Perhaps it’s better to take this discussion to a different thread, but this is the campaign gameplay that I think the two IL2 sims are missing (not familiar with WOTR myself, I’ll check it out!): the ability from the UK side to manage squadrons and put them on various levels of alert to respond to incoming raids and choose whether they attack singly or in a larger force, and from the German side to choose targets and force composition, and then jump into the cockpit once a raid or intercept is underway…
You should see the features list of WOTR, it have one of the best campaign and career system on the genre. For a BoB lover, it is a must to have flight sim.
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Update 4 is out - new features include Blender plugin, Mixed Reality, adds L16 to F-16s, more features for HF F-15C and 3D models converted to PBR.
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Open XR and PBR are going to be huge updates to the visuals of the sim in VR…
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The one thing that always keeps me tied to BMS is the Dynamic Campaign of F4.0
Yes graphics and all are great, but the DC is the one thing that will assure this game to stay on my HDD
Unbeatable
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The old girl is looking amazing. What is the Blender plugin?
Blender is a 3D graphics software tool used primarily for creating 3D models. It can be used for other types of 3D-related applications as well. The plugin is like a module that allows the integration of 3D models into the sim (something like that). There’s likely more to the mojo but it should lead to better 3D models and easier integration to the sim.
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I agree, but these days I can’t fly pancake anymore and the SteamVR blurriness was a real problem (I couldn’t read the HUD for example).
This new patch, now I’ve had a chance to fly it, is lovely for the VR framerate on an older GPU (3060 Ti), and since they now support OpenXR I can change the worldscale which (weirdly? Perhaps there’s an obvious reason?) fixed a lot of my problems with cockpit readability.
The new models are nice, though again I have to remember to turn off the visual model scaling (it really messes with my depth perception in VR). The shading is honestly not quite there yet - the F-15 still has problems with bits of the in-cockpit model (the top of the intake ramps, for instance) being shaded by the external 3d model.
In my opinion if they spent more time on the lighting and shadows produced by the graphics engine they wouldn’t need to spend as much on the 3d models - look at Quake2 RTX for an example of why this is the case. They’re taking steps in the right direction, but it’s not there yet.
The sound model still bugs me. There doesn’t seem to be any wind noise aside from the canned aero noise from pulling G, and that’s really hurting my immersion coming from DCS. I am going to boost the in-cockpit engine volume next flight and see if that goes some way to resolving the issue for me (it is a personal issue, I’m sure the sound model is working the way they want it to - I also fly with “hear like in helmet” off in DCS for this reason).
Oh, and the mirrors work properly in VR (with real depth to them, not just an image pasted on the mirror surface like in DCS)!
So all in all a strong update from the BMS crowd. I’m happy and honestly a bit astonished that this sim, which I’ve been flying my whole adult life, is still receiving support and updates and makes a reasonable recommendation for people searching for a good, engaging, replayable single-player VR flight sim.
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“Astonished” is the perfect word for it. Update after update, my love is renewed.
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That’s one of those buttons [things] I’ve looked at for some time, wondering, but never tried it yet. I always assumed hear like in helmet was more accurate. Time to explore something new!
I think “hear like in helmet” is more accurate, but we’re missing a lot of haptic cues like the vibration you feel through your body, so I think hearing a bit more sound from outside is an acceptable tradeoff. And it makes for much better sound on recordings 
I once came back to DCS (and indeed all flight simulators) after a long break and jumped into one of the FC aircraft without doing anything other than setting up my flightstick, and I was blown away by how immersive the sim felt when pulling G and hearing the turbulent airflow … I then found the “hear like in helmet” option and flew with it for a couple of years (IIRC), before realising I was missing the extra noise!
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Cool, thanks. I’m curious how it effects how you can hear the radios. I’ll find out on my next go.
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I always find it amazing that we can have similar systems but a myriad of different results from the sims we play. So, the update fixed my VR black cloud issue, but now my frame rate has tanked to the point that the sim has become unplayable. No issues in pancake mode but I’m a VR convert, so… 
I’m hoping that 4.38 is the magic bullet. Until then, it’s back to DCS for me.
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Just checking off the obvious things, are you still using SteamVR? I have only used 4.37.4 with OpenXR, and I use a pretty old and low res (1440x1440 IIRC) Windows Mixed Reality headset. My OpenXR render resolution is 2184x2184. I’m not using fixed foveated rendering in the OpenXR toolkit, but that did give me a bit of a boost in DCS so might be worth a try?
Frame rates are buttery smooth in the quick mission (or whatever it’s called) air-to-air mode. There was a stutter or two when I was merged with two Frogfoots and four Fishbeds, but I think that was sounds and models loading in and it happens in most sims for me.
Obviously that machine is still on Win10 (WMR…), and has a 3060Ti and an 11600K. I feel like you should be getting a smooth experience, at least in the quick mission, with similar hardware and settings?
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I was having VR performance issues with 4.37.4 with openxr and these setting improved the situation: https://forum.falcon-bms.com/topic/23871/couple-notes-to-vr-users
Performance is still not perfect, but it’s better. The one setting I haven’t tried yet is:
set g_bVRParallelRenderThread 0
Anti-aliasing and Vsync were 0 and off respectively during my testing.
Now I’m wondering if the quick mission performance is different to the campaign performance due to the campaign engine running in the background? I haven’t tried campaign yet…
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I only use OpenXR. I did try running it under SteamVR and it went from bad to worse. I’ll try the foveated rendering stuff whenever I jump back in to work on getting the sim running nicely.
Thanks for the input.
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Thanks for the link. I’ll definitely take a look.
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I’ll try the sim again in the campaign and let you know what I’m seeing there as well…
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Results: 72 fps in the instant action A2A mission, 54 in a new campaign, F-15C (to make it worse with the mirrors etc.)
Frame rates taken from the OpenXR Toolkit ingame monitor.
So basically the same performance I’m seeing in DCS with all my FR tuning etc in the campaign. I’m happy enough with that!
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