Aerofly uses OpenGL like X-Plane. And I've heard that VR is there for both Vive and Oculus. That said the whole sim is still in beta but looks promising. A instant buy with Linux support, but not sure if I ever bother to boot Windows only for this.

For VR I might wait for the next Vive update as it's not that cheap.

 

 

Aerofly uses OpenGL like X-Plane.

 

Oh, that's interesting... maybe someone can explain more in detail why LR can't use Oculus any longer?

I'm curious about how Aerofly will do this also when they release their Mac version. You also need a fairly powerful machine to run Oculus Rift and Mac computers are really falling behind now in performance. Definitely time for me to move back to Windows, I'm missing out on far too much by sticking to Apple.

Don't know how, maybe Aerofly uses SteamVR for both? Ddenn, the author of the Challenger 300, said the Aerofly VR experience with the HTC Vive to be great. I'll try to test the Vive before buying somewhere locally.

I'm looking forward to VR arriving at some point, but I'm still skeptical that current hardware can deliver the required, stable 70+ fps to avoid motion sickness at the settings I'd want to run in X-Plane.

 

That would be: HDR on, medium road traffic, medium to high density autogen buildings, high texture settings, and the kinds of clouds and weather I like to fly in. I can get some pretty outstanding visuals right now on my 2D monitor with my current rig -- i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 Gig RAM, GTX 970 video.

 

My frame rates never go below 30 fps, and usually float somewhere around mid 30's to mid 40's. That's fine by me; I'm not obsessive about needing 60 fps. But VR, as I understand it, needs far higher frame rates and rock-solid stability. It would mean massively dialing back the world detail I see in X-Plane. I'm not sure even the hottest video cards right now could run my current detail settings at 70+ frames. And I don't want to invest in expensive VR rig just to do Grand Canyon runs with X-Plane detail set all the way down. I'd want it for my normal flying.

 

Since I'm skeptical that this is possible right now with current video cards, it puts me in the "hopeful but skeptical" camp, and I'm not too bothered about VR not being currently available. We know it's coming at some point, it just might be a little early to be practical until video cards reach another generation or two. I'm looking more towards possible seasonal terrain and better weather as the big things I want in X-Plane.

 

Well, don't you think there are much more important things to fix in X-Plane than adding VR support? Don't get me wrong, I'm very impressed by VR (so much I even published a long essay in media theory about VR recently), but X-Plane itself is still lacking proper ATC, proper AI traffic, visible seasons, etc.

 

This said, one of the biggest issues when it comes to VR and X-Plane is that X-Plane needs to use OpenGL instead of DirectX (because there's no DirectX on Mac and Linux) and that makes developing VR apps much more difficult, because Oculus have dropped OpenGL support long ago. Before they had, Laminar had a running VR demo of X-Plane, much earlier than FSX. I don't know about HTC -- do they support OpenGL?

I don't think it's all or nothing unless a third party is prepared like Flyinside to step up for X-Plane support. Insofar as ATC, there are a number of solutions out there from third parties, like Pilot ATC or to a limited degree with X-Life for traffic AI. The latter is the best traffic AI so far. Doesn't approach MyTraffic, UT or even Traffic 360. But if you think about it, even with FSX/P3D the best traffic AI and ATC is not found with the native program but with third parties. So here again, from a VR standpoint third party solutions will have to fill the void.

 

I should say, the native VR implemented by the Aerofly team is way better, comparatively than the Flyinside. Flyinside has very problematic and annoying flickering particularly related to the cockpit. This is virtually absent in Aerofly and it just looks much cleaner. Maybe this is the product of a 64-bit platform than the existing 32-bit with FSX/P3D. One big plus for Flyinside is the ability to import windows into your cockpit. So I can import PFPX for example and do flightplanning while in cockpit or ActiveSky etc. But the 32 bit platform has to go the way of the dinosaur. I basically have a moratorium on any further purchases for P3D because I'm tired of the VAS issues and out of memory problems.

I'm looking forward to VR arriving at some point, but I'm still skeptical that current hardware can deliver the required, stable 70+ fps to avoid motion sickness at the settings I'd want to run in X-Plane.

 

That would be: HDR on, medium road traffic, medium to high density autogen buildings, high texture settings, and the kinds of clouds and weather I like to fly in. I can get some pretty outstanding visuals right now on my 2D monitor with my current rig -- i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 Gig RAM, GTX 970 video.

 

My frame rates never go below 30 fps, and usually float somewhere around mid 30's to mid 40's. That's fine by me; I'm not obsessive about needing 60 fps. But VR, as I understand it, needs far higher frame rates and rock-solid stability. It would mean massively dialing back the world detail I see in X-Plane. I'm not sure even the hottest video cards right now could run my current detail settings at 70+ frames. And I don't want to invest in expensive VR rig just to do Grand Canyon runs with X-Plane detail set all the way down. I'd want it for my normal flying.

 

Since I'm skeptical that this is possible right now with current video cards, it puts me in the "hopeful but skeptical" camp, and I'm not too bothered about VR not being currently available. We know it's coming at some point, it just might be a little early to be practical until video cards reach another generation or two. I'm looking more towards possible seasonal terrain and better weather as the big things I want in X-Plane.

 

 

Flyinside uses a process that effectively deals with what you're talking about. I had a 970 before I just recently moved up to a 1080 Zotac AMP! extreme. I can tell you the 970 works with the same limitations that the 1080 does in the context of a 32-bit simulation. The limitation on memory and memory management. The interior of the cockpit doesn't look any better with either card. The difference is the exterior but there agan the 1080 faces the  limitations of a 32 bit platform.

 

  With a guy who has been very susceptible to motion sickness I can also tell you that is not a problem with VR in flight simulation which I've run into.  Where you get motion sickness is when you turn your head and there is screen lag. Or in game when you are moving a character with your joystick and you have to turn the character in a direction. The 970 worked very well with Aerofly2 it's just that the 1080 bumps up everything to the max and the FPS to boot. That is a magnificent card for a 64bit simulation. Frankly, when you try the VR, it is nearly impossible to go back. It's not a gimmick. When you are in the actual cockpit, with the actual perspectives of flying a heavy for example you feel and see the size of the plane. You experience the actual dimensions of distance from the tarmac. even a multi-million dollar simulator cannot approach VR in the actual cockpit with the dimensions of space viscerally felt and experienced.

 

Which is why I am very hopeful that it can be implemented in X-Plane where a video card and CPU makes a big difference comparatively  to the 32 bit sims.

I'm looking forward to VR arriving at some point, but I'm still skeptical that current hardware can deliver the required, stable 70+ fps to avoid motion sickness at the settings I'd want to run in X-Plane.

 

[CUT]

 

Very good points Paraffin, I thought about that as well.

 

But if you think about it, the worrying thing is that historically flight simulators have NEVER been able to deliver more than 30-40 FPS, let alone 70+ FPS, with the settings that 99% of users want to run. Or, in other words, flight simulators (contrary to other pc games) have always been designed in such a way to deliver single digits if you max out all settings.

 

Flight simulators are (and will be) very CPU dependant, and users tend to settle on settings that give them around 30 FPS or so. That means that VR users will probably be always forced to significantly decrease their settings if they want to have 70+ fps.

 

Or, alternatively, there will need to be a shift in the design philosophy of PC flight simulators to line them to the rest of PC games, where a powerful rig can give 60+ FPS even when settings are close to max. This is apparently what AeroflyFS is doing, reducing some of the CPU hungry features so that users can have high FPS even with high settings.

Oh, that's interesting... maybe someone can explain more in detail why LR can't use Oculus any longer?

it's not that they cant do it. It's that they built it three times from the ground up and everytime it got torn down by changes either in the opengl sdk, or changes in the devkit.

 

So they said they will wait until it matured for a while. Also the OpenGL SDK for the Occulus is a rather underrepresentated SDK to put it politely.

 

Having tried the Vive (for flightsim) and the occulus for gaming, i can totally understand why you will wait for the technology to mature. Its a nice wow, but unless you like gliders or other GA that doesn't require lots of cockpit interaction, the resolution is simply not high enough and more than 30 minutes of wearing them is not really comfortable. Plus using things like charts or other navigation tools is nigh on impossible (apart from some virtual windows like flyinside).

Having tried the Vive (for flightsim) and the occulus for gaming, i can totally understand why you will wait for the technology to mature. Its a nice wow, but unless you like gliders or other GA that doesn't require lots of cockpit interaction, the resolution is simply not high enough and more than 30 minutes of wearing them is not really comfortable. Plus using things like charts or other navigation tools is nigh on impossible (apart from some virtual windows like flyinside).

 

That's the other thing I'm a bit skeptical about, especially the comfort factor for longer flights.

 

My normal routine is cranking up X-Plane, logging into the FSEconomy charter ops game for a flight I've set up (usually the night before). Check the Plan-G flight plan, climb in the cockpit and take off. Reach cruising altitude and then I'm on autopilot for 2-3 hours. I use time acceleration in cruise, but in X-Plane I usually can't get more than 2x with my graphics settings. 

 

I use TrackIR for takeoff, then I turn the tracking off during cruise mode because I find it easier to do an instrument scan with a static cockpit during that long boring cruise phase, without the view swinging around. Then I turn TrackIR back on when landing. It's very handy and immersive for eyeballing the runway, or just looking around and enjoying the scenery on final approach.

 

Head tracking is sort of a mini-preview of VR, and that makes me wonder how I'd use it in a similar way. It doesn't sound very practical to only use VR for takeoff, then pull it off my head for an hour or two in cruise, and put it back on for landing. Just turning off TrackIR for the cruise phase doesn't shift me in and out of a totally different visual environment like that. 

 

Sure, it would be great for a quick 15-minute run down the Grand Canyon in a helicopter just for kicks. But for "normal" flight ops? I dunno. I guess I'll just have to try it and see, once it arrives with a high enough frame rate to be practical.

 

P.S. It does make me wonder if maybe the positive reports about VR in FSX are because you can get much higher time acceleration during cruise, so you don't have the thing on your head for long periods of time. Or in a combat sim like DCS, you're not sitting in the cockpit for long periods of time.

well i guess me with glasses is at a disadvantage vs. people with no glasses. But in general the displays do get warm and the "looking through swim goggles" effect of the small displays is tyring for me after a certain amount of time.

 

Funnily enough, when i first tried it, i was blown away by it and thought aswell it was the future of everything, but after a few hours using it, the novelty wears off and you start to realize where the flaws are. I mean this is still first gen, i can see the potential but 3-4 years down the road is where i see some real use for flightsimming.

it's not that they cant do it. It's that they built it three times from the ground up and everytime it got torn down by changes either in the opengl sdk, or changes in the devkit.

 

So they said they will wait until it matured for a while. Also the OpenGL SDK for the Occulus is a rather underrepresentated SDK to put it politely.

 

Having tried the Vive (for flightsim) and the occulus for gaming, i can totally understand why you will wait for the technology to mature. Its a nice wow, but unless you like gliders or other GA that doesn't require lots of cockpit interaction, the resolution is simply not high enough and more than 30 minutes of wearing them is not really comfortable. Plus using things like charts or other navigation tools is nigh on impossible (apart from some virtual windows like flyinside).

 

Thanks for the explanation! So there's still hope.

 

I experience VR mainly through my GearVR, knowing that it is not comparable to Desktop system. Still it's impressive, and even after 5 months I use it regularly -- but mainly for watching 360° movies, playing some simple games, and the likes. And it's nice to have a big wide virtual Netflix screen, for example.