"DCS supports VR beautifully"... I wish!

[Ovo]

But the reality is that it's terrible. :/

The hands, mainly.

 

And it's a real shame, because it's not so far from being fine. It would be incredible for immersion to have properly implemented hand interaction like in VTOL VR.

 

So let's see what's wrong.

 

Bugs:

 

• Sometimes, one hand will lock in "activate everything you touch" mode, causing unexpected rampage among switches and levers.
  
• Sometimes after activating a control, its tooltip will disappear and it becomes unusable until I hover over another control.
  

Terrible implementation:

 

• When I grab the throttle or stick, it jumps to my hand position, causing unexpected -often dramatic- input to the plane if the hand was a few centimeters away from the control when pressing the grip. The hand should jump to the control, not the other way around.
  
• Levers / knobs require horizontal movement instead of vertical / rotation movement to manipulate them. But worse, after "grabbing" the knob/lever I have to move my hand very, very far left or right before the control actually starts to move.
  
• The left/right mouse click implementation is really awkward. What about this instead: select the control by holding the trigger, then for switches, move your hand up 2cm = right click, down 2cm = left click ; for knobs that require mouse clicks, rotate your hand a few degrees clockwise = right click, anticlockwise = left click ; etc.? Add in some haptic feedback and you'll be close to VTOL VR quality level, for little development cost I believe.
  

Other issues:

 

• With Index Controllers, the hands are completely misaligned, floating 10cm away from my real hands. They are actually aligned with the buttons plate of the controller. It feels super awkward.
  
• There is something off with your VR visual implementation. When I open the SteamVR Dashboard, looking at it and then at DCS in the backround it feels really off, it messes with my eyes. DCS must have a different FOV or something than regular SteamVR.
  
• When loading a map, the loading screen freezes and if I move my head even just a bit, I get this horrible double vision because the image for each eye won't change according to my head position.
  

So please, give some love to the VR implementation, it's direly needed!

 

Cheers

Edited August 31, 2020 by Ovo

[Motomouse]

You dont use vr controllers when you use DCS in VR. Just Stick and mouse.

[Ovo]

You dont use vr controllers when you use DCS in VR. Just Stick and mouse.

You don't get to dictate how other people must play.

[Steel Jaw]

You don't get to dictate how other people must play.

 

 

Chill...and obey.:P

 

 

But he's right about it not being best to use the hand controllers IMHO.:pilotfly:

[dburne]

Yes unlike VTOL VR, DCS is not built for that currently.

[Ovo]

> But he's right about it not being best to use the hand controllers IMHO.

 

Indeed, that's exactly what I'm pointing out. The current implementation of the hands is too bad to be usable.

 

> Yes unlike VTOL VR, DCS is not built for that currently.

 

Indeed, but they can still do all the fixes and improvements I've pointed out, which would make the hands good enough for actual use.

 

 

Don't be fatalistic guys. Progress comes with vision and effort.

Edited August 30, 2020 by Ovo

[Motomouse]

I used a mouse for decades. You can take my mouse from my cold dead hands.

 

Hand controllers are an abomination for flight simulators.

 

Just tracking the bare hands for buttons switching is the way to go. With the inbuild tracking cameras no problem. I would even wear a thin colored glove in the first year if necessary ;-) But I would never play with an airstick. I want to feel my Gunfighter :-)

[Ovo]

Listen, you have your preference, I have mine. Your preference is already catered for, mine is not. So please stop invading my thread trying to tell me how your preference is superior. Respect that other people have different tastes.

[The_Nephilim]

Well what we are so patiently trying to tell you in a nice manor is yes DCS may be able to use VR controllers but the amount of people using DCS this way of being used by other simmers is probally so low it may never get fixed..

 

So instead of bucking the system try and understand DCS is Best used with a HOTAS setup and rudders not VR Controllers. if you like using the controllers perhaps you should stick with VTOL VR.

 

or try and report bugs via the bug fixer or similar. most DCS Staff or the coders don't read these forums so best to use the proper channels to get your item fixed.. perhaps even make a bug report with all the required info for a good bug report.

 

So dont just say the controllors are broke please fix hehe!! what you reported in the OP was good you just need to direct it too the bug reporting part of the forum.. :)

Edited August 30, 2020 by The_Nephilim

[Ovo]

> yes DCS may be able to use VR controllers but the amount of people using DCS this way of being used by other simmers is probally so low it may never get fixed..

 

Chicken and egg problem. If DCS has terrible VR controller support, those who only want to play with VR controllers don't play to DCS...

Note that VTOL VR currently is VR only without HOTAS support, and it's a small scale game with 90's graphics, yet it's very successful. According to SteamDB, it has between 50k to 100k owners, which is already significant. If it was as big, realistic and beautiful as DCS it would likely have 10x this number of players.

 

 

> if you like using the controllers perhaps you should stick with VTOL VR.

 

No thanks, I don't want to play to VTOL VR, it's too simplisitic and ugly for me. I play to DCS, and I would like to play to DCS with hand controllers. Again, please let people request the options that they prefer.

If you were to ask the dev of VTOL VR to support HOTAS, I'd be perfectly fine with that, I wouldn't come to tell you that VTOL VR is meant to be used with hands, I would support your request because I like that everyone can play the way they prefer.

 

 

> what you reported in the OP was good you just need to direct it too the bug reporting part of the forum..

 

Thanks. I believe I posted in the right place: the VR Issues link in the Bugs and Problems for v2.5 section leads to this forum.

Edited August 30, 2020 by Ovo

[dburne]

Listen, you have your preference, I have mine. Your preference is already catered for, mine is not. So please stop invading my thread trying to tell me how your preference is superior. Respect that other people have different tastes.

 

He has opinion, which everyone is entitled to have same as you.

There is no thread invasion, it is a public forum.

[javelina1]

I prefer to use the solution from Miles.... They work great! :-)

https://pointctrl.com/

[speed-of-heat]

The simple reality is that most vr controllers do not have enough buttons to substitute for a HOTAS.

 

You want to play the game in a way that it is:

 

Not designed for

 

Has a relatively low level of interest from the community that currently exploit it.

 

,it's not a problem with the current system, it was never an intended design goal... And so is not a problem.

 

It is a perfectly valid item for a wishlist request..,

[Ovo]

The simple reality is that most vr controllers do not have enough buttons to substitute for a HOTAS.

Designing around buttons limitations has been done successfully for decades: modifier keys, command wheels, there are many simple and efficient ways to augment the number of controls accessible with a small set of physical buttons.

 

You want to play the game in a way that it is:

Not designed for

It doesn't matter that it wasn't initially made for VR, they have decided to do add VR hands along the way and they promote very proeminently that DCS "beautifully supports VR". They have to choose: either they stop saying that VR is beautifully supported, either they make it beautifully supported, or they remove vr hands altogether.

 

Has a relatively low level of interest from the community that currently exploit it.

As I've said, it's a chicken and egg problem. ED have demonstrated they want to reach the "VR hands lovers" market in the first place, so I'm letting them know why it's failing and how to do better.

 

It is a perfectly valid item for a wishlist request..,

Most items I've reported are bugs or problems with the existing implementation.

[BIGNEWY]

But the reality is that it's terrible. :/

The hands, mainly.

 

And it's a real shame, because it's not so far from being fine. It would be incredible for immersion to have properly implemented hand interaction like in VTOL VR.

 

So let's see what's wrong.

 

Bugs:

 

• Sometimes, one hand will lock in "activate everything you touch" mode, causing unexpected rampage among switches and levers.
  
• Sometimes after activating a control, its tooltip will disappear and it becomes unusable until I hover over another control.
  

Terrible implementation:

 

• When I grab the throttle or stick, it jumps to my hand position, causing unexpected -often dramatic- input to the plane if the hand was a few centimeters away from the control when pressing the grip. The hand should jump to the control, not the other way around.
  
• Levers / knobs require horizontal movement instead of vertical / rotation movement to manipulate them. But worse, after "grabbing" the knob/lever I have to move my hand very, very far left or right before the control actually starts to move.
  
• The left/right mouse click implementation is really awkward. What about this instead: select the control by holding the trigger, then for switches, move your hand up 2cm = right click, down 2cm = left click ; for knobs that require mouse clicks, rotate your hand a few degrees clockwise = right click, anticlockwise = left click ; etc.? Add in some haptic feedback and you'll be close to VTOL VR quality level, for little development cost I believe.
  

Other issues:

 

• With Index Controllers, the hands are completely misaligned, floating 10cm away from my real hands. They are actually aligned with the buttons plate of the controller. It feels super awkward.
  
• There is something off with your VR visual implementation. When I open the SteamVR Dashboard, looking at it and then at DCS in the backround it feels really off, it messes with my eyes. DCS must have a different FOV or something than regular SteamVR.
  
• When loading a map, the loading screen freezes and if I move my head even just a bit, I get this horrible double vision because the image for each eye won't change according to my head position.
  

So please, give some love to the VR implementation, it's direly needed.

 

 

Though my hope is really low. Flying through the 40+ pages of this bug report subforum, I barely saw any reply from a staff member. Do you ED folks even read these threads? We spend time and energy to report issues, for free, and get completely ignored. That's not very nice. A simple "thanks for your report, we took note!" would go a long way.

 

ED have over 150 employees, you'd just need one or two people full time on answering customers to go from silent bastards in their castle to awesome communicative devs. [PS: I hope "bastards" doesn't sound harsh here, I'm not English so I don't get the feel for the strength of the word]

Looking forward to this day.

 

Cheers

 

Appreciate the feedback,

 

VR hand controller implementation is in early stages and a lot of work has gone into it.

 

As mentioned by some here, most people use VR with a HOTAS and Mouse, that has not stopped us implementing VR controller use, but it does take a lot of time. There are also different hand controllers out there, and one method fits all does not work for everything.

 

Your feedback is welcome, but saying we don't look in this forum area is wrong, I spend a lot of time working on the forum reporting issues and I make sure I stop here in the VR forum and report issues. Please don't start insulting with your comments, your thread wont last long that way.

 

thanks

[Ovo]

Appreciate the feedback,

 

VR hand controller implementation is in early stages and a lot of work has gone into it.

 

As mentioned by some here, most people use VR with a HOTAS and Mouse, that has not stopped us implementing VR controller use, but it does take a lot of time. There are also different hand controllers out there, and one method fits all does not work for everything.

 

Your feedback is welcome, but saying we don't look in this forum area is wrong, I spend a lot of time working on the forum reporting issues and I make sure I stop here in the VR forum and report issues. Please don't start insulting with your comments, your thread wont last long that way.

 

thanks

Thank you for replying, I'm very glad I was wrong about assuming you didn't read the forums. And I'm glad to know improvements to VR are expected down the line.

 

Please don't start insulting with your comments, your thread wont last long that way.

Do you mean the "silent bastards in their castle"? I'm sorry about that.

I don't think I have made any insult or any kind of derogatory comment in any of my replies to commenters though.

[BIGNEWY]

Thank you for replying, I'm very glad I was wrong about assuming you didn't read the forums. And I'm glad to know improvements to VR are expected down the line.

 

Do you mean the "silent bastards in their castle"? I'm sorry about that.

I don't think I have made any insult or any kind of derogatory comment in any of my replies to commenters though.

 

No problem, yes I thought it maybe a language barrier issue so don't worry. But please keep the feedback polite. We do care, but we do have a whole forum to check, hundreds of threads a week, sometimes it is not always possible to reply to all.

 

thank you

[Ovo]

No problem, yes I thought it maybe a language barrier issue so don't worry. But please keep the feedback polite. We do care, but we do have a whole forum to check, hundreds of threads a week, sometimes it is not always possible to reply to all.

 

thank you

Roger :thumbup:

[Ovo]

So, I've just tried X-Plane 11, which had VR added one year after release, and the hand controlling is very well implemented. Actually works beautifully! If DCS worked that well, oh man, my immersion level would rise over 50k ft!

[sirrah]

So, I've just tried X-Plane 11, which had VR added one year after release, and the hand controlling is very well implemented. Actually works beautifully! If DCS worked that well, oh man, my immersion level would rise over 50k ft!

 

I don't own that other sim, but do you mean you can "grab" the virtual stick and throttle with your HMD hand controllers?

 

I'm probably short sighted, but I just can't imagine such a feature would add immersion over actually holding a real stick and throttle in your hands. Sure, it'd be cheaper if we didn't have to buy expensive HOTAS sets, but (and I can only speak for myself here) I'm never going to use VR hand controllers to operate a virtual stick with virtual buttons that I can't feel and don't get feedback from. I gladly spend money to actually hold a stick in my hand that matches the stick in my virtual cockpit. If anything should happen, I'd say there's a gap in the market for better/smaller hand controllers. So glad Miles jumped in to fill that gap for us and provided us with PointCTRL (see link in my signature)

 

Personally I wished ED wouldn't put any of their valuable effort and resources at all into developing VR hand controller support. There's already a flight-game that provides this (VTOL VR) which is probably fun to play. I just hope DCS stays away from that.

 

 

 

With all respect for the OP wish, but this is my $0.02

[Ovo]

I don't own that other sim, but do you mean you can "grab" the virtual stick and throttle with your HMD hand controllers?

No I mainly mean manipulating all the panel controls. Actually their stick/throttle implementation is a bit weak as it doesn't have haptic feedback.

 

I'm probably short sighted, but I just can't imagine such a feature would add immersion over actually holding a real stick and throttle in your hands. Sure, it'd be cheaper if we didn't have to buy expensive HOTAS sets, but (and I can only speak for myself here) I'm never going to use VR hand controllers to operate a virtual stick with virtual buttons that I can't feel and don't get feedback from.

Holding a physical TAS certainly feels better than a VR controller, but:

- You have to own a HOTAS, or bother placing it on your desk if you can't leave it there 24/7. I personally have a racing wheel & pedals taking most of the room I have, I can't add a full HOTAS to my setup.

- The VR controller is still something with buttons that you hold, it feels ok, is precise, and you actually see your hand grabbing it in the virtual plane, which is good for immersion.

- Not having to switch between VR controller and stick can be more immersive for some people.

- But you can also switch, if that's what you like.

- Or you can have one hand always on your stick, and the other always on the VR controller for all the panel controls and the throttle.

- Or whatever configuration feels the best to you

 

Personally I wished ED wouldn't put any of their valuable effort and resources at all into developing VR hand controller support. There's already a flight-game that provides this (VTOL VR) which is probably fun to play. I just hope DCS stays away from that.

Trying to discourage *options* that you don't care about is a bit egoistical. If you want your own preferences catered for, shouldn't you accept that other people's preferences are also catered for?

Also, VTOL VR is not DCS, it's certainly fun but it's a small-scale arcadish game.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Ovo

[sirrah]

Trying to discourage *options* that you don't care about is a bit egoistical. If you want your own preferences catered for, shouldn't you accept that other people's preferences are also catered for?

 

One could also opine that asking ED to spend valuable resources (which are also needed in other areas) on something he/she wants to see improved, is a bit egoistic :smilewink:

 

 

Let's not go down that road :P

 

 

Again, I respect your wish. Please respect mine as well (even if it might discourage yours :))

[Ovo]

One could also opine that asking ED to spend valuable resources (which are also needed in other areas) on something he/she wants to see improved, is a bit egoistic :smilewink:

I make requests when I think I'm not alone. Obviously I wouldn't want ED to spend time developing something custom for me that only I would use.

 

Let's not go down that road :P

Let's not then, but if we go down your road, I would jump to every request thread that I don't care for and express that I hope ED won't waste ressources on it. What if everyone started to do that? What would you think?

 

Again, I respect your wish. Please respect mine as well (even if it might discourage yours :))

Sorry, I find your wish or rather the fact that you came here to express it disrespectful. No big deal though, I'm just trying to make you feel why that is, but if my arguments don't go through, let's leave it at that.

[sirrah]

Let's not then, but if we go down your road, I would jump to every request thread that I don't care for and express that I hope ED won't waste ressources on it. What if everyone started to do that? What would you think?

Well, actually that's exactly what I respectfully do each time I see a wish that opposites my personal wishes for the future of DCS. If you check the wishlist sub-forum and see what passes there from time to time, you might understand why sometimes I can't resist the urge to express that I oppose to some of those wishes. If only to let ED know, that not everybody sees value in that specific wish.

 

 

Sorry, I find your wish or rather the fact that you came here to express it disrespectful.

Really? Well, again, that has never been my intention. I hope you understand why I shared my opinion here on this public forum as well.

 

 

 

We went down that road, didn't we :doh: :P

I shared my opinion on this matter and I'll let it rest now

[OnlyforDCS]

I at least partly agree with the OP on this issue.

 

Most VR devices come with some sort of virtual pointers, hands etc. These work very poorly or not at all in DCS.

 

I use the RIFT S, and would like to use the virtual "hands" to flick switches in the cockpit in an organic manner. By that I mean, i shouldnt have to aim a "lazer" and "shoot" it out of my virtual fingers to flick a switch because this is NOT what the pilot is doing in the real plane.

 

I should be able to move my VR controller in 3d space and organically push or click switches. This level of functionality is something that would greatly enhance my VR experience AND more importantly make it much easier to KEEP at least one hand on my HOTAS.

 

As for the OP's request that ALL the controls work in this way (as in the throttle and stick) Im not sure that it would be feasible or even desirable in a simulation as detailed as DCS World. I don't disagree with it per se, but I don't think it should be a VR priority, unlike the proper interaction with cockpit switches and buttons which definitely should be a TOP priority for implementation.

Edited September 1, 2020 by OnlyforDCS