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tonywob

Some advice on VR

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Hi All. I've bitten the bullet and bought myself an Oculus Rift to try out VR and have been in awe at how amazing it is to actually sit in the cockpit, and you really have to experience it to know how good it is. However, I have a few problems that I hope any long time VR users can help with:

  • I wear glasses, and I have a problem with the glasses fogging up. It's really frustrating and nothing I've tried seems to work. Without glasses it's just too blurry, but I find it very very uncomfortable.
  • After the initial honeymoon period was over, I'm really noticing how blurry everything is. I can barely read the G1000 and programming the GPS is impossible, I can't read anything. Is this normal? I've tried changing settings, scaling etc, but nothing seems to work. I also can barely seen the runway because the scenery is so blurry. I understand it is lower res, but in other games I don't have this problem. I've watched Youtube videos and others don't really seem to complain about this

I also tried AeroflyFS and performance is vastly better (I turned everything to medium/low in X-Plane). Also in AFS, the cockpits are more readable, but I still have somewhat blurry scenery making it hard to see the runway numbers. As good as VR is, the blurriness of everything in X-Plane and AFS quickly gives me a headache. I've tried racing sims (Dirt Rally) etc, and I don't have these problems (apart from the initial motion sickness :D)

 

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Hi Tony,

I wear glasses, too, I think your problem may be that the lenses are made of actual glass? I have plastic lenses and they never fog up. Seems like you may need to get a cheap pair just for VR.

As for blurriness, I really can't understand how it's so bad for you. In the Steam settings, when I raise it from 1.0 to 1.5, I see a big improvement in sharpness, and gauges are readable very well. You may run out of GPU time at some point, first thing you may do to counter this is get rid of clouds (unfortunately, they are heavy hitters in VR). I run at 1.3 with 2xMSAA+FXAA and the image is decent.

However, there are many more tweaks to improve the VR experience, especially lowering the visibility to get the load off the CPU (and make scenery appear smoother), but then you need to touch the skycolors so you don't get foggy colors all the time. I have a LUA script with all my tweaks for VR, let me know if you're interested. Overall I sense the interest in VR is very low, that's why I haven't bothered to share all my findings.

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-

Belligerent X-Plane 12 enthusiast on Apple M1 Max 64GB

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I borrowed a HTC Vive from work last weekend, set it up, and was instantly hooked! VR is definently the way forward for simming! Although - I discovered some caveats, similar to yours.

 

1. The ”screen door-effect”: it is pretty noticeable, especially when trying to read any of the cockpit dials. Tried flying the 172 G1000, but had to give up - I couldn’t read any of the dials unless I stuck my nose though the dash like a narrow sighted 80-year old. I tried several settings, and combinations of super sampling and AA to get a tolerable result. I recall ending on 1.8 super sampling, and 2x AA with HDR. Anything over that wold kill my Titan X Pascal. I also overclocked the GPU to 2.1gHz, which improved smoothness drastically! 

Most other VR titles available thorough Steam VR are made with the poor resolution of the Vive and Oculus in mind, so everything is huge! X-Plane was not, and if the cockpit size is to remain 1:1 in VR, it has to stay that way. The only way forward, is to increase the resolution of the built in screens. There is a new Vive, called Vive Pro on the way, which boasts a 70% increase in pixel density. There is also a new Rift coming.

Im holding of buying VR until the Pimax 5K and 8k are available. The 8K offers a wider field of view, and 2x 4K resolution, which - if we are to trust YouTube - nearly eliminates the screen door effect. (This does not make it a true 8k VR headset - it’s just dual 4K). If it is enough for x-plane - well - time will tell!

 

2. Blurrieness when looking up and down with your head stationary. A big problem for me. Turns out that the lens made to wrap a flat screen around your eye balls has some serious chromatic issues, so the colors and pixels turn into a smudge when looking around the lens. This is supposed to be better in future generations..

3. Performance: as long as 45fps are kept steady, all is well. When it’s not, bring out a plastic bag: you are gonig to puke. 

That said though - flying over ortho Alicante, doing visual short finals in the 172: it’s nearly as good as in real life! Not having to use a mouse or hat to pan around is brilliant! Track-IR has never worked for me, but this did - instantly!

I did try flying and manipulating the potentiometers etc with the touch controllers. I didn’t like it..ended up flying with a yoke, throttle and one touch controller. I found it very hard grabbing the knobs with the touch controller. Maybe it was something wrong with my lighthouse setup, but it could definently do with some improvements.

cant wait for the next gen VR headsets to hit the market!

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1 hour ago, kristolz said:

cant wait for the next gen VR headsets to hit the market!

Me too. I have Oculus DK2 and the major thing kills it is the low screen resolution. I have still been waiting for a VR with at least true 4K screens. Then I'd worry that no current CPU/GPU combo can drive XP11 in 4K VR at decent fps unless you slide everything down to minimum. It probably will take another five years to have smooth 4K VR + full details in XP11. Then we're all in heaven.. 


7950X3D / 32GB / RTX4090 / HP Reverb G2 / Win11

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9 hours ago, Colonel X said:

I have a LUA script with all my tweaks for VR, let me know if you're interested. Overall I sense the interest in VR is very low, that's why I haven't bothered to share all my findings.

Thank you, yes, I'd be grateful for any tweaks you have :). I've tired 1.2, 1.5 but not actually seeing much difference, everything feels like I'm looking at it through a fogged up biker's helmet

The most frustrating thing for me is that it fogs up quickly. The suggestions are to have a fan blowing or get prescription lenses for the device, all of which I really don't want to do. I have plastic lenses, but it's unbearably uncomfortable and seems I can't really find a solution that's not going to cost me more money and time.

 

 

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Yeah was just wondering how you guys plan on rendering in 4K or 8k with VR!

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| FAA ZMP |
| PPL ASEL |
| Windows 11 | MSI Z690 Tomahawk | 12700K 4.7GHz | MSI RTX 4080 | 32GB 5600 MHz DDR5 | 500GB Samsung 860 Evo SSD | 2x 2TB Samsung 970 Evo M.2 | EVGA 850W Gold | Corsair 5000X | HP G2 (VR) / LG 27" 1440p |

 

 

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2 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

Yeah was just wondering how you guys plan on rendering in 4K or 8k with VR!

That is the question... I'm hoping to avoid AA altogether, or nearly, and save a bunch of GPU power that way. One could take comfort in that on the CES demo last week they ran it of a laptop...:

 

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26 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

Yeah was just wondering how you guys plan on rendering in 4K or 8k with VR!

Unfortunately, the evidences show that VR flight simulation is only viable for full VFR/VMC sessions, from start to finish. No hardware can do 4K per eye at 60Hz minimum. So I stick with my 34 inch ultra wide curved monitor and TrackIR 5 until hardware evolves.

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8 minutes ago, Pascal_LSGC said:

I think you didn't read the article, just the title. FYI, it is about VR 360 videos. Nothing to do with the discussion here.

I agree. Skip that.

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10 hours ago, tonywob said:

I also tried AeroflyFS and performance is vastly better (I turned everything to medium/low in X-Plane). Also in AFS, the cockpits are more readable, but I still have somewhat blurry scenery making it hard to see the runway numbers. As good as VR is, the blurriness of everything in X-Plane and AFS quickly gives me a headache. I've tried racing sims (Dirt Rally) etc, and I don't have these problems (apart from the initial motion sickness :D)

 

Maybe something to do with the low frame rate of XP11 on VR? People say VR at low frame rate gives headache and more motion sickness.

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1 hour ago, ryanbatcund said:

Yeah was just wondering how you guys plan on rendering in 4K or 8k with VR!

Well, if the darn Bitcoin miners would stop buying up all those graphics cards... :dry:

Personally, I'm waiting for the next gen VR facebricks with slightly better resolution. And then in X-Plane I'll still probably only use it occasionally for things like helicopter stunts down the Grand Canyon. Most of my flights are too long to keep it on full-time anyway. 

For actual, usable cockpits in the more complex GA aircraft, I'm getting the feeling that we're still 5-10 years away on the hardware side. And it has to comfortable enough for long flights. I'm thinking some future version of wireless headgear that can switch between AR (outside world while retaining VR elements) and total VR immersion is what's needed here.

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X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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It's very like to take 5-10 years to get us quality 4K VR. It's kind of depressing to think about this long time frame but I can't be more optimistic. 

For wireless VR display though that's already done by HTC Vivo Pro, way faster than most people thought.


7950X3D / 32GB / RTX4090 / HP Reverb G2 / Win11

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3 hours ago, Emerson67 said:

Unfortunately, the evidences show that VR flight simulation is only viable for full VFR/VMC sessions, from start to finish. No hardware can do 4K per eye at 60Hz minimum. So I stick with my 34 inch ultra wide curved monitor and TrackIR 5 until hardware evolves.

I'm reading about people maxing their video ram with GTX 1080 ti's - I just don't see VR being mainstream for some time.  Maybe for fun little "arcade" style games...but serious simming?  Eeek!


| FAA ZMP |
| PPL ASEL |
| Windows 11 | MSI Z690 Tomahawk | 12700K 4.7GHz | MSI RTX 4080 | 32GB 5600 MHz DDR5 | 500GB Samsung 860 Evo SSD | 2x 2TB Samsung 970 Evo M.2 | EVGA 850W Gold | Corsair 5000X | HP G2 (VR) / LG 27" 1440p |

 

 

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