Could Someone Give Me Advice on Immersive Flight Simulation Setup for DCS and X-Plane 12?

Flight Sims
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Hello everyone :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I am new to aviation simulations but have been completely engaged in the genre for a few months now. After trying out a few different simulators; I have opted to focus mostly on DCS World and X Plane 12. While I’m still figuring things out; I want to make my setup as immersive as possible.

  • I am currently utilizing a thrustmaster T.16000M FCS HOTAS; and while it has served me well as a novice, I am considering upgrading. I am looking into more complex HOTAS systems; such as the Thrustmaster Warthog and Virpil gear. I would love to hear any advice you have for someone looking to take things to the next level while staying within a reasonable price. How much impact will updating my HOTAS system make in terms of control accuracy and overall experience? I am also considering adding rudder pedals are these worth the expenditure for both DCS and X Plane 12?
  • This is a significant concern for me right now: should I opt for virtual reality or a high-resolution ultrawide monitor? I have read a lot about how VR may significantly change the game in terms of immersion; particularly in DCS. I have heard that there could be a performance hit, and I’m concerned about motion sickness. How do VR in flight simulators perform after extended play sessions; and how does the visual quality compare to a high-end ultrawide monitor? I’d like to know which VR headsets are best suited for flying simulations and how they compare to a large monitor in terms of performance and fun.
  • My sims are operating on a PC powered by an Intel Core i7 13700K; RTX 3080; 32GB of RAM; and a 1TB NVMe SSD. While I receive good performance in both DCS and X Plane 12; I have seen some stuttering and frame rate drops; particularly during major combat missions in DCS while flying in crowded metropolitan regions in X Plane. I have done some research, but I am curious if this community has any specific recommendations or modifications for maximising performance without compromising too much visual quality. Are there any must-have mods or adjustments that could improve my experience?

Also I explored some topics related to this DELETED SCAM LINK
but I did not get the sufficient solution of my query so I would really want to get some help from a more experienced person

I am still in the early phases of studying, and while I have completed several fundamental tutorials; I believe I may benefit from more resources. Do you have any highly suggested YouTube channels; manuals; or books for mastering both DCS and X-Plane? I want to enhance my dogfighting and carrier landing skills in DCS; as well as my IFR flying in X Plane.

Thank you in advance for your advice and recommendations; I am eager to learn about your installations; experiences; and tips. I am looking forward to getting more active in this incredible community

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Hey and welcome to our hobby! Glad to see you’re enjoying it so much already!

You have a very nice stick and throttle for a starter. I stuck with my starter stick for a few years before upgrading to a Warthog stick. It did make an incredible difference due to the sensory quality of the Hall-sensors and the plethora of functionality, as well as allowing perfect mimicry of the A-10 and F-16 controls (an F/A-18 handle is also for sale). I have a cheaper but splittable throttle. Having all these controls is great, although the splittable control is only a high necessity on the AV-8B N/A for me.

Rudder pedals are absolutely great and virtually a necessity for flying warbirds and helicopters with high accuracy.

I am a big fan of VR but it will come at the cost of visual fidelity and frame-rate. It is extremely immersive. Motion sickness can be overcome by easing into the experience and only do short sessions until you feel used to it. An alternative would be use something like TrackIR. But having something to look around that does not rely on some button pressing is amazing.

Chuck’s guides are the absolute best reading material to study aircraft in DCS. He also has a handful of guides for X-plane aircraft: https://chucksguides.com/

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Willo_w885 is a scammer. She/He/It posted a hidden link masked as a Mudspike forum link…
Elaborate attempt, I must admit.

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Welcome to Mudspike!

I agree with the above, your stick is great and there is no significant upgrade in terms of control accuracy anywhere near that budget. The T.16000M even has Hall Effect sensors.
Rudder pedals are great if you fly helicopters or warbirds, but if you’re focusing on in-flight refuelling, dogfighting and carrier landings, I wouldn’t bother with them yet. Even the F-14 can be controlled quite well with a twist stick, provided you set up a good curve and deadzone.

Being able to naturally look around the in-sim world is, IMHO, the biggest game changer. Whether you use VR or TrackIR is a matter of personal preference, but I would prioritise trying one or both.

Pros and cons of VR

Pros:

  • HUGELY immersive
  • Depth perception helps with precision flying: in-flight refuelling, landings, hover
  • Really really incredibly immersive
  • That’s not many pros but they are very important

Cons:

  • Motion sickness: not a big deal, most people get over this within a few sessions
  • Performance/graphics: the big one. You will need to turn down your settings and still not always get the smoothness you’d like.
  • Cannot look at second screen to read guides / watch vids. This is not insurmountable: you can use add-ins, extensions, apps to view a browser/tablet in VR in your sims. But it does add to:
  • More complicated setup. Programs to run, settings to manage, controls to bind (you cannot see your keyboard)

IMO this is worth it, but you should ideally try this for yourself.
Order a Quest headset from somewhere that gives you 30 days to return it if you don’t like it and see how it goes.

If you don’t like VR after a week or two, get a TrackIR, or DelanClip or similar and get that ultrawide.

EDIT: whaaat? Is this LLM spam?

Wow, I thought about it for a minute (text didn’t feel “natural”) and even looked at the link underneath one of the hyperlinked texts for a bit, didn’t spot it though.

I also recalled a friend saying she hated being suspected of being a bot online just because she’s a woman, and thought it was just my sexism…

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Ha! Not that this isn’t a good discussion for new virtual pilots, but that was certainly a spam link.

We are going to be getting more and more of these as AI becomes more of a tool used to fool people into thinking that users are real. Please be vigilant of this in your every day life.

On the plus side…

For anyone new to this hobby, don’t dive in too deep too fast. Start small (and cheap) where you can and build up from there. VR is amazing, but it is also gong to be frustrating as you learn because you keep having to peak out from under the VR hood for notes, documentation or whatever.

For controllers, I would recommend going cheap first. It may seem like a waste, and if you like flight simming and want to get more into it, it will end up being a waste. But nothing hurts more than pouring thousands of dollars into hardware that you are going to give up on, and walk away from the hobby, in a few months.

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Haha, genius!

I was reading it and thinking that this might be the most perfectly written first post that I’ve ever read.

And look! What a pleasant looking, perfectly framed, corporately appropriate avatar picture.

Nah, you’re just getting paranoid in your old age! :joy:

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yep, because this wasnt its first post here :slight_smile:

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Hi praise that MUDSPIKE is worthy of a scam.

IMHO, no such thing as being too paranoid, especially with bad actors attempting to sway voters during an election year. The amount of political spam that I get on my mobile from both parties is revolting. Some of it is obviously AI generated. With the Russians preferring the Republican candidate and the Iranians preferring the Democrat’s choice, it will be interesting watching them duel for rhetorical supremacy.

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Despite being a scam, I am just about at this point of my aviation sim journey. I just got my computer yesterday. It has an i7 14700F, 32GB DDR5, 2 TB SSD, RTX 4060Ti and Windows 11. It isn’t even out of the box yet. From a previous computer that I flew the ancient MSFS 2004, I have the Logitech G Pro Yoke with pedals. My game plan is to start with X Plane for pedestrian flying and then move on to DCS for combat sims. I don’t have a stick or throttle yet but would love suggestions. I like the Virpil Mongoos and VKB Gladiator. I intend on getting MSFS 2024 in November.

I plan on going with the Head Tracker versus VR. I don’t have a current seating setup yet either I plan on using a desk for the time being.

So, if you were me, what would you do next? Get a cheap stick and throttle? Installation tips? I read about some DCS program loader from Skullz? What is that?

What aircraft would you focus on in DCS and X Plane to learn?

If there is a post for this already (I’m sure there is), please direct me. I am reading a lot on here and appreciate all the great posts and information. I especially dig the reader offerings from Chuck!

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I’ve seen the previous posts of this user and my Spidey senses were tickling. Not enough to flag but it was just too smooth. I remember opening the user profile and thinking

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Welcome to the forums @gdistort!

A great set!

For starters, our smooth criminal had a great plan with the T.16000M (either stick or HOTAS). The stick feels much better around the center than most in its price range, and has hall sensors on the primary axes. The throttle has a lot of buttons in the right places. Perfect for fighter jets and helicopters alike.

Of course, the Virpil and VKB stuff is better, but it is also a lot more expensive. Best start with a T.16000 and see if the hobby sticks. It won’t limit you in your flying for years. Took me, I think, 6 years of flying helicopters constantly before I upgraded. I do not regret that time. It takes a bit of learning before a more precise stick will make you fly better, IMO.

If you find yourself wanting to add launch options to DCS.exe (you probably won’t because you’re not going for VR), or installing / uninstalling modules a lot, or wanting to save different graphics options statea and switch between them, then @SkateZilla 's DCS Launcher Utility is a godsend. If you don’t need those things, it may or may not be worth it to use it.

Finally, the choice of aircraft… Read some reviews (especially on X-Plane side) but then follow your heart.

Later you will find out what kind of role/gameplay you prefer, but to get started, choose an aircraft you are passionate about and everything will be 10x easier to learn.

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I second this. Get them to solve a captcha.

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Hey we could let them do Mudspike themed Captcha’s like identifying planes!

afbeelding
afbeelding1200Ă—811 105 KB

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I suggested

Are you a robot?
:white_check_mark: No
:green_square: No, but in a robotic voice

But @Discobot was offended…

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Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.

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Discobot, did you let this AI bot into this forum?

@Discobot Fortune

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:crystal_ball: Without a doubt

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@Fridge See… We can’t even trust Disco!

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Too many semicolons. Even accounting for using them as a list divider were grammatically it can be a correct usage, they were way overused by OP. I use them more than most in casual writing, but it jumped out at me that they were in spots that would almost 100% always be a comma. I am curious if that’s an AI thing, an AI watermarking thing, or just random chance with this particular event. New captcha idea: “Select the correct punctuation for the following sentence…”

And to address the real humans in the thread:

Head trackers a mostly plug and play with an easy learning curve to setup and use. They don’t really add any appreciable load to your PC when using them. VR when flight sim’ing is basically doubling the graphics processing duties, and it can be quite the chore to get it optimized to run. Let alone run well. If you check out some of the DCS threads, 3/4 of the post will be people trying to get their VR setups working again after an update. I personally fly pancake (monitor), as I don’t like the visual quality available with VR right now compared to what I get on a monitor, or the hassle to get it to run. I am in the minority here at MS on this though. So full agreement with you.

I got a VKB Gladiator NXT a while back, great stick for the money. Adding a throttle module still puts you at right around $200 USD, and the system is very expandable on the cheap. That would be my vote for the smart money approach.

I can’t speak on X Plane, I’ve always been a MSFS guy. For DCS just download the installer, and let it run. I am not aware of any issues with it getting itself sorted, but if you do have any just check back here and people will get you sorted out.

Depending on where your interest lie in DCS, there are a LOT of different ways to go. Do you have any specific interests? The good news is 90% of the stuff in DCS you can try out for 2 weeks for free with the trail program to see if you are interested. So it’s a great way to try out new aircraft.

Depending on your general flight sim’ing goals for X Plane, you can even do the majority of the “civilian” flight stuff like learning basic aircraft handling, airmanship, patterns, VFR navigation, etc in DCS. There are several good purpose designed aircraft for this in DCS (ie they are real world trainer aircraft), and the fun of a sim is you can learn to do pattern work and touch in goes in an F-15E if you want.

And to give you some actual planes to look at:

Do it all (including landing on boats) - F/A-18C Hornet - Yes there are some other carrier capable fighters in DCS, but the Hornet is a single seater, and has access to the broadest set of munitions and sensors out of the carrier platforms. Does everything pretty well, and very popular so lots of help on the internet for it. Has a lot of systems depth and complexity if you want it, but you can have a lot of fun without getting to into that all at once.

Do it all (and landing on boats is not for me) - F-16 Viper - Pretty much nothing it can’t do well, huge amount of info out there about it. If you don’t care about carrier operations, it’ll do everything else. Yes it had a rocky start in DCS, but it’s pretty good now. Same as a Hornet, lots of depth and complexity as you learn, but it’s really easy to get started flying and fighting.

I want to start from the ground up like they do for real - Yak-52. It was the real world basic trainer for the soviet air force for a long time. If you want to do something akin to a real world ab initio progression this solid starting point in DCS.

I want to start from the ground up, but be capable of blowing things up - C-101 - Used as both a trainer and light ground attack/COIN aircraft. The DCS version has both a trainer version (EB) and the attack version (CC), and a TON of really good tutorials to take you from cockpit orientation, pattern work, navigation, ground attack, and even some basic A2A.

Starter Helo - OH-58 Kiowa - The Kiowa has a Stability Augmentation System (SAS) that makes it easier to fly than the Huey, by basically dampening some of the inherent instability of a helicopter. You can turn it off for the full ride, if you want too though. It is a very honest machine to fly, has a nice glass cockpit, and a range of weapons and sensors to learn.

Hope that helps!

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SR-71

Just kidding. Maybe start with the light GA planes, but as has been suggested with DCS try all the aircraft that it comes bundled with and see what floats your boat. This will give you a better idea of what payware aircraft you want to spend $$$ on.

Welcome to Mudspike and the flightsim rabbit hole.

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