues in DCS that until they are worked out, kinda limits what you can hope for. Running DCS in VR smoothly in multiplayer and on a budget is not one of them. Even if you are not budget restrained and buy the stupidest most expensive hardware out there, it doesnt really solve the performance issues.

 

The problem is that past the mid range point, hardware gets exponentially more expensive per performance, and the resulting performance increase in DCS isnt even linear. If you where to trying to get from 75 to a steady jitter free 90FPS in VR, one might consider spending on a 2080 videocard, but when the reality is that you will often be getting sub 30 FPS and stuttering, its hard to justify spending another 1000 to go from 25 to 35 FPS.

 

So instead of upping your budget, scale down your expectations. If you are ok flying mostly single player (or maybe very lightly populated multiplayer servers) and with reduced settings, VR can be made to work even on reasonably priced mainstream gaming machines. But Ill let others share their experience, as I had my VR set for 2 weeks and returned it, its not for me. Too cramped FoV, too low resolution, too impractical to see hotas and use keyboard/mouse. I also found it much less immersive than I expected. I mean, you do feelimmersed in a game, but I never even remotely felt like I was in an actual plane (and I doubt I ever will without G forces).

 

YMMV, but a large screen and headtracking for me is still the superior solution. Its also cheaper and performs better.

Edited June 8, 2020 by Vertigo72

[Wrightie]

For christmas my nephew wanted a VR ready gaming PC. My sister gave me a budget and asked me to build it.

To the best of my recollection this is what i put in it.

I7 4790k, Corsair H100i, 16gb Corsair Vengeance ram and MOBO bundle £300

EVGA 600W PSU £50

Asus Strix 1070 £210

1gb SSD £100

500gb SSD £30

NZXT H500i £90

Oculus Rift CV1 & Touch £230

 

This machine runs DCS in VR on medium-high settings without any issue at all, more importantly though only cost a grand.

 

I got a DK2 in 2014 and cannot imagine playing a vehicle sim on a monitor anymore. I've found that muscle memory has taken over, i'm able to use my HOTAS, mouse/Keyboard but also the MFD Cougars with the headset on.

 

Good luck with your build.

[Sublimearrepentido]

For christmas my nephew wanted a VR ready gaming PC. My sister gave me a budget and asked me to build it.

To the best of my recollection this is what i put in it.

I7 4790k, Corsair H100i, 16gb Corsair Vengeance ram and MOBO bundle £300

EVGA 600W PSU £50

Asus Strix 1070 £210

1gb SSD £100

500gb SSD £30

NZXT H500i £90

Oculus Rift CV1 & Touch £230

 

This machine runs DCS in VR on medium-high settings without any issue at all, more importantly though only cost a grand.

 

I got a DK2 in 2014 and cannot imagine playing a vehicle sim on a monitor anymore. I've found that muscle memory has taken over, i'm able to use my HOTAS, mouse/Keyboard but also the MFD Cougars with the headset on.

 

Good luck with your build.

Thanks this is what i needed more

[Sublimearrepentido]

Im guessing ~2060.

Not the nvidia RTX 2060 card, or $2060 dollar amount, but the year 2060.

 

Seriously, there are performance issues in DCS that until they are worked out, kinda limits what you can hope for. Running DCS in VR smoothly in multiplayer and on a budget is not one of them. Even if you are not budget restrained and buy the stupidest most expensive hardware out there, it doesnt really solve the performance issues.

 

The problem is that past the mid range point, hardware gets exponentially more expensive per performance, and the resulting performance increase in DCS isnt even linear. If you where to trying to get from 75 to a steady jitter free 90FPS in VR, one might consider spending on a 2080 videocard, but when the reality is that you will often be getting sub 30 FPS and stuttering, its hard to justify spending another 1000 to go from 25 to 35 FPS.

 

So instead of upping your budget, scale down your expectations. If you are ok flying mostly single player (or maybe very lightly populated multiplayer servers) and with reduced settings, VR can be made to work even on reasonably priced mainstream gaming machines. But Ill let others share their experience, as I had my VR set for 2 weeks and returned it, its not for me. Too cramped FoV, too low resolution, too impractical to see hotas and use keyboard/mouse. I also found it much less immersive than I expected. I mean, you do feelimmersed in a game, but I never even remotely felt like I was in an actual plane (and I doubt I ever will without G forces).

 

YMMV, but a large screen and headtracking for me is still the superior solution. Its also cheaper and performs better.

 

Entertaining but this really.. didnt help me.at all.

U say lower my expectations. U dont even know what if any expectations i have??? And i do play mostly sp.

Seripusly not to be snarky but im trying to figure something out not be your comedy forum

[Vertigo72]

U dont even know what if any expectations i have???

 

That was sort of my point. Sorry if it got buried. Let me make it make more tangible; I have a 1070 GTX, Ryzen 2600x. 16GB DDR4-3200, NVME SSD. Performance with the low resolution VR set I had (Rift-S) was mostly fluid when in single player, caucasus map, P51, no MSAA, ~100% super sampling, but it looked IMHO, like a pixelated mess. Trying to read instruments it reminded me of F16 Falcon on a VGA monitor. Upping MSAA and super sampling makes it look better, though still not all that great and already made performance borderline in SP and unplayable in populated servers while flying F14. Framerate drops well below 30 FPS and stuttering is annoying on a monitor, buts its extremely nauseating and completely unplayable in a VR set. And for me to consider ditching my monitors for a VR set, I fear i need at least something like a pimax 8K with wide FoV and reasonable MSAA and SS settings, and I dont believe there is a PC on this planet right now that will do that in multiplayer - if at all.

 

So my point is; you probably want to buy no more than a midrange gaming computer, and adjust your usage to what it can do. The difference between what a ~$5-700 / second hand / midrange build will do compared to the highest end, isnt that great. They will both hit a very similar bottleneck a single threaded performance where a cheap I3 or the cheapest ryzen is only marginally (~20% or so )worse than the most expensive CPU on the market. And they will both run DCS with low-ish VR settings in single player, and neither will do MP with high VR settings on a high resolution VR set.

 

As for me; I may revisit VR once we have eye tracking and foveated rendering. That might make it feasible to have the resolution and FoV that VR sets need, without requiring ridiculous amounts of GPU power. I bought the Rift-S to test if I wanted to splash the money on a pimax 8K and CPU/GPU that could possibly drive it. But current tech doesnt cut it for me.

Edited June 8, 2020 by Vertigo72

[Sublimearrepentido]

That was sort of my point. Sorry if it got buried. Let me make it make more tangible; I have a 1070 GTX, Ryzen 2600x. 16GB DDR4-3200, NVME SSD. Performance with the low resolution VR set I had (Rift-S) was mostly fluid when in single player, caucasus map, P51, no MSAA, ~100% super sampling, but it looked IMHO, like a pixelated mess. Trying to read instruments it reminded me of F16 Falcon on a VGA monitor. Upping MSAA and super sampling makes it look better, though still not all that great and already made performance borderline in SP and unplayable in populated servers while flying F14. Framerate drops well below 30 FPS and stuttering is annoying on a monitor, buts its extremely nauseating and completely unplayable in a VR set. And for me to consider ditching my monitors for a VR set, I fear i need at least something like a pimax 8K with wide FoV and reasonable MSAA and SS settings, and I dont believe there is a PC on this planet right now that will do that in multiplayer - if at all.

 

So my point is; you probably want to buy no more than a midrange gaming computer, and adjust your usage to what it can do. The difference between what a ~$5-700 / second hand / midrange build will do compared to the highest end, isnt that great. They will both hit a very similar bottleneck a single threaded performance where a cheap I3 or the cheapest ryzen is only marginally (~20% or so )worse than the most expensive CPU on the market. And they will both run DCS with low-ish VR settings in single player, and neither will do MP with high VR settings on a high resolution VR set.

 

As for me; I may revisit VR once we have eye tracking and foveated rendering. That might make it feasible to have the resolution and FoV that VR sets need, without requiring ridiculous amounts of GPU power. I bought the Rift-S to test if I wanted to splash the money on a pimax 8K and CPU/GPU that could possibly drive it. But current tech doesnt cut it for me.

 

Oh. This makes much more sense sorey to seem rude.

Im still stuck on vr . I havent mwt anyone who hasnt said they will mever go back

I dnt want a supercoomp but this is long in the tooth. Technically this laptop i dnt think or im told often dcs shudnt run on it. Well it does and at combat capable framrates worh some awful lag spikes with no rhyme or reason at times

Hmm. Shit.

[Vertigo72]

. I havent mwt anyone who hasnt said they will mever go back

 

You have now. And I have been racing drones with FPV goggles for almost a decade, so its not like I was a stranger to the limitations of limited FoV "diving goggles" effect, screen door effects or low resolution goggles (my FPV racing goggles and video transmitters use analog PAL, straight out the 1970s, comparable to 640x480 resolution, because analog video is still the only feasible way to have true zero latency). Nor was I untrained in VR nausea, as its the same thing with FPV..

 

And yet I was sorely disappointed. It reminded of me 3D TVs. Something to experience for an hour, and then put aside and continue enjoying the glorious high resolution and wide FoV and peripheral vision of a large or triple monitor setup.

 

Now Im not saying this isnt the future. I bet it is. For some it may already have arrived, you might well enjoy it, but if you can, try before you buy.

[Harlikwin]

I've got a pretty high end system, and at best its "ok" in VR and I get "half" performance, i.e. 45pfs most of the time after a lot of tweaking. For smooth VR you need 90, and unless you are staring at the sky in DCS that just doesn't happen. That being said, I can't go back to flying in pancake mode. However I started in VR on really low end system, and it still "worked". So there is a lot of play in the hardware IMO. I think if you get something like a Rift-S and 2070 level card its probably going to be "ok". And really the issue isn't VR, my rig SCREAMS in VR for everything else, other than DCS.

Edited June 8, 2020 by Harlikwin

[Garrow]

For those who are interested in the real world equivalent to this exceptional VR experience—flying with A VR headset is not unlike flying a pair of military grade night vision goggles. Most in that world adapt to the restricted FOV after a few hours and ultimately log hundreds if not thousands of NVG flight hours over a career.

The point on expectation management is wise counsel. There are three key factors that will affect the VR experience:

1. Both NVidia and AMD will be releasing their next generation graphics cards this fall. It will be interesting to see if the competition will manifest in lower consumer costs.

2. The Vulkan API should provide some performance/frame rate increases once ED releases it.

3. VR technology is improving. The HP Reverb G2 will ship this Fall and the specifications are looking promising.

Good luck with your system build!

Safe Flight

[Mr. Big.Biggs]

Right up until the last OB release, I was pleased with performance with system in signature.

Latest patch screwed it for me. 30fps around any MP activity. Total waste of time currently so I’m dicking around in sp until the 3000 series or something gets done with VR performance. Yes I could probably get better performance if I dial back settings but I shouldn’t have to. Had 45-55 fps on high until last update. Stop making it worse please!!

[Vertigo72]

flying with A VR headset is not unlike flying a pair of military grade night vision goggles.

 

So its just like real flying, except without any physical sensation, and if you substitute the visual sensation with looking at a small pixelated screen before your eyes. So I guess that leaves only the audio sensation ? :D

 

Most in that world adapt to the restricted FOV after a few hours

 

Its not just the restricted FoV that bothered me. In fact, the actual field of view your eyes see, lets call it the "retina coverage" is comparable to what most people will get with a single monitor, depending how large it is and how far you sit from it.

 

The problem is that in VR the same or even larger retina area sees about 1-2 million pixels (depending on set, but also, in theory, in reality the warping software reduces that significantly), where as you get over 8 million actual pixels on a single monitor. That means your eyes see something much closer to real world resolution and it allows you to zoom out further, ie increase DCS FoV setting so you can project a much wider in game viewing angle that is far more like RL. And this projection factor from a wide game world FoV on to a relatively small area of your eyes, is something that we all adjust to easily. Especially with head tracking.

 

VR does give you 3d depth. But I found that unconvincing too. Just like 3d tvs you have this problem of infinite focus, which you dont have in RL. Maybe its because Im near sighted that this bothers me more than others, but that alone totally kills any sense of immersion or reality for me. That might also be the reason why basically no one anymore runs 3d monitors. It used to be a hype 5 years ago, its still perfectly possible today but does anyone know anyone who uses it?

 

There are three key factors that will affect the VR experience:

1. Both NVidia and AMD will be releasing their next generation graphics cards this fall. It will be interesting to see if the competition will manifest in lower consumer costs.

2. The Vulkan API should provide some performance/frame rate increases once ED releases it.

3. VR technology is improving. The HP Reverb G2 will ship this Fall and the specifications are looking promising.

 

DCS isnt very GPU limited, in my testing its mostly IO limited (ram speed is a BIG factor) and single thread CPU limited. Two area's that are unlikely to see significant improvements in the foreseeable future. If you add VR, and then enable MSAA and SS to overcome the worst of the resolution issues, it obviously does increase the GPU load, and thus the need for faster videocards, but if frame render times are already bottlenecked by the CPU (or the code running on our cpus), then even the fastest GPU imaginable will never get you a steady 90FPS.

 

Im also not overly optimistic Vulkan will solve our performance bottlenecks either, but who knows, lets hope.

 

As for new VR sets; you can already buy 8K sets today, the main problem is getting acceptable framerates on them.

 

The key factor that IMO will affect VR experience is eye tracking. That allows foveated rendering, meaning even current hardware might be fast enough to render the area you are looking at in something closer to "retina resolution" while providing lower resolution (and wider) peripheral vision. It may also also allow dynamic focus, so the 3d effect doesnt look flat and fake, but much more like the real world.

 

The first VR sets with eye tracking already exist. It may take a while to trickle down to consumer sets, and then for software to make most of it, and to be combined with high res / large FoV screens, but this tech is "just around the corner" and much more exciting to me than a new generation of GPUs.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Vertigo72

[Kula66]

To start, 2 disclaimers:

Everybody has different expectations of what is acceptable.

There is always a bottleneck somewhere in a computer! Different systems have different bottlenecks.

 

I get acceptable frames (generally around 40) with settings at mid to high - eg. shadows medium, lots of trees etc. on latest OB, with & F-14 SC. Would I like higher FPS? Yes, but I'm generally happy.

 

I have a 3yr old 7700k water cooled and overclocked system at around 5Ghz, with a 11GB 1080ti, M2 and 16GB RAM. I use this just for DCS.

 

Here are some suggestions:

* Go for 32GBs of RAM - I never thought I'd see myself write this, but ...

* Go for a low core count, ATM more is pointless for DCS - go for last years high-end unlocked CPU.

* Go for the highest clock speed CPU and RAM you can afford - go water cooling and over-clock, it makes a difference and is not difficult.

* Go for a Rift S - I have a Reverb too and it is too much for my system without reducing image quality. The Rift is simple to use and works. Only downsides are Oculus is owned by FB and its relatively narrow FOV reduces the sensation of speed. VR is awesome! I've not used a monitor for DCS since the first CV1 of the Rift.

* Go for a 1080ti or better. 2080tis will probably be cheaper when the new cards come out.

* Go for M2 storage, at least 512GB

 

£1500? Possible, £2000 probably. I hope this helps :)

Edited June 9, 2020 by Kula66

[Vertigo72]

* Go for 32GBs of RAM - I never thought I'd see myself write this, but ...

 

And do that with 2x16GB Dimms, not 4x8. Or 2x8 now and thinking you can always add another 16GB later. Most cpus significantly reduce ram speeds when you use 4 dimms, and in DCS ram speed matters. A lot. When I upgraded my old carried over 2133 MHz DDR4 to 3200 DDR4 I saw an almost perfect linear increase in frame rates. Yes, that was with a Ryzen 2 which are known to be ram speed sensitive, but I still found that astonishing and no other game that hardware reviewers use will scale with ram speed like that. Usually its a few percent, which is was I didnt bother upgrading it straight away.