Where the hell are you getting this dual 4k stuff from?

Its 960x1080 per eye, not even full 1080p each.

But amazingly there are other flight sims that support rift right now. So clearly the hardware is there. For some reason bos doesn't. Wonder why... dx9... something... something. ...

Also, you don't actually need to have the game rendering everything at 75 fps (the current standard for low persistence, 90 or 100 fps is what might become the consumer version standard) - there's a trick called asynchronous timewarp which lets you render your game as much as you can, say 35 frames per second, but display it on the Rift at 75 fps - this allows the head tracking to refresh your head position while the scene is rendered less often (at a wide fov). The Prepar3d VR plugin, DCOC,uses that and it lets me play complex addons such as the Aerosoft Airbus X or Captain Sim planes in complete smoothness despite the game actually rendering at 30 or even 20 fps (but if it gets too low you get some artefacts in your peripheral vision).

In short, it's absolutely possible to run complex sims right now with an Oculus Rift, and many developer have found great ways to implement that. I run DCS World in it, I run complex airliners addons + OrbX scenery in Prepar3d with it (but you do need a GTX 970 - what I have - or 980 to do that well). The Il2 BOS team is trying to pretend that the Oculus Rift is not for simulations, but simulations have actually been at the forefront of successful VR implementations, and it extends to other things than flight sim such as motor sims with Euro Truck Simulator 2, Assetto Corsa, Live for Speed, rFactor 2, as well as other great sim-like games such as Elite Dangerous, Lunar Flight. The list of games which I'm enjoying playing on DK2 (to cite some more: Half Life 2, Alien Isolation) is actually long enough that I don't have enough time to play them (and don't play on monitor at all these days). And that's not even mentionning the huge scene of freeware developers experimenting with short games/experiences all the time (eg the Battle of Endor, which is basically an Xwing game in VR). So I find the excuse "it can't be done, it's not for hardcore games" not very convincing, that's all.

To have decent resolution, enough to recognize distant aircraft, yes you'd need at least 4K per eye since the image is enlarged to life size. I've heard 1080p is too blurry. Immersive and cool no doubt, but too blurry. Perhaps a DK owner can comment.

First you say the hardware doesn't exist to run it at 4k.

Then when its pointed out that oculus isn't 4k per eye you claim you have to have 4k to spot contacts.

What are you basing this on?

Because if you can spot an aircraft on a 1080p monitor at several feet away, then why not on a 1080p screen a few cm from your eye and with the apparent size of the screen much larger?

So to increase the apparent frame rate it's just adding frames like 120hz TVs do?

Because if you can spot an aircraft on a 1080p monitor at several feet away, then why not on a 1080p screen a few cm from your eye and with the apparent size of the screen much larger?

Guys,

I know it's fun to ridicule us, but you have no idea how Oculus operates and our experience with them. Loft has every reason to not be thrilled with his experience with Oculus. I'm not too happy with them either. Google translating his words from Russian is not going to tell you the whole story either.

We tried very hard to support their devices as they grew and introduced new units and we did build support for them to the best of our ability (it wasn't perfect but it worked) when we probably should have been focusing on other stuff. They also seemed interested in working with us as I live not far from their offices, but the harder we tried to support and work with Oculus the more difficult it got. This was even before Facebook and before them dropping DX9. I can't say too much in detail due to NDAs, but basically they tried to tell us how we should make our game and unless we made it how they wanted it, they wouldn't work with us. Essentially, their hardware could not run a hardcore sim like ours in 3D with what they deemed acceptable framerates (their level of acceptability, not ours). And the Oculus team seemed puzzled why we had built a custom engine or why we needed a custom sim engine that requires large environments which does not run at a constant 100 FPS like a shooter. Our customers also do not want to necessarily see a human body in our cockpits as they demanded. So we decided to wait a bit until their hardware and software was a bit more mature before we spent any more man hours supporting something that is not even a final product.

However, based on the vibe from Oculus we felt that the final retail Oculus product (or at least their first retail unit) was imminent and their would be no real hurdles to using it with BOS since we had already built initial support. This is why Loft made such comments about our planned support. But then a few things happened - 1. They got bought by Facebook and they no longer cared to talk to us about technical issues. 2. Something changed in their software concerning 32 bit vs. 64 bit which broke our implementation. But we were hopeful a solution could eventually be found. 3. They simply dropped support for DX9 games which ours is one.

So that's the progression from initial support to none. Not our fault and now we are in a tough spot because we do not have the right requirements since they changed them and we don't have the budget to build such support at the moment. There was zero intention by us to not have support. Just a string of unfortunate events. It has nothing to do with us not willfully supporting our users or any other motive.

Oculus seems to work really well with off the shelf engines that most other developers use for shooters and whatnot. We have a custom engine and huge environments and complex physics that suck frames so this is a difficult situation for us developmentally because Oculus is 3D and everything needs to be drawn twice. There seems to be two kinds of developers who have success supporting Oculus. The first is large mega-teams like you find at EA or Valve who can stick a team of people on the implementation task. Then there are tiny teams with super talented individuals who make super niche games that use some off the shelf engine that already works well with Oculus and where meeting budgets or deadlines is not a huge priority for them. We are in a different situation entirely. We are a small team with a super complex product, small budgets, a custom engine and a plan we are in the middle of implementing. Any deviation from that causes major disruptions to planned updates.

Oculus also really seems to want to "change the gaming industry" with VR by changing the requirements for gaming such as only supporting DX10 and above. This puts smaller teams like us in a bind. Oculus is not the cute little startup it once was, they are aiming to be THE VR company and with it comes big corporate policies and choices that affects teams like ours. You can argue coulda, woulda, shoulda all day long, but Oculus has not made it easy on us to support their product and they pulled support for BOS, not us. It's disappointing, but that is the situation.

I am hopeful something can change in the future where we have enough money to build new support for Oculus and make whatever changes necessary to get there. That of course requires more sales.

The VR revolution looks promising and many companies are now involved in this space. It's got a long way to go before it completely supplants your monitor. Maybe it will come fast, maybe not. Time will tell. We have nothing personal against VR and we did give it a go, but when it becomes simpler to add it to our titles I am sure we will support it. VR does not need sims to make it big and whether we need OR support today or tomorrow as some here claim to make it remains to be seen. People have counted us out more than once before and we're still here creating stuff. There are other things I'd like to work on before we worry about OR support again.

The perils of being a sim developer never ceases to amaze me.

Jason

The much wider FOV in the OR means that 1080 in OR is not nearly the same as 1080 on your PC monitor. It's a question of pixels and the area they're spread over - the number of pixels and pixel density. For a full explanation have a read through this: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/when-it-comes-to-resolution-its-all-relative/

1080 in OR just won't cut it for the likes of DCS or BOS. It'll be immersive but you won't be able to see enough detail. What's needed is more resolution and 1440 is the minimum for flight sims. Even that resolution won't be fantastic for spotting but it should be ok and really immersive. 1440 will be fantastic for games like Elite, Star Citizen, etc. The real revolution for hardcore flight sims won't start until resolution hits 4k but that's not going to be OR CV1 - that's probably 2-3 years away.

All that being said there's no doubt that BOS devs are probably missing a trick here and a DX9 based engine just won't cut it for OR down the line. At least DCS understand that this is likely to be a transformative technology and are building it into the long term plans. I think DCS are sure that they'll still be around in that timeframe. The future for BOS is more uncertain right now I'd say and they probably have more important things to concentrate on.

Yes I think we are several years away from VR replacing our monitors. In the meantime BoS has more important things to work on. I'm sure when that day comes they will upgrade for it.

Yes just like they upgraded their old Dx9 engine.....oh. Just like they upgraded the SP campaign from RoF.....oh. Just like they upgraded the HOTAS axis assignments.....oh. Ok then just like the upgraded ME.....oh.

Sorry man, but "upgrade" or "progression" is not a strong point for these devs.....unless you are talking about unlocks.

Of course its not 777/1cs fault. Its the customers, hardware developers, and everyone else s fault their game is turning into poo.

Pretty much a moot point because there was no way they were going to create a new game engine for BOS when they already had one. EDGE is going to be cool but how long has ED been working on that?

You are again having a comprehension issue.

You are talking about 777/1c making "upgrades" when needed. They dont.

Comparing DCS to BoS is rather funny. DCS was first released when? And EDGE is called making progress for the future. BoS is the newest released CFM, yet instead of making a scalable engine they decided to use an old one that limitations are already showing.

No way they would upgrade to a more capable engine? Of course not if you dont plan ahead. The goal was to release a game in a quick amount of time using scraps, with an IL2 name, but no substance. Plan worked well for them.