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. 

[Dragon1-1]

11 hours ago, draconus said:

So IPD is actually what it is. 

No, it's World Scale. In commonly used VR terminology (including every other program that has this setting exposed), it's called that. IPD refers only to the actual distance between user's eyes and the corresponding physical setting on the headset.

[draconus]

8 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

No, it's World Scale.

No, it's really not. What others may wrongly describe it's only the viewer's perception and his own feeling of size, which is dependent on IPD. Set your "world scale" to whatever you want and then check VR with one eye or make screenshots, then tell me the scale is different.

[Lt_Jaeger]

2 hours ago, draconus said:

No, it's really not. What others may wrongly describe it's only the viewer's perception and his own feeling of size, which is dependent on IPD. Set your "world scale" to whatever you want and then check VR with one eye or make screenshots, then tell me the scale is different.

It is. Just do as you said and check....the world gets bigger / smaller as in opposite to change the IPD on a headset, which just moves the lenses without changing the scale.

So yes, the IPD in Game is just to adjust the scale to your liking. I e.g. use the ingame IPD to match my to scale panels to the actual cockpit view, which has nothing to do with your inter pupil distance.

 

Edited Friday at 08:01 AM by Lt_Jaeger

[MasaMan]

2 hours ago, draconus said:

No, it's really not. What others may wrongly describe it's only the viewer's perception and his own feeling of size, which is dependent on IPD. Set your "world scale" to whatever you want and then check VR with one eye or make screenshots, then tell me the scale is different.

It's world scale and can be checked very quickly. I did some testing when I sat in a real Viggen -cockpit and then compared the view in DCS. I changed to different settings and realized that the default setting is closest to reality.

[Dragon1-1]

56 minutes ago, MasaMan said:

I changed to different settings and realized that the default setting is closest to reality.

For your headset at least, really the whole point of this slider is that if your headset driver gets it wrong, you can fix it by adjusting it in the sim. Haven't had that problem myself, but I've seen posts from people who needed to tweak it in other sims.

[Jayhawk1971]

As far as I could find out (and take that with a massive grain of salt!!!!), there's IPD, used to adjust the physical separation of the lenses in the headset. And then there's the setting within DCS, which apparently is ICD, and which changes how you perceive the digital world in DCS. Parallax effect, I suppose.

The upside of this setting is that you can adjust the perceived cockpit size (and objects within that cockpit) to your personal liking. The downside -at least in my case - is that, with smaller values, depth perception gets worse, as objects (such as, for example, the carrier, or airborne tanker; heck, the world itself) appear larger, or closer (?). Nice for enhanced visual clarity (lights, details), bad for judging height and distance.

I experimented with this, and found out, to my chagrin, that in the Tomcat, a "force IPD" setting of 60 feels a bit better than the default, yet I found I lost depth perception somewhat, making AAR and trapping a little more challenging than usual (usual = a breeze). So I reverted back to default. It's a compromise.

If anyone has better information about this, and/or a clear recommendation on what to do, feel free to both correct my post, and provide a solution for this annoying problem. The worst-documented feature in DCS!

One thing I am still not clear about: is the "default" value just some "one size fits all" value ED came up with, or does the IPD value set for the headset (either physically, like with the Vive Pro, or via the headset's software) get "transmitted" into DCS, via the headset's driver? For example, if the IDP I've set for my headset is, say, 65, would the default setting (force IDP unchecked) also be 65, or would it revert to whatever ED thought to be a "middle of the road" setting (IIRC, unadjusted the value in the box said 63.5)?

Edited Friday at 03:12 PM by Jayhawk1971

[Jayhawk1971]

vor 6 Stunden schrieb MasaMan:

It's world scale and can be checked very quickly. I did some testing when I sat in a real Viggen -cockpit and then compared the view in DCS. I changed to different settings and realized that the default setting is closest to reality.

I suppose that's because Heatblur actually thoroughly scanned the cockpits of the Viggen, Tomcat and Phantom. So those should be as close to reality as possible. I believe the older ED modules (A-10C, for example), that pre-date the widespread use of VR are the ones giving VR players some problems. 

[Rhrich]

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this discussion. It’s been very interesting. 
 

question:

On 10/10/2025 at 5:17 PM, Jayhawk1971 said:

I suppose that's because Heatblur actually thoroughly scanned the cockpits of the Viggen, Tomcat and Phantom. So those should be as close to reality as possible. I believe the older ED modules (A-10C, for example), that pre-date the widespread use of VR are the ones giving VR players some problems. 

What about the F-5 and the F-16?

[Dragon1-1]

F-5 is extremely poorly matched, it doesn't even fit the external model particularly well. They updated the textures, but the underlying cockpit model is still quite old. The F-16 has some minor errors, but it seems fairly accurate, including how claustrophobic it feels in VR.