@SoBad bottom line is that it doesn’t matter what you (or I or anyone else) think should be the priority. The dev team do it because they want to and they work on whatever they decide, for our benefit. So my view is always, “just be grateful for what we have now and look forward to whatever is coming”.
Best posts made by rubbra
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RE: News from the frontline, 4.37.3 delayed (and explained)
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RE: Never used VR
@Sabert00th I used DCS 100% VR for the last 18 months, BMS with headtracking before that.
DCS is a little easier for me with VR because they have a “mouse follows head” option and you can bind left and right mouse clicks to your hotas. So look at the gear handle, push hotas button, it moves. Look at mfd button, click it etc.
BMS hasn’t quite got that yet - you will still need to use your mouse for some things, which is easy to do in VR - you’ll get to know where your mouse is, it’s just as clunky and immersion breaking as it is in 2D/headtracking.
No VR hand controllers required. (You wouldn’t want them)
With DCS I just used hotas - and mouse for startup for some of the harder to get to switches - with BMS I find myself using my cougar MFDs even though I can’t see them, and a number pad for the ICP.
I can’t recommend VR enough.
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RE: VR vs TrackIR
@tank2 it depends on you, really. TrackIR and friends just works, performance is great, and it’s easy to drive systems with the mouse etc.
VR will require you to spend a bit of time getting to know all the options available to you for performance tweaking vs visuals and for you to find your happy balance between the two.
VR will also require you to work out how best to interact with the plane - mouse May no longer be the preferred option (personally I use mouse follows head and have left and right clicks bound on my hotas).
TrackIR makes it much easier to check six etc in BFM, though you can achieve similar with Vr neck safer.
VR makes you instinctively aware of your attitude and horizon via peripheral vision and the 3D / depth perception you get from it.
And the joy of just flying in VR is so much more.
So, if you’re someone who enjoys zipping along at 28k ft, popping off a couple of amraams and then maybe engaging a ground target from afar, you might prefer track ir. But if you enjoy simply flying, BFM, CAS etc, VR is pretty awesome.
Personally, once I switched a couple of years ago, I will not fly without VR in any sim. Ever.
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RE: So about those cockpit pedals
@Atlas he dropped a pen down there.
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Common VR issues and some suggested fixes
I wrote this post on discord a few days back, and thought I’d offer it here as a starting point “VR FAQ”.
My MFDs are hard to read on Quest 2
- Go to oculus application, turn up resolution to maximum (not auto)
- Increase your encode resolution and bit rate in oculus tray tool or ODT - try 2912 (I recommend much higher, 4040 is the max I think) and 300 to start.
- Set your steam VR resolution to the same as the double the oculus native (which is 1832x1920 according to google, so around 3600x3840 is what you’re aiming for) (edited to go double resolution)
- Experiment with increasing BMS render resolution - eg set g_fVRResolution 1.4
I get sucky performance
Try the following one at a time in order:
- Disable reflections - set g_bEnvironmentMapping 0 // Reflections are evil
- set g_bWaterEnvironmentMapping 0 // Reflections are evil
- Disable shadows - set g_bShadowMapping 0 // Shadows are evil
- Disable VR mirror (this should probably be first) set g_bVRNoPresent 1 - note this has no effect if you turn of parallel rendering
My cockpit is tiny
- Add BMS to your Steam library and also click add to my Vr library
- Go to SteamVR settings, show advanced, and then video per application settings, override world scale for BMS. Try 125% as a starting point
I get lag or black bars when I move my head
This is usually because the parallel rendering is not quite in sync so it’s basically a tearing issue.
Essentially you want to follow the performance steps above to get your frametimes as low as possible.
You can disable parallel rendering by setting this to 0 - set g_bVRParallelRenderThread 1 // Enable Multi-Thread optimization for VR - but it will hit performance hugely.
Index users have reported lowering refresh to 120hz helps.
Config file is usually - C:\Falcon BMS 4.37\User\Config\Falcon BMS User.cfg
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RE: Quick (noob-ish) question regarding the campaign COMM ladder
@Snake122 This BMS community and the discord have long raved about how much better the FM, systems etc are than DCS and therefore that’s why people should fly BMS, but that is really not the USP of BMS, especially with the pace of improvement that the DCS viper has hit recently.
The real pros are in the size, scale and realism of the campaign engine and the gameplay it drives, and the cooperative AI - not just your wingmen but the other packages, ATC etc who all (pretty much) do what you expect, what they’re told, and at the right times.
This makes for a simulation of an f16 with a simulation of complex air warfare and a game to go with it.
Whereas DCS is a sim (of many aircraft, f16 included) without a game. It’s a sandbox. Good for some air quake or some simple missions, but it just deliver the scale and complexity that BMS does.
(Spoken from the standpoint of a BMSer who defected for VR, spent a fortune and a lot of hours in DCS and has spent all those hours wanting VR in BMS. Dream come true )
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RE: Limits needed on seat height adjustment
@Stevie The only point I’m trying to make is that there is no limit on the seat adjustment control in VR. I’m delighted that you have a height adjustable seat. I do not (and even if I did, it wouldn’t make any difference, because in BMS, in VR, there is literally no positional adjustment except for the seat, unless you start messing with cockpit cameras which don’t persist between flights). I do, however, move my seat up and down in the aircraft (and in other sims) from time to time to change my angle of view or whatever, depending on what I’m doing. Not by much, but by a bit.
I get you’re not a fan of VR, but some of us are, and this minor thing is a minor bug. If it doesn’t get fixed, meh, it’s not a big deal, but if the devs don’t know it’s there, then they can’t decide about it.
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RE: Quality of life problems in VR
@Kiwispirits use joystick gremlin to bind hotas buttons to keyboard inputs for the comms menus.
You could try open kneeboard if the in game ones don’t work for you. But… I’m on a lowly rift s and have no issues with reading the kneeboards - sounds like you need to bump your resolution up. If you’re a quest user, do that in the oculus app (take it off auto and move it all the way right) and also bump up your encode resolution and bit rate.
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RE: Suggestion: Putting BMS on Steam as a Mod to improve its longevity and public visibility
@bjjman94 I fly both, and have for a few years. For me, the difference is not in the graphics or the flight models or whatever (honestly, for a lay person, it’s hard to tell the difference in FM).
Instead it’s in “what do you do now you’ve loaded the game/sim?” aspect, especially in single player.
DCS is a decent (and pretty) sim.
BMS is a decent (and maybe not quite so pretty but I still like it) / excellent sim.
DCS has nothing aside from being a sim. It’s a sandbox, with limited scope for missions due to being cpu bound whenever you want more than a handful of units. The AI that you fly with is poor. Flying against, it’s pretty good.
But BMS has a massively rich environment with a full scale war, and cooperative AI that mostly do the right thing.
I enjoy DCS for air quake and flying other things, or “training”, or quick flights.
I enjoy BMS for being part of a war.
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RE: News from the Docs team for 4.37.3
@Micro_440th will it still be downloadable as a pdf though? It’s particularly useful having the training manual as a pdf as it can be loaded into openkneeboard and viewed easily
In VR during flight; less easy with web content.
Latest posts made by rubbra
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RE: Understanding Quest 3
Usually nausea (at first) is caused by system performance not quite being able to keep up, so you get lag in movements (often barely perceptible) which really messes with you until you’re a more seasoned VR user when you might be able to put up with it more.
For BMS, turning down / off aliasing and object detail is often a good starting point to help with performance. Or just try a lower VR resolution (not the in game one)
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RE: Virtual Desktop and Quest 3
@Atlas said in Virtual Desktop and Quest 3:
So now I have Virtual Desktop both through Steam and through the Meta store.
Is there a performance difference between the two?
Annoying that the Meta version needs a program to be running on the PC for it to work, whereas the one on the Desktop does not.Please share your (Meta) Virtual Desktop settings!
All you need is the virtual desktop streamer app running on the pc. It should run at boot. Then on your headset open the VD app. That should be it.
On my headset, I never quit VD, so whenever I pick it up it just reconnects.
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RE: Considering a Quest 3, some questions please
@Xeno do you also use alvr for openxr titles?
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RE: Any Advice on how to map Orion II F-18 Throttle to BMS's F-16?
@C0ntr0lman ah sorry, I should learn to read all the words in a post!
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RE: Considering a Quest 3, some questions please
@Xeno will do, thanks. I have done a fair bit of a/b testing between Alvr and vd these last couple of days; alvr appears to have a more aggressive sharpening applied, which makes it crisper. If I add CAS via Reshade, vd is as good with similar performance. The one thing I haven’t worked out with alvr is how to disable ASW- I assume that’s what is happening as if it drops below about 52fps and then lock at 36 for a bit.
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RE: Any Advice on how to map Orion II F-18 Throttle to BMS's F-16?
@C0ntr0lman there isn’t a near authentic way. You’re missing a hat. The only way to do it is to either use dx shift + a hat to make that hat dual function or move a hat to the throttle. I use the trim hat as dms, and then shift and trim hat for trim. (When I’m using my ffb f15 stick instead of my NXT)
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RE: A golden era ahead for BMS
Threads comparing dcs and BMS are always fun, on both sides of the fan fence. I always feel that the wrong comparisons are made though.
Yes graphics are different.
These days there isn’t a lot to choose between the two viper simulations unless you’re someone like mavjp who really knows the numbers, and the feature sets are both reasonably complete.
The thing that sets the two apart is the game/war side of things. DCS can not handle large scale modern warfare. It can’t do lots of coordinated, well planned packages in the air working together to take out several different targets. It can’t do it with humans let alone with AI. BMS can with both.
Where DCS shines is in CAS and helicopter stuff, small engagements or sandboxes. The kind of thing where, because you’re down low, the graphics make a big difference. It’s best at the free for all, the unstructured/unplanned gameplay.
For me, I enjoy both and rotate between them. I love flying campaigns in BMS esp with other people on the rare occasion I can, and I love dodging ground fire in the a10 or helicopters in DCS.
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RE: Considering a Quest 3, some questions please
@Atlas at the bottom of the hsd there some numbers (i think they’re blue but i weirdly can’t remember). They say where your hsd cursor is in relation to the bullseye. As your slew your cursor on either fcr or hsd, those numbers will change. This exists whenever you’re in a jet with the ins aligned.
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RE: Considering a Quest 3, some questions please
@Xeno I have no problem with that without leaning in at all. Even with the rift S. Pico, it’s definitely clearer still.
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RE: Considering a Quest 3, some questions please
@Xeno I’ve never had an issue reading MFDs, even with my aged Rift S!