DCS Shows New Dimension of Immersion in Video Games

Footage posted on Reddit shows just how amazing Digital Combat Simulator can be when combined with VR goggles and additional hardware. The video is also a great illustration of how far video games have come since the days of Pong and Pac-Man.

IN A NUTSHELL:

A video posted on Reddit shows what can be achieved by combining expensive hardware, virtual reality and DCS: World;
The result is impressive and shows how realistic video games have become - and what the future of flight simulators could be;
Achieving a similar effect in your own home will require you to spend a lot of money - and even then you will probably have to put up with performance issues.

If you're a fan of flight sims and old enough to remember what they were like a few decades ago, be sure to take a look at the short video that appeared on Reddit. It's a great illustration of how far our hobby has come over the decades, and a potential omen for the future of this - let's face it - niche genre of video games.

It's worth mentioning that the video presents Digital Combat Simulator World, the game was released in 2012. It's a title widely regarded as one of the most realistic flight simulators ever made - the level of detail depends on the aircraft you choose (some are more and some are less detailed), but the best ones have virtually every button and control in the cockpit replicated.

Pretty impressive, right? The author of the thread claims that this may have blown his mind if shown to him 12 years ago and you have to admit, they make a pretty good and blunt summary. In fact, fifteen or twenty years ago this level of realism in simulators existed only in dreams... or videos (much like real, reasonably working VR goggles). What kind of stuff will we be seeing in similar videos in another couple of decades?

Unfortunately, currently such experiences are still the stuff of the future in a sense, because to enjoy such a setup - including Thrustmaster T.16000M throttle with J-PEIN HOTAS grip, Thrustmaster MFD Cougar displays, CH Pro USB pedals, and HP Reverb G2 VR helmet - you need to spend at least a few hundred dollars. And that's not counting the expenses for DLCs for DCS: World (the game itself is free-to-play) and a PC powerful enough to cope with the game in VR - and without special mods to degrade the visuals, even a really powerful machine may have considerable problems with performance. The hardware used by the author of the video is ABS Gladiator from NewEgg, with an i7-9700F CPU and a GeForce RTX 3070 GPU.

By the way, this is not the only example of an amazing combination of VR and DCS - another is provided by a player who built his own M-134 minigun rig for DCS: UH-1 Huey DLC.