I recently upgraded my T300 wheelbase to the Simagic Alpha Mini. I had a few custom made rims and the TM Open Wheel rim that I wanted to try to get working on the Simagic base, including all the buttons. After a few days of hardware exploring, learning about nRF24 & logic analyzers and packet disassembly I managed to figure out the important bits of the wireless protocol Simagic uses and make my rims work with the base directly.

I put all the info over at a github repository if someone else wants to do the same, or perhaps the opposite attaching a Simagic rim to another base :)

Here’s a new version of the VR eye accomodation fix, with a few new features. On the original accomodation fix side there is now ability to have different color toning settings for daytime and night stages (with interpolation for other times of day). This is primarily because previously I was not happy with having to make a compromise with the contrast on the gamma setting, I wanted it higher for daytime but that made the nights too dark. So now being able to set different gamma for different times of day allows for better look in both cases. Its still not quite perfect as in some stages like Scotland the lighting is not entirely consistent with other stages.

An extra feature I implemented is haze reduction, which reduces the fog in daytime good weather conditions which is too thick in some stages like Finland. It works properly only in some locations (Finland, Wales, Poland primarily) as I had to limit its effectiveness so it wouldn’t bring any unfair advantage in worse weather conditions where thick fog is intentional. Here is a comparison screenshot from Finland stage:

Another feature I added is overriding some vegetation pixel shaders from the game which makes most of the vegetation use alpha-to-coverage for much less aliased appearance when MSAA is enabled. This was primarily motivated by wanting to remove the weird distracting dither effect from the trees. This dithering removal looks like this (view the image in full size), the better aliased vegetation isn’t so well visible in a static screenshot but it looks much smoother in motion:

Download v2.0 of the mod from here, read the readme for instructions.

As before, the default config is made for the Vive Pro. Other headsets, especially LCD panel ones might need some adjustments. Also the mod should work without VR as well, but in that case you probably will want to disable at least the accomodation area override setting (overrideArea=0 into the config).

Here’s a quick update to the DCS VR Shaders mod for DCS version 2.7.0.4625. The ENABLE_HMD_MASK & MASKSIZE settings are removed in this version as DCS now includes a correctly implemented headset mask. Everything else seems to be as before, though this version is not very heavily tested.

Download from here.

Yet another update for the VR shaders performance mod – which is now called just “VR shaders mod” because it does more than just performance improvements.
List of changes for this version:
– Renamed the mod to ‘DCS World VR shaders mod’
– Compatibility with DCS World version 2.5.6.49314 (23.5.2020)
– Removed MSAA_MASKSIZE setting as ED “cloned” it to DCS itself
– Added multi-sampled terrain shadow sampling (less aliased shadows with MSAA)
– Added alpha-to-coverage support for trees and tree flat shadows (less aliased trees with MSAA)
– Fixed ship wakes being permanently “burned in” with high water detail
– Simple transparent objects rendering setting (off by default – not well tested)
– Fixed some issues with NVG especially with NVG_GAIN_ADJUSTS_POSITION enabled

Get it from DCS forums: here.

It has new AToC and multisampled terrain texture sampling features which make shadows on terrain, trees and tree flat shadows less aliased with MSAA enabled. Comparison screenshot is here, again in motion the difference is more visible.

Yet another DCS shaders performance update is available on the DCS forums here.

Its compatible with 2.5.6.47224 beta and fixes a few issues that have accumulated over time. There is also a setting to keep bloom enabled, it seems to have a much smaller performance hit noways.

It also contains a new feature: Supersampling for the albedo (diffuse) textures. It is a very performance-cheap way to get improved clarity especially for the cockpit labels and stuff. So instead of having to supersample the entire rendered scene to get more sharpness, it will sample the diffuse texture multiple times.

The difference looks like this:

Even with just 2x sampling the text labels (like “FIRE EXTGH”) are much sharper and its performance hit is very neglible, almost any GPU tha runs DCS in VR probably can do 4x without any noticeable hit. It looks even better in the headset than in the screenshot. With it its possible to turn down the pixel density quite a bit without getting a blurry cockpit, and then use the performance headroom to do 4xMSAA for smoother geometry edges.

It can be controlled with _HMD.hlsl setting ENABLE_DIFFUSE_SS, the default is 4x.

I updated the DCS shaders peformance mod again for DCS 2.5.6.43503. Download link in the ED forums here and a bit more info about the changes here.