Trying to get into DCS and need help with PC/GPU choice!

[sheepdog700]

Hello y'all. This is my first post. I'm trying to get into DCS, but I'm looking for some advice... 

I'm a long time War Thunder pilot who is shopping for a new PC to start playing DCS. Now, to give you a bit of context, I've never owned a true gaming PC, nor am I very savvy when it comes to the ins and outs of building or choosing a specific platform. I currently play War Thunder on PS5 and have only ever owned consoles. The idea of getting a true gaming PC is new to me, however I have been researching the topic on various forums, websites and discords for the past month or so.

I'm really looking for opinions on PC setups for DCS. I've done some research on my own and have found answers to many of my questions already.

As for what I have planned in my mind, I would eventually like to play DCS in VR so I would prefer a PC that can handle VR well. There seems to be many different opinions about the visual quality when playing DCS in VR. Keep in mind that I have not played DCS before and only know War Thunder from my experience on the PS5. I have no previous experience when gauging the quality of the graphics in VR vs. TrackIR on DCS or how to compares to WT on PS5. When I buy a PC it will mainly be to play DCS, War Thunder and Warzone. I might download a game or two for my kids also.

I've watched some YouTube videos and read some posts in which people running DCS in VR on a RTX 3070 (or sometimes older) graphics cards that are having a blast playing the game in VR. They really rave about the immersion and graphics quality and such. I've also heard from people that playing DCS in VR with anything less than a 3080 graphics card is not playable, at least in a way that can be enjoyed. I hear complaints about frame rate drops, blurry words/numbers in the cockpit etc.

So which is it?

I suppose it could be very subjective as some people have higher expectations than others.

It's hard to gauge the quality of VR experience by watching a 2D video on Youtube, and I don't always know what graphics setting each individual user is using either. But is it really THAT bad with something less than a 3080 graphics card? My problem here is that I do have a budget when it comes to the PC I'm going to buy and I don't want to break the bank if I don't have to. I have the option for a 3060ti, 3070, or 3080 graphics card paired with good quality CPUs. I'm also planning on purchasing 32gb of RAM for the machine as well. Right now, the Oculus Quest will most likely be the choice of VR headset I purchase. If I can get an enjoyable experience in VR from a 3060ti or 3070, then I'd rather not spend the extra on a 3080. 

With that said, how would VR perform with that setup using those three GPU's in predominantly medium or high graphics settings? What could I expect for performance in VR when playing single player v. multiplayer? How much of a difference will I see from a 3070 to a 3080? How about the difference in between a 3060ti v. 3070? I'm just looking for an objective analysis of your experience I guess. Please, if you play VR and enjoy it, can you describe your experience and what you like about it and any problems you see with graphics etc. Please include your PC setup also! Likewise, if you've tried VR with any one of the GPUs I listed above and didn't like the experience, please tell me why and what the problems were that you experienced. Thank you so much!

 

[draconus]

The better card the better experience as in performance and quality. It's very individual thing so it'd be best so see and try it somehow if you can. You can find people with top tier hardware like Intel i9-11k and 3090 still complaining.

I myself was advised against going VR with my rig yet I did and there's no going back for me - I enjoy it very much - however the quality and performance is not what most people could stand. Surely even 3060 and Quest 2 is way better for a start. You may need to have some local IT guy to help you set this all up without too much trouble.

Edited November 14, 2021 by draconus

[sheepdog700]

5 hours ago, draconus said:

The better card the better experience as in performance and quality. It's very individual thing so it'd be best so see and try it somehow if you can. You can find people with top tier hardware like Intel i9-11k and 3090 still complaining.

I myself was advised against going VR with my rig yet I did and there's no going back for me - I enjoy it very much - however the quality and performance is not what most people could stand. Surely even 3060 and Quest 2 is way better for a start. You may need to have some local IT guy to help you set this all up without too much trouble.

 

I wish I could try it, but unfortunately it's not an option. Thanks for the reply. I'm really eyeing the 3070, for the price point, but I'm hesitant and not sure if it would be worth spending the extra $$$ getting the 3080. I know lots of people say there's a big difference especially for VR, I just don't know if I'd really notice it much given that I've never played and I'm coming from console games. 

I plan to start out with trackIR first just to learn. That way I don't have to remove the headset everytime I need to find a certain key or read a guide. I would like to progress to VR once I get the hang of it.

[draconus]

4 hours ago, sheepdog700 said:

I plan to start out with trackIR first just to learn. That way I don't have to remove the headset everytime I need to find a certain key or read a guide. I would like to progress to VR once I get the hang of it.

That sounds like a good plan As a console user you're probably not used to any stutters or framerates lower than 60.

Remember the law of diminishing returns is kicking badly the higher the price of the card, ex. the 3080 is only 30% better than 3070, but the price is 60% higher.

[Hoirtel]

For DCS and VR. CPU and GPU choice is the bigger the better!

Its really down to what you can afford but if you think you will like it, you will always want more. Spending extra on the initial purchase is cheaper than upgrading after 6months to a year, but yes the best value for performance is low to mid range.

[Eugel]

12 hours ago, sheepdog700 said:

I've watched some YouTube videos and read some posts in which people running DCS in VR on a RTX 3070 (or sometimes older) graphics cards that are having a blast playing the game in VR. They really rave about the immersion and graphics quality and such. I've also heard from people that playing DCS in VR with anything less than a 3080 graphics card is not playable, at least in a way that can be enjoyed. I hear complaints about frame rate drops, blurry words/numbers in the cockpit etc.

So which is it?

The biggest thing in my opinion about DCS in VR is managing your expectations.

I played in VR on an i7 6700K and a 1080Ti on an original Vive and the Vive Pro and later, the Reverb G2. DCS ran fine on the Vives, but the image was indeed quite blurry, which made it difficult to read numbers in the cockpit. That got better with the G2, but I had to lower the graphic settings considerably. I had to turn off shadows, MSAA and go down to something like 40% render resolution, but it was still playable (with the exception of the Marianas map)

Meanwhile I upgraded to an AMD Ryzen 5800 and a RTX 3090 but still, on a 3090 you will have to tweak to find a compromise between FPS and picture quality.>
The biggest problem I see with the 3070 is the low video RAM of only 8 GB, but as long as you don´t expect to run everything on maximum settings, you can probably get the 3070 to work fine.

[Hiob]

5 hours ago, sheepdog700 said:

I plan to start out with trackIR first just to learn. That way I don't have to remove the headset everytime I need to find a certain key or read a guide. I would like to progress to VR once I get the hang of it.

There are of course people that never go back, once they went with VR, but that is certainly not a given.

I have VR, use it once in a while for the visceral experience and enjoy it for sure. But most of the time I prefer and enjoy good old Pancake. Especially when actually doing stuff, like missions or multiplayer. Trackir (and similar headtracking) is still a very viable option and gives a very decent experience. Having the option is not a bad thing, though!

[peachmonkey]

21 hours ago, sheepdog700 said:

With that said, how would VR perform with that setup using those three GPU's in predominantly medium or high graphics settings? What could I expect for performance in VR when playing single player v. multiplayer? How much of a difference will I see from a 3070 to a 3080? How about the difference in between a 3060ti v. 3070? I'm just looking for an objective analysis of your experience I guess. Please, if you play VR and enjoy it, can you describe your experience and what you like about it and any problems you see with graphics etc. Please include your PC setup also! Likewise, if you've tried VR with any one of the GPUs I listed above and didn't like the experience, please tell me why and what the problems were that you experienced. Thank you so much!

 

- the DCS graphics settings aren't grouped in to a Medium or High pre-set. Each graphic setting has its own Low/Med/High/Ultra setting. The devs did introduce the "VR settings" button that kind of presets all of the settings for the best VR experience, however in reality the chance of having a fluid VR gameplay using those settings is still highly tied to the hardware the Devs had when they were testing it. The point is it still means means that you will most likely spend some time balancing one graphical feature setting over the other. There are several posts where people uploaded screenshots of their settings along with the CPU/RAM/GPU specs, i.e. you either need to find those posts or just accept the fact that you'll need to figure it out on your own. There are several GPU heavy hitters like the render resolution textures, shadows, particle count in the objects...

- SP vs MP performance - this is a tricky one. In SP all of the computational tasks are done on a single cpu core, i.e. the flight model, damage model, other flying units, ground objects, etc. All of that takes away the resources from the CPU, so more dynamic units you have the more framerate impact you'll get. In MP the majority of those units gets calculated on the server hosting the mission, i.e. your CPU is tasked with local stuff only. However, when you join the MP with multiple players the added compute requirement to render those other players essentially evens out the gains you get by joining the MP, and in some instances you actually can get too much compute tasks requests during a MP mission and your frame rate will bog down in to a slideshow.  Some folks did run a SP mission on their own MP server (hosted on the same machine) in order to split the compute load between the cores, i.e. the 'server' was running the mission on core#1 of the CPU and your 'client' was running on core #2.  The point is the smoothness of the gameplay depends on a lot of factors, be it SP or MP, and so there's no way to deterministically answer this question.

- I play in VR, however I have a pretty beefy system - 32GB RAM, Ryzen 5900x, and a 3090 GPU (oc'ed a little). Everything I said above applies to my cpu/gpu combo as well, so I think you can already see that DCS graphics is a pro&con game. 3060ti vs 3070 will be on a low end of the performance.  Can you get the acceptable smoothness in VR with this hardware? Sure, but be ready to lower the graphical settings in-game and the render resolution in SteamVR. Will you like it? Only you will be able to answer this question.

- Also, don't forget the VR headset itself. The previous gen HMD's maxed out at 1600x1400 resolution physically (screens) and you could add about 20-30% in oversampling (i.e. final image is rendered at 1600x1400+20%=~1920x1680) to get a smoother image (less jaggies), however that again depends on the GPU you have. The latest HMD's have a much higher physical resolution (G2=2160 x 2160, VivePro2=2448x2448). To give you an idea with my 3090 pulls VivePro2 at 2448x2448 (no oversampling) with MSAAx2 and the graphics settings I use are hovering in the solid "medium" experience realm.

Like @Eugel mentioned above you need to manage your VR expectations. My advice would be: "no expectations = no disappointments"    Just get a rig that will give you a decent monitor experience and then you can slowly get in to VR once you learn and understand its options. The game itself has a pretty steep learning curve compared to WT.

 

[Fastbreak]

Hot topic

I personally would not buy a 308X graphics card for the following reasons:

The very first reason not to buy any graphics card higher than 3070 is the positively obscene prices. While customers ("have to") pay through the nose for hardware, companies laugh up for their sleeves and laugh all the way to the bank.

The second reason is that DCS still uses a vintage graphics engine, but to be fair, ED is working on Vulcan, new Graphics Renderer and Multithreading to modernise it - It might be worth to mention that ED has not announced any offical release date yet. As for the old engine, DCS 2.7 gives a lot of performance away with both high-end and less powerful hardware in 2D as well as 3D (VR) use.

Third reason resulting from above: the cost-value ratio is simply bad. Rip-of prices for high-end hardware to compensate for suboptimal software seems to be the standard way to go today - unfortunatelly it is neither an economical one nor the smartest (with regard to future market prices).

 

P.S.:  Don't get me wrong, I do grant each of the users with a 3080 or better graphics card the fun with fast and fluid flying. 

 

 

 

[Boosterdog]

I recommend you buy a torch and some string to help you find your way around whichever rabbit hole you go down and that you never look at your bank account again.

BTW - youre gonna need some decent outboard too.....ah.....theres another grand gone...

But steal yourself because, for all the frustrations and expense, it can be a very absobing and very entertaining adventure. 

 

Edited November 15, 2021 by Boosterdog

[Fastbreak]

2 hours ago, Boosterdog said:

I recommend you buy a torch and some string to help you find your way around whichever rabbit hole you go down and that you never look at your bank account again.

BTW - youre gonna need some decent outboard too.....ah.....theres another grand gone...

But steal yourself because, for all the frustrations and expense, it can be a very absobing and very entertaining adventure. 

 

 

Well, I have an unenviable position. If I caused your philosophy of fun to totter, I would be awfully sorry. 

[edmuss]

I'm aiming for a 3070 when the FE cards become available again, currently on a 1070 in VR with a reverb g2 and I can play it; it is running at 60hz pegged down to 30hz with motion smoothing and pulling 40-45fps; on the lighter singleplayer missions is just fine but approaching the limit of capcity for the GPU.  This is playing at 60% render resolution with medium/high settings, kegetys shader mods and openvr fsr running.  Reading Thrud's VR guide should give you some insight into the dances you can perform to maximise performance, the long and the short of it is that you need to temper your expectations and understand that you're unlikely to get 90+ fps at full render resolution; generally the sim plays fine at much lower frame rates, how low will depend on how well you physically handle low frequency VR.

For the CPU, single core clock speed is king at the moment, I have a ryzen 5 3600 @ 4.4ghz on all cores.  As alluded to above, more cores may be utilised better with engine updates in the future but that's an unknown at the moment, I wouldn't go less than 6 core though and look to overclock to push the clocks up.

RAM you're already covered with 32 GB, make sure you have windows and DCS on SSD drives as well.

For learning it can be very helpful to be outside of VR in pancake mode, performance is better but you will need a head tracking solution.  I have an opentrack setup with a ps3 camera, cost is about a tenner if you have the time and facilities to make an IR clip and tweak the settings.  Alternatively the trackir will work out of the box at more expense.

HOTAS and rudder pedals are the other consideration, I have a TM warthog with some ancient TM RCS rudders that I converted to USB by cannibilising an old logitech steering wheel.  You can get away with much less but the utility of a proper HOTAS unfortunately comes at a price.

Edited November 16, 2021 by edmuss

[Lurker]

I would advise avoiding VR in DCS for the moment. While it is very usable, there are serious performance issues that will leave you disappointed in the long run. Hopefully they will improve this, I have however for now stopped playing due to the constant increases in requirements that I simply cannot afford to follow anymore. (And I own I would say an above average VR system)

Edited November 16, 2021 by Lurker

[draconus]

On 11/15/2021 at 5:40 AM, sheepdog700 said:

I wish I could try it, but unfortunately it's not an option.

Afaik in EU almost anything you ordered and paid online you can return within 14 days without giving a reason. You would need some kind of test because some people cannot bear VR well in rare cases.

[Razor18]

But two weeks are mostly enough to find out if you can get used to VR step by step. At first try, flying Huey in VR, I had to put it down in 15 minutes to avoid throwing up... Then time span increased day by day, and after about two weeks it was gone.

[edmuss]

For a cheap test entry into VR then a first generation WMR isn't too bad, lenovo explorer can be picked up cheap now and whilst not quite as clear as the reverb is a more accetpable cost to try out.