I’m 93% positive that Beach is allergic to tactical aircraft in DCS.
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He’s a lover not a fighter… 
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LOL…I am a super fan-boi of VTOL VR. For a few reasons.
First - it is really a sim custom created for VR, which makes is special from the outset. I’ve been meaning to write a review about it for ages, but just haven’t slotted it in to my schedule. The cockpit is very well laid out for VR…big buttons, easy to grip switches, and I struggle to explain it, but it is just very well “integrated” to the Rift Touch sensors. Meaning, there isn’t much struggling to find the sweet spot with the cockpit controls.
And then, you get over the initial impression of the VR cockpit, and you realize just how much depth there is to the sensors, systems, and weapons…and you sorta shake your head and go “this is a one man show making this?” (essentially).
Any-who. Yeah, I love the game and really need to push out a review that shows why I gush so much about it. 
I fly a Citation and a King Air in real life…so I’m much more attuned to things that happen at helicopter speeds 
I love the low and slow and stealth…and I don’t care if I have to fly an hour to score one kill on a tank. I mean, if I had to rank them in order of wanting to learn them, I’d probably go:
AV-8B
Hornet
Mirage
At least…those are the ones I’ve only barely dabbled in. I’m odd in that I feel like I really need to commit to them before I fly them a lot. And I just have too many shiny things that I find more approachable at this time. It doesn’t help that every 60 days (my magazine deadlines) I pretty much have to pour myself into whatever I’m writing about. So every two months I usually have to learn (relatively completely) two new aircraft (like a 727 or some biz jet) and research the Challenging Airports article. I take that job seriously, so it really eats up a lot of time…probably more time than it is worth other than that I really enjoy doing it.
Which explains why I have an affinity for things like the Hawk, C-101, and L-39. Simpler airplanes with less complex weapons and sensors, that I feel like I might have the time to get to know (even though that is untrue too because I keep waiting for the 101 and Hawk to be “complete”…sigh…)
Mostly accurate for sure. Which is odd. I fly civilian airplanes all day and night in my day job, but oddly enough still fire up X-Plane more often than not when I’m off…to fly the same types of airplanes I fly. You’d think I’d be more interested in pursuing those sim platforms that are less like what I do in the day job…but maybe there is just a comfort and familiarity with them that makes them easier to digest.
All that goes out the window when we talk about helicopters though. I love, love, love me some helicopters…even though I’ve never once been in one in real life (really!). I missed my calling as an Apache pilot I think. 
Any-who…yeah, VTOL VR is cool. Buy it! Haha…and the VR headset that you need to fly it.
It does make me wonder if I’d be so enamored with it in a non-VR setting. I actually think I would as well…but probably not quite as much as in VR.
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Can you take your right eyeball out and stretch it 3 meters in front of you? If so, you might still have a chance.
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Just some random few minutes of me recording last night. Really, really boring stuff…but I can do this kind of things for hours. I’ve barely touched a weapon in the sim yet… Apologies for the frantic “looking” footage…it doesn’t look like this in the Rift because you have a much wider FOV and this footage I think is a bit more zoomed in and the vertical dimensions don’t match what you see in the sim. So it’s not really representative of what you see in the sim…
New, small update today:
v0.0.11p8
Map Editor
- Implemented LODs to cities
General
- Restarting a scenario will no longer require reloading the entire map
Advanced Radar
- Added radar cross section values for ships (should fix anti-ship missile guidance)
Regarding the advanced RCS:
“With the new radar system simulating the effects of ground clutter, the ability of anti-ship missiles targeting missiles is affected by whether the missile is sea-skimming on approach (ships have sky as a background) or if the missile is approaching from higher altitude waypoints (radar is looking down at ships surrounded by water, hard to make out). I haven’t tested them in all situations yet so this is another thing to look at.”
Having some fun in the F/A-26 over the new height map test map mission. A much larger map that requires a bit more flying to get to the target area…
I’m not very good with the weapons and sensors yet…but the strike flight below does a pretty good job (I’m supposed to be flying CAP)…
Can’t resist the temptation to roll in even if only with the cannon…
Doing some damage but every so often a missile comes arcing up…
On no…one of the strikers is down…
I got shot down a minute later…
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Some ridiculously bad flying here…but lots of fun. Still trying to get a grip on the weapons system and HOTAS dance. There is a great part of this video that I didn’t record that shows me focusing all my attention on the airfield defenses, not knowing that just over the ridge to the north of the airfield was another complete SAM battery that was lighting me up over and over again.
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Oh…actually I did get that footage…LOL… 12 seconds in shows why I’m not insurable as a fighter pilot…(I thought I hit a goose to be honest…)
…and one last video from the same mission. I was hoping to go back to the carrier and repair the damage, but you can only rearm and refuel, not repair. Hoping that feature might get added since I uh…tend to damage a lot of things…
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That was really cool. Does trapping without a proper stick feel really out of place? I always get a bit tense and twitchy towards the last 300 ft or so. Does it happen worse without a stick to kind of brace against?
For me, the twitchiness is less with the touch controller because there is less tendency to grip the stick. Because you must rotate your hand in 3 axes you are sort of forced to hold the controller gently. My issue with VTOL VR traps is the slightly exaggerated angle between flight path and touchdown. You almost have to kick in some left rudder at touchdown to straighten the nose. Otherwise it lands all wobbly and rolly (at least for me). Compare it with DCS where the nose is pointed at the carrier’s crotch at touchdown and that small angle is handled well enough by friction and physics without any pilot input needed.
Yeah…I agree. Flying in VTOL is very intuitive and since there is no resistance against your inputs, your hands almost sort of float the inputs into action. I have my VR cockpit adjusted such that my forearms are laying comfortably on the armrests of my chair, and only some small hand movements are necessary to manipulate the controls.
And yes, the landings seem a bit more wobbly to me that in other sims. The AV-42C (the VTOL bird) seems more wobbly with that narrow wheel base and the big nacelles than the F/A-26B fighter. I really love that you can see the optical landing system “ball” so well in this sim.
So yes, I’m on a VTOL kick right now. Having so much fun with it. This morning I tooled around with one of the practice missions. This one is the AV-42C (the actual VTOL that the game started with) and doing some weapons practice with bombs, rockets, and gun against passive targets. I really love the sound effects and even the explosions and stuff are really cool. Hard to describe how cool it looks in VR. As many of you know already, translating VR imagery into 2D screens and recordings is sorta like losing 75% in translation…
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Second pass…
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Did you change recording software?
The two last vids have some strange curtain thing going on, when you turn your head…
Yeah…that cropping doesn’t happen in game. I widened the field of view in OBS recorder because I thought it was a bit too zoomed in otherwise. I might need to dial it back slightly…
Here is a bolter, landing, and refueling…
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So I looked at this more and this is what is going on as far as I can tell.
The first few videos I recorded using OBS using the game generated monitor window. That one does not show the black artifacts at the edges of the video, but it is zoomed in and only shows the left 75% of so of what you are actually seeing in the Rift (I wonder if it is perhaps the left eye mirror or something?).
If I switch the OBS recording video to using the Oculus Rift Mirror window, I get the black artifacts, but I also get a wider field of view that is properly centered.
You can see that here - the left window is the Mirror view, the right one is the one that is output by VTOL VR - see how much more FOV is included in the Mirror view?
So I guess I need to see if I can get VTOL VR to output to a wider field of view, or I need to crop the Mirror output. I’m guessing the reason you get artifacts with Mirror is perhaps it is having trouble keeping up with rapid head movements, drawing, and recording at the same time maybe.
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