Helicopter Gunship DEX News

A quick preview of the RAH-66 Comanche model....

This update adds the following...

1. Massive performance increase! I traced the low fps down to the atmospheric rendering system. I'm not sure why it runs so slow but I suspect something has changed in the XR/Steam VR environment that causes it to not play well with VR setups.

So, I've stripped that out and replaced it with a standard fog system. It's not perfect but it is a lot faster!

My 2080ti now hits 14-15ms per frame putting it just shy of the magic 11.1ms required for 90fps. ːsteamsunnyː

This makes the whole game much much more comfortable to use.

2. Adjusted the HUD size so it is a little smaller to keep elements away from the edges of the VR headset where its more difficult to read things.

3. Swapped camera render more to "Forward" rendering which seems to be slightly faster in VR.

4. Most bloom effects now work correctly.

For best visuals I suggest turning the maximum view range to 100km. There's little performance change between 20km and 100km.

What Doesn't Work...

1. Load out screen.
2. HUD elements that align to world positions e.g. waypoint marker, targeting boxes etc
3. Norway & Lush Desert won't have distance fog but should still benefit from the fps increase.
4. Bloom effects on distant tracers don't work, not sure why yet.
5. Mission planning map is washed out due to the distance fogging system messing with the map camera.

I have now uploaded an initial VR beta test version. This is a very basic VR test to get some initial performance feedback and has only been tested on Central Libya

What Works

1. Menu systems are projected onto your normal monitor. They should be fully functional from there.

2. When the mission starts it should drop the VR camera into the cockpit (or close to it). Press "V" to recentre the VR view and align with the cockpit. This control can be rebound in the control bindings area under View Controls.

3. You should be able to take off and fly as normal.

4. All MFD screens work

5. It is recommend to turn off the rotor blades when in interior view and also remove the virtual MFDs from the HUD.

6. For a little more performance you can switch the graphics display to "Windowed" and "1280 x 720".

What Doesn't Work

1. Weapon loadout screen doesn't work.

2. HUD elements that align to world objects e.g. Waypoint markers, targeting boxes etc do not work.

4. Some bloom effects such as weapon tracers do not work correctly.

5. LOD (Level of Detail) models are not being swapped correctly and as such you will see low poly models quite often.

My personal thoughts are "it works - kind of!" but the performance is pretty bad. I'm not sure what I can do about that at the moment.

There's a lot of work to be done to get everything working and even then I think the VR experience will be "clunky" at best.

However, your feedback is always welcome ːsteamhappyː

This update adds the following....

1. New skins for the AH-56 Cheyenne A & D models. The Cheyenne is also now set up for custom skins.

2. Fixed a bug that would cause the radar icon of wingman to persist if they were added to the mission and then removed.

3. Fixed a bug that would cause duplicate NAV waypoint names to be displayed on the HUD even though they are named correctly on the mission planning map. This only effected infantry missions that used multiple target waypoints e.g. pickup, mission point & drop off

Here is a sneak preview of the new colour schemes for the Cheyenne and the new D-30 model