My awkward start in VR with the awesome Pimax Crystal Light
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- In today's video we take a look as I struggle with setting up my VR correctly in DCS. I do this with the Pimax Crystal Light that was graciously sent over to me by Pimax. Just so we are all clear on this, the Pimax was NOT the problem in this video. It works great and is fantastic.
If you want to snag one for yourself then use this referral link:
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ralfi10
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Banger video dad
Bang my dad and video….it
Where’s your dcs content drewski?
Hey drewski. Just wanted to say you're amazing.
Thanks son
Like father, like son then?😂
My favourite part of DCS in VR is the neverending urge to rage quit. That and the alcoholism.
Certainly learning that the hard way
@@ralfidude We drink not because it is easy, but because it is hard. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
I'vo got the urge to rage quit and the alcoholism down already. Am I ready to try DCS ?
I doff my glass whilst lifting my quest 3 good Sir, cheers.....hic
Glad to help out!
o7
My man!
No idea boundary lines would do that haha, good catch!
35:30 bro... that's the single most soul crushing feeling to ever exist
Ralfi one way i found to stop motion sickness is to play with a fan on, just enough to feel it so when your headset on, your brain has a way to know what way your actually facing
I second this!
I heard that chewing gum would help as well. Never had issues, so I can only relay stuff I picked up on this. Also, playing seated helps, but obviously, we all do that already anyway while flying. The key is that it will go away with time and practice. Just don't give up, but end your sessions when you need to and only come back a few hours later or even just on the next day. Don't try to push it too far. Also, playing some roomscale games that don't move your POV automagically or by input that your own actual movement to get used to the whole thing helps. There's some great games out there for that like the Moss series (can't recommend those enough). In games with thumbstick movement involved, try playing with teleport locomotion and snap turns first.
This 100% perfect, i always have a fan pointed at me when in VR, helps me stay cool and comfortable. Havent had an issue since i started doing this
You must enter the 9th level of VR hell before you can experience the Nirvana of frame chasing, broken updates, building/buying new hardware all to figure out you now have a 'it's ok' experince AND you now heat a small city while playing DCS! Great video! It was like looking into a mirror.
For people really new to VR that might get disoriented or motion sick, keep the visuals shitty and the framerate high until you get used to flying around without feeling weird. Stutters and hitches are major contributors to sudden lunch reversal. Try to just get in and fly around for initially very short periods, increasing over time and stop your flight immediately if you start to feel hot/weird. Typically a week or two of baby-stepping it and you'll be good to go.
Bonus DCS VR Tip: There's a no cockpit view (Alt-F1) that just shows your HUD and your MFDs at a fixed, super readable distance even with a lower resolution headset. I find that a lot more comfortable than using VR zoom or leaning forward if I need to be head down for a long time.
Seriously, try cranking down the resolution. Ofc it's less pretty, but it gives the most performance boosts. Once you're down to 2400 pixels vertical or even less, it should run quite darn well even on older systems. I could read everything in the Hornet with just 1600, which was the native res of the CV1, I just increased it to 2400 by setting the PD to 1.5 at a later point when the thing was a little more optimized. The F-16 however was horrible in the CV1. At least without zooming in on the HUD and MFCDs. But if I hadn't to read stuff and just take a joy ride, it was awesome. I could push my old 1080 to somewhere around 3000-3200 pixels vertical after upgrading the rest of the system from a 3570k with 32GB to a 5800x with 64GB. Anything above that would destroy the framerate exponentially as much as I was trying to push it. 3070 was just slightly better in that regard BTW. Well, lack of RAM tells it all, they have the same amount. When keeping it at around 3200, the 3070 made it a lot more stable and at higher frame rates still (like getting 45 out of the 1080 @2400, but 60-70 out of the 3070 @3200ish, trying some res in the 4000+ range was virtually equally as bad on both cards, the difference literally vanished the higher I tried to push it)
Low-mid res + pixel density crancked up does well for me.
I’d also recommend good air flow, AC low and a fan blowing on you while making sure you’ve ate and drank before playing. Took me a month or so before it completely went away
"we love ralfidude!" we all say in unison
This video is a genuine life saver. I got a Pimax Crystal a few weeks ago. I tried DCS and it was a nightmare. Had no idea where to start with the settings.
Should‘ve used that as the video title: „This corner kills my FPS!!!“
You actually had a better time then alot of people I know getting into VR with DCS. I've done VR since the birth of the current generation of headsets (starting with the vive/rift) and got so into it, my gaming pc doesnt even have a monitor (later this lead me onto moonlight for flatscreen games which had alot of other advantages like playing games from a chromebook on the couch)... couple of things worth knowing IMHO...
- bind the VR zoom button, much like the centering button you already have, very useful
- sacrifice anything for FPS, lower fps's will make motion sickness worse
- if you feel motion sick, close your eyes, your inner ear takes over and you're instantly grounded
- some people forget to blink in vr which can cause some fun problems
- a couple of games absolutely numbed me to motion - jet island, mount wingsuit, minecraft in amplified mode to name a few
VR legs: you can train out of motion sickness. I did this for sim racing. Just do straight and level flight, maybe some wide turns. As soon as you feel even a little bit weird, stop. Do it again the next day and you should be able to survive longer. Repeat. It took me about a week from surviving two slow laps around an oval to managing 20 full racing speed laps. So gradually do more harsh maneuvers.
Don't let yourself feel too ill or else you'll get to the point where even looking at the headset (or smelling its plastic smell) will make you throw up.
This, just do a little bit at a time and then build up to it. When I first started using VR I couldn't fly for more than 20 minutes without feeling a bit of nausea, but by gradually building up my time in VR by flying a little bit daily and I can now fly for 3 hours non stop and not feel ill at all! Rotary wing is a lot harder to do than fixed wing I've found, but VR has the biggest benefit when flying helicopters. Same goes for real flying, I'm learning to fly gliders atm and have been having motion sickness issues possibly due to doing lots and lots of turning continuously when learning to climb in thermals. I could barely last 20 minutes when I started a couple of months ago, but the other week I did a 55 minute flight where I managed to keep my lunch down and didn't feel all that motion sick at all! Staying cool and keeping hydrated definitely helps too which might help in VR as well.
I found having a fan blow on my face help for VR sickness when I first started. You eventually get used to it...
Amazing Video Ralfi. I have to admit I have seen some other DCS enthusiasts do similar videos who know a lot about DCS but it is apparent they know nothing about VR and spread a lot of misinformation as a result. I can tell you sought help and did your research. Great job.
I've said this a million times, but:
DCS in VR is amazing, but by far the worst overall VR experience you can have.
No other game comes close to the amount of min-maxing you have to do to get it consistently good.
I gave up on VR, and when i want to fly in VR, i just boot VTOL vr.
Not in my experience. Sure I had to tinker with the graphics settings, but I enjoy tinkering. But for my headset it is one of the best VR experiences
@@Zolbat The point of the quote is not to bash DCS VR itself, more so its optimization. You _never_ have to tinker this much with pretty much any other VR title. Great _when it works._
@romeovictor6223 yeah probably. But if you get a potato pc, you'll have to tinker with settings with many other vr games too. Dcs having to restart each time is a bit of a bummer though
This an assetto corsa competitzione lol
Great video man. Wlel explained. And also explained why things happened or had to be done. I think others that need to setup their VR will really appreciate this.
Welcome to the VR club, it’s about time.
22:24 had me laughing so hard. The Gasp and then me realizing it feels very real to you cause your in VR 🤣🤣🤣
It's not just immersion: i find spatial awareness is much better. At low level in an A-10, getting terrain between you and the AAA is so much more intuitive!
Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz, love it
Google lets me hit the translate button, but it doesn't make that glorious name any more legible... XD
THE most entertaining VR headset review/setup video in the world !!!
I feel this video in my core.
I did all of this a few years ago with my Quest 1. Gave up. Hated it.
Upgraded PC, had a Quest 3 and figured... hey, I hate myself, I'm gonna do all this again!
Thankfully the scenes got some gods, such as mbucchia and his quadviews which has made the entire experience, combod with new headset and pc, allllll groovy.
For motion sickness, I got a tiny usb desk fan to blow at my face when playing, it really helps.
Anything you can do to avoid DCS DL/SS/AA or TAA vastly helps image clarity and artifacting. I have a 4090 and turned down more settings to get higher PD plus MSAA for crisp lines and text. IIRC Pimax lets you fine tune pixel density and if not, and OpenXR plugin tool, including SteamVR will let you adjust the exact pixel resolution without any additional overhead.
DCS in VR is the only way to play.
I've never had issues with VR, but lots of people do I guess. It was completely plug and play for me on a G2 and OpenXR, I play with mostly high settings, stable frames in the 50-70 range on a 3080ti and 9700k
Great video ralfi... thought you had a stroke at the begining when you said "affiliated" 😂😂😂
Simplest VR trick that helps with sickness. Put a fan in your room so it blows at you from one stationary position. Just a little, just so you can feel it, it's not for cooling or anything, it just fixes something in your brain for some reason when you feel the movement of the air from one direction and makes a big difference, so you don't feel ass much sick while playing. Just do it, believe me it works.
This is actually making me consider digging out my old pimax
I usually don't comment on vids but felt this is good info for people. I have had multiple headsets and have learned that headset resolution has a pretty big hit on preformance. Started with a quest 2. Then upgraded to a reverb (then i learned windows mixed reality is shutting down). And now a vive pro 2, fhe higher the resolution the bigger the performance hit. My reverb had a 2k res and the vive pro 2 has 5k. But every headset has a recommended gpu spec and should be considered when getting a vr headset. Hope this helps!
Welcome to the club. It's amazing how you have a harder time with this compared to my htc vive pro 2.
Thanks for going through this for us.
The video we all need! Thanks.
Was getting annoyed with pimax play, nvidia control panel, dcs settings. We all need a Tuuvas! 😅
It took me 3 weeks to get my stamina up for playing with my TrackIR Ralfi, the absolute biggest thing is DO NOT PUSH YOURSELF with the VR. The minute you start feeling the effects of motion sickness get out of VR immediately, if you begine sweating youve already pushed yourself too hard. Trying to push through will make things significantly worse for you. Slow and Steady wins the race when getting your brain rewired to use VR, it took me about a month of consistent short sessions in H3VR, now i can go for 12 hours straight playing it with no issues. Another great tip i found works for me personally, i turn my fan onto me while playing VR, i find keeping myself cool and comfortable drastically reduces the motion sickness when playing more motion intense games. Cant wait to get some VR gameplay from ya Ralfi, im gonna look into a Pimax headset myself, my Index is unusable in DCS due to its resolution. No matter what you do, gauges are unreadable.
Fan helps, Try chewing some gum.
Oddly enough; i accidentally found that a tens device used for back pain helps a lot (shrug). Something about the micro-shocks gets rid of all nausea...
Ive been watching Ralfi for years now! And only now have I learnt he’s actually a pilot irl🤦🏼😂
I’m not even a VR or DCS user, but this video was hilarious. Great job! Ps on the edge of getting the crystal light.
I play DCS only in VR :D I have just Quest 3 with standard PC as I am not super rich, but only rich XD , but since I get rid of motion sickness in Mi-24, I am super happy with VR DCS.
Thanks for all your videos. Play VR and have fun :)
hahaha I lost it at that cursed bugs bunny going "Gaddamn!" hahaha
i love the uncut version video. this is nicer than those overpolish video.
It is a beauiful game. please play more
Great information. I just got my hands on one, looking forward to testing it out.
broooo, thanks a lot, i needed that video long ago, i was strogelling with my HP reverb g2, and then i gut pored so i stop using it, but i tryed some of the things you guys show and its freeking useful, thanks a lot
Man this just proves my theory that vr is not for the faint hearted! You need to be a complete pc expert to get it working well. You need the app to fix the problem caused by the other app you installed to fix the problem with another app you installed to fix the problem with that other app you installed to fix the fps😅 Great video.
What a day, what a day, so many tools.
Great video, Sir! I have the 14900k and 3090, 64 ram , just got the Crystal light yesterday. I am expecting My fps should be somewhat like yours
The "good is not great" trap. I was lost in it for two weeks, nearly losing any drive to even start the game :)
This encapsulates my chase of DCS VR perfectly. My Quest 2 simply isn't sharp enough to benefit compared to the Crystal Light. Maybe next VR gen and when I have a better GPU than a 3070 I'll try it again.
It's a day and night difference already going from Q2 to Q3, just because of the lenses.
Feelimg your pain Ralphi! Currently going down the same rabbit holes....
Good vid. Just ordered one and this gives me a lot of hope that I'll be fine. Hopefully.
* while this may not work too well as a content creator locking your FPS to 72 in the Nvidia Control Panel will do wonders for the smoothness of playback in the headset (will be butter smooth with no stutters). Also lock the FPS at 72 in the Pimax Software…. After this change you will see the game being GPU Limited and not CPU limited in the DCS FPS Graph visible in your video. For reasons unknown to me this will free up the CPU performance on anything above 72. The internal game FPS restriction does not seem to have the same effect so make the change in the Nvidia Control Panel (or AMD equivalent) before loading the game.
I second this, set your Pimax to 72Hz for DCS. It's a massive improvement over 90 with my Pico 4 and I see no reason it wouldn't be the same for a Pimax Crystal.
This probably has to do with frame pacing. FPS is calculated as an average over multiple frames. When your CPU has a high load, it can cause a few ms of delay and then you get a couple frames at once. On paper that's 90 FPS but it could actually be one frame after 26ms and then three frames after 6ms each, so 38 and then 166FPS.
With FPS limited to 72, your CPU has 2.7ms spare time to do it's thing should it encounter a bit more work.
Welcome to the club Ralfi. Even though I only got Q2 atm, even with that I can't go back to flat.
Ralfi - “Check out air combat USA I did a few years back.”
More than a few, Ralfi. 11 whole ass years ago bud. 🤣🤣
Enlightening & entertaining, thanks for sharing the "experience"
Most relatable DCS VR video ever xD
Great video. Very well done
Tuuvas is the best...always helping people
great ad ralf. almost makes me wanna buy VR
New ralfi video... let's go
Yeah today is a good day
Well mine arrived last week and still need to finish tweaking the settings and the VR Rock lenes got here 2 days ago. Thanks for the info and video
Awesome Thank you for Sharing 💯✴
Motion sickness left my body after about a week of using VR. I've never experienced sickness after that point. Now I can barely play games without VR. Racing sims, flight sims or I try to find VR versions of other games I've played.
33:50 Correction, the lighthouse does no tracking, it is simply an emitter. The faceplate does the tracking using the lighthouses as reference points. Lighthouses ARE inside-out tracking technology, just not using general purpose cameras.
I currently have my DCs VR resolution setting at 1.8, and I can tell you with that jump in resolution running at 72 FPS nice and smoothly it is an absolute dream to go flying. FYI I've noticed that the only module that seems to text my system harder than others is the Apache 64, when I fly the F-16 or the A-10 my machine doesn't get taxed as hard. Also I was watching your FPS counter along with your timing and I can tell you you want both of those lines dead flat, if they're not then you just aren't getting the smoothest game play.
"Maybe this will be the video that makes me go back through the nightmare of getting VR gear and finding a smooth, clear, and comfortable setup."
[watches video]
"Nope!"
[goes back to 34" ultrawide OLED and is happy]
I have the valve index. I love the headset
The air combat USA video shows who the OGs of this channel are. Back when Flaming Cliffs 3 was the latest and greatest and I think the F-15 was the only aircraft to have a 3d pit at the time.
Hoo new ralfi video!!!!
I bought the first vive when it came out and yeaaaah the readability of gauges is a real problem for me. I do hope it gets cheaper because at the current price point I don’t see myself buying any new versions anytime soon, although this seems to be pretty great!
Be happy it wasnt a few years ago you tried holy hell it made me insane. DCS has come a long way with VR
Modern pioneering
My Crystal arrives tomorrow can't wait 😅
Heisenburg's customers be like
Strikes me that Razbam are in a unique position. With extensive experience of DCS World, they likely understand how the DCS World platform doesn't quite scale as well as it should, hence the requirements to tinker and support existing modules after every DCS World patch, large or small.
So it makes me wonder that if they were to join another Team, say Microprose, might they be able to consult on new air combat platform architecture.
Just a thought.
I came in for DCS VR, i stayed for the essay on VRs and computer science.
I gave up as well, after downloading so many apps, and it still didn't work. I couldn't keep up with everything. DCS in trackir is fun and i just got the clip bro. Now i am killing it. Good videos, love the insertsbduring the video, made me laugh my ass off.
Awesome edit!!
Finallllllly he does vr. Cant go back to flat ever again
Bought a pimax, and after multiple days of trying to get it working i gave up. It's been collecting dust ever since and this video proves why. I'll buy another pimax when they provide a technician that shows up to my home and configures it for me. For what they're charging, it should at least come with costumer service that speaks the language of the countries theyre selling to... or provide some classes on how to optimize performance.
DCS is a fucking Nightmare in VR.
Horrendously unoptimized.
Generally need between 3 and 8 3rd party background programs.
Editing in game and .ini config files.
Days of tweaking, editing, changing, replacing, alternating programs and waiting for the game to restart just to Alt+F4 it 20 seconds in.
Then you can get an unstable 15-70fps with spikes and dips in FPS for no obvious reason.
😮💨
When it works its the dream.
It just rarely does.
It is fine, just need to accept having all settings on low except textures.
Skill issue.
I pray for a new Sim every day, F...K DCS
@@gungriffen funny, I sit at a mix of medium/high settings with a reverb g2 and am locked at 80-90fps. Sounds like YOU have something going on with your system/hardware choices that need a ton of 3rd party things to make VR work.
Works mostly fine for me but I 100% see your point as well. As long as you have a good PC with like 2-3 background programs running (for quest 3. I'm sure this differs on other headsets but just sharing my experience) mainly for ease of use and a bit of a performance boost you can run it pretty much on medium/high settings with good optimization after 3-4 hours of setting everything up. Only issue I have with it is that we can't use stuff like Reshade or custom monitor color presets which makes the game look absolutely beautiful without taking much of a performance hit. Imo the game looks and runs so much better without VR so I do see your point as well but I'd say the work ED has done is pretty good over the years to improve VR. As you said, when it works it's the dream. I hope they keep working on it so that it's a good experience for everyone
FIY for most users the Quest 3 have the same crispness and high res per eye while costing sub $500 and works very well out of the box
Now I'm nervous. I've just gotten back into DCS after being away from it for almost as long as I was hooked on it. I need lots of practice in everything I flew and still setting up my hotas in each module (again) and I want to get all that out of the way before I start flying with my HP Reverb G2 which I have only tried briefly on this new pc.
DCS gives me enough heartburn (which is why I took a long break from it) and now I'm nervous of how setting up the VR will be. I was hoping for some Tips before I dive into the Rabbit Hole !
Soon as they can incorporate air conditioning into the VR sets I’ll be in.😅
My goofy ass 3rd party head strap for the Q3 has a fan on my forehead. It's the best dumbest thing.
@@Nate-ip4qo BoboVR S3 Pro, I guess.
@@CakePrincessCelestia yep
I have gone from a reverb g2 and wow the crystal light is amazing
Raf, I don't know how you're doing it man but you sound more like Kermit the frog every time you talk about technical stuff each video!!!
Coming from the Reverb G2, I've always run my DCS VR flights at 60Hz. Luckily I don't get any of the strobe/flashing many others report. Running at 60Hz allows you to push textures and res much higher with 0 stuttering and other min/max chasing.
Hoping I can do the same at 72Hz in the PCL... when it arrives.
I remember seeing you in the discord talking about VR in the discord
Ralfi went from garbo tier VR headset to god tier VR headset lol. I remember going from my at the time 3 year old HTC Vive to Valve Index.
You having figured out the lag to 45FPS is the boundry line. makes me wanna change my boundry on my original vive and see if i also get more fps XD
In terms of the Rift you can record the mirror with it's built in stabalisation, resolution is still a bit bab but you lose the wobble.
Recording the Oculus Mirror tool and getting that superior stabilization also works with the Quest 3 (or any other Quest), but requires you to use either wired link or Air Link. Would love to have that with Virtual Desktop as well since that is the better method.
Moral of the story, build your PC like a normal person and everything will work fine.
You got almost the same specs as me. If only you could go through this painstakingly long quest of finding that sweet spot but then for the quest 3 so that I can copy you 😢
Great video! I watched it before I hooked up my headset. It won't send graphics to the headset though. I do have the settings set to VR . . .
waow thats some journey
And yeah, you need the DMAS speakers, theyre excellent
Damn I had same issues with reverb g2 vr, passed same way through all those bugs and gave up. Now using trackir for streaming and vr for sessions on my own
As a Rift S gamer, we fly together blind as hell
Just wait until there’s a new driver update or DCS update that screws it up again. It’s a never ending process
Thx for an entertaining video ^^
Great vid, realy usefull
It will be significant.
Welcome to the layer cake XD
Every time, they change the spotting dots is a loose my mind moment, where I'm sure I could spot better in the last patch, but I'm not so sure it was real either and maybe the matrix is fucking with me.
Ralfi upload 🔥
"Randy, I am the liquor!"