Altitude perception in DCS

[Rhrich]

Hi all,

How do you find the height perception in DCS?

I have a Facebook Q3 headset, and I really feel I don’t get enough sense of the altitude. 
It’s decades since I was last in the cockpit of something decent, and my eyes aren’t what they used to be, but I’ve always thought that you don’t get sufficient impression of altitude and the enormity of one’s surroundings in DCS. 

But, as said, I’m old so I figured it just could be that. However, just a few days ago I was passenger on a civilian flight in a place covered by DCS. It was scattered clouds as well and I knew that altitude.
 

So, I thought id recreate what I saw out of the window in dcs. And now I’m certain that there’s something off in altitude perception or perspective in DCs.
 

anyone else noticed this? And is there settings I can change to rectify this? (It would not ve surprising if I’m to blame…)

[Dangerzone]

Distance in VR is something I don't think yet has been fully mastered. I certainly feel like distant things are closer and smaller than what they should be. I don't know if this is due to the way VR attempts to fool the brain, whether it's just my brain getting used to VR, or other factors.

I did a little bit of searching on this. From what I could gather, the whole close seems good, distant seems less good could be due to Binocular cues getting weaker with distance, and that Monocular cues such as haze, scale and perceptive are harder to replicate with limited FOV and resolution. IPD / world scale settings can also have an impact. The one area I've always wondered is DCS's own IPD settings - which seems to make a big difference in the cockpit for the cockpit view, but has no perceivable difference for outside objects.  

But in the end, I've just accepted that VR is an emulation of an environment - does a good job at helping me to judge distance with things like formation, and gives me a more immersive experience, but that it's normal to feel like the 'world is smaller'.

 

[draconus]

Never had problem with that. Whole idea of VR and proper objects in a game is to have them correctly scaled, exactly to not feel any difference at least on that part.

IPD change works only for close objects because that small parallax is not gonna change your view on the distant ones.

The quality of the simulated terrain though leaves much for improvement and with limited headset resolution I think it has the biggest impact on how you perceive the world in DCS.

[Rhrich]

Thank you. 
 

I’ve never messed with the IPD, I just assumed it was the same as the «set how far it is between your eyes» thing. 
Could it be beneficial to change that in DCS as well?

 

A few comments:

It’s altitude I think seems off. Distance seems somewhat better (although this is highly subjective). However I believe it’s considerably easier to spot stuff than in real life. Especially from distance and front facing in some planes with smaller front cross section, like 16, 21, etc

[draconus]

IPD is what you described it is and so it should be set in DCS and on your headset. It can affect how you see the scale in VR but I doubt you'll see a difference between 63 vs 65mm. Check extreme numbers like 40 vs 80 to see what I mean, just for fun. One will make you feel like a giant and the other makes you feel like a fly. Both will not affect the distant objects much though.

That you feel altitude is off, I already said possible reasons (image realism and details) but it's not much devs can do about without major graphics improvemnts, especially when distance feels ok. Altitude is just vertical distance, right?

Spotting depends on your settings esp. resolution, AA method and of course spotting dots setting.

[Dragon1-1]

I suspect spherical Earth will help with that. One thing about the "feeling" of altitude is just how far the horizon is up there. In DCS, there's no real horizon, the maps are flat. It works at normal mission altitudes if you're not looking too closely, but it's missing the "hey, did I just fly into space?" feeling at the extremes.

[Rhrich]

On 10/3/2025 at 12:24 PM, draconus said:

IPD is what you described it is and so it should be set in DCS and on your headset. It can affect how you see the scale in VR but I doubt you'll see a difference between 63 vs 65mm. Check extreme numbers like 40 vs 80 to see what I mean, just for fun. One will make you feel like a giant and the other makes you feel like a fly. Both will not affect the distant objects much though.

That you feel altitude is off, I already said possible reasons (image realism and details) but it's not much devs can do about without major graphics improvemnts, especially when distance feels ok. Altitude is just vertical distance, right?

Spotting depends on your settings esp. resolution, AA method and of course spotting dots setting.

Just thought I would express my gratitude and say thanks  

Im not saying it looks perfect, but the IPD thing definitely did make it a lot better. Both attitude perception and overall look. I also checked force ipd, do you think that is correct?

don’t understand why this wasn’t enabled by default, but I can wholeheartedly recommend mr. Draconius suggestion 

Altitude, not attitude. 

[draconus]

10 minutes ago, Rhrich said:

I also checked force ipd, do you think that is correct?

Only if you want forced IPD values set from DCS. Otherwise it's taken from your Meta Quest Link settings.

[Spartan111sqn]

1 hour ago, Rhrich said:

Just thought I would express my gratitude and say thanks  

Im not saying it looks perfect, but the IPD thing definitely did make it a lot better. Both attitude perception and overall look. I also checked force ipd, do you think that is correct?

don’t understand why this wasn’t enabled by default, but I can wholeheartedly recommend mr. Draconius suggestion 

Altitude, not attitude. 

great!, what number you put in the field?

[Rhrich]

7 hours ago, Spartan111sqn said:

great!, what number you put in the field?

Im sorry, but reasons discussed elsewhere I do not share any personal information. 
 

However I believe that number should correspond to the distance between your pupils. 
I got an optometrist to measure me. Perhaps you could do the same if you’re uncertain. 

8 hours ago, draconus said:

Only if you want forced IPD values set from DCS. Otherwise it's taken from your Meta Quest Link settings.

Thanks again.

[Spartan111sqn]

1 hour ago, Rhrich said:

Im sorry, but reasons discussed elsewhere I do not share any personal information. 

The number you put in the option is personal?, ok I respect it.

[Dragon1-1]

Well, IPD is supposed to work best when it's your actual IPD, which is personal information, albeit of a rather inconsequential sort. That said, the IPD value in DCS is actually world scale, which is not quite the same as the actual IPD setting that physically adjusts the lens on your headset to match your eyes. World scale can be thought of as the size of your virtual head (and hence your "virtual" IPD), but it's not exactly that.

[draconus]

5 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Well, IPD is supposed to work best when it's your actual IPD, which is personal information, albeit of a rather inconsequential sort. That said, the IPD value in DCS is actually world scale, which is not quite the same as the actual IPD setting that physically adjusts the lens on your headset to match your eyes. World scale can be thought of as the size of your virtual head (and hence your "virtual" IPD), but it's not exactly that.

Tell us more. It's that but it's not?

[Dragon1-1]

It actually rescales everything else. Actual people with different IPD don't perceive the whole world as significantly bigger or smaller. Due to how VR rendering works, the base setting for world scale is tied to IPD reported by the headset, but this does not necessarily result in correct perception. In racing sims, it's immediately visible as the difference between the size of your real and virtual steering wheel, for example. The "IPD" setting in the sim is actually an adjustment factor to correct this. 

[draconus]

19 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

It actually rescales everything else. Actual people with different IPD don't perceive the whole world as significantly bigger or smaller. Due to how VR rendering works, the base setting for world scale is tied to IPD reported by the headset, but this does not necessarily result in correct perception. In racing sims, it's immediately visible as the difference between the size of your real and virtual steering wheel, for example. The "IPD" setting in the sim is actually an adjustment factor to correct this. 

So IPD is actually what it is. Nothing special is going on, independent of the game. Two cameras are rendered and depending on IPD set by either game or headset software it moves them apart creating parallax effect. That's all there is to it. No artificial scaling is applied.

[Jayhawk1971]

I just used the PDCheck AR-App to get my IPD.