To VR or not to VR

Oculus S is better than Reverb ?

Well its a better choice if you don't care about resolution and play other VR games, or have a lower end system. Reverb is top dog on resolution.

I know this is a very personal preference but I have come to a stage in my home cockpit build where I am really starting to consider VR.

 

 

I probably mainly play at my desktop games like Anno1800, slow paced city sims, then its DCS and I dont fly for 100's of hours.

 

 

I have all the parts for my pit except a 4k TV and the new PC which I have the money for.

 

 

 

My Pit will sit in a room away from our main house, the 4K TV I need for the Pit may get used every day, perhaps an hour or so, or maybe not.

 

 

 

My new PC I dont want to have permanently linked to a 4k TV I dont use if I can use it as my desktop so I am thinking about moving the computer to my pit just to play DCS when I want to, it doesnt sound great.

 

 

 

If I finish my pit in the current state I have a decent computer linked to a decent TV that doesn't get used much, or I start to move my PC and TV when I want to fly. I dont like the thought of it.

 

 

Finally, I just got really into dog fighting with guns and TIR5 is p1ssing me off with all the blind spots to the point I hate it.

 

So what am I left with? Well I need to upgrade the PC and have the money, I am going to do this.

 

 

I can donate my PC to my boy to add to his XBOX/PS4 and then PC needs.

 

 

 

I can play my city builders and strategies on a new monitor but get a VR headset for FPS, Racing and Flying...

 

 

Out of interest, I enjoy flying 1080p - how much worse is VR?

You can play all your strategy games in VR too, it will be like having a 200” monitor in front of you. This is how I play SupCom.

You keep mentioning gimmicks as the main draw to DCS VR, but most people use DCS to study aircraft systems and fly tactical missions.

 

The fun of sitting in a cockpit is quickly lost when you realize you have 25% of the combat effectiveness of an actual pilot.

That’s not flying though and since when did you speak for most people. Yeah, some people want to check Six by turning their heads 180 and cry when they cannot do it in VR. Hardcore flightsimers want max immersion not a pathetic drone station experience.

Bedwetters tend to not like VR.

A couple of things about me:

1) I have a full simpit with all the toggle switches and buttons I need in concjunction with trackir and a 34" widescreen monitor; plus additional panels for tons of expansion.

2) I played only in VR with the Vive Pro for 1 month

3) I returned the Vive Pro in favor of the simpit.

 

 

My SimPit setup vs. VR is a ying and yang of sorts. The SimPits pros are VR's cons and vise versa. But it all comes down to personal preference. The limiting factor for me was the lack of adequate hand controls to let go of your HOTAS and interact with the virtual pit. Trackball mice do not cut it, end of story.

 

VR is impressive and a lot of fun. But I 100% could not get over wiggling around a mouse to interact with the pit. There are some things people are developing to get around it but in my mind the technology still is not there yet and is years away.

 

So as long as you're comfortable using a mouse for most of the interactions with your pit then you will be fine. It is true you can use muscle memory and learn where switches are, but you will feel discombobulated when you look down in VR and the switch is not where you expect it to be. It's jarring.

 

So I ended up going with my simpit and I love being able to fly in formation and quickly flick the Tacan, punch in the frequency and set the course needles in the hornet for a case 1 carrier approach while staying in formation. Very hard to do in VR when you're interfacing with a mouse or trying to feel around for a button.

 

Performance was terrible, even on a 2080Ti. Target spotting even worse. VR is not up to my standards visually. I would have thrown $10K at it if I could make it look great and perform great. It doesnt... and no amount of money in the world can tackle the bottle neck DCS is and VR for the consumer. You have to make a lot of sacrifices for it to perform okay, especially on busy online servers and large SP missions.

 

All to say, if the choice was VR vs. a regular HOTAS on top of a desk... I would choose VR. Since I have my simpit and can interface so well with all the buttons and switches... the SimPit was more superior for me.

Pressing buttons seems to be your main reason for playing. All that money on button boxes you can’t use in VR followed by buyer’s remorse. All you have left is a feeling of emptiness and a need to hate on VR.

I would say that the top experience would be “augmented reality” were you could interact with real physical cockpit and use VR for the outside world.

US Army uses/ used such a system. But it seems to complicated for public use yet.

http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=b8a5bbd4-9b9f-46d7-9723-b1e6b255321b

Personally, CV1 didn’t pass the threshold for “tactical” use, and even use the cockpit properly (but I mainly fly M-2000C, and it’s one of the most difficult to read, tiny cockpit and writings).

But with Rift S I feel it’s really ok.

You need to adapt, but once used to it, it’s ok. And the super natural zoom on screen sometimes is really too much.

And any higher resolution will only improve on that :thumbup:

I do play only flight simulators, and yes, I do care about resolution

I think a bunch of you were missing my point. Many of the pit interactions, even by MilesD are workaround to end-state solutions. The controllers you have to pick up (if you are going to use the wands) to interface with the pit are terrible.

The whole point of my post was not to say VR or a TIR/SimPit setup is better. They both have a plethora of pros and cons. The point was to say, based on what is important to you, one will hit more of your check boxes over the other. For me, a SimPit+TIR did that. VR, after a month, did not. For me, it's more immersive to physically interact with my pit. Once VR comes out with suitable hand controls and DCS fully integrates them I'll be onboard. Until then... TIR+SimPit.

Pressing buttons seems to be your main reason for playing. All that money on button boxes you can’t use in VR followed by buyer’s remorse. All you have left is a feeling of emptiness and a need to hate on VR.

There is no hate on VR - the OP is asking for our experiences and I was sharing mine. I just don't think you have the ability to understand how someone else's opinions differ from your own. It is very possible that people have different wants/expectations. My SimPit checks more of the boxes for what is important to me than you. VR checks more of the boxes for you than me.

I'm sharing my perspective and my thoughts to help the OP make an educated decision. If he goes with VR - great! If he decides to go with a SimPit - Awesome!

Believe it or not, interacting with the cockpit (virtually or in reality) is a big part of DCS. I'm not sure what modules you fly, but having the controls at my fingertips in the Hornet made all the difference. VR in a FC3 aircraft was very enjoyable, but not so much in the hornet. I mean, it was cool and immersive... but grabbing the trackball to enter in a TACAN or flick a switch got to be really annoying, for me. Again... FOR ME, not you... me.

In terms of your comment regarding buyers remorse - I have a healthy disposable income. I dont need to choose between VR and my SimPit. But I'm certainly not going to buy something I'm not going to use. Hence the only buyers remorse I had was when I realized I was coming up on the Amazon return window for both the Vive and VivePro. I made the decision to return both headsets and build out a brand new pit instead; knowing that I would get a solid 5 years of enjoyment from it. Worst case scenario I can still sit and feel like I'm in a cockpit if I choose to go the VR route later.

I think a bunch of you were missing my point. Many of the pit interactions, even by MilesD are workaround to end-state solutions. The controllers you have to pick up (if you are going to use the wands) to interface with the pit are terrible.

 

The whole point of my post was not to say VR or a TIR/SimPit setup is better. They both have a plethora of pros and cons. The point was to say, based on what is important to you, one will hit more of your check boxes over the other. For me, a SimPit+TIR did that. VR, after a month, did not. For me, it's more immersive to physically interact with my pit. Once VR comes out with suitable hand controls and DCS fully integrates them I'll be onboard. Until then... TIR+SimPit.

Thats why I framed my response as I did. I totally agree that different folks want different things. For me I can't really fly flatscreen, and I don't see a non-vr pit investment as worth it. Rather I'm trying to do my best to make a VR compatible physical pit, which at this point is several different types of control sticks/throttles. I wouldn't mind some sort of stand alone lolipop gear handle either.

And currently you are right I'd say the cockpit interaction with hand controls is really lacking. I tried using the occulus controllers at it was "neat" for a hot minute, and after a week I got "ok" at it, but in general I found that using a mouse was faser, more precise, even if it was less immersive (don't get me started on phantom floating hand syndrome)

MilesD will be the first to say that pointCtrl is mainly intended as a interim stopgap until better solutions come around, but frankly I think its probably an 80% solution as it is. It will functionally allow you to interact with the pit, even if you see a mouse cursor.

The "end state" solution I envision will be something like captogloves, and these will be then somehow tied to the pilot model, so the whole arm/hand moves to track them, plus you can interact with buttons. The "end end" state will include some sort of good haptic feedback. One of the key challenges I see will be "linking/mapping" physical controller location to the gloves.

@Harlikwin 100% agree and onboard with everything you just said.

My only other gripe with VR, which is mostly a DCS gripe, is the performance issues. DCS is not optimized well for monitors, let alone VR. But I could get around that if I had much better hand controls.

Thats why I framed my response as I did. I totally agree that different folks want different things. For me I can't really fly flatscreen, and I don't see a non-vr pit investment as worth it. Rather I'm trying to do my best to make a VR compatible physical pit, which at this point is several different types of control sticks/throttles. I wouldn't mind some sort of stand alone lolipop gear handle either.

 

And currently you are right I'd say the cockpit interaction with hand controls is really lacking. I tried using the occulus controllers at it was "neat" for a hot minute, and after a week I got "ok" at it, but in general I found that using a mouse was faser, more precise, even if it was less immersive (don't get me started on phantom floating hand syndrome)

 

MilesD will be the first to say that pointCtrl is mainly intended as a interim stopgap until better solutions come around, but frankly I think its probably an 80% solution as it is. It will functionally allow you to interact with the pit, even if you see a mouse cursor.

 

The "end state" solution I envision will be something like captogloves, and these will be then somehow tied to the pilot model, so the whole arm/hand moves to track them, plus you can interact with buttons. The "end end" state will include some sort of good haptic feedback. One of the key challenges I see will be "linking/mapping" physical controller location to the gloves.

Make your own gear handle. You don’t even have to plug it in. Your dummy gear handle would just be operated by voice over VoiceAttack. Gear up/gear down verbal takeoff/landing checklist complete. Improvise, adapt and overcome.

Make your own gear handle. You don’t even have to plug it in. Your dummy gear handle would just be operated by voice over VoiceAttack. Gear up/gear down verbal takeoff/landing checklist complete. Improvise, adapt and overcome.

How immersive this is! haha This is not the year 2200 where we speak to an AI to operate the various systems of the aircraft. oh boy, oh boy.:doh:

How immersive this is! haha This is not the year 2200 where we speak to an AI to operate the various systems of the aircraft. oh boy, oh boy.:doh:

As a VA user I can attest it won't be anything like 2200 AI.

It's like 2012 voice recognition software, so look forwards to:

"Landing gear... lAndiNG gir, Laaaanding gEAr,,

Christ ! ****ing ****.

LANDING GEAR !!!

Give up and just press the button.

"Oh hey kitty."

Nightvision goggles engaged!

There was also a time when VA would only recognise my voice commands if I tried to sound like a drunk Sean Connery.

As a VA user I can attest it won't be anything like 2200 AI.

 

It's like 2012 voice recognition software, so look forwards to:

 

"Landing gear... lAndiNG gir, Laaaanding gEAr,,

Christ ! ****ing ****.

LANDING GEAR !!!

Give up and just press the button.

 

"Oh hey kitty."

Nightvision goggles engaged!

 

There was also a time when VA would only recognise my voice commands if I tried to sound like a drunk Sean Connery.

hahahahaha

There is no hate on VR - the OP is asking for our experiences and I was sharing mine. I just don't think you have the ability to understand how someone else's opinions differ from your own. It is very possible that people have different wants/expectations. My SimPit checks more of the boxes for what is important to me than you. VR checks more of the boxes for you than me.

 

I'm sharing my perspective and my thoughts to help the OP make an educated decision. If he goes with VR - great! If he decides to go with a SimPit - Awesome!

 

Believe it or not, interacting with the cockpit (virtually or in reality) is a big part of DCS. I'm not sure what modules you fly, but having the controls at my fingertips in the Hornet made all the difference. VR in a FC3 aircraft was very enjoyable, but not so much in the hornet. I mean, it was cool and immersive... but grabbing the trackball to enter in a TACAN or flick a switch got to be really annoying, for me. Again... FOR ME, not you... me.

However, I totally get the desire to have a more complex setup with switchgear you can interact with and a pure 1:1 relationship (i.e. not press a gear switch on a hotas and see a lever magically move).

Right now I would take VR but that is just a personal choice.

The big advantage for flight and racing sims is that the main controls, steering wheel, gear shifters, pedals, throttles, joysticks are incredibly close to the real thing and our basic inputs are realistic. Compare that to other game genres where we run with a keyboard, or teleport to avoid motion sickness or aim a heavy gun with controllers weighing nothing.

That is why I think VR is great for this genre, the level of fantasy is far less.

As a VA user I can attest it won't be anything like 2200 AI.

 

It's like 2012 voice recognition software, so look forwards to:

 

"Landing gear... lAndiNG gir, Laaaanding gEAr,,

Christ ! ****ing ****.

LANDING GEAR !!!

Give up and just press the button.

 

"Oh hey kitty."

Nightvision goggles engaged!

 

There was also a time when VA would only recognise my voice commands if I tried to sound like a drunk Sean Connery.

Oh and i just thought it is my bad english accent as i try to command and VoiceAttack makes completely different things or do not recognise my "finglish". It is somehow relief to see that also native speakers seems to have some issues.

That being said i am now tempted to try Vaicom with VoiceAttack to communitate mainly for radio commands.

I am a huge fan of VR, to the point I will choose the aircraft I fly so that I can get everything to hand on HOTAS as much as possible.

 

However, I totally get the desire to have a more complex setup with switchgear you can interact with and a pure 1:1 relationship (i.e. not press a gear switch on a hotas and see a lever magically move).

 

Right now I would take VR but that is just a personal choice.

 

The big advantage for flight and racing sims is that the main controls, steering wheel, gear shifters, pedals, throttles, joysticks are incredibly close to the real thing and our basic inputs are realistic. Compare that to other game genres where we run with a keyboard, or teleport to avoid motion sickness or aim a heavy gun with controllers weighing nothing.

 

That is why I think VR is great for this genre, the level of fantasy is far less.

I agree 100%. For simulator genre VR is most suitable at the moment. As long as you are sitting in some cockpit racecar, aeroplane , helicopter or truck all is good and it feels quite natural. But issue is when you need to start to simulate walking.

As a VA user I can attest it won't be anything like 2200 AI.

 

It's like 2012 voice recognition software, so look forwards to:

 

"Landing gear... lAndiNG gir, Laaaanding gEAr,,

Christ ! ****ing ****.

LANDING GEAR !!!

Give up and just press the button.

 

"Oh hey kitty."

Nightvision goggles engaged!

 

There was also a time when VA would only recognise my voice commands if I tried to sound like a drunk Sean Connery.

I’ve never had a single problem with VoiceAttack.

Oh and i just thought it is my bad english accent as i try to command and VoiceAttack makes completely different things or do not recognise my "finglish". It is somehow relief to see that also native speakers seems to have some issues.

 

That being said i am now tempted to try Vaicom with VoiceAttack to communitate mainly for radio commands.

The secret is to use phonetics. VoiceAttack can’t translate Geordie into English, so you just tell it what the Geordie Pronunciation means in English. It’s very simple.

As a VA user I can attest it won't be anything like 2200 AI.

 

It's like 2012 voice recognition software, so look forwards to:

 

"Landing gear... lAndiNG gir, Laaaanding gEAr,,

Christ ! ****ing ****.

LANDING GEAR !!!

Give up and just press the button.

 

"Oh hey kitty."

Nightvision goggles engaged!

 

There was also a time when VA would only recognise my voice commands if I tried to sound like a drunk Sean Connery.

Could be just you. Did you do the Voice Training for voice recognition as suggested in the manual?

I always thought VA used whatever native MS voice recognition existed in the OS, and I'm on win10 and mostly don't have issues, and I did do the voice training, which if I recall was an MS thing.

I mainly use VA for navigating the radio menu. I.e. F1, F10 etc. And some with administrative FC commands I can't really map to the hotas well and aren't critical for fighting, like GEAR/Kneeboard etc...

I've also had good luck setting it to "Talk to" the menu system, so I say, Chief Remove the Wheel chocks, and it in fact removes the Wheel chocks. Sometimes the ol' Chief is a bit deaf (working around Jet engines does that so I hear) and I occasionally have to repeat myself. Same for Jester, not sure what his specific problem is though :music_whistling:

I’ve never had a single problem with VoiceAttack.

+1

Lots of mumbly wumbly mouths in here ;)

Make your own gear handle. You don’t even have to plug it in. Your dummy gear handle would just be operated by voice over VoiceAttack. Gear up/gear down verbal takeoff/landing checklist complete. Improvise, adapt and overcome.

Yeah, I don't want a dummy one though :) And yeah I've thought about it, I'm generally very impressed with the various boxes people have rigged up, though my time is limited, so I'd rather just buy off the shelf if it exists...

If it’s any help, I had problems with Viacom when first started using it. Found that turning down the mic volume in windows to around 75 - 76% gave me a massive leap forward in voice recognition success rate.

I started simming with Falcon 4.0 in 1998 and built up quite a nice virtual cockpit over the years: Cougar HOTAS with FFB, Warthog throttle, pedals, Cougar MFD's with exported MFD video, CH button panel, 32" QHD monitor, VoiceAttack. Probably spent in area of $2000 over the years, not counting PC upgrades.

Since I received a CV1 last Christmas, 90% of my sim time has been VR (single-player). I just enjoyed the VR immersion more than I enjoyed the flat screen cockpit, despite the CV1's limitations. I found I could operate the Cougar MFD buttons quite adequately with the headset on. I detest using the mouse, but am in the next batch of Miles' PointControl shipments. New Reverb arrived Saturday and raised VR experience to a new level. I have found VoiceAttack to be 99% accurate, using a few phonetic spellings as suggested by BigDuke. Can't see myself returning to mostly flat screen play.

One man's opinion.

One of the big things I love about DCS in VR....body position.

This is a real consideration and something you need to get sorted when dogfighting in VR, you don't get that with your TrackIR lol (unless you have monitors on your roof).

I have found it a lot more tricky since using a force-sensor sidestick as well in the Mirage in preparation for the Viper release, no more swapping hands to turn around and look behind you!

So yes, VR is clearly a lot more 'interactive and immersive' than other alternatives :thumbup:

Edit: While I said specifically dogfighting, it is any form of flying really in DCS, keeping tally on a target during A-G attacks, low level through the mountains etc etc. you get the drift - VR makes the whole experience a lot more involving.