Oculus DK 2 in P3D V3

[joolsd 10]

Has anybody tried Oculus DK2  in P3D V3?

 

I can borrow a DK2 one weekend?   Is it hard to get working?

 

I would really like to try it with the PMDG NGX.  I would expect it would be quite difficult to fly with it. Or just try VFR flights with it.

 

Many thanks

 

Jools

[Oliver Ooi 85]

Some discussion here:

http://www.avsim.com/topic/473492-oculus-rift-and-p3d/

[Mickeyj 35]

Hi Jools,

 

i had some time with a DK2 with P3D2.5. Dont know if it works in v3.1. The immersion is outstanding however there is a major lack of AA. AFAIK you´d better get Flyinside ther you can make a few adjaustments. But first head over to their forums for further.

[joolsd 10]

Thank you for this.

[Raymundo 6]

Frooglesim did a review on this this past week.  You can likely find it on UTube

[joolsd 10]

Frooglesim did a review on this this past week.  You can likely find it on UTube

 

Thanks

[Travis Carney 0]

Heya Jools,

 

I have the DK2, and it works well with v3.1, using a third-party application called FlyInside (flyinside-fsx.com). There are things that it's great for, and things that aren't so great. Sitting inside the cockpit with it for the first time and looking around is just amazing. It's really useful for things that don't generally translate well in the simulator to real world flying like flying the pattern. Being able to look around and see where the runway is really helps for pattern work.

 

What it's not great for are things that require a lot of switch manipulation (like the PMDG NGX). The resolution just isn't that great for reading labels on the panels and getting your mouse on the switches to manipulate them is a major pain. I expect the experience will be considerably better with the consumer Rift when that comes out.

[joolsd 10]

Heya Jools,

 

I have the DK2, and it works well with v3.1, using a third-party application called FlyInside (flyinside-fsx.com). There are things that it's great for, and things that aren't so great. Sitting inside the cockpit with it for the first time and looking around is just amazing. It's really useful for things that don't generally translate well in the simulator to real world flying like flying the pattern. Being able to look around and see where the runway is really helps for pattern work.

 

What it's not great for are things that require a lot of switch manipulation (like the PMDG NGX). The resolution just isn't that great for reading labels on the panels and getting your mouse on the switches to manipulate them is a major pain. I expect the experience will be considerably better with the consumer Rift when that comes out.

 

Exactly as I imagined.  I have used the DK 2 at work, creating very simple Unity apps, but not in P3D or FSX.  As froogle said it makes you feel sick. I think you would have to turn the graphics completely down to get any descent frame rate. I hear the public version will be slightly better definition, IE less dots in the screen. 

 

If you have head traking can you move in on complex dials? Or is it still very difficult?

 

I am getting the feeling that we are some way off from a VR being widley used in flight sim.

 

It would be interesting to try a simple VFR flight, this is where it would show its worth.

[Travis Carney 0]

I've definitely experienced the nausea before with the DK2, though I didn't at all in the flight sim. Not sure if that's just because I've had it a while and got used to it. My system is five or so years old, so I'm not getting crazy awesome frame rates or anything.

 

Yes, you can lean in to read the dials and labels, and that works. It would just be better to have the higher resolution. I'm really curious to see how it is in the consumer model. Actually, leaning in to look at the gauges is really cool because they're a lot more detailed than you might think. For example, you can actually see the hands on the altimeter standing out in 3D above the face of the gauge. In a well modeled aircraft, there's very little in the cockpit that's just "painted on," and I think a lot of that detail usually goes unnoticed. So excited to see where all of this goes. Once the quality is there, this will completely change flight simulation. It's so close.

[whitav8 98]

For those of you with a DK2 and want to see a comparison between P3Dv3 + FlyInside image quality and something else that supports VR directly, try out the free (direct or through Steam) DCS World openbeta 1.5 (Russia database) or openalpha 2.0 (Las Vegas + Nellis+Groom Lake) since it doesn't require FlyInside. This simply gives you a visual image comparison with better antialiasing (at present) with the free SU-25T  and P-51 aircraft.  I can generally read the gauges well and the update rate is pretty smooth. Shooting rockets off is fun as well. Evening/Dawn shadows are nice and don't have to be turned off for reasonable performance. Asynchronous Time Warp isn't released yet though.

[Guest]

For a long time I've been looking forward to flying in P3D in VR. But I think it won't happen anytime soon.

 

First of all the Rift was twice as expensive as anticipated, in fact for me it is three times as expensive because of shipping, taxes and the need for a new GPU.

 

Secondly, as Froogle said in his video: the resolution isn't too good. Now in his video he said he expects the consumer edition of the Rift will be a lot better but I wonder where he has that information from... Yes, the Rift will be better but not a lot! He talked about HD graphics, being perfect, well, dream on, because that won't happen. The Rift will still have a low resolution and a screen door effect (though a lot less). I am btw also very surprised Froogle didn't mention the goggles you are looking through constantly: you are looking through a black porthole all the time. He made it sound as if the gaming world is ALL around you, well, it isn't.

 

Third: the needed fps cannot be achieved in P3D. It simply is impossible. Now I know about FlyInside but as Froogle said: the question is if that one will be available for the CV of the Rift. If not, it's the end of story for P3D and VR for now, I think.

 

Add to that the difficulty of manipulating buttons and switches as you can on a PC screen and well... we still have a looooooooong way to go before we can really simulate flight in VR with P3D. For me it won't happen anytime soon. Or I should give DCS a try. And win the lottery.  :wink:

[Travis Carney 0]

I agree for the most part. We do have a long way to go before it's "perfect," but a long way technology-years isn't generally very long. Yes, I expect that the 1200 lines of resolution in the consumer version (compared to the 1080 in the DK2) will go a long way toward reducing the screen door effect, but I don't expect it to be perfect. I heard an interview with Palmer Luckey (founder of Oculus) on a podcast, and some of the stuff he was talking about was pretty interesting. It's very hard to get a high resolution in a device like this that would take up your whole field of view because of the sheer amount of pixels that would need to be driven in that area, and for each eye. The processing power to drive such a display at a high enough resolution where you wouldn't see the pixels would be tremendous. One of the ways they're working on alleviating that is to only render in high resolution the exact area of the screen you're looking at (detecting eye movement). The fovea, where things are in focus for us is actually a pretty small area of our vision, and everything outside of it is out of focus, so all that other area could be rendered at a far lower resolution, saving on processing power required. Pretty fascinating stuff.

 

And yes, Froogle failed to mention the goggle effect. I've heard other YouTubers describe it as taking up your whole field of vision and being able to see things peripherally, which is just not the case. (Unless I did something horribly wrong when I was adjusting my headset.)

 

You're right about the button manipulation thing still being an issue. I have the LeapMotion device, which detects where your hands are and lets you see them in the simulator. I would say that a technology like that, if perfected, would be a great solution for button manipulation, but it's just not there yet. Not there to the point that I tried it once, and haven't used it since, it was so frustrating to use. It would probably improve with practice, but still not ideal.

[joolsd 10]

I agree for the most part. We do have a long way to go before it's "perfect," but a long way technology-years isn't generally very long. Yes, I expect that the 1200 lines of resolution in the consumer version (compared to the 1080 in the DK2) will go a long way toward reducing the screen door effect, but I don't expect it to be perfect. I heard an interview with Palmer Luckey (founder of Oculus) on a podcast, and some of the stuff he was talking about was pretty interesting. It's very hard to get a high resolution in a device like this that would take up your whole field of view because of the sheer amount of pixels that would need to be driven in that area, and for each eye. The processing power to drive such a display at a high enough resolution where you wouldn't see the pixels would be tremendous. One of the ways they're working on alleviating that is to only render in high resolution the exact area of the screen you're looking at (detecting eye movement). The fovea, where things are in focus for us is actually a pretty small area of our vision, and everything outside of it is out of focus, so all that other area could be rendered at a far lower resolution, saving on processing power required. Pretty fascinating stuff.

 

And yes, Froogle failed to mention the goggle effect. I've heard other YouTubers describe it as taking up your whole field of vision and being able to see things peripherally, which is just not the case. (Unless I did something horribly wrong when I was adjusting my headset.)

 

You're right about the button manipulation thing still being an issue. I have the LeapMotion device, which detects where your hands are and lets you see them in the simulator. I would say that a technology like that, if perfected, would be a great solution for button manipulation, but it's just not there yet. Not there to the point that I tried it once, and haven't used it since, it was so frustrating to use. It would probably improve with practice, but still not ideal.

 

I have tried the leap motion, and it is not that great. I think I would rather use a mouse. For the time being.  The better it is calibrated the better it works, in fairness.

[Travis Carney 0]

I have tried the leap motion, and it is not that great. I think I would rather use a mouse. For the time being.  The better it is calibrated the better it works, in fairness.

 

Well I was trying to use it on the overhead panel of the NGX. Maybe not such a fair test. I'll probably play with it some more with a simpler airplane and be less lazy about calibrating it properly. I do think it has potential. I just don't know if that's only a matter of perfecting the software, or if it would require new hardware as well.

 

One thing to note regarding Froogle's comments about FlyInside. Maybe they hadn't announced this yet at the time he made the video, but they are in fact planning on supporting the consumer Rift. It works just fine with the current Rift drivers, contrary to a statement he made in the video (that I think he later corrected).

[joolsd 10]

Well I bought a DK2 home from work, which my boss kindly lent me.

 

The biggest problem is using windows 10, because a lot of DK2 dev is based on old SDK runtime 0.6 or earlier.

 

I went insane trying to make the dk2 work.  I started by installing sdk  0.7 which was the first thing I did. no luck at all with that. There is no extended desktop mode.

 

Then started using sdk 0.6, which worked briefly with the tuscany demo. 

 

Then tonight I went back to sdk 0.7 and tried the http://flyinside-fsx.com plugin in.   It was all pretty painful to do.

 

Unless you can find someone who knows exactly what to do at the right time it is all a bit tricky to do. Because what was true one month ago isn't what is true now. Not very user friendly that is for sure. I will certainly keep an eye out on develpments.