Is VR Still King Over Ultrawide Monitor With TrackIR?

The only reason I can think of for now using a monitor is that instead of getting a zoom in VR, monitor users get a telescope.

I'll give you another reason (my own) for not jumping into VR. Mine is a philosophical one: As a husband, father, son, brother, and friend, I'm very cognizant of the fact that sim-ing in general (DCS in particular) is incredibly immersive. Incredibly so. I could burn hours of my time staring at those pixels if I'm not careful and constantly exercising self-control. I don't want to take my head completely out of the real world while I'm "flying." At least with TIR and a large screen, I'm still able to tell what's going on around me (am I being robbed? is my house on fire? Is the baby awake? Does my wife need me? :)) Living in a time/culture where I see couples and families out to dinner or at the stadium, all staring at their phones, not interacting with the world around them, I am very comfortable bucking the VR trend right now. I have no doubt that VR is WAY cooler and more immersive than my 2D pixel experience. And I'm happy to keep it that way. We all need to have our loved ones take a picture of us 'flying' and showing us how stupid and inactive we really look when doing it. While I'm over the Persian Gulf, grunting under G's that aren't being pulled, I'm really just sitting in a chair with a silly visor on, looking at pixels.

Just my 2 cents for the reason that I resist VR. :thumbup:

I hated VR when it first came up... sickness and all that bad stuff. Didn't like resolution at all... and remain on my 4K with TrackIR.

Lately I took the plunge and get the CV1. Elite Dangerous was the game that I used to train my sickness, then went in DCS. I still did not enjoyed it because the ugly graphics.

I have started to get in VARS pilon racing... in VR. And did that last year. This year I have tried racing on my monitor again... and surprise. I was not able anymore to complete a race. Get back in VR and suddenly I was top performing. Now I have the RiftS.

Conclusion: the 1:1 sense of environment is something that cannot be replaced. The image clarity ... there will be needed another 5 years to be on par with 2k monitors.

…of course, another reason to use VR is that it lets you cheese the DCS sensor logic and have a much easier time locking onto targets, especially with EO/IR weaponry. :D

short answer: No.

Too much money, not enough performance, not enough clarity. Hand controls, in every way, suck and break the whole immersion you are going for with VR.

What's the VR experience like if you have reduced vision in one eye?

There are at least 2 guys here with that. They both said it was worth it, you can try to search for the various posts.

I have a TrackIR sitting in a drawer collecting cobwebs now that I have the Rift S (sold the original Rift)

 

But I am desperately hoping for improvements and mass production of hand controllers that will still allow me to use my HOTAS in a more immersive way.

 

-=gos=-

So I'm on the VR side of the argument for sure. Even my ancient CV1 is "good enough" for alot of things if you bother to set it up right and the immersion is incredible. I have tried going back to track IR and find it clunky to use, and lame, but yes the monitor looks nicer but it doesn't beat the 1:1 head tracking of VR. I'm waiting on the Reverb to actually be buyable, and I think with its mid 20's PPD compared to most monitors (30ppd) it will be pretty good.

Personally, I don't find using a mouse to interact with the pit to be immersion breaking, and you can use hand controllers if you really want, I tend to find them worse for immersion but others disagree.

Short term the hand control thing should be "solvable" by using point-control to have finger controllable mouse cursors and later on actual gloves to interact with the pit, but thats been in development for a long while. Eventually I do think we'll also get some sort of haptic gloves to make it even better.

I been in love with the VR experience as Im new to it but I wont lie, dcs on my asus pg34q is reallllllly nice too.

Even with a 980ti and Oculus Rift CV1 the DCS experience in VR was far better than my track IR setup with 3 monitors. Now with the Rift S, I've disconnected the Track IR and two side monitors. It only gets better from here...VR baby. I'll probably ditch my last monitor with the next bump in VR res...I feel for all the builders with their cockpits and projectors...although a 3D motion rig would be a cool add...

Got the Rift S a month ago...and I am now packing up the TrackIR and the DELANCLiP and donating it to a simming buddy who still uses a POV hat for his in-game views.

What TrackIR was for simming 10+ years ago...VR is leaps and bounds better.

There are at least 2 guys here with that. They both said it was worth it, you can try to search for the various posts.

Thanks, will have a look!

Been playing with a Rift-S and enjoying it, although the resolution isn't nearly as good as with a hi-res monitor and Track-IR.

As others have mentioned, doing the 'Linda Blair' with a VR rig isn't as comfortable, easy, or efficient as using a properly programmed TIR. Another disadvantage of the VR deal is lack of easy access to the keyboard, although a lot of that can be mitigated by programming HOTAS buttons and using Voice Attack.

Those issues aside, VR really rocks it. Once we get some true 2nd gen headsets with high res, and maybe some commercial means of clicking switches and throwing knobs in the cockpit in VR (I know there are some user-made ones already out there), VR is going to be the only way to fly.

Again with this thread. There are those who think high resolution monitor is king. There are those who think VR is king.

Who's to say one is better than the other? YOU! When it comes to monitors or VR, it's my way or the highway. The monitor people will never understand the allure of VR, so why belabor the point? It's not something you can explain with words. And every VR user decided to move away from monitors for a reason.

 

As others have mentioned, doing the 'Linda Blair' with a VR rig isn't as comfortable, easy, or efficient as using a properly programmed TIR. Another disadvantage of the VR deal is lack of easy access to the keyboard, although a lot of that can be mitigated by programming HOTAS buttons and using Voice Attack.

But, doing the "Linda Blair" is what you would be doing if you were sitting in the cockpit of a real aircraft in combat, and your brain automatically tells you exactly how you need to maneuver your aircraft to accomplish a specific goal. For me, that fact, combined with the depth perception that VR provides, makes everything more natural (including avoiding missiles that have been shot at you). In relation to the missile that was shot at you, the other advantage to VR is that you naturally know which way to point your jet so you can instantly get on target and kill the thing that shot it at you. You just can't do that with TIR and a flat screen.

That being said, which one is "better" overall just depends on the experience you're looking for. If you're looking for the experience of actually flying a jet in combat, VR is the way to go. If you're more into the technical aspects or flying competitively, then TIR is probably going to be best for you.

I just got the HP Reverb, and the visual advantage of a flat screen has almost been negated by its clarity. But, in my opinion, visual acquisition of targets on a flat screen has always been possible at unrealistic ranges anyway. If you're on a 1080p monitor though, as opposed to 4K, the Reverb surpasses the visual quality by a tiny bit. The only problem I'm having now is just with the Reverb's lenses being a little too close to my eyes, which makes everything a half-step out of focus, and I can see the bottom edges of the lenses. Once I get that dealt with, it'll be fantastic. :D

Gen1 VR sucked except as proof of concept.

Gen2 looks to be the first truly acceptable offering.

Gen3 will be the one that firmly subdues 2d, except for specific genres/uses

Nothing beats my LG 4k OLED + TIR, but I'm still going fly in VR as well.

Now that the HP Reverb VR Headset is out, you can actually read the instruments and small text in the cockpit, so I'd be leaning towards that if you can afford a top tier graphics card. The immersion in VR is just on another level compared to even the largest of TV's.

The sense of depth and scale, is not achievable on a flat screen. The aircraft are huge (realistically) and all of the little buttons stick out, it feels like you can touch them. And also having 1:1 head tracking is much more than natural than what trackIR does. Also having a 90hz fast refresh screen in VR is very much beneficial for moving a head around. The smoothness is great.

(I wouldn't recommend any other VR headsets though, because the resolution and screen door effect make DCS very hard to play. Either get the HP Reverb, or wait until other headsets of equal pixel density arrive in the near future. Even the pimax 5k/8k is not good enough.)

What's the VR experience like if you have reduced vision in one eye?

You will likely have reduced depth perception. If I close one eye in my VR headset, then the 3D effect is gone, as it in real life. However the sense of scale and immersion still exceeds a typical monitor or even large projector.

Even with one eye closed, I still feel like I'm really in that cockpit. You feel like you are in the game/sim surrounded by the game world, instead of peering into it through a window as we do with a monitor.

Now that the HP Reverb VR Headset is out, you can actually read the instruments and small text in the cockpit, so I'd be leaning towards that if you can afford a top tier graphics card. The immersion in VR is just on another level compared to even the largest of TV's.

 

The sense of depth and scale, is not achievable on a flat screen. The aircraft are huge (realistically) and all of the little buttons stick out, it feels like you can touch them. And also having 1:1 head tracking is much more than natural than what trackIR does. Also having a 90hz fast refresh screen in VR is very much beneficial for moving a head around. The smoothness is great.

 

(I wouldn't recommend any other VR headsets though, because the resolution and screen door effect make DCS very hard to play. Either get the HP Reverb, or wait until other headsets of equal pixel density arrive in the near future. Even the pimax 5k/8k is not good enough.)

I'm with this guy. 100%. Tried it in CV1 rift two years ago inside the mirage 2k and that single aircraft with its red dials convinced me it was better feeling. Don't use the CV1 because of the funky resolution but, waiting to order the Reverb soon so I can go back in.

You will likely have reduced depth perception. If I close one eye in my VR headset, then the 3D effect is gone, as it in real life. However the sense of scale and immersion still exceeds a typical monitor or even large projector.

 

Even with one eye closed, I still feel like I'm really in that cockpit. You feel like you are in the game/sim surrounded by the game world, instead of peering into it through a window as we do with a monitor.

Yeah, you really feel like a near-blind pilot in a cockpit with little combat effectiveness because you can't see anything clearly. :thumbup:

:doh:

Well , there is more than one kind of blindness...

Well , there is more than one kind of blindness...

Sadly, the pilot is neither near-sighted, nor far-sighted, just BLIND. :lol:

Sadly, the pilot is neither near-sighted, nor far-sighted, just BLIND. :lol:

Hence my recommendation to only use VR if you have a HP Reverb or better ;-) Since it's said to be slightly crisper than playing on a 1080p monitor.

Nothing beats my LG 4k OLED + TIR, but I'm still going fly in VR as well.

For the time being, flat panel monitors vs VR have tradeoffs. VR simply can't match the visual quality of a large screen 4K panel. But if the hardware ever catches up to the point I can have 90+ fps with a full FOV and a "retina" resolution, I won't need a flat panel ever again.

In the mean time, I alternate between flat panel and VR depending on what type of flying I am doing: do I want/need image quality? or do I want/need 1:1 head tracking and scaling? Flat panel/TrackIR can't match the experience of 1:1 head tracking with stereo 3d images. I can easily see around canopy frames with stereo 3d, whereas aircraft like the Fw190 that have canopy frames at inconvenient locations cause major problems on a flat panel display. Of course, I may not even be able to spot/locate an air-to-air threat in VR that I can easily spot on a 4K flat panel as long as it stays away from my canopy frames ;)

For me the performance just is not there yet in VR.

But that will change in one or two gpu generations imho.

I am currently using a 3440x1440 ultrawide and am able to keep the frames between 60 and 70 with a 1080ti. Going to VR with the requirement of being able to read everything within the cockpit in a clear way would require me to bump up my specs heavily while still ending up nowhere near the framerates I am used to.

So ye it is going to be vr for me sometime in the future but not now

Again with this thread. There are those who think high resolution monitor is king. There are those who think VR is king.

 

Who's to say one is better than the other? YOU! When it comes to monitors or VR, it's my way or the highway. The monitor people will never understand the allure of VR, so why belabor the point? It's not something you can explain with words. And every VR user decided to move away from monitors for a reason.

What can change is the software.

As I said in my reply, the DCS was not VR ready before 2.5.2 or something. That was when there became a big change in the clarity of spotting units. Their shadows, shape etc was just better. It became better to read the instruments so you could after training to get a glance of the important instruments like HSI, Speed, Altitude etc. Yet challenged by the values like Mach, radio frequencies etc.

It literally was a HUGE jump at some point. And that is when the VR became much more valuable for flying aircraft as you could see the instruments better, spot the targets on air or ground and identify them even further distance. And that was with CV1 alone.

I still say that for some people it is better to learn the aircraft with the display, as you can read and spot things. But not to fly it with so good experience, that makes challenge example with helicopter or aircraft landing. But those things are better in VR, but if you can't read the instruments without leaning, using zoom etc, it is more difficult really as it is frustration to see.

And that is what the upgraded HMD now does, make possible to read cockpit instruments etc. Something very, very important.

So it is big thing is the question of example Valve Index with DCS 2.5.5 or is it Oculus DK2 with DCS Alpha 2.0.

Some people will always want to cheat, by using TrackIR and just turn their real head 15 degrees and see their six. Or use a zoom to see only the FOV of the HUD and use that for spotting or identifying targets etc. And especially perform ground attacks as that way. But that is just using superior computer graphics ways that VR doesn't have, as VR is more like a real eyes and real visibility regarding those things, and not being able look your six without turning on your seat and leaning opposite side. Like if you want to look at your 7'clock, you lean to right and turn your head over the head support.

Main problem is still the hardware limitations for performance. VR requires too much. Why the CV1 and Rift S are still the best options as you get higher performance with the current hardware for lower price. Going with higher end VR sets like Valve Index means that you need to put a lot of money on hardware, and yet run performance that is not as great.

In 5 years things change.