Finally with the new 3070Ti I can enjoy the pleasantries of VR with my HP Reverb G1 in real time and not as a flipbook!
So far I can’t lament anything bad- it works really nicely.
Everything I tried has been nothing short of a revelation… except for DCS.
Question 1)
I know that fighter jet have more or less small offices (I have been sitting in more than a few for more than an hour) but … in DCS this is almost ridiculous.
I feel more like a giant head strapped to the seat rather than a normal person.
In the Fw190 the cover for the reflective sight is literally up my right nostril…
Someone pointed out that in the Options>VR tab there’s an IPD (Inter-Pupillary Distance) setting and it is correctly set to my actual IPD. Maybe that’s the problem? Should I change it? To what?
So if anyone could tell me what they have as VR setup tab in DCS (A screenshot is equally welcome) I’d be really honestly happy.
Question 2)
What people are using more efficiently for flying DCS? I see several options like Steam VR and OpenVR (or something) - what would be a good way to test several different things?
Question 3)
Is there a way to use the mouse to actually click inside the DCS VR cockpits? I find I have to use my nose to point at the switches and that’s mildly annoying…
I use a G1. Been pretty much faultless as a DCS vessel
I find having the “clickable cockpit on off” button mapped to the stick helps. It turns the mouse pointer on and off at your leisure. Have it mapped on every vehicle.
OpenXR feels a lot smoother to me. Numbers are not very different though. Also SteamVR does not work in multi-threading, and multi-threading is the best thing in DCS since version 1.5
Moving the mousr works for me, just not too far from the center of FOV or it gets reset back to the middle.
The IPD thing in DCS is actually a world scale setting. I have it to about 65 iirc and that works for most cockpits. Use the stick for reference.
As for head position, in some cockpits it is necesary to lean a bit out from center, press the re-center button and repeat until it feels good. I use the pilot body to see if it looks good, but I turn it off while flying. Can’t raise that elbow to look at the switch, so I rather be a ghost.
Keeping in mind I haven’t messed with the IPD thing in a long time…it seems each module has its own idea on this; I leave this box UN-checked allowing, in my mind, the module to handle it.
This is using only? the Apache, F-5/15/18/16/14. And of course I’ve never sat in any of those (cept in the ‘trunk’ of a VIPER for a few hours but I’ve slept since then and memory is hazy) but it seems about right. And is one less thing to have to fiddle with?
As others have mentioned you might have to re-center the Headset once you enter the cockpit, I have a button on my Honeycomb bravo set to center the headset and I use it all the time.
The 190 in particular, has a very small cockpit, it is extremely cramped. Jump into the P-51D or better yet, the Jug and you will see what I mean. The American fighters feel very spacious in comparison.
Ok ok ok, I followed @jross suggestions and unticked the IPD Distance in the VR Tab and wow… now everything seems perfectly in order… I’m very very impressed.
One thing is still odd, DCS is still the only game that makes me feel cross-eyed when I remove the headset.
Interesting.
Beside that, OMG, DCS in VR is such an experience.
EDIT: please let me reiterate a bit, I’m still riding the high of last night’s flight time…
There’s an instant mission for the F-16, over the Caucasus map, at night.
There’s no combat, just you, your jet, and the cloudy night sky…
I wish I knew how to take pictures in VR because it nearly moved me to tears. The moon light reflecting off the jet’s skin, the fluffy clouds, some civilian airliner barely visible around, the peaceful cities below…
I could have totally lost myself in there- I wish I could have had time to see the sunrise, refueling from a tanker as the night passes by, the notes of Black Sabbath “Planet Caravan” in the back of my mind.
By the way, recentering the cockpit did help a bit as well.
I noticed in many cases that my virtual head was not even close to the seat headrest…
That said, as you mentioned the German cockpits are really cramped. I’m surprised pilots managed to turn and look back at all.
I managed to use the mouse but somehow it still reads both the mouse and the headset input so it makes it for a very bothersome experience to use the cockpit.
From this point of view I love the relative simplicity of IL2 Battles… All the controls fits on my HOTAS.
That sounded always very appealing to me, but I am a bit scared to tweak around with DCS.
Is there a DIY video for that? Or a .PDF?
Aaah! That’s a smart thing! I am just winging it by ear but I might do this too…
If you run the MT client it will use OpenXR by default, otherwise you can simply install the OpenXR runtime from the windows store and then add the appropriate command to the start parameters of the dcs shortcut (can’t remember right now, but it’s easy to find)
Can’t you create a profile that points to the dcs.exe inside the bin mt folder instead of the normal bin folder? Also, I forget to mention you have to install the OpenXR runtime for MT as well of course.
Correct, this is how it’s supposed to work. I think it is because you are still using the mouse on a flat screen and that just gets projected onto your view, so the mouse moves with your view. Would be nice if it would move in relation to the cockpit instead.
Except you don’t have to remove SteamVR.
Don’t be worried, there is no need to touch anything inside DCS anymore, you just create an additional shortcut with some command line args and use a completely side by side separate VR driver.
I launch the MT and OpenXR shortcuts separately from desktop, until Skatezilla releases his updated launcher at least.
