Total noob saying hi and asking annoying intro question about his PC setup...

[HiGYoYo]

Hello all. I'm about as green as they get. Still downloading DCS World and yet to fire it all up but so far verything looks frigging amazing. Could I ask if my PC setup is strong enough to play with some degree of smoothness? I'm running an Intel I-7 9700 at 3200Ghz with an nVidia 1070 GPU and 16GB of RAM. I've got my beady eye on the Warthog A10C II and would like to concentrate on that platform initially. Thanks, Mike  (HiGYoYo)

[GregP]

Welcome to the forum and to DCS! Seems you’ve got a strong machine other than the video card. However if you’re planning to play at 1080p resolution, your 1070 might be sufficient if you’re willing to drop some graphics settings. What kind of monitor are you using, and what’s its resolution?

[HiGYoYo]

Hi GregP,

 

The monitor is nothing special, a Dell U2518D at 2560 x 1440, so not too demanding for the GPU. I do have an Oculus Quest 2 which i would love to integrate but that may be a bridge too far at this point. Btw I’m busy installing 32GB of RAM and am installing everything on an SSD...

[Yurgon]

That setup should work okay for now, but you're not likely to get stellar framerates. I'm running DCS on the same 1440p resolution with a 1070 ti and it's okay (AMD 3600X, 32 GB RAM); I've tweaked the settings a bit and am getting stable 30 FPS in most situations (capped to 30 fps via editing a config file), but near some of the large cities in the Syria map FPS are going down.

 

Not sure about the Quest's resolution; you can try it out, but you'll probably need a faster GPU to run DCS smoothly in VR.

 

Anyway, in 2D you should be able to run it fine in most situations, and enjoy the hell out of this fantastic sim.  

[GregP]

Glad to hear you’ve moved to 32gb RAM as that definitely helps. Good luck with framerates and it might be worth trying windowed 1080 if 1440 is too slow.

[HiGYoYo]

Thanks guys. Sure you’ll be hearing from me again soonish but this will get me going in the meantime.

[Art-J]

^ I've got the same CPU and GPU as you, only with 32 GB of RAM. Playing at 1440p as well.

 

Starting with "high" gfx preset and cranking down some options (see the screen below) I stay above 60 fps pretty much all the time, although I fly offline only, with small number of units in missions, and do not own resource hog maps like Syria or Channel. I also use primitive AA methods like FXAA, injected via Reshade.

 

 

[HiGYoYo]

Thanks for the guidance and posting the options page. Dang there’s a lot to this “game”.

Edited December 17, 2020 by HiGYoYo
Pooched the first attempt.

[Burt]

Welcome,  I believe that would get one going especially you upping the Rams to 32gb. The main thing now is to get some seat time... your gonna love it ! I would recommend running the DCS Open Beta version. 

[Yurgon]

1 hour ago, Burt said:

I would recommend running the DCS Open Beta version.

I'd actually advise to opt for the Stable version.

 

Lots of people are fine with the OpenBeta. But I think there's a common misunderstanding that the OpenBeta is there to get features to us sooner. That's wrong. It's there for us to help ED find bugs.

 

When you, personally, are fine with running into problems, and then trying for as long as it takes to reproduce them and condense them into a bug report here on the forum (having checked up front whether the problem was already reported, of course) that is short, concise, to the point and free from demands, then the OpenBeta is for you.

 

If any of these conditions are not met, stick with the Stable. Simple as that.

 

And yes, the Stable is not perfect, it's not free from bugs, bugs are present in the Stable much longer than they are in the OB. That is all true. But we have just too many members on the forum and Reddit and whatnot who don't understand OpenBeta and Early Access and will start to complain rather loudly, instead of contributing.

 

So as a rule of thumb, IMO people should stick to the Stable version of DCS, unless they make a conscious decision that they want to use the OpenBeta, with all the strings attached.

 

I run both in parallel and do all of my fun flying in the OB. Right now I'm F5ing the hell out of the update page waiting for the next OB to finally arrive. And if it breaks DCS to the point of unplayability, that's okay, I can wait for it to get fixed and use the Stable or downgrade in the meantime, or try to narrow it down. But that's always a possibility and has happened in the past.

[HiGYoYo]

Noted. Wonder if I could ask another hardware related question? How many of you guys are using IR Tracker and do you recommend or not? I’ve just started working through my preflight flows on the A10 and miss the ability to move around the cockpit naturally. Have a fair amount of real world experience so the flying and systems and operational aspects are less demanding to me than familiarizing myself with the sim environment. I have bought a Thrustmaster HOTAS and Thrust lever so will have to set that up - binding I believe is the term. 

[Thinder]

2 hours ago, HiGYoYo said:

 I’ve just started working through my preflight flows on the A10 and miss the ability to move around the cockpit naturally.

 

That's one of the reasons why I went full VR, the other being tracking moving targets made a lot easier with a headset and once you've tried this solution, you wont be willing to go back to using PoV buttons or any other solution, VR is the future of flight simulation and the next generation of headsets (starting with the HP Reverb G2) will make it more attractive.

 

There is a complementary solution for binding, using voice recognition: VoiceAttack works well with DCS although I haven't been using it, I have it, it's just a matter of making the effort of going through voice recognition drills in Windows and set it up, in any case it will extend your control over your gaming and support your HOTAS efficiently.

https://voiceattack.com/

 

  

On 12/17/2020 at 7:28 PM, Yurgon said:

I'd actually advise to opt for the Stable version.

 

Lots of people are fine with the OpenBeta. But I think there's a common misunderstanding that the OpenBeta is there to get features to us sooner. That's wrong. It's there for us to help ED find bugs.

 

 

The funny thing is that more often than none, the OpenBeta version is actually more stable, once Support told me to stick with it when I experienced issues with the "stable" version...

Edited December 18, 2020 by Thinder

[Yurgon]

12 hours ago, HiGYoYo said:

How many of you guys are using IR Tracker and do you recommend or not?

 

I absolutely recommend it, but only if you're not aiming to go the VR way anyway.

 

VR has a steeper initial cost and is more demanding on the PC hardware as well. For all I know (not having used it myself), VR is also much more immersive.

 

In any case, TrackIR does not supplement VR; on the contrary, VR brings its own head-tracking and makes TrackIR obsolete. At this point, if you can go either way, you'll most likely want to go the VR way. But if money is an issue, TrackIR would be an amazing addition to a well running system, and with a bit of an effort you might even get head-tracking alternatives (without VR) for free.

[Yurgon]

9 hours ago, Thinder said:

The funny thing is that more often than none, the OpenBeta version is actually more stable, once Support told me to stick with it when I experienced issues with the "stable" version...

 

It's funny that a few hours ago I had to cancel an MP match with something like 30 or 40 players, scheduled 3 weeks ago, because yesterday's OB version apparently broke AMRAAMs and Sparrows and a few other missiles that are absolutely crucial to this particular game.

 

Now I don't run that particular game, and it's for this exact reason that I would personally require it to be played on the stable version of DCS rather than the OpenBeta, if it was up to me. But I certainly did take some flak for canceling the game.

Let me not downplay the advantages of playing on the OB. But a last minute cancellation is rather unlikely on the Stable version, whereas this is certainly not the first MP match to get crushed by the last minute problems associated with an OB update.

[Thinder]

1 hour ago, Yurgon said:

 

It's funny that a few hours ago I had to cancel an MP match with something like 30 or 40 players, scheduled 3 weeks ago, because yesterday's OB version apparently broke AMRAAMs and Sparrows and a few other missiles that are absolutely crucial to this particular game.

 

Now I don't run that particular game, and it's for this exact reason that I would personally require it to be played on the stable version of DCS rather than the OpenBeta, if it was up to me. But I certainly did take some flak for canceling the game.

Let me not downplay the advantages of playing on the OB. But a last minute cancellation is rather unlikely on the Stable version, whereas this is certainly not the first MP match to get crushed by the last minute problems associated with an OB update.

 

I guess it depends on the update, in this particular case, the engine start button didn't work following exactly the same procedure in both versions, now it's the Mirage 2000 INS enter button that doesn't seems to be working but it is certainly more likely related to the module or mistakes from my part than the game.

 

DCS OB doesn't upload the Mirage 2000 settings from DCS client either, I have to rebind everything.

 

Since I play solo at the moment, still learning DCS and the Mirage, fine tuning my upgrades, new VR set etc, it doesn't matter to me too much but I can understand why it can cause you some real inconvenience.

 

 

Edited December 19, 2020 by Thinder

[HiGYoYo]

Thanks for the great feedback guys. I will def go the VR route once I'm up to speed but for now will use IR Tracker which arrives in the brown van o'goodness today. I bought my son Oculus Quest 2 for Xmas but he's going on deployment so we opened it early. Amazing concept but have to be honest the resolution aint there yet. Will try out the Reverb in a couple months but at the moment I'm drinking from the fire hose.

[GregP]

Yeah, I’ve tried two VR sets over the past few years and ended up selling them shortly thereafter, because I’ve been spoiled with playing DCS on a large 4K monitor for several years now, and the drop in resolution in VR was just too noticeable.

That being said, those experiences definitely convinced me that VR is the future of sims like this. The added sense of immersion is absolutely astonishing compared to what I’m used to in plain ol’ 2D. I’m hoping in a few years both VR tech and video cards will be able to support making it a realistic alternative for me.

Also I should note that you and I seem to be very much in the minority. From what I’ve seen, the vast majority of flight simmers can never go back to 2D once they experience VR for the first time.

[Thinder]

4 hours ago, GregP said:

Also I should note that you and I seem to be very much in the minority. From what I’ve seen, the vast majority of flight simmers can never go back to 2D once they experience VR for the first time.

 

That's true, especially when your grear and settings allows you to mitigate the loss of frame rate, since VR is relatively new and evolving real fast, it takes a lot more research work to get it right...

 

I've played with an Oculus CV1 at much lower resolution and had more trouble getting a decent frame rate and no adverse effects than with my new Reverb G2 at max resolution, that's for one thing.

 

Then Setam seems to be waking up (it took them time and then some) and come up with better support software, players find and share settings we can try with our own hardware and figure out what is best and what works best for us, as a result I was able to set my textures from low to high with no apparent loss, raw figures doesn't mean much to me, it's the visual which matters most, if the game looks smooth, from 30FPS it's well playable for me.

 

Anyway, what I noticed, is that the more progresses I make with my GPU settings, the lower my CPU scores in 3D Mark, so I guess it is a matter of knowing what I want to do with my settings for a particular game, for DCS, I would bet on GPU, but my next upgrade stage is Rizen 3 and DDR 400 3600 RAM.

 

Edited December 19, 2020 by Thinder