VR Inclusion in MSFS

[carbonbasedlifeform 179]

Although I don’t like the feeling of VR myself, this a surprising bummer.For others. My guess is that it will eventually be added by MS. Widespread VR is coming.

My equivalent is seasons. It doesn’t look like it will be released right away but I’m not giving up hope for the future.

[Pilot53 543]

VR may not be mainstream for gaming just yet, but where it really shines and has its purpose is SIMULATION.  For this new Sim to not include some form of VR support is absurd, and i hope this turns out to be untrue.  I don't care how good the new sim looks, without VR I wont touch it with a 10 foot pole. I'd rather watch paint dry then pretend to fly on a flat 2d screen again. 

Edited September 30, 2019 by Pilot53

[blueshark747 1,843]

7 minutes ago, Pilot53 said:

VR may not be mainstream for gaming just yet, but where it really shines and has its purpose is SIMULATION.  For this new Sim to not include some form of VR support is absurd, and i hope this turns out to be untrue.  I don't care how good the new sim looks, without VR I wont touch it with a 10 foot pole. I'd rather watch paint dry then pretend to fly on a flat 2d screen again. 

Yea there is no going back after actually being inside of a virtual cockpit.

[dongdongliushui 49]

This is a big mistake. I am officially stopping my support for the new MSFS. 

Until the VR support comes, goodbye!

[Woozie 732]

Woah guys, take a deep breath, we really dont need another tech-war, there are enough battlefields already 😉

While i'm a VR enthusiast too, i can absolutely understand that MS refuses to make any promises at this point. The VR community can be very vocal and demanding, same goes for flight sim community in general, and now combine these two player types and imagine the outrage if they promise VR but cant provide a sufficient experience on launch day....

A few reasons why MS are lowkey on VR:

1. Microsoft isnt really known to be one of the industry drivers for VR. They focus on AR for commercial applications and this hasn't changed much recently. We can all be certain that they keep an eye on how VR tech evolves but its market share is still to small for a company like MS to board the hype train and allocate any extra resources to the development

2. Like it or not, we are still a minority representing a single digit percent share in the game industry, and this wont change anytime soon unless VR enters mainstream territory. Oculus are on track with their Oculus Quest ecosystem idea, but its still a long way to go. We can shout "No VR, no buy!" at them as long as we want, it wont have any discernible effect on their sales figures, especially for a company as big as MS. Total market share according to Steam survey is still around 3%, but we will see higher shares in "hobby"-genres like sim-racing and flight-simming, As seated experiences are something where VR absolutely shines, and members of these communities tend to spend a lot of money on hardware compared to other game genres.

3. VR is still experimental, and takes both, software and hardware to its limits. For proper VR implementation you need a highly optimised graphic engine (or use either Unreal Engine or Unity), something you cant really expect from a product still in alpha phase running on a proprietary engine. Just look at No Mans Sky which recently got post-release VR support. Community forums are full with angry VR users complaining about bad performance.

4. The VR world may soon undergo a major change if the industry decides to fully adapt the open XR standard (which seems to be very likely). Its a cross platform/cross engine standard which will streamline VR development significantly. Another reason for MS to wait and see how this evolves before committing to any industry standard or SDK

 

And those who compare 3D-TV to VR.....that's utter nonsense and can only come from someone who never tried proper 6DOF VR. 3D-TV was mainly a marketing thing for cinemas and TV manufacturers. It was something that could be added to existing technology without much effort or increase of production cost. In terms of VR, there's a whole industry behind with hundreds of millions being invested into R&D. And while 3D TV added some kind of (quickly fading) "wow-effect" to the movie watching experience, VR revolutionises gaming in many ways, although it will never fully replace 2D gaming. It still needs to become mainstream in order to survive but its not even remotely comparable to the very short age of 3D TV

 

Edited September 30, 2019 by Woozie

[G-RFRY 1,708]

I don't think home cockpit builders use VR and could not say they are not series simmers. 

[HiFlyer 9,343]

5 hours ago, Sethos said:

Just the overbearing attitude about it is mentally exhausting, especially as it always has to sound like there's millions of users screaming for it, when it's in fact the same handful of users every single time. I actually had a Vive headset, got it when they launched, eventually sold it. VR is okay but the technology is / was still too young at the time for me to truly enjoy it. It was good but I can live without.

I think that's pretty common in the community, actually. I can't even recall how many zillions of threads I've read with people demanding nitpicky thing #20072 or else (place name here) is not realistic or not a sim, or etc.

Why should this be different? People want what they want. Many many things some people have essentially demanded over the years (or else) I find mentally exhausting, (mostly because people never seem to want to pay the premium for such detailed features) but I'm silent, because hey, it takes all kinds to make a world.

I will almost certainly buy this, but then, I will pretty much buy any sim. 

However, it cannot be my primary sim without VR, and that's that.

[Cyrex1984 175]

I think Microsoft are doing a big mistake not having VR at launch. Every other flightsim on the market have VR at this point.

[G-RFRY 1,708]

It`s amazing that flight sim became a hobby of so many without VR so is this the end and doomed to fail.

[HiFlyer 9,343]

11 minutes ago, rjfry said:

It`s amazing that flight sim became a hobby of so many without VR so is this the end and doomed to fail.

It's amazing that flight sim became a hobby of so many without sid/star and all sorts of other stuff, and so was obviously doomed to fail. Oh, wait, the most popular sim ever had none of that and managed to survive for decades.

Huh. Maybe it was only a minority of enthusiasts (kinda like VR users) that wanted all of that.

Go figure!

[irrics 1,517]

Absolutely massive disappointment that VR isn’t being factored in from the get go, especially as this product isn’t even launching for nearly a year as it is. 

 

My main frustration on this is just that not designing with it in mind from the get go makes me concerned about the performance implications of ever implementing it after the fact. 

 

I will remain positive and hopeful that they’ll bring VR at some point, but they’ve lost a ton of my enthusiasm right there.  It’s nearly impossible to really enjoy non VR sims, especially flying ones, after great exposure to VR.

Just a a major major bummer for me. 

Edited September 30, 2019 by irrics

[HiFlyer 9,343]

5 minutes ago, irrics said:

Absolutely massive disappointment that VR isn’t being factored in from the get go, especially as this product isn’t even launching for nearly a year as it is. 

 

My main frustration on this is just that not designing with it in mind from the get go makes me concerned about the performance implications of ever implementing it after the fact. 

 

I will remain positive and hopeful that they’ll bring VR at some point, but they’ve lost a ton of my enthusiasm right there.  It’s nearly impossible to really enjoy non VR sims, especially flying ones, after great exposure to VR.

Just a a major major bummer for me. 

Bel Geode has a video out regarding the new sim, and he mentioned on the facebook VR flightsim site that he pushed pretty insistently for the inclusion of VR especially as the sim apparently began its life as a VR hololens demo. I'm sure MS will be hearing a lot of questions about it.

[irrics 1,517]

What makes “no VR” (yet and or if true) particularly egregious is that they have focused so heavily on “fly VFR truly anywhere!”

 

I can’t think of a better and more awesome immersion and usage case for VR than graphically amazing and accurate VFR flying. VR completely excels at that specific type of usage. 

 

Headset on, grab your hardware yoke and “look around and fly and watch your jaw drop”. 

 

This new MSFS is potentially missing a massive opportunity to be THE next gen showcase for VR. 

Edited September 30, 2019 by irrics

[RioPilot 99]

Everything Microsoft has shown us so far has been absolutely mind-blowing, but I must say I'm quite disappointed VR apparently won't be supported at launch. Hopefully it's something that still gets implemented sooner, rather than later, whether it be by Microsoft or a 3rd party like FlyInside, because returning to a 2D representation of Flight Simulator is not something I could easily return to. Using VR in P3D for instance, despite its limitations, is still preferable to me because you really get the sense of being inside an actual cockpit with a proper sense of depth perception during landings.

It's sort of like when I first got Track IR, I couldn't just go back to using a hat switch. So I really hope Microsoft considers placing at least some importance on VR. I know the market may be rather small, but in my opinion, Flight Simulators were made for VR. There's really no better application in my opinion for the use of such technology.

I wouldn't even mind if it is was a basic implementation. I suppose worst case scenario, I could buy a large curved monitor and go back to using Track IR, but that would be like taking a step back.

That said, everything else they've shown has been so amazing, there's no way I'll stick to using P3D just because it has VR capabilities, but lack of VR in the new sim is again, very disappointing to me.

Edited September 30, 2019 by RioPilot

[nickhod 425]

11 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

he pushed pretty insistently for the inclusion of VR especially as the sim apparently began its life as a VR hololens demo. 

Yeah, I found that slightly strange..

"We were so blown away with this AR / VR hololens demo that we went on to create a new flight simulator based on it"

"So it supports VR, right?"

"Nah, not a priority"