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

[metalnwood]

I have tried xplane with the vr only, I cant say I liked it much at all compared to physical controls.

 

 

The other things with xplane is that you are in aircraft with simple controls, there really is nothing on the stick/yoke you need to do most of the time. Some may have a trim, throttles are bare compared to most aircraft in dcs.

 

 

You can sort of get away with it for most GA aircraft and in DCS you could probably get away with it if you were just going for a sight seeing flight.

 

 

You would be very hard pressed to use vr only controls and use DCS for what it was made for which is in it's name.

 

 

If you are using a hotas you would never use the controllers instead of a mouse for most operations as it is harder. Coming up on target, 15 seconds until some action required and you forgot to do something. A few mouse clicks and averted having to abort. Not so if you had to fumble for a controller do your stuf and put it down.

 

 

It's a bit like how some racing sims had rubbish support for game pads. They didn't put in the effort to make a gamepad work well because the people playing those sims were using wheels. They were not catering to the need for speed crowd.

 

 

Better controller support will help DCS in the end but I think thats going to come to fruition more when we are dealing with things like hand tracking. DCS would be a frustrating proposition using only a controller with any of its complex aircraft.

 

 

@OnlyforDCS we were replying at the same time so I didnt see yours. Yes, that would be good. I would be happy doing startups using a controller that had good mechanics for switches. In the air I would end up with the mouse.

Edited September 1, 2020 by metalnwood

[Eldur]

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 :-)

 

The truth is, you definately have to ungrab your Gunfighter to grab either your mouse or your touch controller. Not much of a difference there except for the controller actually being more comf'ble.Now if you would want to grab everything by your hands (Quest hand tracking FTW as a first experience for that), you'd literally need to clear up your surroundings completely to be able to reach everything within the virtual 'pit. For the most that already is impossible. With the controller however you can do the "point at it and press XYZ to manipulate" thing which is actually a lot more accurate already than using a mouse since the controller is completely independant of your head. And you don't have to waste precious time searching the cursor in the first place. Just grab your "gun" and "shoot" that button, literally. It's a lot better than the clunky mouse thing. And I've been using that for ages before.

 

However the controller interface needs lots of improvements. I like the VTOL VR approach, but again, that is something that needs you to have free space around you and as soon as you've got a HOTAS which has to be mounted somehow, you don't have that anymore. It works in VTOL VR because you don't even use a HOTAS at all. Would be great to have a similarly working approach in DCS for getting people into it like "Hey, you've got that Index, you should try DCS!" where they mostly don't have a HOTAS yet. With VTOL VR-alike controls, this would make the entry for such people easier and that other sim is a perfect example of how well this can work.

 

The stick grab in DCS works like you grab it and move your controller accordingly, which in the first moment seems to be more realistic, as it simply tracks your hand position against the virtual stick and moves it accordingly. But you have no rest, no stability and most importantly, no feedback and it's very hard to muscle-memory. OTOH in VTOL VR you grab the thing with your wrist resting on the armchair or your leg/knee which literally becomes something like the base of a stick and the controller itself becomes the stick. With that you don't move the hand laterally to control the virtual stick, but you tilt it just like you would with a simple stick like the T16kM. Even the grip twist works for the rudder. With that, precise control suddenly becomes possible and you work your muscle-memory to fly the thing. Staying level or doing a coordinated turn now is possible where it was a real struggle in DCS. Also, the three stick axes are always centered the moment you grab th thing, so just hold your controller comf'ble before grabbing the thing and it just will work. On the throttle there's some haptic notches so you feel your changes there even without looking at the display indicator in the HUD. On top of all that, when grabbing those controls, the thumbsticks work just like hats on the stick and the buttons also have proper functions.

 

However, when we come back to DCS with a HOTAS, you might have to grab some switches that literally sit within your deskplate. There the index finger laser and something to control LMB/RMB/Scroll works very well and you can't replace it by "grab the switch and move your hand to flip it", simply because you can't reach it. A real solution would be to have both at the same time. Being able to grab the things and do it as it works in that other sim, but keeping the current laser finger telekinesis method as long as you don't grab anything.

 

Another culprit I noticed within DCS is when trying to enter things into the UFCs. Your finger goes right though the thing and as you do it, the buttons get released as if you lifted off the finger as you would IRL. That makes inputting harder as you move your index in there a bit too far every now and then. A solution to this would be to check the movement vector. If you push a button and push the finger further through it or even sideways onto other inputs, the button should stay pressed and the others around it untouched. It shall only release the button if you actually pull the finger back from it.

 

Another issue is that with the default settings the RH controller manipulates things (as with LMB) as soon as you touch them. Luckily ED added an option to get rid of that after I posted something on this. But, it raised another issue, the virtual mouse cursor being stuck in the center of the view, always making the tooltips pop up as you look at things. That needs a fix for sure.

 

BTW flipping all those 81 circuit breakers in the Mi-8 by sliding the finger across them is pure joy, something I really wasn't amused of doing with a mouse. And when the thing was new, it didn't even have those group handles at all, so you even had to do that on startup. Now with the controllers, it's even a joy switching all those off after a sortie.

[Goblin]

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.

 

More importantly, I believe, is that VTOL VR is easier to use with VR hand controllers. The buttons, switches and levers are designed for this purpose. Also the systems are simplified, even though I must say that they are quite advanced for a single developer product, like that.

I think we must realize that we who want realistic aircraft systems are the few. We’re the niche. Most people want a game. They don’t want to actually learn a bunch of advanced systems. They just want to play.

 

I think VR hand controllers work surprisingly well, in a sim-game like VTOL VR. But I prefer a HOTAS and a mouse for DCS. In fact, the PointCtrl finger ”wands” are perfect for this purpose. The problem with hand tracking in VR is that the physical space that is needed to interact with the virtual cockpit is often obstructed. A mouse, or PointCtrl, functions in 2D, but interacts with the 3D virtual cockpit like a wand or laser pointer, which means that you can interact with everything you need, without hitting your monitor, keyboard, HOTAS or wall...

[Motomouse]

I would not like to reach the actual switch with my bare hand. I think a 2D hand "mouse" would work good enough. Just control the mouse pointer by the extended index finger and retract/tick the index finger to switch or rotate hand to rotate knobs. But a real 3D option for the hand would be also nice, time to clear the space arround my rig ;-).

 

It is worth a try but perhaps the physical mouse buttons/physcal mouse wheel feels just better than operating virtual switches and knobs.

 

So as a further idea, I would like to buy a mouse with a rotary knob instead of the mouse wheel :-)

Edited September 5, 2020 by Motomouse

[Ovo]

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.

 

So, two month later and it's well time to share this poll I posted to the VTOL VR community on reddit, asking "Would you like it if DCS World had proper VR handling like VTOL VR?".

The results:

161 people (+ me) cared to vote, which is a lot of activity for this subreddit.

78% answered yes, they'd like better vr controller support.

58% explicitely answered that they don't play DCS, and better VR controller support would raise their interest for the game (answers 1 and 3)

 

The whole VTOL VR playerbase is between 50k and 100k owners according to steamspy.com. (It's a $30 game)

I'll let you extrapolate the numbers if you want.

Outside of these concrete numbers from VTOL VR players, there'd obviously be many more VR users who'd become interested in DCS if it had good VR controller support.

 

Note to those who'll come here with doubts that DCS can have really good VR controller support because the game wasn't built for VR: try X-Plane 11, which had VR added one year after release, it's really close to VTOL VR in quality.

[BIGNEWY]

 

So, two month later and it's well time to share this poll I posted to the VTOL VR community on reddit, asking "Would you like it if DCS World had proper VR handling like VTOL VR?".

The results:

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161 people (+ me) cared to vote, which is a lot of activity for this subreddit.

78% answered yes, they'd like better vr controller support.

58% explicitely answered that they don't play DCS, and better VR controller support would raise their interest for the game (answers 1 and 3)

 

The whole VTOL VR playerbase is between 50k and 100k owners according to steamspy.com. (It's a $30 game)

I'll let you extrapolate the numbers if you want.

Outside of these concrete numbers from VTOL VR players, there'd obviously be many more VR users who'd become interested in DCS if it had good VR controller support.

 

Note to those who'll come here with doubts that DCS can have really good VR controller support because the game wasn't built for VR: try X-Plane 11, which had VR added one year after release, it's really close to VTOL VR in quality.

 

Thanks for the feedback, I will show it to the team, I have not played VTOL VR so I have not experienced its VR controls.

 

The team are working on better VR control, tool tips and help in the controls settings to assist the user, hopefully these changes will make it to the public builds soon.

 

thank you

Edited November 14, 2020 by BIGNEWY

[Ovo]

Thanks for the feedback, I will show it to the team, I have not played VTOL VR so I have not experienced its VR controls.

 

The team are working on better VR control, tool tips and help in the controls settings to assist the user, hopefully these changes will make it to the public builds soon.

 

thank you

Thanks for your reply, looking forward to those improvements!