Posts by John Hargreaves

    I've just gone from a 1070 to a 2080 and gained about 50% fps on average in the likes of AFS2, Project CARS2. However, those game engines like X-Plane and DCS, that don't fully use current CPUs properly aren't giving anything spectacular. I haven't tested much DCS yet, but XP11 sits at about 40% cpu/gpu usage and just looks at me refusing to work any harder. I get about 45fps using Flyinside and 32fps using native VR (I was on about 26fps in native VR on the 1070). DCS now gives a nice smooth 45fps where before I was dipping below that. For me on a 1070 the 2080 has been a decent upgrade, but from a Titan I don't think you would see a big difference for the cost personally.

    I’m a Pimax 8K Kickstarter backer, and look forward to receiving the headset at some point before Xmas. I’m a bit down on the list, so it might be a couple of months after shipping starts until I receive mine. While it would probably run AFS2 well with my 1080 card, I have somehow managed to justify the decision to splash out on a RTX2080Ti Founders Edition that should be in the mail sometime next week. Will post up my experiences once the new aquisitions show up.

    Consider it a public service for the benefit of the rest of us. Excellent decision I'd say.

    The reason I deleted this before is because this same exact link has been posting on here two other times. This is just repetitive.

    I'll leave this up in case others missed when it was posted before.

    I posted the link within an hour of the preview being published on helisimmer, so if two others were deleted in that time it doesn't give people much time to read the information. A post like this is intended to promote AFS2 so if you prefer us not to do that please make it clear.

    OrbX need to generate their income like any of us, so if they can build a region with passable airports, then make and sell more detailed versions, I can't see a problem. For £26 you are getting a whole country in an amazing level of detail, I'd be happy to shell out for a few more airports down the line. However, if the region cost £100, but included 20 payware quality airports, I think I would have given it a miss.

    I think OrbX are clever by releasing material at pocket money prices so you can build up your collection.

    Whilst I would have paid for the R22 personally, that's because I am already a fan of AFS2. I think it's a good idea to include it in the toybox of the base game, so that it demonstrates the potential for payware stuff down the line. It helps make the sim an overall package with a range of different aircraft, and makes it more appealing to new users.

    The sweet spot for sharpness is quite small in the rift, I find it needs to be slightly angled downwards, and the front of the HMD pivots to allow this. Even during use I have to keep adjusting it to keep the image sharp. Also getting the IPD right in the original setup procedure has a big effect.

    Anyway, glad you like it.

    I've had mine for two years and still love it. I occasionally go back to 2D when I have to do some fiddling and setting up, but the flying is just really unsatisfying for me in 2D now. You are starting with one of the best VR experiences with AFS2 (not just flight sim but any VR experience); the smoothness and clarity is just about the best out of everything I've tried.

    I'd also recommend trying out other sims and experiences such as Google Earth, Mission: ISS, Discovering Space 2, Project CARS 2 (if you have a wheel), DCS World, even Robo Recall is worth a look and gives another dimension to the rift experience.

    AFS2 is one of the easiest ones to set up too, on my system it runs most things maxed and keeps a steady 45fps. The Buckmeister Biplane was born for VR, you can chuck it around and land it anywhere, it will take off from a car park and you get a great view.

    You are in for a treat I'm sure.

    The Vulcan / Oculus rift blank screen might be linked to the NVIDIA drivers that are installed as part of the Windows Update procedure. We recommend to download a dedicated NVIDIA driver from http://www.nvidia.com and install it. This should fix the issue.

    That's probably it, I've tended just to let windows update things recently, so long as stuff works there's no point wasting time faffing like we did in the old days, but once something isn't working it's time to step in and do it manually. It's not that long ago that installing any game took hours of patching, updating and generally wasting time, things are much better these days.

    Thanks for the update! I'm running on a gtx1060 6gb and an oculus rift. When I turn on Vulcan, I get a fine picture on the display, but the rift is black. Switching back to OpenGL fixes it, but I was just wondering if there were other settings I should make.

    Thanks -

    Ray

    I had exactly the same issue last night when I gave it a quick test. I'm guessing a driver update will fix it, but could the devs confirm which driver version is recommended to get Vulkan working right? Or is it on the Oculus side maybe?

    I've tried (unsuccessfully so far, but I'm close) to land on the football field near Meigs field in the Buckmeister. I think it could be done by someone with actual flying skills (unlike me). I've managed to land on the large flat roofed structure next to it though, stopped right on the edge in a bit of an Italian Job style, that was fun.

    There is one major difference here. When running in VR mode the screen needs to render twice as opposed to once for a single monitor.

    I could be wrong on this but I think it gets rendered more than that as the spherical aberration has also to be put in to balance the distortion from the lenses. I find in most games the step from 2D to VR reduces framerate to about a third of what you start with. It's an indication of how efficient the graphics engine in AFS2 is that we get such good framerates in VR.

    I'd guess that the performance solution could come from the fixed foveated rendering that the Oculus Go is using. Basically sharp in the middle and lower res on the edges to reduce the rendering burden. The type of moving foveated rendering that follows your eyeline around is going to be much more complex to implement, but the Oculus solution is very neat and simple I think.