Please try the Oculus Rift DK2 + FlyInside

[whitav8 94]

   I have been very fortunate to have an Oculus Rift Dk2 ( https://www1.oculus.com/order/  ) temporarily provided to me for some evaluation. Also, with Dan Church providing FlyInside ( https://flyinside-fsx.com/ )as an interface to FSX or P3Dv2.5 , you can have an experience that really is amazing. The very large field of view (100 deg or better), decent resolution (there is a Samsung Note 3 OLED display in there), stereo vision, and superb head tracking (orientation and distance from camera) will really convince you that you're inside that virtual cockpit,  and hilly terrain (including the Grand Canyon) will leave you in awe. I tried high end Virtual Reality equipment when I worked for Boeing up until 10 years ago and it just wasn't immersive - I felt that I was just watching an HDTV screen some distance away - this is just not like that - this is the way that flight sim should feel!

     Of course, there are a few requirements - you need a 4.2Ghz 4 core i7 and a Nvidia 900 series (I just have a 660ti) on Windows 7 64-bit  plus a joystick/yoke controller with plenty of buttons because you can't see the keyboard (as yet) or your hands (as yet) - you keep wanting to reach out and touch or grab things that are in the virtual cockpit.

     The DK2 is $350 and next year, the Consumer Version 1 (CV1) is due out. Maybe you can find a gamer friend to let you borrow it for a couple days. I guarantee that you will truly enjoy flying an F22 inside the BlueSky (or equivalent) Grand Canyon scenery. I also enjoy flying a Bonanza around the old Megascenery Socal scenery or any Orbitz areas.You find that you will constantly be looking all around - even backwards (stay seated and don't hit anything) - and leaning in to see an instrument a little better. Right now, it is difficult to tune a radio but Dan and several others are working on it.

 

Try it and see for yourself

 

Dave

[denali 74]

Galaxy Note 4 + Homido headset = higher resolution / readable gauges. 

[tutmeister 458]

Maybe but how do you make it work with prepar3d and fly inside?

 

I own a note 4 but doubt it will come close to the persistence of the dk2.

Happy to try it though.

Chris

[whitav8 94]

@Denali,

     I think that the CV1 version next year will in fact have the Note 4 display (or equivalent) but it is imperative to have the display driven via HDMI from your PC to become somewhat similar to a regular monitor so that FSX/P3D can drive the highres video (using regular Nvidia drivers) with proper shaders to work the distortion and AA, etc . 

     What is important is to actually experience the ability to fly with the large FOV, superior head tracking where instead of the TrackIR requirement to still look at your forward monitor (sideways a bit), you get to turn your head completely naturally (1:1) and lean left/right or forward/aft. 

      I will agree that the current DK2 feels like you need weak glasses (I do have to lean into EFIS displays with small fonts) and better antialiasing, still, the feeling of size when flying among large hills and mountains is hard to beat.

[Faisal altheyab 11]

Wow! Wish I knew a guy who has one so I can give it a try.. But oh well, I think I'll have to wait for CV1.. Can't wait! It's definitely gonna introduce an unprecedented world of possibilities in the flight sim world! Cant wait

[denali 74]

@Denali,

     I think that the CV1 version next year will in fact have the Note 4 display (or equivalent) but it is imperative to have the display driven via HDMI from your PC to become somewhat similar to a regular monitor so that FSX/P3D can drive the highres video (using regular Nvidia drivers) with proper shaders to work the distortion and AA, etc . 

     What is important is to actually experience the ability to fly with the large FOV, superior head tracking where instead of the TrackIR requirement to still look at your forward monitor (sideways a bit), you get to turn your head completely naturally (1:1) and lean left/right or forward/aft. 

      I will agree that the current DK2 feels like you need weak glasses (I do have to lean into EFIS displays with small fonts) and better antialiasing, still, the feeling of size when flying among large hills and mountains is hard to beat.

You don't need HDMI.  NVidia has streaming directly from their cards without any lag to tablets or smartphones for gaming.  I have over 100 fov, as I dremeled out the hole in the Homido to be full screen on the note 4.  trackIR works fine I'd rather have higher resolution cause DK1 is too blury even for my old eyes.  CV1 will have a custom oled display with unusual shapes to the lenses to achieve a much wider fov.  

[whitav8 94]

@Denali,

      I'm not sure if you are using FlyInside with your setup, but if you are, you can select 3840x2160 as the generated resolution - even though the Note 3 screen can't quite show it at that resolution - particularly with enough antialiasing. I would have to guess that direct HDMI would have at least 50 milliseconds less lag than any kind of streaming but it probably doesn't matter with slow responding aircraft - maybe the F22 doing aerobatics might. I think one of the greatest things about FlyInside is the Asynchronous Time Warp features which attempts to keep the frame rate to the DK2 (not DK1) at 75 fps no matter what the FSX/P3D frame rate is - that seems to work pretty well with the PMDG 777 where again, it's seems smooth flying but the NAV and Engine displays don't have enough antialiasing.

     I'm not promoting the Oculus brand - just would like folks to see for themselves just what this type of VR gear can do for flight sim -so much more interesting than my three monitor setup. It would be real great if one had an f22 full scale cockpit mockup with everything just where the googles say they are - and fully functional - but used the goggles for the out the window scene.

 

Dave

[tutmeister 458]

Denali how do you have this setup? How do you stream it to the display? Tempted to try just to see what the resolution is like compared to my dk2.

 

Chris

[whitav8 94]

@Denali,

     I was just going to ask the same question. Could you share with us how you set up stereo streaming (which Nvidia driver set?) from FSX/P3D. Are you using PPrep3D (that you developed) for increasing the FOV with reduced distortion? What are you doing for head tracking - is it 1:1 (one degree of yaw,pitch, roll and fore/aft/right/left for the equivalent in the scene orientation)? Are you using regular antialiasing (set by FSX/P3D in-game or NVInspector) or more like Sweetfx at postprocess shader time? What about the "time warp" (extra frame generation) that Dan Church is providing to smooth the frame rate for DK2? How much material did you have to take out of the Homido to get the wider FOV? This all sounds terrific! Could any other cellphones be used? Would there ever be any way to use the cellphone orientation sensors to feed back head position to the PC? I saw an app for the iPhone6 that can even track your pupils (gaze direction)!

 

Thanks for any info you can share

 

Dave

[chass32 136]

For me, all the VR think is about immersion. I remember landing at LEPA at midnight with Oculus (It´s so different to land like this cause you get the real size and distance of everything). And once I parked my Phenom 300 I thought that it was one of the most vivid experiences I had on Flight simming. But the good thing is, that no matter how much you try and fly, everytime you put your googles on is like being in a different cockpit.

 

BTW The  Asynchronous Time Warp is simply mind blowing. You can get 75 smooth fps on VR when you can´t reach 60 on your monitor.

[denali 74]

Trinus VR  using it's limelight plugin, tridef with default fsx profile.  Use NVidia oversampling, forget what it's called at this time, to send higher res than your phone to smooth things out.  Trinus can use smartphone headtracking  as well