DCS and VR?

[Phantom88]

Just curious,How many of you who use DCS also fly exclusively in VR? I bought an Oculas Rift headset about a year and a half ago and I have not used my Track IR since.I just can not go back to using a monitor anymore because the immersion in DCS is so incredible.....Anyone else in the same boat?

[IanHenry]

No Phantom, I haven't tried VR yet, I was thinking I might wait until the next generation of it arrives.


Ian

[Mach3DS]

one of my friends that you've seen me fly with in some of the F-100D videos I've posted in the P3D/FSX forums, uses an Occulus rift. He's an ex-F-4E and C-130 driver, says next to actually being in the aircraft it's that good. I'm waiting for a PC upgrade first...

[Stickshaker]

Just curious,How many of you who use DCS also fly exclusively in VR? I bought an Oculas Rift headset about a year and a half ago and I have not used my Track IR since.I just can not go back to using a monitor anymore because the immersion in DCS is so incredible.....Anyone else in the same boat?

I am in exactly the same boat, Phantom. It is simply fantastic; this is what a sim should be (even with the relatively low resolution). It is even better than some of the sims with ‘real’ cockpits that I have flown at airshows and manufacturers, since with the Rift you have a 360 degree view with no distractions, but with subtle things like canopy reflexions (most professional sims have open cockpits). I made a few flights and landings in real P-51 Mustangs and to me the Rift comes ever so close to the real thing. I am even thinking about hydraulics to make my seat move (does not make a difference with loops and rolls, in my experience, but with subtle movements like moving the throttle).

[strykerpsg]

Funny story, I bought an OR set last November, just to fly DCS and P3D...however, been a bit intimidated in setting up a good profile or two for my Warthog HOTAS, so I can fly inside the OR without having to lift the goggles up to see what I am doing. I also have yet to try much of this because DCS has not updated yet to 2.5 for my version installed, nor has P3D4.2 settled down yet, with all the add on's supporting the upgrade. Once those both get updated properly, I will dive a bit deeper. For now, I am in the kiddie pool.

[Victory103]

one of my friends that you've seen me fly with in some of the F-100D videos I've posted in the P3D/FSX forums, uses an Occulus rift. He's an ex-F-4E and C-130 driver, says next to actually being in the aircraft it's that good. I'm waiting for a PC upgrade first...

Same here, if it's that good then I have to ask myself why I need a huge gaming laptop (on 17" ASUS now) if purchasing OR. Take the saved money and get some building materials to properly rest my Warthog/pedals on.

[scotth6]

Yeah, in DCS World I fly almost exclusively with the Oculus Rift. The only time I don't is if I'm creating a mission and testing, or if it's over 36°C. I have been flying in some KA-50 and A-10C campaigns most recently. Nellis looks so good in VR. The immersion and situational awareness is unbelievable. What I love most about VR is the realistic scale of everything. My first VR experience was in the Hawk trainer, and first combat was in the Sabre. The VR experience just seems to get better in DCS World.

I only use VR occasionally for FSX and P3D as the performance just isn't good for me. My PC is quite a few years old, and the only new hardware I got for VR was a GTX980. I also use Aerofly FS2 exclusively in VR. The performance in that and DCS World are excellent.

[scotth6]

Funny story, I bought an OR set last November, just to fly DCS and P3D...however, been a bit intimidated in setting up a good profile or two for my Warthog HOTAS, so I can fly inside the OR without having to lift the goggles up to see what I am doing. I also have yet to try much of this because DCS has not updated yet to 2.5 for my version installed, nor has P3D4.2 settled down yet, with all the add on's supporting the upgrade. Once those both get updated properly, I will dive a bit deeper. For now, I am in the kiddie pool.

I think I am just using the default Warthog profile (for the Warthog) which works great. I do use the keyboard for commands and for the gear but I am used to peeking down through the little gap under the OR if I need to. I don't need to touch the Rift, but just roll my eyes down.

[Phantom88]

:jump: Glad I'm not alone,I knew I was completely hooked on VR in DCS when after a week of using my Rift I was flying The Mi-8 (fantastic cockpit in VR BTW) I took a cannon round to the port side that severely damaged my tail rotor.....I soon could not control the Copter and started to rapidly lose altitude ,I fought to gain control but it was useless ,I was on a collision course with the Nevada Desert....I accepted my sure fate and made peace with my maker.....Just before impact I reached out....extended my arm and braced for the crash.

But of course my arm only reaches to my computer desk which was safely on the ground:a1310: I hit ESC took off my Rift Headset and sat there in disbelief ....My brain had actually been fooled into thinking I was in real danger and automatically reacted ...then I knew I was hooked. lol

[scotth6]

:biggrin-new: LOL, yeah I know the feeling Phantom. I love the way you (well, I do at least) actually get that feeling in your gut as you take off, or pull out from a dive, just as you would if you were flying. Orthe feeling you get the moment you punch out. Your eyes really do fool your brain at times. I am also always knocking my head on my Warthog stick, or my monitor, or the shelf next to me as I lean forward or side to side in the virtual cockpit looking for switches, or sometimes sticking my head out of the cockpit while taxiing. After a few dogfights in the Sabre (or any fighter, or CAS in the Warthog or KA-50 for that matter) I end up with a sore neck from all the head swivelling, and I can feel it the next day :biggrin-new:.

The Rift and the TM Warthog HOTAS are the two best flight sim investments I have made by far. They both cost a bit, but I feel like I have got every cents worth out of them already.

[IanHenry]

A couple of VR questions, firstly is there a significant difference in the resolution and will my current graphics card an Nvidia 970 cope with it? I'm actually very happy with the performance of the card at the moment, I can run DCS with most of the setting on or near full up.


Regards,
Ian

[Phantom88]

Ian,If you go on Oculas Rift site,scroll down to bottom,You can download a small program that will check your PC specs and see if you meet the requirement's and where you might have a bottleneck.
https://www.oculus.com/rift/

[strykerpsg]

Same here, if it's that good then I have to ask myself why I need a huge gaming laptop (on 17" ASUS now) if purchasing OR. Take the saved money and get some building materials to properly rest my Warthog/pedals on.

That was exactly the reason I went from the laptop to a new desktop, even bought the very nice desk clamp stands for the Warthog. You won't regret upgrading your laptop to a desktop.

[scotth6]

A couple of VR questions, firstly is there a significant difference in the resolution and will my current graphics card an Nvidia 970 cope with it? I'm actually very happy with the performance of the card at the moment, I can run DCS with most of the setting on or near full up.


Regards,
Ian


As Phantom says, download the compatibility tool from Oculus, but just be aware that if your PC doesn't pass, it is worth comparing the specs of your cpu and graphics card to the minimum suggested specs. My older graphics card (ATI 7970) and my older cpu did not officially pass, but they both ran DCS World in VR very well. I now have a GTX 980 but the same CPU and I use a lot of VR programs with ease.

The resolution is fine, especially in DCS World as you can use a built in supersample to increase resolution x 2. I have mine set at 1.5, and can read all labels. The Rift resolution takes a bit of getting used to but it is fine especially if performace is good.

[IanHenry]

Thanks for your advice and suggestions Phantom and Scotth6, I'll check those out.


Regards,
Ian

[Phantom88]

Funny story, I bought an OR set last November, just to fly DCS and P3D...however, been a bit intimidated in setting up a good profile or two for my Warthog HOTAS, so I can fly inside the OR without having to lift the goggles up to see what I am doing. I also have yet to try much of this because DCS has not updated yet to 2.5 for my version installed, nor has P3D4.2 settled down yet, with all the add on's supporting the upgrade. Once those both get updated properly, I will dive a bit deeper. For now, I am in the kiddie pool.
Matt Buddy,Don't deny yourself the incredible immersion of VR!!! It's absolutely Sublime!!!!

[Phantom88]

As Phantom says, download the compatibility tool from Oculus, but just be aware that if your PC doesn't pass, it is worth comparing the specs of your cpu and graphics card to the minimum suggested specs. My older graphics card (ATI 7970) and my older cpu did not officially pass, but they both ran DCS World in VR very well. I now have a GTX 980 but the same CPU and I use a lot of VR programs with ease.

The resolution is fine, especially in DCS World as you can use a built in supersample to increase resolution x 2. I have mine set at 1.5, and can read all labels. The Rift resolution takes a bit of getting used to but it is fine especially if performace is good.

Scott,Thank You for mentioning this as it's very true,I was running a processor ,3970X I believe when I first got my rift,I ran the compatibility tool which said my CPU was a bottleneck,Wowever my PC ran fine on medium settings,The tool didn't take in effect my CPU had a healthy over clock of 4.7GHz

[gunit]

I too have dipped into VR, using Vive. It is now very hard to go back to a flat screen, I use it P3Dv4, and DCS. DCS renders better at this point. Go on take the plunge you will not regret it.

[scotth6]

I too have dipped into VR, using Vive. It is now very hard to go back to a flat screen, I use it P3Dv4, and DCS. DCS renders better at this point. Go on take the plunge you will not regret it.

Good Stuff :encouragement:

It's great isn't it. The best flight programs for VR, in my opinion are DCS World, Aerofly FS2, and the new IL2 series ( I have Cliffs of Dover, Battle of Stalingrad and Flying Circus).

Even just starting up and taxiing around is still awesome for me in VR in DCS World. The scale and detail of the virtual world is spectacular.

[centuryseries]

DCS in VR is awesome. Granted the resolution isn't as good as it could be yet, but what I like is that for both P3D and DCS you get to be in the cockpit, not watching it on a screen. I have a modest and old system, GTX970 30Gb RAM and an i7 and while not perfect sometimes, the times when its good, its amazing. Occasionally I max out the GPU which causes some stuttering. To be honest it was often better in Windows 7 without the extra memory than it is in Windows 10 - something to do with ASW, which I believe is not available in 7 but turns itself on in 10 and you have to use OTT to turn it off each time!

If anyone has any tips I'm all ears! I have it set to either 1.3 pixel density or 1.7 - depending on GPU load.

VR is addictive in DCS!

[Phantom88]

***FLASH NEWS......FLASH NEWS***
"Hey everyone,

Earlier we mentioned that we have been working on DCS VR optimization. I have good news today! After much investigation and work, we traced the issue back to the terrain engine. We have since adjusted the terrain engine, and this has resulted in a 50% increase in VR performance! We will continue to test and optimize this further, but we hope to have this great improvement to you soon.

Thanks

[scotth6]

Wow! This is amazing news. VR performance is already very good in DCS World, but I do still use the simple VR settings with just the resolution turned up. A 50% performance increase is huge.

[scotth6]

I wonder if any other sims can use this information and apply it for an increase in performance in VR. I know they are different terrain engines, but if there was some commonality between engines and some way to apply it P3D and XP11 could both benefit from an increase in VR performance.

As an aside, tonight I was trying out VR in P3DV3.4 on my new PC for the second time, and the default VR was horrible. Lots of shimmering, 15 FPS when set at 30 and poor resolution. I installed FlyInside P3D Pro, which I purchased long ago, and wow, what a difference that made. I'm not sure if the program itself has improved or if it just works better on my new PC. I downloaded and installed the latest version which was 1.96. I did the same test as the default P3DV3 VR and used the Captain Sim 727 from Taxi2Gate's LZIB Bratislava. With FlyInside I got a smooth 50FPS (converted to 90 in the program), the resolution was amazing and there was no shimmering. This was all straight out of the box, with no adjustments made. I don't remember FlyInside ever working so well on my old PC, so I suppose it just works better with newer hardware. BTW I now have an i9-9900k (stock speed) and RTX2080Ti.

I just completed a full flight from Bratislava to Zagreb, gate to gate, in VR and the whole experience was awesome. I now need to try some more full flights in VR, something I had never done much of with any version of FSX or P3D.

[Phantom88]

A word from Wags about VR Optimization
https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=3878128
""Also, I’m sure you’re asking: where is the VR performance boost!? It’s coming. The VR optimization of the Caucasus map is done, and now the team is optimizing the other maps for improved VR performance. Once done and tested, we’ll release this in a future Open Beta.
"

[Phantom88]

Hhmmmmm??????



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSCCS7i-Ic4

[Phantom88]

***Mini update***

"Hey everyone, a little update. The map VR optimization changes are being integrated into the next DCS World version: 2.5.5. This will be for both the Caucasus and Persian Gulf maps. Nevada map VR optimization will come after.

2.5.5 will not be this week, but not too much longer now. As a few version, it's not as simple as a regular Open Beta, there needs to be a lot more testing and checking to make sure that all 3rd party modules are working.

Thanks"

[centuryseries]

That's great news - I was using an Nvidia GTX970, but now a GTX 1070 - can't afford the 1080, but the 1070 yields pretty good results already, so looking forwards to the optimisation with baited breath! :applause:

[Phantom88]

***Small update from Wags on Open Beta VR improvements***

"Dear all,

Sadly, we still have a 3rd party that has not updated their code to work within the 2.5.5 branch. To release 2.5.5 today would mean their module would not function within DCS World. We very much hope to see this resolved next week. If it cannot be, we will still release version 2.5.5 next week, and the 3rd party module will still be playable in the release version.

Thanks"

[centuryseries]

Hopefully VR performance improvements tomorrow on open beta :applause: