Is this a good computer to start DCS with?

[Eugel]

I have a very similar PC as in the OP (Ryzen 5800X3D, 64 GB Ram, RTX3090) and DCS runs perfectly fine in VR for me. Just don´t expect the same sharpness/clarity as on a 4K screen and don´t expect to put everything on maximum and still get 90 FPS.
In my experience, much of the frustration of VR comes from unrealistic expectations.

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Hiob said:

At least not yet. I guess that will further improve over time. CPU really shouldn't be a bottleneck for VR, but it certainly is sometimes now.

Again though it’s always going to be more demanding to render stereoscopically in 3D. Always. Unless some as yet unimagined computing power comes along. But that’s just fantasy. 

[LucShep]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

It’s not that DCS isn’t meant for VR. VR wasn’t meant for DCS. VR will never be able to run demanding games as well as 2D. And this game targets its performance at 2D. VR can only run well on games intended for VR. DCS has things like huge draw distances and object counts as well as flight model physics and such. The only way to make it run well in VR would be to compromise all that. Look at the VTOL VR game, that’s what DCS would need to be like in order to run well in VR. That’s not really appealing to this player base. 

There’s always an update coming. But the same reality above still applies. Performance for VR will always remain out of reach due to the fact that it’s running 3D and the game will continue to evolve its features and demand based upon 2D. 

This is the crux of the problem. VR will always require stereoscopic rendering by its very nature. I can’t see how Vulkan can avoid this reality. 

No, the problem is also the stubbornness of ED and 3rd party devs, ignoring the alerts of modders who point out faults in decisions taken for what is used in DCS.

....8K and 4K textures, not just in diffuse but also on bump and specular maps(!), and 32-bit when they should be 8-bit(?), or alpha-channels used when none is to be used. (and, really, someone needs to explain us why do missiles need 32-bit 8K and 4K textures (?!?). It's mind boggling!)
....shaders that could be lighter without any real impact on image quality. 
...the new cloud system (since 2.7 was out) with the ammount of aliasing problems it has, and its heavy impact on performance (~25% on a mid-range GPU, over previous versions?), when the game engine doesn't really seem ready for it (too much sacrifice).
And list goes on. 

You have the other WW2 sim capable of giving nearly double the performance, and it's graphically just as capable (amazing in VR).
Even that other mod on the old late 90s sim that now supports VR, and it's surprising how it can do some things better, never even being made with VR in mind.
And please don't tell me those are not as complex, because they too recreate very complex physics, 3D models, audio, shaders, terrains, scripts and missions/campaigns (even dynamic ones).

It's also a matter of how you do and what you're doing with the content, and not just the game-engine. 

Edited October 19, 2023 by LucShep

[SharpeXB]

1 minute ago, LucShep said:

No, the crux of the problem is the stubbornness of ED and 3rd party devs

It’s not “stubbornness”. They’re designing the game to exploit 2D capabilities and hardware because that’s the majority. If the game was curtailed down to what would run well in VR it wouldn’t have the fidelity and graphics it does. Very simple math. They couldn’t sell a game which looked like that. 

4 minutes ago, LucShep said:

You have the other WW2 sim capable of giving nearly double the performance, and it's graphically just as capable (amazing in VR).

People complain about that game too. They complain about all these sims in VR. Because again they’re simply too demanding due to being intended for 2D

And honestly that game is looking pretty weak now compared to DCS. 

47 minutes ago, Eugel said:

In my experience, much of the frustration of VR comes from unrealistic expectations.

They have unrealistic expectations because somebody on a forum said “VR runs perfectly fine” that definition in VR is subjective. 

[LucShep]

37 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

It’s not “stubbornness”. They’re designing the game to exploit 2D capabilities and hardware because that’s the majority. If the game was curtailed down to what would run well in VR it wouldn’t have the fidelity and graphics it does. Very simple math. They couldn’t sell a game which looked like that. 

What?  ...you know there's kind of an "industry standard" for this, right? Just like there is for audio and other content for games.
Noone else is doing 8K and 4K 32-bit textures on everything, much less on normals and speculars.
It's no wonder you see 14+ GB of VRAM consumed (and a heap of stuttering), and why you need upwards of an RTX3090 to have "ideal" performance. 
 

37 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

 

People complain about that game too. They complain about all these sims in VR. Because again they’re simply too demanding due to being intended for 2D

And honestly that game is looking pretty weak now compared to DCS. 

You have no idea what you're talking about.
You'd be surprised to see the ammount of fellow DCS'ers who fly in that one, and vastly prefer it in VR exactly because of the better experience you can get in it for that particular aspect.

Edited October 19, 2023 by LucShep

[SharpeXB]

1 minute ago, LucShep said:

You have no idea what you're talking about.
You'd be surprised to see the ammount of DCS'ers who fly in that one, and vastly prefer it in VR exactly because of the better experience in that particular aspect.

I see people there saying DCS is “better”. And again that game is getting rather dated. So go figure what will happen… their next project will raise the bar and VR will struggle again. VR is always going to struggle compared to 2D. To think otherwise is just naive. 

5 minutes ago, LucShep said:

What?  ...you know there's an industry standard for this, right? 
Noone is doing 8K and 4K 32-bit textures on everything, much less on normals and speculars.
It's no wonder you see 14+ GB of VRAM consumed, and why you need upwards of an RTX3090 to have "ideal" performance. 

The only “standard” is that things will keep changing and evolving to be better but also more demanding. And again this all targeted at 2D. 

[LucShep]

42 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I see people there saying DCS is “better”. And again that game is getting rather dated. So go figure what will happen… their next project will raise the bar and VR will struggle again. VR is always going to struggle compared to 2D. To think otherwise is just naive. 

You missed the point.
No one is contesting that VR is more demanding than 2D. Of course it is and always will be.
The point is the lack of vision and adjustments from DCS devs, ones that could have been used at anytime (for years now), to improve performance without compromising visual quality on both VR and 2D. All users would benefit, every single one. But, alas..

Following this and this into account, @Taz1004 already took a first step --> the proof is in the pudding

Edited October 19, 2023 by LucShep

[Dragon1-1]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

There’s always an update coming. But the same reality above still applies.

No it doesn't. Not when you can, say, render at 2K and use AI to upscale to 4K. You could get Oculus Rift performance and Reverb G2 looks. That's what DLSS can do (of course, we'll see how well it does this in practice). In fact, most updates make performance worse. This one should be a gamechanger for VR. Whether it actually is, we'll see. It won't fix all issues, but it will make it smoother. I've experimented with FSR, which is similar, and you can gain a lot with it even with a 1080ti, although unlike DLSS it sacrifices quite a bit of image quality.

Yes, VR is more demanding, but it's not some magic FPS hog that will always, forever be doomed to slideshow FPS. DCS wastes VRAM, uses an outdated API and is rather demanding overall. Two of those are perfectly fixable issues, VRAM waste could be eliminated fairly easily if someone could convince ED to do it (whoever came up with the idea to use those huge normal maps doesn't know how rendering works, they don't add quality), transition to a better API is being worked on.

[SharpeXB]

4 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

No it doesn't. Not when you can, say, render at 2K and use AI to upscale to 4K

Which will probably look like crap in VR since you can see every pixel. I wouldn’t put too much hope in that. Plus that doesn’t solve the CPU side of the equation. It’s the stereoscopic rendering that’s the killer. VR will by nature always require this. 
In order to truly run well, VR would need a doubling or tripling of its performance. I can’t imagine any magic trick which will provide that. 

[Eugel]

46 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

They have unrealistic expectations because somebody on a forum said “VR runs perfectly fine” that definition in VR is subjective. 

So, what´s unrealistic about that ? Your computer is much stronger than mine, what´s preventing you from getting a decent VR perfomance ?
I set my render resolution close to 4K and I get a similar perfomance from running DCS in 2D on a 4k screen. Little difference, but not like the FPS are cut in half ...

But I agree, VR is subjective.

[SharpeXB]

12 minutes ago, Eugel said:

So, what´s unrealistic about that ? Your computer is much stronger than mine, what´s preventing you from getting a decent VR perfomance ?
I set my render resolution close to 4K and I get a similar perfomance from running DCS in 2D on a 4k screen. Little difference, but not like the FPS are cut in half ...

But I agree, VR is subjective.

I’m not even going to try to run VR. I can run DCS or any game flat out maxed on a monitor in 4K at 120 FPS. I’ll just stick with that. 

[LucShep]

3 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I’m not even going to try to run VR. I can run DCS or any game flat out maxed on a monitor in 4K at 120 FPS. I’ll just stick with that. 

Of course, it's easy to say the peasants are fine from the ivory tower... 

[Eugel]

12 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I’m not even going to try to run VR.

I rest my case then ...

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, LucShep said:

Of course, it's easy to say the peasants are fine from the ivory tower... 

You don’t need an ivory tower to play DCS. In fact this is a rather easy game to run. Just recently I was playing this on a 7-10 year old machine and it was actually the only game I played since nothing else would run very well on my aging system. 

1 hour ago, Eugel said:

I rest my case then ...

What case? I’ve used VR headsets so I know what they’re like. Everyone has. 

Games like this will simply never run well on them so there’s no point in trying. 

[LucShep]

35 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

You don’t need an ivory tower to play DCS. In fact this is a rather easy game to run. Just recently I was playing this on a 7-10 year old machine and it was actually the only game I played since nothing else would run very well on my aging system. 

What case? I’ve used VR headsets so I know what they’re like. Everyone has. 

Games like this will simply never run well on them so there’s no point in trying. 

Sure.... ah yes, on a 7-10 year old hardware system base, sure thing  (riiiiiiiight! ) 

Let's all repeat that too to ourselves, we may start to believe in it too.... 
And start recommending different, older and far, faaaaaaar cheaper hardware on all these frequent and inumerous threads for hardware updates and new PCs. 

Edited October 19, 2023 by LucShep

[SharpeXB]

21 minutes ago, LucShep said:

Sure.... ah yes, on a 7-10 year old hardware system base, sure thing  (riiiiiiiight! )

Sure. Last year I had a i7-4790K and a 2080Ti plus 32GB RAM. The rest of the machine had been purchased in 2012. That did fine running max settings on a 4K monitor. The only things I found trouble with were big MP missions on Syria on a certain server. But most MP even the big DLC campaign missions ran fine. I probably had frame rates in the 40-60 range. 

2 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

That's what DLSS can do (of course, we'll see how well it does this in practice).

Hey it’s live now! 2.9 is here  

[Dragon1-1]

And it looks like they added FSR, as well. Well, let's see what the old 1080ti can do with a 4K headset.  Still going for a 3090 next month, though (dat 24GB of VRAM...).