Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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User avatar
By Rob P
#1818907
That's interesting.

I'd assumed that the VR kit did the heavy lifting on graphics processing. I didn't realise that it needed the computer's gpu to drive it.

Rob P
By IWF
#1818945
I’m lucky because I built a pc especially for fs2020. A amd5600x processor , 3090 graphics card and a reverb g2 goggles. I thing the 3090 is overkill, but dies make for a great VR experience

I powered up some old goflight modules this evening and remarkably they actually worked. Ive a Honeywell yoke on order and I think the combo will work well.
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By Full Metal Jackass
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1818985
Chris-tt wrote:
Full Metal Jackass wrote:
IWF wrote:I highly recommend folk to try out VR if they can. Most people say they’ll never go back and several real pilots are very complimentary about it.

They haven’t sorted out how controllers work either. I prefer real switches but beyond a yoke, it’s complicated, because of course you can’t see anything outside of the headset.

The hardest thing to simulate for me is the trim wheel. I just can’t get the keyboard to reproduce the wheel effect


I agree with you with regards VR - I have the Oculus Quest connected by the Link cable and everyone who has tried it, has been blown away, the realism is good. I especially enjoy night VFR as you can really use the roads to navigate by.

Concerning trim, this is why I am glad that I bought the Saitek trim wheel when it was available; having said this, am waiting for the Honeycomb Bravo to be delivered to go alongside the Honeycomb Alpha - I ordered this back in August but still no delivery date.

If you've not seen this, look at YouTube reviews - I like the idea of changing the quadrant quickly and easily from SEP, MEP, twin Jet up to 4 engine Jet; the settings in FS2020 allow for individual profiles for each.....

Just wondering when the UK world update is coming - some time this month, I believe????


My son got an Oculus Quest 2 for Christmas, he's got a fairly okay gaming PC. The frame-rate with MS Flight Sim 2020 on the VR headset makes it unplayable. I've got a feeling it needs an RTX 3080/90 to play it properly? Not quite sure I can justify £1500+ on a graphics card to play it.


My graphic card is an RTX 2070, works fine. But I did notice that having more memory is a bonus - 32GB helped accelerate the system. What CPU are you using?
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By Full Metal Jackass
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1818986
JAFO wrote:Out of interest, @IWF, how much might all that cost if starting from scratch?


Not @IWF but I also built a system to allow me to run FS2020 on ultra settings with a frame rate of at least 35 - 45 FPS. The full system cost around 2100 quid including VR headset, Honeycomb Alpha Yoke (the Bravo Throttle is on order) It's based on an AMD Ryzen 3700 CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, RTX 2070 GPU, Oculus Quest & Link. The only thing I've not counted there is the price of the monitor because I already had a dual set up.
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By Chris-tt
#1819046
Full Metal Jackass wrote:
Chris-tt wrote:
Full Metal Jackass wrote:
I agree with you with regards VR - I have the Oculus Quest connected by the Link cable and everyone who has tried it, has been blown away, the realism is good. I especially enjoy night VFR as you can really use the roads to navigate by.

Concerning trim, this is why I am glad that I bought the Saitek trim wheel when it was available; having said this, am waiting for the Honeycomb Bravo to be delivered to go alongside the Honeycomb Alpha - I ordered this back in August but still no delivery date.

If you've not seen this, look at YouTube reviews - I like the idea of changing the quadrant quickly and easily from SEP, MEP, twin Jet up to 4 engine Jet; the settings in FS2020 allow for individual profiles for each.....

Just wondering when the UK world update is coming - some time this month, I believe????


My son got an Oculus Quest 2 for Christmas, he's got a fairly okay gaming PC. The frame-rate with MS Flight Sim 2020 on the VR headset makes it unplayable. I've got a feeling it needs an RTX 3080/90 to play it properly? Not quite sure I can justify £1500+ on a graphics card to play it.


My graphic card is an RTX 2070, works fine. But I did notice that having more memory is a bonus - 32GB helped accelerate the system. What CPU are you using?


I’ve not updated his PC in a few years - I don’t usually play games myself, but wouldn’t mind a go on FS 2020. It has a i7-9700k processor with a gtx 1080 ti graphics card and 32gb of ram, and a two screen setup. I guess with a third screen being the VR and at 90hz it’s pretty demanding. It has run everything fine upto now, sounds like I need to buy a few upgrades though.
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By Rob P
#1819057
Without VR and with just one (wide) screen I am running it quite happily on a modestly lower spec machine than that.

Rob P
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By WelshRichy
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1819085
I was running FS2020 rather well on my PC with an i9-10900K, 64GB RAM, 2070 8GB GFX and a couple of 1TB NVMe SSDs. That was until three months ago when we moved and I went from having 70mb FTTC connectivity to 15mb (on a good day) ADSL with no FTTC available.

Now MSFS2020 complains my internet connection is too slow and disables online streaming of scenery data. I also fear updates as one cannot by-pass them as far as I am aware. My quick go on FS before work turns into I'd better leave my PC on for the next few hours to update FS.

Saving grace is I know we are already in the rollout plan for FTTP and a 900mb connection 2023/24 Q1. Only 2.5 years to go... :cry:
By IWF
#1819115
@Full Metal Jackass

I guess the best of £3k, if I think about it. The 3090 is over kill , but a 3080 would cost the best part of £1k at the moment. I was starting from scratch not upgrading but others have less expensive rigs and seem happy. I wouldn’t run anything less than a 2080 ti if you wait decent frame rate. Supply is a bit crazy at the moment , which is why prices are so silly.

In the 2d world it’s the CPu that takes a hammering, partly because MS haven’t written the code very well. In the world of VR the GPU matters a lot more.

Just spent an hour doing circuits and bumps around Southend. Per the real world it’s quite tiring , apart from the pillocks using the wrong runway. At least that doesn’t happen in the real world
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By Full Metal Jackass
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1819240
Chris-tt wrote:
Full Metal Jackass wrote:
Chris-tt wrote:
My son got an Oculus Quest 2 for Christmas, he's got a fairly okay gaming PC. The frame-rate with MS Flight Sim 2020 on the VR headset makes it unplayable. I've got a feeling it needs an RTX 3080/90 to play it properly? Not quite sure I can justify £1500+ on a graphics card to play it.


My graphic card is an RTX 2070, works fine. But I did notice that having more memory is a bonus - 32GB helped accelerate the system. What CPU are you using?


I’ve not updated his PC in a few years - I don’t usually play games myself, but wouldn’t mind a go on FS 2020. It has a i7-9700k processor with a gtx 1080 ti graphics card and 32gb of ram, and a two screen setup. I guess with a third screen being the VR and at 90hz it’s pretty demanding. It has run everything fine upto now, sounds like I need to buy a few upgrades though.


There would be two things I would update - graphics card - for VR, the RTX 2070 would suffice. And to aid with loading times, an SSD for FS2020. Everything else I would leave.

One thing I would point out - using VR, the other screens won't be used or rather, what you will see on those screens are two squares showing the field of view of each of the lenses so it's not that demanding. Don't forget, the goggles refresh at 90Hz, you don't have to have FS2020 refreshing everything at that rate - it needs to refresh at a rate where you can perceive your inputs are making a difference - so above 25 frames per second.

My rig performs at 35 - 45 FPS and with the Oculus Quest, it's really mind-blowing.
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By Full Metal Jackass
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1819244
IWF wrote:@Full Metal Jackass

I guess the best of £3k, if I think about it. The 3090 is over kill , but a 3080 would cost the best part of £1k at the moment. I was starting from scratch not upgrading but others have less expensive rigs and seem happy. I wouldn’t run anything less than a 2080 ti if you wait decent frame rate. Supply is a bit crazy at the moment , which is why prices are so silly.

In the 2d world it’s the CPu that takes a hammering, partly because MS haven’t written the code very well. In the world of VR the GPU matters a lot more.

Just spent an hour doing circuits and bumps around Southend. Per the real world it’s quite tiring , apart from the pillocks using the wrong runway. At least that doesn’t happen in the real world


Yeah, my guesstimate was that I paid around £2200 for my setup using an RTX 2070 and I'm happy with the frame rate so not far off your pricing. I'm surprised you say the GPU is more relevant - the resolution for my Quest is 1440 x 1600 per eye meaning total resolution is 2880 x 1600. My monitors are 2560 x 1440 (HP Omen 27) and 5120 x 2610 (MSI Prestige PS341).

When using the latter monitor, the frame rate was obviously impacted - down to around 25 - 30 FPS hence I was typically using the Omen. For VR, instead of drawing one large screen it draws two separate screens next to each other, one per lens - you'll no doubt have seen this on the monitor if you remove the headset. What is important is for the system to know where you are looking, what is there and then render that for the eyes to be presented with. After all, what we are seeing is the original 2D picture presented on the monitor, split vertically and presented one for each eye slightly offset, I don't believe the VR will impact your FPS *unless* the resolution of the goggles are significantly higher than the resolution of the monitor and for my Quest, the RTX 2070 is plenty capable.

As for circuit bashing, I actually turned off live traffic specifically for that reason you mentioned.....
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By SafetyThird
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1819303
After trying out x-plane on my laptop (Dual-Core Intel Core i7, 3.3 GHz, 16Gb, Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536 MB) I've found that it just doesn't really work with my 32" 4k display. The frame rate just isn't there and, not being IFR rated, it's the VFR stuff I really need.

I've decided to sell the Playstation 4 Pro with it's VR gear and instead buy a dedicated PC for flight simming (x-plane and probably FS2020 for it's VFR scenery) and the occasional game.

Having been a Mac laptop user exclusively for thirty years, this is a bit of a dive into the unknown, hardware wise, so I have a few questions.

Firstly, is there any reason to pick between Intel and AMD? Does it make sense to choose an AMD processor if you're going for AMD graphics or doesn't that matter?

My plan is to buy the box, PSU, a decent motherboard and processor (currently looking at the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X) and a mid range graphics card. The idea is to eventually get a card that can cope with VR and get a VR headset but that may have to wait for a while due to cost of setting all this up.

Any suggested hardware vendors or just buy individually. I'm tempted to source processor and graphics second hand unless I can find a good deal somewhere. Also, Any suggested size/spec for power supply and motherboard?

Note this is purely a games machine, I have my Mac systems for everything else.

Thanks.
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By Rob P
#1819308
Second user graphics cards are a treasure trove of bargains as the keen types trade up. There's the small risk that they have been abused but I have always found it a gamble that pays off. I can't remember the last time I bought one new.

.My current 1060 which runs MSFS quite happily on a widescreen monitor reached me by the ebay route

Rob P
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By Tonybishop
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1819359
The new Mac laptops and Mac mini, powered by Apple's own ARM processor are phenomenally fast and run x-plane. Looks like a winning combination, so need to move to a Windows PC.

Also, having tried games joysticks, I've moved to a Gladiator for joystick and rudder controls. Much more precise.
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By Full Metal Jackass
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1819421
SafetyThird wrote:After trying out x-plane on my laptop (Dual-Core Intel Core i7, 3.3 GHz, 16Gb, Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536 MB) I've found that it just doesn't really work with my 32" 4k display. The frame rate just isn't there and, not being IFR rated, it's the VFR stuff I really need.

I've decided to sell the Playstation 4 Pro with it's VR gear and instead buy a dedicated PC for flight simming (x-plane and probably FS2020 for it's VFR scenery) and the occasional game.

Having been a Mac laptop user exclusively for thirty years, this is a bit of a dive into the unknown, hardware wise, so I have a few questions.

Firstly, is there any reason to pick between Intel and AMD? Does it make sense to choose an AMD processor if you're going for AMD graphics or doesn't that matter?

My plan is to buy the box, PSU, a decent motherboard and processor (currently looking at the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X) and a mid range graphics card. The idea is to eventually get a card that can cope with VR and get a VR headset but that may have to wait for a while due to cost of setting all this up.

Any suggested hardware vendors or just buy individually. I'm tempted to source processor and graphics second hand unless I can find a good deal somewhere. Also, Any suggested size/spec for power supply and motherboard?

Note this is purely a games machine, I have my Mac systems for everything else.

Thanks.


There is no real reason to choose between AMD or Intel, the difference is purely bang per buck and I would recommend you get a system specced the way you want it. If you buy something from (eg) Currys, you'll pay too much or have some sort of bottle neck.

To get a reasonable performance, I would recommend a computer with:

AMD Ryzen 3700x
Mainboard with B550 chipset
32GB RAM
1TB SSD
RTX 2070 Graphics card
600W PSU

You should be able to run 4K with 35 - 40FPS with these components.

I would never buy a CPU or graphics card second hand - a relatively new board / CPU might have been overclocked and damaged - what warranty will you have? Yes, you might be lucky if it's from someone like me, then you could have a second hand GTX 1080 which hasn't been clocked but such a card it's not up to the performance if you want to run ultra setting. You'll then regret not splashing out on the 2070 in the first place....

For VR, all you'd need to add would be the Oculus Quest 2 and the Oculus Link cable... add 300 quid.. done....

just my 0.02 worth....
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