Oculus Rift and DCS World Discussion

[lobo]

Even on a 4K TV I find zoom very useful.....

 

Even when looking behind you? :music_whistling:

[hannibal]

BoxxMann's "pet" suggestions/wishes for DCS:

 

1 - menu optimization for VR users

2 - seat adjustment bindable to joysticks, boxes, etc.

3 - binoculators or zoom function

4 - optimization to the various world objects to reduce inefficient rendering

5 - update the frame rate counter to include ATW frame rates

 

Thank you!

 

I would have to add a kneeboard to the list.

would be nice if it was like Flyinside FSX.

but if we cant have that.. it would be nice to see it on the virtual pilot kneeboard??

[KLR Rico]

- What about the cv1 blurring in the centre of the lens reported with Apollo 11?

I Seriously think you have a lens problem, as I've been talking with a dozen plus people the last hour and they have entirely different findings in Both DCS and Apollo 11, not to mention iRacing and Elite: Dangerous

 

I only noticed this after Warthog Farmer pointed it out, and I still only notice it when I'm looking for it. There's something about the optics that makes barely illegible text, barely legible at certain angles, I see it when I tilt my head down and look through the top of the lens. I'm talking like a 10% difference, it shouldn't be anything for anyone to worry about. ;)

 

- The new cockpit interaction method?

Unless there's a setting I'm missing to enable it, it's not quite there yet, IMO. It doesn't appear to follow the surface of whatever you're hovering over, and I think it's kind of fidgety. On the plus side, the mouse is kept bound within the display when DCS is the foreground. Loosing the mouse somewhere on another monitor was something that annoyed me with FlyInside.

 

- positional tracking on the dcs main menu/mission planning screens?

Currently the 2d menus are all just virtual desktop style. I'd say I'd like them to be bigger. In VR you can make a virtual desktop look like an imax theater, but in DCS they're like regular monitor size and distance. From what wags said I guess this is an area of future improvement.

 

- frame rate performance?

 

First and foremost, ATW is amazing. Even if you're running at 30 FPS head tracking and everything is still smooth as butter. The only thing I really notice at lower framerates is that the ground moves by in a steplike fasion, or the slight stutter when rolling, stuff like that.

 

Still, I went tweaking looking for that 90 fps lock. Specs are i5-4670k at 4.5ghz w/16gb ram and a Gigabyte G1 GTX970 with factory OC. Going into this, I had DCS set up for a reliable 60fps on 1080p monitor (most settings high).

 

I didn't change anything at first, and saw frame rates of 45 to 60. I put all settings at low and still couldn't break 60. Turned off v-sync, tweaked all kinds of other crap and then finally I realized that I had capped DCS at 60fps in the text editor. (d'oh)

 

Going back into it, I'm still having some strange performance issues. For the most part I'm seeing 45 or 90fps, but occasionally 30. On the good side, it jumps between them without being very noticeable, and they're all factors of 90 so there's minimal judder. Now the strange part is that I'm not seeing much change in performance between low and high settings, either way it's either 45 or 90, and if AI aircraft, smoke, explosions and what not are in view, it's almost guaranteed to be 45. Like I said, even on low settings, the same thing happens.

 

What also has me confused is that my CPU utilization is pretty low. All 4 cores are hovering around 50%, but without the rift I'd usually see one or two of them near 100% and the others around 50 (which makes sense to me), also the GPU is hardly breaking a sweat here, about 60% for the most part, even with MSAA at 16xQ and a lot of the other post processing up pretty high.

 

Still need to do some tinkering here. I have no idea how much of it is DCS itself, and how much is something within my control.

 

- shadows?

Mostly good. The in cockpit shadows are immersive as ever, and outside they're generally pretty good. Sometimes a bit of flicker though, and the tree shadows are flickering a lot. I haven't tried disabling them yet.

 

- switch label readability?

There's a great deal of variation here. Some of the A-10C switches are legible from a normal position, and almost all of them can be read if you lean closer. The Ka-50 also has good, readable, labeling. On the other hand, I could read basically nothing in the MiG-21, even while trying to look closely. Also, the weapons panel in the P-51 was particularly hard. There's other good/bad ones, but those stood out to me. Really though, if DCS is going to be completely playable, we need a magnifier tool and/or binocular view like in FlyInside.

 

Sound doesn't come through the Oculus headphones if you have any other sound device attached to your machine. Other Oculus games have no issue with this, they detect you're in the HMD and use that sound device.

 

Make the rift your default playback device.

 

When you start in the A-10C, you're seat position is so high, and so far forward, you're out of the cockpit. Oculus global re-orient does not have any effect. Why would the default seat position be setup like I was an 8 foot tall giant?

 

Most of the aircraft are doing this. Press numpad 5 to recenter.

 

The main 2D menu is skewed and way off to the right, again, Oculus global re-orient does nothing. In fact, in general, Oculus global re-orient seems to have zero effect on DCS at all.

Sorry, can't help you here. I haven't seen this one yet.

 

 

Overall impression

The DK1/2 users already know all of this, so it's mainly for those who haven't tried VR:

 

I don't see myself going back to another display for simming ever again. There is a lot of room for improvement, in both the hardware and software, but the "OMG I'm flying a plane" is unbelievable. I also have the benefit of a G-Seat and FFB HOTAS, so the complete experience is ridiculous, although the rift is 90% of that.

 

Flying the Huey at 120kts down the street and cranking between full size buildings is incredible. Hovering and spot landing is much much easier. Autorotations are also a lot of fun.

 

Dogfighting in the P-51 was a blast. Spotting within normal dogfighting distances was no problem (I'm also using model enlargement). I mapped labels on/off to HOTAS, but I didn't need them at all. Despite the physical difficulty of checking 6 with the 1:1 tracking, my overall situation awareness was better than with TIR. Also, I felt I had a much better sense of the aircraft's energy state. The sense of speed and altitude really helped with that. You're really flying and fighting in 3d space.

 

I'd say those experiences really summarize what's so great about flying in the rift. Yes, there's room for improvement in the image quality, and there's more to be done on the software side, but the tracking and depth/scale is perfect and the impression of flight is incredible.

[S3NTRY11]

Ok I'll give him some reasons.

 

Its cheaper if he's primarily a flight simmer, and the parts delays have translated into free shipping. Cancelling his order would also put him at the back of the line for either headset.

 

If you want room scale VR, you can add it later, as the Touch inputs are likely to be more refined than the Vive wands.

 

The headset is comfortable and well balance for long periods of use.

 

The headset includes a decent set of headphones.

 

The displays and optics appear to be more refined that the Vive in regards to SDE and larger sweetspot. These features should be of paramount interest to flight simmers, where we need to spot distant objects.

 

The ATW Oculus software appears to be working very well with DCS.

 

If he doesn't like the Rift, he can sell it for quite abit more than he paid for it, as long as the demand lasts, and it doesn't appear to be ending anytime soon.

 

All that said, he wouldn't go far wrong by ordering the Vive, as it also appears to be a very good headset, but IMHO the Rift appears to be a little more refined..

 

edit...only one flight sim developer (flyinside) has talked about the difference between the Rift/Vive, and his thoughts would imply that the Rift would work better for flight sims, and the Vive is the obvious choice for handtracking atleast until the consumer Touch inputs are tested.

Much better response.

 

I would say that the point about roomscale is off though. The Rift is not going to come near the Vive for roomscale, I guarantee it.

 

If he has the chance, I recommend he find a way to check them both out, physically before doing anything.

[hannibal]

vids... for the skeptics!!!!

where are the vids!

thru lens prefered for me... ;)

[S3NTRY11]

Great post, Rico!

First and foremost, ATW is amazing. Even if you're running at 30 FPS head tracking and everything is still smooth as butter. The only thing I really notice at lower framerates is that the ground moves by in a steplike fasion, or the slight stutter when rolling, stuff like that.

I've noticed the same thing with the Vive's reprojection too.

[Kal-El]

I only noticed this after Warthog Farmer pointed it out, and I still only notice it when I'm looking for it. There's something about the optics that makes barely illegible text, barely legible at certain angles, I see it when I tilt my head down and look through the top of the lens. I'm talking like a 10% difference, it shouldn't be anything for anyone to worry about. ;)

 

 

Unless there's a setting I'm missing to enable it, it's not quite there yet, IMO. It doesn't appear to follow the surface of whatever you're hovering over, and I think it's kind of fidgety. On the plus side, the mouse is kept bound within the display when DCS is the foreground. Loosing the mouse somewhere on another monitor was something that annoyed me with FlyInside.

 

 

Currently the 2d menus are all just virtual desktop style. I'd say I'd like them to be bigger. In VR you can make a virtual desktop look like an imax theater, but in DCS they're like regular monitor size and distance. From what wags said I guess this is an area of future improvement.

 

 

 

First and foremost, ATW is amazing. Even if you're running at 30 FPS head tracking and everything is still smooth as butter. The only thing I really notice at lower framerates is that the ground moves by in a steplike fasion, or the slight stutter when rolling, stuff like that.

 

Still, I went tweaking looking for that 90 fps lock. Specs are i5-4670k at 4.5ghz w/16gb ram and a Gigabyte G1 GTX970 with factory OC. Going into this, I had DCS set up for a reliable 60fps on 1080p monitor (most settings high).

 

I didn't change anything at first, and saw frame rates of 45 to 60. I put all settings at low and still couldn't break 60. Turned off v-sync, tweaked all kinds of other crap and then finally I realized that I had capped DCS at 60fps in the text editor. (d'oh)

 

Going back into it, I'm still having some strange performance issues. For the most part I'm seeing 45 or 90fps, but occasionally 30. On the good side, it jumps between them without being very noticeable, and they're all factors of 90 so there's minimal judder. Now the strange part is that I'm not seeing much change in performance between low and high settings, either way it's either 45 or 90, and if AI aircraft, smoke, explosions and what not are in view, it's almost guaranteed to be 45. Like I said, even on low settings, the same thing happens.

 

What also has me confused is that my CPU utilization is pretty low. All 4 cores are hovering around 50%, but without the rift I'd usually see one or two of them near 100% and the others around 50 (which makes sense to me), also the GPU is hardly breaking a sweat here, about 60% for the most part, even with MSAA at 16xQ and a lot of the other post processing up pretty high.

 

Still need to do some tinkering here. I have no idea how much of it is DCS itself, and how much is something within my control.

 

 

Mostly good. The in cockpit shadows are immersive as ever, and outside they're generally pretty good. Sometimes a bit of flicker though, and the tree shadows are flickering a lot. I haven't tried disabling them yet.

 

 

There's a great deal of variation here. Some of the A-10C switches are legible from a normal position, and almost all of them can be read if you lean closer. The Ka-50 also has good, readable, labeling. On the other hand, I could read basically nothing in the MiG-21, even while trying to look closely. Also, the weapons panel in the P-51 was particularly hard. There's other good/bad ones, but those stood out to me. Really though, if DCS is going to be completely playable, we need a magnifier tool and/or binocular view like in FlyInside.

 

 

 

Make the rift your default playback device.

 

 

 

Most of the aircraft are doing this. Press numpad 5 to recenter.

 

 

Sorry, can't help you here. I haven't seen this one yet.

 

 

Overall impression

The DK1/2 users already know all of this, so it's mainly for those who haven't tried VR:

 

I don't see myself going back to another display for simming ever again. There is a lot of room for improvement, in both the hardware and software, but the "OMG I'm flying a plane" is unbelievable. I also have the benefit of a G-Seat and FFB HOTAS, so the complete experience is ridiculous, although the rift is 90% of that.

 

Flying the Huey at 120kts down the street and cranking between full size buildings is incredible. Hovering and spot landing is much much easier. Autorotations are also a lot of fun.

 

Dogfighting in the P-51 was a blast. Spotting within normal dogfighting distances was no problem (I'm also using model enlargement). I mapped labels on/off to HOTAS, but I didn't need them at all. Despite the physical difficulty of checking 6 with the 1:1 tracking, my overall situation awareness was better than with TIR. Also, I felt I had a much better sense of the aircraft's energy state. The sense of speed and altitude really helped with that. You're really flying and fighting in 3d space.

 

I'd say those experiences really summarize what's so great about flying in the rift. Yes, there's room for improvement in the image quality, and there's more to be done on the software side, but the tracking and depth/scale is perfect and the impression of flight is incredible.

 

Thank you, I honestly cant wait. VR virgin here.

Guess you support Wags statement where he said he will never enjoy flying on a regular monitor anymore as he used to.

Just cant wait. OMG!!!

[SkateZilla]

vids... for the skeptics!!!!

where are the vids!

thru lens prefered for me... ;)

 

 

Cuz everyone has a tripod and macromode capable camera with hood to zoom on the lens..

[jerda]

When i launch 2.0, 1.5, or 1.5B it will open oculus home, and then stop loading DCS. I'm trying to download the steam version now...

 

*edit* Steam didn't work either. The only way to use DCS is to disconnect the rift.

Edited April 9, 2016 by jerda

[lobo]

vids... for the skeptics!!!!

where are the vids!

thru lens prefered for me... ;)

 

Exactly! Video or it didn't happen! :thumbup:

[recoilfx]

Does anyone have issues with the WWII planes's gunsights? I feel like they are super close and they are giving me eye strains (feel like I can't get them focused). Moving to the back of the cockpit helps somewhat, but it's still really uncomfortable. Modern jets are better with their big HUDs. And yes, I have already tried the IPD slider to no avail. I wonder if I have some weird vision problem....

[Crunchy]

I use Joytokey to bind Num+5 to a joystick key. Works perfectly.

 

I just have to say the word "center," because I use Voice Activated Command. This works really well in the Rift and saves me pressing lots of different switches.

[Vladdo]

Ok.. so I have a DK2 & was running 0.8 & DCS 2 open alpha.. I've now gone back to 1.5.3 with 1.3 runtime and it's definitely an interesting experience.

 

I'm running windows 10 x64, 6700k @ 4.5ghz, 980ti x2 (with sli disabled), 16gb ram, samsung 850 pro 1tb ssd.

 

With 0.8 and NTTR on high settings in the huey, I'd mostly get a judder free experience with the only real exception was cruising down the las vegas strip at very low altitude and even then it wasn't so bad. But the tracking was never 100%, as sometimes you'd just get random spikes in judder which would be annoying. Even Project Cars is way better under 1.3.. It's been an interesting going from 0.5, 0.6, .8 etc, and now 1.3 it actually feels finished and not just a .. so close it'll do.. sort of thing..

 

Compared to 1.5.3 with 1.3 runtime in the huey doing the harbour tour. The tracking is just so much better it's judder free. There are no tracking issues whatsoever. However, for whatever reason, the caucasus map seems to really struggle. It's like the game is getting around 40-50fps but with the ATW feature, head tracking is remaining constant at 75fps but the outside world is like in bullet time. I'm sure it's because I've really pumped up the detail in the outside world but it's an interesting visual artifact. I don't think there's any real visual improvement from 0.8 to 1.3 in terms of pixel fidelity but yeah.. DCS on an Oculus Rift is wihtout doubt the most immersive experience you can get.

 

I load up P3D and it's not even in the same ballpark to DCS. I think what would be really awesome is having the leap motion controller working inside the cockpit in DCS, as it's not just a gimmick in P3D, it does actually work and is infinitely more immersive than a mouse.

 

Is anyone here running a CV1 with DCS? How do you find the audio? Is the audio positional tracking as well? Say if you taxi a p51, open the canopy, stick your head out, does the sound of the engine reflect where it is in the world?

Edited April 9, 2016 by Vladdo

[Frusheen]

Something in 1.5 broke framerates a few updates back. I lost 25% framerate on my all low VR settings. I hope they can figure out what has caused it. The same thing then happened with 2.0 a few updates later! Settings were almost irrelevant. I went from over 200fps on a 1080p monitor which provided a solid 75hz in dk2 to 140 fps on the monitor and no way of maintaining v-sync on the dev kit. It surely sounds like that problem is still there.

[KLR Rico]

Does anyone have issues with the WWII planes's gunsights? M\

 

My first impression was that it felt screwey, but I got used to it pretty quick. I didn't have any problem using the P-51's sight in A2A or A2G. I only briefly tried the 109 and it didn't seem too bad either. The one thing that is messed up is the Ka-50's helmet mounted designator. Both eyes get the reticle at the same time. It doesn't make much of a difference at long ranges, but if you look around in the cockpit it gets doubled.

 

I just have to say the word "center"

I'm really going to have to set that up one of these days.

 

 

Is anyone here running a CV1 with DCS? How do you find the audio? Is the audio positional tracking as well? Say if you taxi a p51, open the canopy, stick your head out, does the sound of the engine reflect where it is in the world?

 

Inside the aircraft the audio seems perfect. Wind, buffeting, airframe, engine... it all sounds really good and in 3d space. However, it doesn't go as far as echoing off buildings, or sounding much different if you lean out of the cockpit.

 

Settings were almost irrelevant.

YES! This. The CPU and GPU are both being underutilized for some reason and it's killing the potential framerates.

 

And now for y'all that wanted a video. I don't know why you do, but here it is. You can sort of see that the hud is quite readable and the tracking is good, but it really gives no sense of FOV and the image is a lot worse in the video as far as distortion and focus. Sorry about the portrait view, it's the only way my phone fits in there.

e3KXY-oF6ug

[aaron886]

Thanks everyone for the impressions. Come on, Oculus, email me! No love if you pre-ordered a few hours later than everyone else...

[Crunchy]

Does NTTR work with Runtime 1.3 on DK2? I can only get DCS 1.5 running. When I try to run 2.0 NTTR, it just starts on my computer screen and not in DK2?

[KLR Rico]

Same here, I think it's just 1.5 right now

[Crunchy]

Same here, I think it's just 1.5 right now

Damn, I hope not, but atleast I know it's not just me with the problem. I was really looking forward to playing NTTR with Runtime 1.3 :(

[Warthog_Farmer]

KLR Rico - I have the same frame rate issues as yourself.

 

I've always noticed that when I was testing frames rates in the past I would normally default to Batumi and they always took a huge hit when I looked to the north. I don't know what it is up the coast but it absolutely munches the frame rates. Fly south for 90fps locked, fly north and you're frequently dipping into high 30's and early 40's which bring around the outside world stutter even though your head tracking is smooth. Like yourself... I can change the graphics settings until the cows come home and it has little effect on the frame rate.

 

As for 'through the lens' I find when I record on my iPhone everything is deceptively better... Not by a lot but I'm not sure what happens within the phone to cause the effect.

 

DCS is going to be much harder work from now on though... If you're waiting on your CV1 arriving I'd advise you take up some neck muscle training =p

[Crunchy]

The best way to get good frame rates is to set view distance to medium and shadows to medium. I think setting to medium is fine in the DK2 because of it's crappy Resolution.

 

Can anyone else confim that NTTR 2.0 isn't working with Runtime 1.3 on DK2?

[KLR Rico]

I just did refueling with the A-10, and it's incredible! I've been on the tanker side of an AR in real life and one of the things that struck me the most is how close the receiver is. You just don't get the impression in pictures or video, but in the rift I had the same feeling. I mean, it seems obvious that it should, but it still got me by surprise. :D

 

Oh yeah, and it *is* easier to do refueling with the rift. It's a lot easier to pick up on those small cues to help keep things under control.

[KLR Rico]

Guess we'll have to wait for ED to get some of that tuning done to really get the most out of our rigs.

 

I'd advise you take up some neck muscle training =p

 

LOL, I'm not going to be surprised if I need a Motrin in the morning.

 

Flying like this doesn't help a whole lot either:

:P

[*Rage*]

Im trying to resist ordering a Rift! Came one click away last night (even entered payment info) after reading some of your mini writeups:)

[KLR Rico]

If you're even thinking about it, do it. :thumbup: