I know the full news was posted here in the proper topic:
…but after a quick pre-breakfast flight (very late now, but c’est la vie) I wanted to point out two quick things:
IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad (and Battle of Moscow) has had a VR patch today and it’s wonderful. Solid 90 FPS, beautiful sharp cockpit, amazing presence. Flew a Stuka in a steep dive and I screamed louder than the siren. Sat in a He-111 and for the first time managed to appreciate the size of that beast.
Congratulation to @777Studios_Jason and his crew for such good job with this, you’re going to make a lot of people very happy in VR.
I’m so late now that this will cost me dearly, so a price payed.
Things I found out to hopefully save others time:
Don’t use the SteamVR beta. The regular Steam VR needs to be installed and working.
In SteamVR before playing then disable (or turn down) the guardian walls, as it’s annoying having a blue grid in your face.
When they say turn off the HUD with ‘H’ then it’s worth it. On a 1070 I never went below 90 FPS, but it does make it more immersive for sure (although radio messages in German/Russian are now a mystery to me, sorry wingmen).
Wait for it to login the first time, I think they are being snowed under with login requests for some reason this morning - it does work if left though.
The infinity focused aiming sight takes some getting used to, you need to lean in and use a dominant eye. I’m guessing that it might be like the real thing, but it’s weird/neat. As generally with VR, everything is far far easier to fly and fight for me now.
I ticked on the ‘Sharpen’ filter and it works really well in VR, cockpit very clear with no super sampling fiddling around as yet.
Well it has transformed the game for me. Still some teething issues but looks georgeous and the dogfighting gets pretty intense. Off to tweak some stuff
For $25 for 8 planes, driveable tanks, two maps in multiplayer and a nice free dynamic squad campaign engine, I think it’s a pretty solid deal even if you aren’t that much into WWII.
Plus it might be the sort of thing that would make for a good Mudspike Fly-in event (once I learn to pull out of a dive properly)? The RoF one we did was fun before.
I’m up for sending a squad to Stuka’s on a bombing mission with sirens blaring! *I may also keep the siren on when i taxi, take-off, in-route and for the landing
How do I turn off the chaperone blue line in SteamVR? I looked for it in the SteamVR app.
So, what settings affect VR performance? SSAO?
I dialed back to ‘balanced’ graphics and got a steady 90FPS.
Two things about this updates makes me sad…
The first is that it reminds me of how incredibly cool Rise of Flight would be in VR. @777Studios_Jason, I’ll gladly buy all the planes in RoF again. Pleeeease!
The second thing that makes me sad is we’re leaving on a easter trip to the inlaws tomorrow… No more IL-2 VR until next week. I could fake illness, but my daughter will celebrate her 7th birthday while we’re there. She wins…barely…!
Oh well! I got to try it out at least.
On phone, might be inaccurate but you can do a couple of ways:
Steam VR / Settings / Chaperone / setting = ‘Developer’, but that leaves the floor box (not that noticeable). On the Rift touch controllers, press the left ‘properties’ button (under the X) to get to settings dash.
Do a Steam VR set-up, but choose the ‘Standing/Seated’ option, and it’ll remove chaperone graphics after about 10 seconds of sitting down.
Steam install directory, config/steamvr.vrsettings - set CollisionBoundsColorGammaA to 0 (it makes it all go invisible) but google check this one, as not 100% sure.
EDIT: For the last one, in the steamvr.settings put the following in as a line to completely remove chaperone (although don’t bump your head and blame me ):
Huge fun with turrets in VR - I can see Multiplayer single plane is going to be hilarious. I would love to fill up a HE-111 with mudspikes!
To get it set up in VR I did the following:
Settings / Key Bindings / Pilot Head Control set the ‘Bow pilot head vertically’ and ‘Turn pilot head horizontally’ to a control, as for me they were blank by default I think. For turrets I chose the mouse X and mouse Y, but will play around with joystick axis too. Make sure the ‘Turn gunners head horizontally’ is cleared of a value.
Default controls are(old news to BoS people, but new to me, best put these on a hotas) are:
Control + C = change to next aircraft station.
T = Grab turret/gun control
Shift + T = Put eye down to gun level (works best to shut one eye in VR to aim nicely)
You can also use Shift + C to switch ‘inter-station’, i.e. the two waist gunners on the HE-111 between the left and right one.
So @BeachAV8R, you can ride backwards in my Stuka for hours at a time now. Great fun!
It’s different to RoF, in that the ‘Battle of Stalingrad’ gets you a base of 8 flyables and one single player map. The HE-111 (with 5 slots) is one of those for example. You can buy individual planes (Premium ones), but otherwise it all just adds to a single install, e.g. buy Battle of Moscow and then you get those 8 planes plus another single player map/campaign just added to your install.
If we were to organize a MP then personally I prefer the BoS plane set (slightly later period), but open to ideas. One interesting thing is that even if you don’t own BoM, you can still play on the map in Multiplayer. The is also early access Battle of Kuban as well, which is 10 more planes (as it’s a premium edition, so 8 standard plus the 2 premium).
I don’t know for sure if in MP you can switch into a plane you don’t own, but would be surprised if you could. Anyone know? More details of what planes etc here:
- it does work if left though.
