VR's Impact on Developers.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

My go-to sim for VR is Aerofly FS2, but I've also given into curiosity, and been playing with Flyinside for FSX(SE) P3D and even Xplane.

There are a lot of threads out there about what a game changer VR is, (with some readers chiming to pooh-pooh the whole idea) and also a lot of talk of the technical merits yea or nay, but one thing I haven't seen really mentioned is how "true" 3D will affect the creation process for developers.

It's probably hard to appreciate unless you've actually seen all the various sims in action in VR, but one thing that's become glaringly obvious to me is that many cockpits that were perfectly fine in 2D are woefully inadequate when seen in the VR space. Textures that were fine in 2D often become pixelly messes when blown up to life-size in 3D, and shortcuts like flat pictures for dials and panels (which is barely noticeable on a monitor) become near travestys in virtual reality.

The last few months has convinced me that Ipacs intended Aerofly to be seen in VR from the start, because everything in all of their planes, down to the smallest cockpit detail, is depicted in very high resolution and fully 3d.

On the other hand, I now see that many planes that I thought of over the years as very very good in FSX etc, are now revealed to be not at all ready for VR, and would likely have to be redone nearly from scratch to measure up to the evolving standard.

Its pretty bad.

One wonders how various companies will react to this, and how it will affect the process of Aircraft and maybe even scenery creation. When an airport terminal can suddenly be be scrutinized from feet away in near lifesize, will a flat picture of the front of the terminal pasted onto what's essentially a rectangle be sufficient?

Will it take longer and be more expensive to construct fully VR-ready 3rd party items?

I think there are going to be some big changes necessary; hopefully sooner rather than later.

Just something I've been thinking about as I explore flight simming in VR.

 

 

 

[WebMaximus 372]

I've been thinking about this too and will be very interesting to see how developers tackle this going forward.

I think it primarily depends on how VR will evolve and how popular it will get.

[vortex681 806]

14 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

It's probably hard to appreciate unless you've actually seen all the various sims in action in VR, but one thing that's become glaringly obvious to me is that many cockpits that were perfectly fine in 2D are woefully inadequate when seen in the VR space. Textures that were fine in 2D often become pixelly messes when blown up to life-size in 3D, and shortcuts like flat pictures for dials and panels (which is barely noticeable on a monitor) become near travestys in virtual reality.

I think this is more down to the poor resolution of the headsets rather than any failing of the cockpits. If they look good when lifesize on massive 4k displays then it can't be the fault of the developer or the cockpit graphics.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

22 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

I think this is more down to the poor resolution of the headsets rather than any failing of the cockpits. If they look good when lifesize on massive 4k displays then it can't be the fault of the developer.

If you were to compare an Aerofly FS2 cockpit to some others in VR, I think you would see what I mean pretry quickly. 

On the other hand, people using Pmdgs latest in VR have voiced no complaints, which makes me curious. Too bad there are no demos, as far as I know.

[WebMaximus 372]

I'm doing all my flying in the NGX which looks great in VR IMO and I think that is because PMDG developed the v/c in true 3D which maybe not always is the case with all developers and aircraft.

On a 2D display even when running 4K it's much easier to get away with objects not in true 3D I guess vs in a VR environment.

[vortex681 806]

But the bottom line is that both the Rift and the Vive have a resolution of just 1080×1200 per eye. It doesn't matter how high res the cockpits are, all that you're ever going to see will be at 1080×1200. 3D cockpits (which applies to most modern payware) may look better in VR than flat, 2D panels but they won't be any higher resolution because your stuck with what the hardware gives you. There has been a lot of talk recently about supersampling the displays to give a better image but, in the end, it's just a trick - it doesn't actually give you any more pixels. If I look at a lifesize instrument on my high res display, it consists of many more pixels than the same apparent sized instrument would through a VR headset. If you're happy with that, and value immersion over clarity, then you'll probably be delighted with your investment. I tried it and decided that there's still some way to go before it will replace my monitor.