DCS World and VR

Schlangers

Schlangers

Schlangers

Associate
Joined
22 Aug 2009
Posts
116
Hi Chaps,

I had a 780 which was working reasonably well, however it died a few months back and I have been waiting for the GPU prices to go down.

What GPU would you recommend for reasonable performance with DCS World in the Rift?

Thanks,
Schlangers
 
DCS is still a resource hog and it's a little more complex to understand than most applications.
It like a lot of RAM (preferably a min of 16GB), and is primarily CPU bound, even in VR. It also has long load times, and with the amount of textures that it likes to use is frequently making calls to RAM (so likes DDR4 RAM) and then to hard drives (so much prefers SSD drives).

For a GPU, I'd say a 1070 as a minimum (2060 now), then when you can, overall your base until with 32GB of RAM, NVME2 SSD and a decent processor.

On a positive note:
- They've stated that there are some generic VR performance enhancements inbound, but we've now idea of when or how effective they will be
- If you play mainly on your own, with your own missions and have a spare PC to hand, they've recently released the "dedicated server" option. It's a bit bare bones from a control perspective, and still requires a full game install, but can host a fairly complex mission in 4GB of RAM and has minimal GPU requires. The really good bit being that it takes responsibility for AI/server calculations, thus reducing load on your gaming PC and resulting in a significant increase in frame rate.
- Vulkan support is inbound. Again, no timescales. They're currently updating textures. My opinion is that this is why we've recently had cockpit enhancements to the warbirds and a few aircraft textures go missing. I think we're still looking at a few months though, as I'd assume the planned update to the A10 and KA50 will also be required and that's still yet to happen.

So there's a lot of good things coming.
 
kevman said:
I love dcs but to any newcomer this just sounds ridiculous:D
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Sorry, I'm a little confused by why? I assume that I've failed to explain successfully what I was trying to say.
In short, if you have a secondary PC, you can use that to host an instance of a dedicated server, which will then handle AI logic. You can then login to the server using your gaming PC running the standard DCS client, and your PC won't have to deal with the resources required for AI logic. The implications being that you get an improvement in frame rate.
Bearing in mind how much money people are willing to spend on a graphics card, what appears to be a free increase in frame rate (assuming that you do have a spare PC), seems like a bit of an easy win.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
Sorry, I'm a little confused by why? I assume that I've failed to explain successfully what I was trying to say.
In short, if you have a secondary PC, you can use that to host an instance of a dedicated server, which will then handle AI logic. You can then login to the server using your gaming PC running the standard DCS client, and your PC won't have to deal with the resources required for AI logic. The implications being that you get an improvement in frame rate.
Bearing in mind how much money people are willing to spend on a graphics card, what appears to be a free increase in frame rate (assuming that you do have a spare PC), seems like a bit of an easy win.
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Yeah sorry not a dig at your explanation perfectly clear and it does make sense.

But it's like saying to get your car running well all you need is another car to take some of the load off. I just found it funny that's all.
As you say stranger things have happened and for the price of a 2080ti you could just buy another pc to improve performance instead.
 
I had a spare laptop kicking around, so really was a bit of a no brainer. Took me around 30 mins to get my head around how to start the server correctly and job's a good un', with (rough guess), something like a 50% improvement in frame rate.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
I had a spare laptop kicking around, so really was a bit of a no brainer. Took me around 30 mins to get my head around how to start the server correctly and job's a good un', with (rough guess), something like a 50% improvement in frame rate.
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Has the dedicated server improved mp at all?
 
kevman said:
Has the dedicated server improved mp at all?
Click to expand...

Probably too early to tell. I expect it to.
For one thing, it changes the system requirements. Until now, you needed a server with a decent graphics card attached, which are pretty few and far between, and more importantly, aren't cheap to rent (assuming you don't own one).
My assumption is that this should significantly lower the cost or renting a server, and very much allows player to host a server using a pretty simple PC. As mentioned above, when I've tested it, it's not used more than 4Gb of RAM, and my laptop has coped very nicely with just 8GB of total system RAM.

So you'd expect there to be more servers now hosting. Certainly when I run my own, I leave it open for others to login and also run a free Teamspeak server for any who fancies dropping in to say hi.

My guess is that not many people are aware of the benefits, and haven't given it a try yet.
Finally, this is only the first "public" drop. There's bound to be usability enhancement as we go forward.
Right now, you boot it using a CMD line instruction, control it using a webpage and kill the instance using task manager. It all works, is very easy to do once you know how, and I've yet to have a server crash, but clearly there's room to make it more user friendly. Doesn't really bother me, but it'll bother some.
 
Sale is currently on. With most things discounted at -50% a Helicopter module is tempting. I read the reviews with people saying that Blackshark is difficult to learn, the Huey or Mi any easier?
 
The Ka50 has a lot of complex systems, but is the easiest to actually fly. The Huey is IMO the best fun overall. More interesting/challenging than the Ka50 to fly and just a generally fun all rounder. Takes real practice to get any good in it, and a decent HOTAS is pretty much obligatory, and that includes pedals. The Huey was my first DCS module and 3 years on, I still love flying it. Infact, I was in it 30 mins ago.
 
No pedals, i was wondering if they would be needed. Are they an essential item for any or all of the helicopter modules, is the rudder control on the throttle unworkable?

Of all that DCS offers, it's only the helicopters that really appeal. Buying a set of pedals isn't beyond means, but wasn't in the plan.
 
I thoroughly recommend the story driven DLC campaign "F-15 The Georgian War". It's kinda like Ace Combat for DCS - in a nice way:) Not too hard, atmosphere, tonnes of voice overs, naive sounding inept wingman... And lots of fun setups- you don't just fly in and kill everything, as the goal is to deescalate the conflict and unauthorised fire will fail the misison. Plus on many occasions the enemies will flee once locked onto or if their buddy catches a missile in the knee right next to them)
Imho this campaign is the best single player experience in DCS, works great in VR too - I've played it in my Oculus from start to finish.

PS Another recommendation is to get Voice Attack for the radio comms and forget about squinting under the HMD in search of the F keys. It's a doddle to setup, Oculus inbuilt mic means no extra hardware is needed and the immersion of actually telling your wingman to "Hold position" (as opposed to pressing "\", "F2", "F3", "F1" combo) to set up a trap for the enemy, or verbalise "AWACS, target" - priceless :)
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
he only Heli I'd even consider trying to fly with a twist group would be the Ka50.
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I apologise for going back on this, but digging around for drivers has brought a clearer understanding of my situation. It might sound odd, but I still have my old X36F-X35T Saitek from 20 years ago. Reading up on a forum post has made me aware of the significance of this and the rudder solution of old which Saitek did away with for the 'twist group' of which I was unaware.

I don't know if you've experience with the rudder control on the X35, but as I've always used it over the years, it's a natural thing that just works for me. Hopefully it translates over to workable rudder control in DCS.

IAS4O91
 
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Maybe I should explain better.
I bought the Huey roughly 3 years ago, and bought a set of CH Pedals at the time. I took me months to be fairly comfortable with flying the Huey, as I'd never needed to coordinate so many things in unison and even then, it wasn't easy. Since then, I've replaced the CH with a set of MFGs and with 3 years of practice, consider myself to be pretty competent in flying not only the Huey, but also the Gazelle and Mi8.
So I'm not saying that it can't be done with a twist grip. I'm saying that the right kit makes a big difference to flying a chopper with a rear tail rotor (as against contra-rotating blades on the Ka50). Using a twist grip sounds like REAL hard work.
 
Understandable, I know you become accustom and there's often no way back. No doubt it's the perfect solution, something I should be looking toward. I can see how having to turn on the main stick would be an impedance too, it seems like an odd workaround and a bit of a backwards step.

The pivoting bar that act's as the rudder on the throttle though is far more intuitive, it's a natural motion that doesn't impede any other action. Having just tried it, I think it's going to work out, certainly usable in the interim.

My initial impressions in the cockpit are positive, aside from it's all in Russian and no doubt would be easier to reference and learn without having to read the mouse over tags. I was using a motion control to manipulate the switches which worked but seemed to work on most things, but levers and the directional switch on the engines were a problem. Aside from the load times running it from a mechanical drive, performance was great and text is more than readable with ss at 2.0 and my good eye sight.

You really do feel a phenomenal presence in the cockpit, glad I took the recommendation, the level of detail is insane.
 
Thanks. In truth I noticed the English in some instruction videos, I tried to find the option earlier to no avail. Cheers for the links.
 
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