about to lose me as a customer . . .

[plane_crazy242]

Frustrated Reverb G2 user and about to give up on DCS until something changes.   Been messing with settings and drivers for weeks now and can't get a stable, high quality  set up.  Either WMR crashes ( I get that's not ED's direct issue)  or the DCS menu flicker makes me sick or lately DCS crashes to desktop.  I thought this was all 'normal' bleeding edge until I flew IL-2 again after a long time.  It just worked - very clear, no crashes, 90 FPS.

 

DCS is spending time upgrading my FA18 to have TXDSR and Sea radar which is all very cool, but in the mean time the VR experience is horrible, the base engine is outdated and stability is lousy.  It's starting to feel like DCS is just a programmers playground to put interesting additions in that few people will actually use at the expense of having a commercially viable product.

 

It bums me out, I'd rather fly my FA18 off a super carrier or an F5 over the Persian Gulf, but after going back to IL-2 for just an hour, I realized how poor the whole DCS experience currently is.  I want to have fun, fly planes, interact with the systems, learn things.  But the whole DCS product under VR (and especially a G2 is just poor.  Usability was better with my Rift-S but then I sacrifice clarity)

 

It saddens me, but likely playing Il-2 (and MSFS) more in the coming months

 

Ryzen 3700x

32 GB Ram

3080

Reverb G2  

[unlikely_spider]

Lol, for me MSFS is unusable in VR so I've been spending time in DCS. Do you have any overclocked components? DCS virtually never crashes for me.

[dburne]

Different folks have different experiences I guess,

I am loving the Hornet in the Persian Gulf in my Reverb G2 at 100% resolution.

Very stable on my end. In all three flight sims I run.

 

[oz555]

43 minutes ago, dburne said:

Different folks have different experiences I guess,

I am loving the Hornet in the Persian Gulf in my Reverb G2 at 100% resolution.

Very stable on my end. In all three flight sims I run.

 

Same here. No major issues with the current build on my G2. 

[Gunnar81]

These type of threads always give me a good laugh. No attempt to ask for guidance or help with settings, just right to the business end of 'Im about to walk out on DCS'. I'm sure if you give some of these folks here some more info you may in fact be able to sort your problem out, especially with others saying the G2 is working just fine for them!

[Brainfreeze]

No issues either with maybe the exception that exiting and restarting DCS does not seem to clear GPU memory or something like this so getting a bit of graphic black outs / stuttering for a few seconds initially until it gets cleared up again.

[Burt]

I feel your frustration. I got great help in here and followed all the steps but being so new to vr like I have never put one on before I didn’t know what was good or bad. I am also new to steam and everything that goes with it to run vr. But I do understand.  I don’t quit get why I’m not seeing the clear picture in my G2 with my humble specs. It’s just so damn blurry that I think it may be my vision because I wear glasses. I also see in the cockpit while in vr is white rings as I move forward and back, it may be a controller thing but it drives me nuts. I’m getting 90fps and it actually smooth but! The crisp picture I have yet to find so I’m giving it a break and go back to my 1080p @ 240hz monitor where the picture is just beautiful. The WMR stuff that’s all nice just not in DCS for me.... yet.But no matter how much I get frustrated with something I don’t know a thing about and how to navigate through all the options,

I will never leave DCS. At my age “56” and new to the gaming/simulator world it has changed my life. I love it and I love E D for all they do for us.

 

Good Luck and hope the best for VR and DCS!

 

Cheers!

[plane_crazy242]

@Gunnar81 fair enough.  I count there are ~190 settings between WMR, StreamVR, Nvidia and DCS of which it seems about 20-25 more directly effect performance and stability (resolution settings, smoothing, refresh rates etc.)    20 settings means there are at least 1,048,575 combinations of settings and, more realistically, an order of magnitude more than that since many settings have multiple values.   I have certainly tried about 200,000 (ok not really, but feels like it) of these combinations by this time including many of the ones posted here from bignews, speed-of-heat, 71st mastiff and dozens of others.  I'll be oz555, dburne and unlikely_spider all have different configuration settings.  All are different, all very correctly point out YMMV and try to see what works for you - which is my point.  I want to fly DCS, not try thousands of setting combinations just to get something that is stable and works decently.  I get you can putz around forever to get 5 more FPS and a little sharper experience, but it shouldn't be this hard for a commercial software product to just work at some level.   IL-2 does. 

 

The very tactical problem I have is the VR support, things work pretty well on my system on my 4K monitor, but I want the VR experience to work.

I'm clearly not alone in this, you can read hundreds of posts about the old code that is DCS, the old engine, the single thread aspect, the poor VR support and on and on.  Again, that's my point, why spend programmer resources on TXDSR for the likely few that may use that when a much higher percentage of people are frustrated with the base product?

 

I get DCS blue screens, I get a 'rolling effect' occasionally in VR, my opening menu stutters so badly its nauseating (and I'm a real world pilot I don't get sick easily),  I can get 45 FPS locked in, but clarity is poor,  I can get 60-80 fps with better clarity but stutter,  Georgia map is more stable than PG map with the same setup.  It would be great if someone can give me guidance as which of the 1M+ combinations of settings will fix the issues I'm seeing .  Thanks in advance for your help

 

I get no one can help me and I'm being sarcastic out of frustration and really just giving ED some business advice to consider putting programming resources on the things 99% of users want vs. the small, incremental things only a few will use. It's not going to happen, of course, since ED basically has a monopoly in this niche and has no competitive pressures to build a more robust core platform.  Nobody is going to care except me but and I'll be sad, but likely to spend more time with IL-2 in coming months.

 

[Brainfreeze]

1 hour ago, plane_crazy242 said:

 I want to fly DCS, not try thousands of setting combinations

 

I want the VR experience to work.

Totally fair.  Arguably the windows world is like that...millions of combinations to allow anyone to do anything...not user friendly though.

VR is relatively new and it will still be a bit trial and error for a few years, especially as programmers need to account for/cope with different standards.

DCS was clearly designed in the pre-VR era and they are catching up. Arguably they do lag behind, maybe because the engine was not designed with this in mind at all. 

 

Personnaly, i was reasonably ok for my gear to find settings that make VR so much better than flat screen but indeed it could just be down to luck.   Hope you can get back to it in the near future

[dburne]

Yeah I am putting in easily 4-5 hours each day in with my Reverb G2 and DCS Hornet.

I am bound and determined to finally learn this aircraft where I can do some campaign flying with it.

Granted the learning curve with my Reverb G2 was a little steep, took me about 3 days or so to finally get it where I want it.

Now it is pretty much plug and play and works solidly for me each time.

There was a time early on in the process I was about ready to throw in the towel on it lol.

[GunSlingerAUS]

On 1/24/2021 at 5:33 AM, plane_crazy242 said:

Frustrated Reverb G2 user and about to give up on DCS until something changes.   Been messing with settings and drivers for weeks now and can't get a stable, high quality  set up.  Either WMR crashes ( I get that's not ED's direct issue)  or the DCS menu flicker makes me sick or lately DCS crashes to desktop.  I thought this was all 'normal' bleeding edge until I flew IL-2 again after a long time.  It just worked - very clear, no crashes, 90 FPS.

 

DCS is spending time upgrading my FA18 to have TXDSR and Sea radar which is all very cool, but in the mean time the VR experience is horrible, the base engine is outdated and stability is lousy.  It's starting to feel like DCS is just a programmers playground to put interesting additions in that few people will actually use at the expense of having a commercially viable product.

 

It bums me out, I'd rather fly my FA18 off a super carrier or an F5 over the Persian Gulf, but after going back to IL-2 for just an hour, I realized how poor the whole DCS experience currently is.  I want to have fun, fly planes, interact with the systems, learn things.  But the whole DCS product under VR (and especially a G2 is just poor.  Usability was better with my Rift-S but then I sacrifice clarity)

 

It saddens me, but likely playing Il-2 (and MSFS) more in the coming months

 

Ryzen 3700x

32 GB Ram

3080

Reverb G2  

 

You get 90fps? Wow, I wouldn't be quitting DCS considering you have a magic PC that can get an FPS that is basically impossible for most users. My lowly 3090 can't even maintain 45fps during normal combat missions.

[Taz1004]

6 hours ago, plane_crazy242 said:

20 settings means there are at least 1,048,575 combinations of settings and, more realistically, an order of magnitude more than that since many settings have multiple values.

 

I don't see how it's combinations.  One setting is not related to the other.  In-game PD has nothing to do with Nvidia Texture filtering Quality setting.  Nor in game Shadow Quality has anything to do with Windows Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling.

There's only 5 settings that I can think of that really affects performance.  And they're not "combinations"

 

Nvidia settings and Windows settings are out of ED's control.  You can watch optimization guide videos for MSFS and you will find exactly same tweaking advice on Windows settings.  Fullscreen optimizations, Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling, Pagefile... And I can tell you from my experience (and many others) that MSFS does NOT work out of the box without tweaking.

Edited January 25, 2021 by Taz1004

[dburne]

1 hour ago, GunSlingerAUS said:

 

You get 90fps? Wow, I wouldn't be quitting DCS considering you have a magic PC that can get an FPS that is basically impossible for most users. My lowly 3090 can't even maintain 45fps during normal combat missions.

 

Not sure where you are getting that idea.

 Seems to me in that post of his you quoted his experience was just the opposite ?

[PicklePicklePickle]

The OP has a point.

 

On one hand, DCS with VR is simply the most amazing experience in flight simulation since I started flying Sublogic's Jet and Chuck Yeager on the C64. It is quite simply a culmination of the immersion and experience that any combat flight sim enthusiast has longed for. When you climb into the Heatblur F-14 on a moonlit night and turn on those instrument lights...wow.

 

On the other hand, it is frustrating to be so close to this flight sim 'nirvana' and not being able to enjoy it or being interrupted due to stutters, low frame rate, sparkling, blurry etc. Spending days tuning only to not get any improvement at all. I think fixing performance should be ED's highest priority. It doesn't matter what new features they come up with if they run badly.

 

I am having the same experience as GunSlingerAUS, everything I get is <45fps and I have Samsung 980Pro, 128GB RAM and RTX3090 although admittedly it is as an eGPU. I am now looking at getting a desktop i9-10900 system just for DCS, and I could very well be disappointed because there is so much inconsistency in performance, there is no guarantee it will work.

 

They could literally charge for the Vulkan update and I would buy it, if it gets DCS working smoothly like every other VR game.

[Burt]

Kinda just like golf, you gotta take what it gives you. I’m in the market again for a new DCS rig and I’m going pretty big. I’m just shock the even the very best and highest stuff is still having issue with DCS and VR running at its fullest potential. But I have a feeling it will change by the end of the year. Im sure hoping. I just don’t see anything fancy about right now... but it is pretty awesome.

[dburne]

I have been spending several hours a day in VR with DCS over the last several days as I continue to learn the Hornet.

I run with Motion Smoothing forced at 45 fps and very high graphics settings, and am more than pleased with the experience.

I have a fairly stout rig too which certainly helps.

I have got to where I prefer Motion Smoothing forced at 45 fps for my flight sims, enables me to run higher graphics and too me the image quality outweighs the cons of Motion Smoothing. I do not get any annoying stuttering.

[Brainfreeze]

12 hours ago, PicklePicklePickle said:

They could literally charge for the Vulkan update and I would buy it, if it gets DCS working smoothly like every other VR game.

+1 !

[Brun]

Happy enough here with a G2 and 3080. Honestly can't remember DCS ever crashing.

 

The menu weirdness is annoying, but it's never made me feel ill.

[Wolf8312]

DCS has never run better than it does for me right now on the index. I was flying over Vegas yesterday and just marveling at how much the performance has improved since I started on VR about 4 years ago. MSFS is working great too now, but VR really does require a lot of tweaking. MSFS was an abomination when I first loaded it up!

 

I kinda get the feeling as well that the people who have performance issues with DCS tend to be those who are watching their fps counters all the time and comparing these numbers to other games.

[BMGZ06]

I just got my G2 and have a G1 also. I had a good initial result but noticed the G2 was really not noticeably better than the G1 besides comfort. Sweet spot seems the same to me and so do colors. I took pics through the lens and they both look the same in color and clarity. 

 

Anyway. I had good FPS with 100% SS then my system updated to windows ver 20H2(2004). That destroyed everything. I tried the newest nvidia driver and it did nothing. Tried various settings in game and in steamvr and made zero difference. I finally realized I had to do the nasty, and reinstall everything. I did it yesterday and installed windows 10 Pro ver 1909 H2. Fired DCS up with the F18 and bang all my fps came back and way less stutter. So I kept at tweaking and now with motion vectoring on in steamvr the game runs so much smoother and I even turned on MSAA 2x and AF 16x with flat shadows in world and low in cockpit. Still running 100% steam SS. Sure there are spots where the FPS will drop off but it is not often. Just ran a mission with 4 AI in close combat and it ran great. Before it would hitch and stutter with FPS going all over the place. 

 

Long story short...you may want to look at reinstalling DCS or windows and DCS. If you have upgraded to windows 2004 it could be causing issues like mine. 

[divinee]

Have anyone tried to reinstall 20H2 version of Windows? I'd be curious to know if it helps with random fps drops and problematic memory handling before doing that by myself  I don't want to revert back to 1909 because with 20H2 there came corrections for barrel distortion and general image quality improvements for G2.

 

Edit: Sorry for the little hijackin of the thread..

Edited February 8, 2021 by divinee

[javelina1]

do a search on how to reinstall Win10 and keep your files and apps.  (that's a key component, "keep your files and apps").  It'll keep all your data, but you'll have to go back and reset some of your customizations.

[BMGZ06]

12 hours ago, divinee said:

Have anyone tried to reinstall 20H2 version of Windows? I'd be curious to know if it helps with random fps drops and problematic memory handling before doing that by myself  I don't want to revert back to 1909 because with 20H2 there came corrections for barrel distortion and general image quality improvements for G2.

 

Edit: Sorry for the little hijackin of the thread..

 

Maybe if I am feeling like my life does not have enough pain already, I will  update to 20H2 to see if it acts the same on a fresh win install. Right now I have DCS running too well on the G2 to F with it. I am on nvidia 456.71 driver right now. Scared to try a newer one.

[RackMonkey]

For you guy's that seem to have a "working" system...please post your spec's, and I mean everything. From you MB BIOS to the version of SteamVR you have running. Maybe we can spot a common thread of system that seem to work and other that don't or won't. 

Mine is blurry and stutters on loading like Plane Crazy says. I see one top level system that can't run it correctly run VR from Pickle. 

Mine

Gigabyte G170XP-SLI latest BIOS

Gigabyte RTX 2070 8GB(tried different driver sets)

32GB 

Intel NVME drive

Reverb G2

Win 10 ver 2004

WMR and SteamVR from Steam 

[Mars Exulte]

On 1/24/2021 at 1:18 PM, plane_crazy242 said:

 just giving ED some business advice to consider putting programming resources on the things 99% of users want vs. the small, incremental things only a few will use.

 

  Well, I'm sure they'd fall apart without people on the forums pointing out the trees in their forest.

 

  This isn't an ''either or'' proposition. They have more than 1 guy, working on more than 1 thing, and those guys aren't necessarily interchangeable. Also, fixing stuff like ''HURDUR FIX YER GAM'' (running through Google translate this will convert to a lengthy treatise on multicore processing and more efficient rendering pipelines) is both very time consuming and not particularly exciting.

 

  Progress on the F-18 is a screenshot of some new HUD mode, a cool looking weapon render, etc, and is incremental in nature. Fixing the game's render engine is millions of lines of code, and it doesn't really have a ''middle stage''. It either is finished and works or it is not finished and does nothing (or worse, breaks something).

 

  VR is also very new, people often forget HOW new, it's literally JUST starting to go more mainstream. It's easier to work into a newer engine than it is one that has its roots fifteen years ago before any of this even existed. ''Your game designed before this technology was a twinkle in some rarely bathed college dropout's eye doesn't work very well'' is like... the least surprising statement of all time.

Edited February 9, 2021 by zhukov032186