Should I Switch to VR? August Answers Your Questions!
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  1. #1

    Should I Switch to VR? August Answers Your Questions!

    I got the HP Reverb G2 in the $300 sale last month, and have been spending a lot of time with it since it arrived two weeks ago. I thought my impressions might be useful to some of those considering making the jump.

    I"m assuming that you have mid-range, easily MSFS capable but not crazy hardware, that you already use TrackIR or similar, and that you have a decent monitor of at least 1440p and audio tuned to your liking.

    Q: This is a long post, what's the TL;DR?

    Yes, VR is awesome and more than a gimmick now, but it comes with major tradeoffs and you may not want to use it all or even most of the time, depending on your simming habits and style.

    Q: What's so awesome about it?

    If you already have head tracking, VR really only adds one thing to the sim, which is stereo 3D vision, mainly of your own plane. When you're close to things on the ground, there's a little 3D effect on them as well, but human binocular vision only goes out a few dozen meters and this is accurately reflected in VR, so once off the ground, your own aircraft - the interior and such parts of its exterior as you can see out the window - is the only thing you can see in 3D. (By that I mean binocular vision type 3D, of course; the entire world is rendered in 3D in MSFS, as you can see when you move your eyepoint or aircraft.)

    Q: That's it? Is that really a game changer?

    Oh yes, it is. Experiencing your aircraft in stereo 3D definitely makes it a whole new game. None of the 2D YouTube videos or anything you have seen can quite express how much more immersive it is to be in your cockpit in 3D. It really comes alive. As far as being a game changer, it is more of a game changer than when you first got TrackIR - but not entirely in a good way. TrackIR just made one thing about the sim much better, but with basically no downsides. It was now much easier and more intuitive to look around compared with the hat switch, but you were still playing the same game. VR comes with LOTS of downsides and is suited to a different way of experiencing and enjoying the simulator. It has the big benefit of seeing your cockpit in 3D, and I can't stress enough that this is very cool, but at the expense of making almost everything else about the sim noticeably worse. These trade-offs may not be for you, or may not be for all of your flying.

    Q: What are these downsides?

    First is the loss of visual quality. Almost no matter what kind of rig you run, you'll have to dial down your graphic settings to maintain good frame rates in VR. You may have to turn down your texture sizes and draw distances, give up volumetric clouds and lighting, turn off ambient occlusion, lighting and fog effects, and you'll get used to seeing antialiasing and other artifacts that you might have considered unacceptable on a screen. You may even have to turn off all AI air, land, and sea traffic, which can make the world a pretty quiet place. (I have kept my traffic settings at around 5% so the world isn't completely dead.) Even if you have a fast rig and don't dial down your settings so much, it's being delivered through a headset projector that is very inferior in resolution, color, and contrast to a decent screen. VR headsets have a sharp zone or "sweet spot" in the center, and the Reverb is known for having a relatively small one; outside of the area directly in front of your eye, you get a lot of blur and color fringing. I was warned about this but was still surprised at how much the visual quality fell off away from center.

    Second, you lose a lot of field of view. The visual area in a VR headset is a roughly circular patch that takes up only about 98 degrees of your 190 degree (horizontal) field of view, so there is blackness above, below, and especially to either side of your viewing area where you are expecting to see stuff with your peripheral vision. The effect is not so much of being surrounded by a cool 3D world as looking through a peephole at a cool 3D world. This is one of the differences between really high-end VR headsets and consumer units like the Reverb, and I'm sure will be improved in future generations at the consumer price point.

    Third, the VR headset will become yet another source of MSFS freezes and CTDs - just what you needed, right?

    Fourth, cockpit interaction is more difficult. The gauges are harder to see and read, and you'll be switching among instrument views more than you used to in order to get a good look at them. Mouse control of the instruments is wonky which will result in irritating, and occasionally fatal, extra seconds of head-down time when you need to change a radio frequency or something. Map as many controls as possible to your HOTAS where you can remember their location by feel.

    Q: What kind of sim flying is VR best for?

    The kind where you want to experience your aircraft and drink in a nicely done aircraft model. Planes with a lot of external geometry visible from the seat, like biplanes or twins with big engines beside you like a C310 or P-38, look especially cool. Any kind of cockpit, whether it's a little Pitts hole or a big flight deck with a cute copilot, benefits equally from the VR experience if it's well modeled. You'll see and appreciate details that were invisible on a screen. Once you are on autopilot, you can even physically get up and sit in another seat, or walk back into the cabin if your actual room is big enough, in a true 360 degree, 1:1 scale environment.

    Aerobatic flying and abrupt maneuvers in VR can be a little stomach-turning. The headset isolates you from any fixed point of reference, so there's a disagreement between what your eyes are seeing and what your guts and inner ear are telling you that is not resolved by seeing stuff in your room next to your monitor. I can do a full acro routine without barfing, but not quite without thinking about barfing. The other moment that gives me a twinge is the moment the plane comes to a complete stop after taxiing in. I just can't get used to seeing the plane come to a stop without feeling the deceleration.

    On the other hand, the spatial awareness that comes with VR can improve piloting in certain ways. I find it much easier to do slips on approach in VR, and I think my turn coordination and landings are generally better, although VR tends to create the illusion that you are higher off the runway than you are, so I am touching down a little earlier than I expect.

    Helicopter flying is probably great in VR because you can get up close to things for a good 3D look. I still haven't quite got the hang of choppers but this is an incentive for more practice.

    For me personally, it is also nice that my VR headset doesn't care about the ambient lighting conditions. On a clear winter day like today, when the sun comes through my south-facing window and lights me up to a degree that hopelessly confuses my TrackIR, VR is the only way I can fly. So that's nice.

    Q: What kind of sim flying is VR not so good for?

    If you want to enjoy MSFS's wonderful scenery, you might be better off going back to the monitor. There's no stereo 3D effect in VR of anything that far away, and the graphic quality and panoramic field of view are so reduced that scenery peeping is not very rewarding. When you go back to your monitor on the graphics settings you're accustomed to, you'll be amazed how sharp, saturated, and generally better it looks. And more animated, with all the traffic settings turned up.

    If you typically make use of a lot of other open windows while in MSFS, such as Little Navmap, other charts and navaids, etc., VR may be difficult for you. There are apps for looking at PDF files and browser windows from within the 3D environment, but reading documents in VR is no fun. It will be hard to make out the fine print and it will be artificial and immersion-breaking. Plus, all those open windows are using CPU and GPU resources and costing you frames per second. The good news is that it is fairly easy to pop in and out of VR within a flight, so you can get your route and procedures all sorted on the monitor, program your nav instruments as desired, then go to VR for the actual flying, with maybe the occasional jump back to 2D to check an approach plate or whatever. So far I mainly stick to VFR in VR and rely on either the aircraft's GPS unit or the toolbar VFR map to figure out where I'm going.

    Vatsim and multiplayer are going to be a bit of a challenge with VR, but doable if you're very familiar with the procedures and don't need to look up a lot of stuff. I'm still ironing this out but really want to make it work, because the audio interaction and the display of Vatsim air traffic would add a lot to the immersiveness that VR provides.

    Q: How is the sound?

    Meh, okay I guess. After the first few minutes, I turned off the headset sound and went back to my speakers. I prefer the ambient noise of my aircraft to be ambient, not piped into my ears, and have nice speakers with a subwoofer for engine rumbles etc. that sounds far better than the headset speakers. I wish I could pipe just the voice from ATC into the headset, but so far I can't, because Windows and MSFS don't recognize the headset as a speaker. I think the headset mic picks up a lot of ambient noise, too, so it's not great for Vatsim. I'm actually sticking my old headphones and mic over the VR headset now when on Vatsim, which seems a little silly but is the way that works best for now.

    Q: Can I use it with glasses?

    Modestly sized glasses will fit in the unit, but I don't like it. The peephole effect is even worse if you wear glasses and have to use a spacer that moves your eyes farther from the headset lenses. Glasses make it more difficult to make fine adjustments in the position of the headset on your face, and a few millimeters of such adjustments can determine whether you see any sharp sweet spot or not. Personally, I found that the vignetting became unacceptable and dug out some old contact lenses to use when I'm doing VR. The alternative is to get corrective lenses that go into the headset, which I'll probably do eventually, but I'm willing to bet that they further reduce the sharpness and add more chromatic aberration.

    Q: Is it good with sims other than MSFS?

    Yes, I've used it with P3Dv4, P3Dv5, IL2:Great Battles, and a couple of car sims, Assetto Corsa and Project Cars 2. VR actually improves all of those more than it improves MSFS.

    Q: Really? Which is best?

    The best experiences I've had have been in IL2, where I get nice frame rates with relatively little dialing down of settings, the entire game UI is usable through the headset, the cockpits are beautifully modeled, the systems are simplified with nothing to click in the cockpit anyway, and the entire experience is just the visceral joy of flying the old fighters. The only real downside is the difficulty of looking around you because of the FOV limitations and the need for 1:1 head turning. I guess you could argue that's at least partly authentic to the real-life experience, but I could do without the authentic neck strain.

    Q: How about P3D?

    P3Dv4 and v5's VR support is excellent and with their lighter graphics processing load, it is easier to maintain good frame rates, and they never CTD. From the cockpit, many older planes made for P3D and FSX look fantastic in VR. It really rejuvenates the old sim. I'm going through my over 400 installed planes in P3D and experiencing their cockpit modeling in a new light - not always a flattering new light, but quite often. Of course the FSX/P3D era products from the best publishers like Aeroplane Heaven, Milviz, Just Flight, Carenado/Alabeo, Flight Replicas, A2A/Aircraft Factory, Aerosoft, Vertigo, etc. are consistently beautiful; you would think they were designed for VR originally. The ones from the next tier of publishers, like RealAir, Golden Age Sims, Iris, CR1, Virtavia, and Flysimware are a bit more hit/miss but a lot of it is excellent. And then there are our favorite freeware authors, like Rob Richardson, the late Tim Piglet Conrad, Dave Molyneaux, Dave Garwood, Milton Shupe, Stuart Green, Manfred Jahn and many others, whose work holds up beautifully in 3D. It's a pleasure to fly these old planes again and the 3D cockpit takes the focus off of that bad P3D scenery. P3D also has the pop-up instruments and controls which can be a big help, especially the radios and GPS units. For that reason, plus the greater stability and computing power headroom, I might be inclined to use P3D rather than MSFS for any VR Vatsim flying.

    Q: What about the car sims?


    In some ways VR does the most for car sims, because the other cars and track elements are close enough to you that there's still a 3D stereo effect associated with them, and it's helpful in judging your turns and positioning. Negotiating Bannochbrae in an old Ferrari in the rain has been among the most fun I've had with the Reverb thus far.

    Q: What about smut? Is it good for smut?

    I'm afraid I have no idea what you are talking about.

    Q: So are you glad you did it?

    I don't regret the $300 I spent on my unit. At the full price of $600, I might regret it. I won't use it for all of my flying. Right now I'm binging on it, but it will probably settle back to about half my flying in MSFS. Probably I will use it 100% of the time in P3D, IL2, and the driving sims though.

    August

  2. #2
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    A very nice write up and critique. Your conclusions are sound, and in my opinion (I have been using the G2 for two years) mostly accurate.

    Flight simming is about perception. How accurate to real life do you perceive VR to be. As a former real world pilot, the 3D perception is important to me. I recently, because of software issues, had to go back to IRTrack for a while. I could now see the room in my peripheral. It really took away from the perception of being in a real cockpit. Besides, my cute little skinny, half sitting, half reclining, motionless co-pilot just wasn’t the same. 😊

    For me, the advantages of VR far outweighs the disadvantages. I recognize that my two-year-old computer is still fairly powerful. Thus, I do not suffer many of the visual and game play degradation you describe. I think that as time goes forward and people upgrade their hardware systems VR will become more and more accepted by hard core simmers.

    FYI for those who need reading glasses, a company named VR Wave makes snap in prescription lenses to match your glasses.
    John

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  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by K5083 View Post
    I wish I could pipe just the voice from ATC into the headset, but so far I can't, because Windows and MSFS don't recognize the headset as a speaker.
    Are your speakers USB or 3.5mm jack?
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  4. #4
    the first thing I removed was the headphones, I prefer my headphones or speakers
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  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Clayton View Post
    Are your speakers USB or 3.5mm jack?
    3.5mm audio.

    August

  6. #6
    USB audio devices typically show up as a separate audio device. Back in the days when I flew online regularly with TeamSpeak, I had that running through my USB headset/mic and the FS9 audio running through the speakers. I have yet to try the headset simulation option in the sim though.
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  7. #7
    Thank you very much for your elaborate report on VR, August. Very much appreciated !

    Personally i'm sitting on the fench for many years already to step into the 3D virtual world of flying but sofar never felt like jumping off of the fench and take the big step. I think this may have very much to do with constantly giving my eyes only the 2D experience of reading about it and never the actual real 3D deal of what VR is all about.

    Even in a great and very much to the point elaborate report like yours i simply cannot find the decisive factor. I guess 'see for yourself' is the only way.

    So maybe you can help me with that, August.

    The only experience i have ever had with artificial 3D depth perception is a 3D TV demo that was broadcasted about half a century ago (and, even until this day, never ever has something solid come out of that.... remarkable, isn't it... or maybe it has and it's called VR now ?...) and i'll never forget because of the amazing impact it had on me and i suppose on everone else that watched it thru these '3D glasses'.

    Then there came something similar on the market during the 60's of the past century (while already invented in the 1930's ) : the well known and very successful '3D Viewmaster' which used small stereo slides to trick our eyes seeing depth in them ( loved that thing ! ):



    I bet you are familiar with this wonderful gadget, August ?

    If affirmative, can i ask you if this is about what i can expect when i first experience MSFS thru a VR set ?

    Would you say VR works the same as viewing a 3D movie or demo on TV thru such a 2 colored 3D glasses method ? I mean where you'd better duck your head to avoid an arrow that's coming straight at you ?...

    Btw, my rig is i9 9900K, RTX 2080Ti, Asus RogStrix Z390-F, DDR4 64GB, W10, Dell 32" Curved, 2560X1440, MSFS Silky Smooth. Would you say that would deffinately be sufficient to try VR without being dissapointed right away ?

    Thanks very much again, August !

  8. #8
    3D movies or video games that were sold in the 90's and 2000's were needing special glasses to be viewed.
    However, with these technologies, you still need to keep your eyes on the TV. The picture is still sitting in front of you a few feet away and won't move away from there. It's not like you can turn your head around and see what's around you, because if you turn your head, then you won't see your TV anymore It's the same limitation as TrackIR, in fact... excepted the movie picture doesn't move according to your head movements...

    VR games are totally different, because the screen is sitting on your nose, and stays there, no matter how you turn your head.
    That screen can be single or twin, but in any case, each eye gets its own picture to look at. You're not looking at a picture a few feet away.
    Until that point, it's the same as that picture toy you are showing above, right ?
    However the headset reproduces ALL of your head movements (rotations and translations) to the same extend in the video game (and also it shows the picture in a "larger" way than that toy).
    As a consequence, you don't feel like the picture is in front of you anymore; you are inside the picture. You turn your head to the right, and you see what's on the right of you.

    If you translate that to a flight sim, it means you're not seeing a virtual cockpit on the screen in front of you anymore. You feel like you are actually sitting inside that cockpit (excepted you cannot touch it, which is kind of weird the first time ) . You have to rotate your head around to look around. If you want to imitate the open-cockpit pilots that were putting their heads aside to view forward, you just do that (careful, the border of the cockpit is not really there to put your elbow, so you might fall from your chair ).

    The bad sides of VR have already been summarized I think, and they are not "bad" enough for most of us to come back to 2D. That tells a lot, I think.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Clayton View Post
    USB audio devices typically show up as a separate audio device. Back in the days when I flew online regularly with TeamSpeak, I had that running through my USB headset/mic and the FS9 audio running through the speakers. I have yet to try the headset simulation option in the sim though.
    Thanks, but that is not the issue. Both USB and 3.5mm headphones show up as audio devices on my system, as do my speakers. It's the Reverb headset that does not. When not using VR I always use the MSFS headset simulation to pipe just the comms through my headphones, whether USB or 3.5mm, while the other sound goes through the speakers. But the Reverb is not recognized as an audio out and is not selectable as such in either Windows or MSFS. I can switch the sound to the Reverb using the Windows Mixed Reality config panel, but it's all or nothing.

    August

  10. #10
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    Thank you. August, for this elaborate analysis. I have flown exclusively with VR in Il-2 and DCS (I have Microsoft FS but somehow I don't fly in it much) and I can only add three things:
    1: It takes time to get used to VR. In time, you might adjust your way of flying to negate the downsides.
    2: If you can, give VR a try by visiting someone who has it. Then go home and think over carefully what you have seen. And then decide whether to buy it or not.
    3: VR will get better in time. But uf you wait until it's perfect, you can wait forever, if only because your norms will evolve as VR gets better. If you take the plunge now, you will have spent money that you cannot spend on the next generation of VR. But you also will have the enjoyment that the present generation of VR can give you.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Javis View Post
    Then there came something similar on the market during the 60's of the past century (while already invented in the 1930's ) : the well known and very successful '3D Viewmaster' which used small stereo slides to trick our eyes seeing depth in them ( loved that thing ! ):



    I bet you are familiar with this wonderful gadget, August ?
    Oh yeah, I had one of those.

    I'll tell you when I first became fascinated with 3D, though, was in high school geography class. We had a book of stereo aerial survey images and a little 3D viewer, really just two lenses on a wire stand, that you would position over the photos. Such a device is shown on this thread, https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/thread...ography.54941/. This was how aerial surveying and also WWII aerial photo-reconnaissance was done, with the stereo image obtained by the plane taking two photos a few seconds apart as it overflew the target. This was also when I learned to train my eyes to separate so that I could view 3D stereo pairs without a viewer. Sometimes when I'm on a commercial flight over some nice scenery now, I will take pairs of photos out the window with my phone, producing a 3D image of the landscape below. There was a fashion in 3D still photography back in the 1960s, with some fairly high-end cameras that recorded two images on a 35mm frame. I'm a collector of old cameras but don't have one of those yet.

    If affirmative, can i ask you if this is about what i can expect when i first experience MSFS thru a VR set ?

    Would you say VR works the same as viewing a 3D movie or demo on TV thru such a 2 colored 3D glasses method ? I mean where you'd better duck your head to avoid an arrow that's coming straight at you ?...
    VR is better. When you use something like the red/blue method, you have to sacrifice some color or brightness information to add the 3D information to a single image, and I have always found the results underwhelming. VR generates a separate image for each eye and although the headset image quality isn't close to that of a good monitor, it's not terrible. You get used to it, and it's really quite sharp in the center. You will definitely appreciate your beautiful monitor when you go back to 2D, though. The closest thing you might have experienced is one of those cheap viewers that you can insert your smart phone into to watch VR videos from YouTube and such, but the Reverb is much better quality obviously. The 3D effect is very convincing. You will really feel like that gunsight in the P-51 is going to bop you in the face if you aren't careful, peeking around the Merlin to see where you're taxiing is sublime, and many times I have found myself reaching for the controls where they are on the screen rather than where they really are on my desk.

    As far as likely first impressions, if you want to be really impressed by VR, get a friend to let you try his unit that's all set up and dialed in. (Edit: I see stickshaker gave exactly this advice while I was typing this.) There's an immediate Wow factor and you'll likely be hooked right away. When setting up your own unit, the Wow is rather diluted by the setup and tuning process. It takes a few hours of work before you can just pop it on and immediately enjoy a good experience, and really, people keep tweaking the thing for weeks or longer. I am still cautiously dialing my MSFS settings back up to see what I can get away with without hurting my fps. If you want an awesome immediate first experience and you play IL2:Great Battles, I might recommend setting it up in IL2 first, VR is spectacular in that game with little or no tuning. I'm looking forward to the release of VR for Cliffs of Dover, which is now in beta.

    I will let others speak to the adequacy of your rig. Mine uses all AMD chips and I don't really speak Intel/Nvidia. Yours sounds better than mine, though. I don't think you'll have trouble maintaining decent frame rates without dialing your settings down too much. You'll probably even be able to turn on post-processing in OpenXR Tools and improve MSFS's contrast and color balance, which is a nice benefit of the headset if you have the computing power. But not much of the degraded video experience of VR is due to dialing down settings, most of it is really due to the optical and resolution/color/contrast limitations of a consumer VR headset, which won't change no matter how good your rig is.

    August

  12. #12
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    I also have the G2. For me there is just no going back to 2D, unless it’s for a sim event of some kind, like a race. I tried Track IR some years ago. I didn’t like it at all. To me it felt like I had to “re-train” myself on how to look around. And any head movement was interpreted as more “looking around”, produced movement of the world on the monitor. I Just couldn’t get used to it. As for the field of view of the G2, I didn’t even notice it at first. I would describe it as wearing a hoodie than peering through a peep hole. I setup my sim so that there is nothing I need to do that requires the keyboard. Rudder and elevator trim is assigned to the hat switch, since I don’t need it to look around anymore. Gear, tail wheel lock, altimeter and compass reset, “seat” (eyepoint) adjustment, all that stuff is assigned to buttons on my stick and throttle unit. One button even toggles the in-cockpit 2d map window, in case I get lost in a non-glass cockpit ship. Working other switches in the cockpit is a bit of a pain, but not a show stopper. For those who like doing long 14 hour flights from LAX to Brisbane, VR might be more trouble that it’s worth, but I only do short flights, so that’s no factor.
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  13. #13
    I love TrackIR, but I agree that it does take some getting used to after using VR for a while. I have actually adjusted my TrackIR profile to make it more linear and to keep the magnification of my actual head turning to a minimum, just to reduce the disparity between the two. But TrackIR has to turn your view about 4 degrees for every 1 degree of head movement, there's no getting around that if you're going to be able to look behind you, and it is a jolt after the VR 1:1 experience.

    You definitely can never have too many buttons, switches and doodads on your controllers if you're going to do VR. I am glad that I got the button-and-switch-encrusted X56 HOTAS last year, and I keep that and my CH yoke permanently mounted so that I can use all the same doodads no matter what I'm flying, switching just the ailerons and elevators from one to the other. It's just a matter of remembering which doodad does what.

    August

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by K5083 View Post
    It's the Reverb headset that does not.
    Gotcha. Sounds like a tech issue with the people that make the headset. Just spittin' in the wind here, but is there possible an updated driver of any kind?
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  15. #15
    I think I have the newest drivers. In a way, I'm not surprised, because a VR headset is so much more than a mic/speaker, so if the PC has to assign it to a device category, it is unlikely to be this. However, since typing this email I have discovered that the vpilot app for connecting to mulitplayer networks does seem to recognize the headset as a mic/speaker channel in its audio settings. So it may be possible to use the headset for online comms when in VR. I will be testing this and annoying some people on Vatsim by asking for radio checks of how well they can hear me. Whether I will be flying VR on Vatsim much is still an open question. There is a brand new app from flightsimulator.me which creates a universal ipad/tablet for all of your cockpits containing a suite of apps including a Little Navmap window, PDF viewer, and Vatsim traffic and one-click ATC frequency selector that just might provide the needed tools for an online VR experience in a non-immersion-breaking way, if it does not hit frame rates too hard.

    August

  16. #16
    Thanks very much for all your additional comments, gentlemen. Very helpfull, highly appreciated !

    I think good chance you might have me converted finally. Must say just about all i've read about VR in MSFS is unmistakingly positive despite the shortcomings. In any case i jumped off the fence and went looking where to buy a Reverb G2 here in Holland. Turns out it's about 500 Euro. I stumbled over the 5 best VR headsets especially for Flight Simulator by some game guru and the Reverb G2 is his first choice. So i guess that's what i'd be going for, right ?

    Couple weeks ago i got my Honeycomb Bravo TQ (yesterday arrived the additional DC-3 and DC-6 lever sets, absolutely lovely ! ;-), tried handling the levers with my eyes closed (well, i gotta practise, ain't i...;-) i guess that won't be much of a problem. Not sure about the switches and particularly the AP switches... i suppose i shall have to learn to count them...

    My flightstick is a very old AV8R. If i go VR i might want to change it for something new. Any suggestions ? (with VR in mind of course) Needs to have rudder twist because no room for rudder pedals.

    I understand a mouse cursor is available but not really preferable to work with ?...

    I think my fav activity in MSFS is flying low and slow to and over big cities. Let's say at the moment (2D) i get about 24 fps over New York in full glory. Because i understand that with VR the picture has to be rendered *Twice* instead of *Only Once* on a normal 2D monitor do i also understand that doing that with my VR helmet on i only get 12 fps ???... ( I know from experience that 12 fps is painfully way too low to get any satisfying result of make believe i am flying )

    What are your experiences flying low and slow in VR over New York, London, Paris, Rome, Ankara et all ??.....

    Thank you so much again gents !

    Oh! One more if i may : would you say that for somebody who suffers from vertigo (fear of heights) MSFS in VR is not adviceable, even strictly off limits ??...

    Thanks! ;-)

  17. #17
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    Jan, I can't answer any of your questions but for what it's worth: I have a Valve VR and I am very satisfied with it. I had it installed by a PC expert to get the best results.

  18. #18
    Javis, your PC specs are pretty much the same as mine and I get silky smooth flying with a Quest 2 with most settings at mid or high and a couple on ultra.
    I don't know what my FPS is as I haven't checked but its silky smooth with no stutters even low and slow over London in a helicopter which is a known FPS killer so I'm happy.
    I'm not sure what the difference will be with a G2 though but you still should be able to tune it for good FPS I should think.
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  19. #19
    I understand the remarks or advice to use nicely configurable joysticks with lots of buttons and axis and such...
    That being said, I have flown in VR for 4 years with only my trusty MS Sidewinder FFB2 and that's all. Cockpit interactions were done with the mouse, just like I did on my 2D screen.
    Yes it's not the best. But it works and it works well enough, at first at least.
    It is indeed difficult to reach some of the controls, yes, but that depends how complex your plane is, really.

    Three months ago, I switched to a thrustmaster TCA Airbus set, which includes the joystick (with twist axis for the rudder), the throttles 1&2, the flaps, the airbrake, gear and a few other functions. It's nice and not too costly. I wish I had some rudder pedals for my helicopters, but for now it's good enough.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Javis View Post
    I think my fav activity in MSFS is flying low and slow to and over big cities. Let's say at the moment (2D) i get about 24 fps over New York in full glory. Because i understand that with VR the picture has to be rendered *Twice* instead of *Only Once* on a normal 2D monitor do i also understand that doing that with my VR helmet on i only get 12 fps ???... ( I know from experience that 12 fps is painfully way too low to get any satisfying result of make believe i am flying )

    What are your experiences flying low and slow in VR over New York, London, Paris, Rome, Ankara et all ??.....
    First of all I would say that 24 fps is very close to the minimum acceptable. With your rig, you must have all the settings on max to be getting a frame rate that slow. On my unit, my frame rates range from 40 to 62 for most flying on a flat screen with a mix of high/ultra settings that satisfies me. They might drop to 30 or the high 20s in a combination of frame-sucking conditions like complex plane, complex scenery, complex weather. On VR, I haven't done an exact comparison at the same settings because I took the advice of the YouTubers and have most of my settings dialed to medium or high with some effects turned off entirely, and I find my frame rates generally are in the 30-35 range with occasional excursions down to 25 or up to 40. I find that frame rates are less variable in VR than in 2D for some reason, and there wasn't much difference whether I was beating up the Vegas strip looking at all the photogrammetry buildings or cruising over the empty desert.

    As I said in post #1, I don't think low and slow scenery admiring is the best application for VR because a headset just doesn't render the crisp sharp saturated contrasty image that a good screen does, but if you think you might enjoy it, I wouldn't worry about the performance.

    Oh! One more if i may : would you say that for somebody who suffers from vertigo (fear of heights) MSFS in VR is not adviceable, even strictly off limits ??...
    I wouldn't say fear of heights exactly, but how do you feel about amusement park rides and roller coasters? For me, that is the closest real-life feeling to what I've experienced with spirited flying in VR in the sim. Also do you easily get seasick/carsick/airsick? That results from a similar visual versus inner ear disagreement to what you get in VR. If you are willing to stick with VR, it might actually help you get over these things.

    August

  21. #21
    I'm a long time member here and am now a G2 user.

    I did recently upgrade my video card to a rtx 4080 (prior had a 1080 Ti). I also use a 12700K cpu. So now I've got a high end PC.

    Outside of big cities I can run 45-60 fps in VR with medium-high settings (I started using DLSS and it's okay - I just use the zoom in feature for glass cockpits). I can go higher but then it's not as smooth. I run 150 LOD in this area.
    In large cities with payware I get about 25-35 depending on if I drop some settings to medium. I run 100 LOD in this area.

    There is a discolored spot on my right lens so I'm a little bummed about that. I'm not certain if it came that way but I've noticed it for the last few weeks. It's small but noticeable against a brighter sky or area of the image.

    This afternoon I had an extremely rare time to fly without kids needing me hehe - I shot a bunch of approaches in the Minneapolis area with the FSW C414. I also use dual TDS GTN 750Xi's because the touch screens are so much more effective when in VR. If flying in USA they also provide me with charts and metar (metar is worldwide as well) - so that pretty much takes care of all my flying needs. I have yet to fly VR online but am very excited. Anyway the flight today near MSP (I actually did IAPs at 21D, STP, SGS and FCM) was my best yet. I had about 35-40 fps at all times and it was in and out of snow and icing. I frequently inflated the boots because of ice buildup. To lookout at my left wing as see the "depth" in VR is incredible.

    Downsides of VR are definitely still the clarity. In previous years I had tried an Occulus Rift at a friends' house using P3D and DCS. (DCS is the superior experience btw). The OR had the classic "screen door effect" and I didn't care for it. P3D wasn't very nice. DCS was a lot better but still not great. Today with my G2 and the 4080 I have the DCS F16 and AH64D Longbow. Both are phenomenal in VR! But about MSFS - I'd definitely consider a headset upgrade possibly to the Pimax Crystal at some point. Even at 100% render, the G2 is still a little low res... feels like 1080i at best. Unless you're looking right at a gauge, most gauges in the peripheral are somewhat fuzzy. Still the depth perception received from VR outweighs this issue IMO.

    Here's a pic I took with my phone of the lens...it was from the first day of VR use and I was still learning. It's not quite this bad with the headset on but there is most definitely a lack of focus outside of a small focal point radius. The little ramper and the cone is sort of the focal point for context.

    Oh, I also got my G2 for half off on Black Friday sale about 350 USD or so with tax.

    Blah a lot of rambling! But with the old 1080 Ti it was acceptable with low settings. With the new 4080 I get about double the fps with double the settings - well worth it!

    VR_FT_KBOS_sm by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr
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  22. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Stickshaker View Post
    Jan, I can't answer any of your questions but for what it's worth: I have a Valve VR and I am very satisfied with it. I had it installed by a PC expert to get the best results.
    Thank you, Hans. Do you use it all the time flying MSFS or do you still fly using your 2D monitor as well ?

  23. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Dangerous Beans View Post
    Javis, your PC specs are pretty much the same as mine and I get silky smooth flying with a Quest 2 with most settings at mid or high and a couple on ultra.
    I don't know what my FPS is as I haven't checked but its silky smooth with no stutters even low and slow over London in a helicopter which is a known FPS killer so I'm happy.
    I'm not sure what the difference will be with a G2 though but you still should be able to tune it for good FPS I should think.
    Thanks DB. That certainly sounds reassuring. The Quest 2 comes second behind the Reverb G2 on this 5 best VR headsets for MSFS list. I know now that the G2 comes without controllers. The Q2 comes *with* controllers. Do you actually use them while VR flying MSFS ?

    Thanks !

  24. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by Daube View Post
    I understand the remarks or advice to use nicely configurable joysticks with lots of buttons and axis and such...
    That being said, I have flown in VR for 4 years with only my trusty MS Sidewinder FFB2 and that's all. Cockpit interactions were done with the mouse, just like I did on my 2D screen.
    Thank you, Daube. 4 years ! Wow!! You must feel like one of the 'founding fathers' of VR flying !

    So you must've flown FSX/P3D in VR too, right ? In humble 2D the difference between FSX/P3D and MSFS is totally overwhelming (IMHO..), in VR it must be even more astounding and 'out of this world', right ??.... Flying it with 'just' your MS Sidewinder and using a mouse to interact with the cockpit does sound wonderful !

    I notice next to the relatively 'affordable' VR headsets like the G2 and Q2 there are some very expensive ones as well. Even up to 2000 euro's or more. May i ask which kind of VR headset you are flying with now ?...

    Yes it's not the best. But it works and it works well enough, at first at least.
    It is indeed difficult to reach some of the controls, yes, but that depends how complex your plane is, really.
    I get that, sure. Well, my fav aircraft is and will always be the DC-3. Now i have my Honeycomb Bravo TQ with the DC-3 lever set and all i believe i'm all set to put that VR headset on. Certainly after your comment of 4 years with just your trusty Sidewinder.

    Three months ago, I switched to a thrustmaster TCA Airbus set, which includes the joystick (with twist axis for the rudder), the throttles 1&2, the flaps, the airbrake, gear and a few other functions. It's nice and not too costly. I wish I had some rudder pedals for my helicopters, but for now it's good enough.
    Yes, i have just the stick of this set but like with all other flightsticks i tried i just keep coming back to my old AV8R. Bought the Raptor Mach2 Hotas a while ago, the throttle is quite nice but i can't get used to the way the buttons on the stick are arranged.

    Merci beaucoup, Daube, your comments makes me take the VR plunge with more confidence !

  25. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Javis View Post
    I know now that the G2 comes without controllers. The Q2 comes *with* controllers. Do you actually use them while VR flying MSFS ?
    The G2 does come with controllers. Mine are still in the box, I never set them up. Can't see any use for them in the sim.

    August

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